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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1288/17230/AHarrisDR190508.1.mp3
6a11b42596b674bae0164350fdeba8e7
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Harris, Donald Raymond
D R Harris
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Donald Harris (B. 1925, 1877136 Royal Air Force) and two photographs. He served as an air gunner on 625 Squadron Lancaster at the end of the war when he flew on Operation Manna.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Donald Harris and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-05-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Harris, DR
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: Right. This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive on the 8th of May 2019 between Harry Bartlett, volunteer with the Digital Archive and Mr Donald Raymond Harris who served in Bomber Command during the Second World War. Well, thank you for agreeing to the interview Don. The interview is taking place at Earls Barton in Northamptonshire, where Mr Harris lives. Right. Don, well like all good stories we start at the beginning so where were you born?
DH: Acton, London.
HB: Right. Oh right, and did you, you went to school there did you? Yeah.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
DH: A Common School. A Common School.
HB: A Common School. Oh right. So, you were at that school until what sort of age?
DH: Fourteen.
HB: Fourteen. Right. And so that would be, yeah we would be talking about the year war was breaking out.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. So, as you came to fourteen did you, did you leave school and go to work straightaway?
DH: Yeah. Yeah.
HB: At fourteen.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. And what sort of things did you do, Don?
DH: What? Work?
HB: Yeah.
DH: Teaboy.
HB: Right.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Well. That’s, that’s what the official title was. I was the teaboy.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And I had to travel from Acton in London to Slough to go to work. I had to catch a lorry that took me down there with all the men.
HB: Right.
DH: Digging the road up, laying gas mains.
HB: Right.
DH: That’s what my Reserved Occupation was because gas mains were being bombed. Broken. All kinds of things. So we had to go out and repair them. And there had to be a teaboy because you could not allow the men to walk off to get cigarettes or tobacco or whatever else.
HB: Oh.
DH: I had to do it. I had to go and get the men’s, whatever they wanted. They weren’t allowed to leave the job.
HB: Right.
DH: So that was the original.
HB: Yeah.
DH: It was rather amusing in as much that being totally ignorant and fourteen years old I also had to tidy up round the office. There was an office for the ganger and I had to tidy up coke because it spread you know. That kind of thing. And I found a little package about that big. Didn’t know what it was so I took it in to the boss’s office and I opened it and it was all the men’s wages. The stupid agent had hidden it amongst the coke.
HB: Oh dear.
DH: So, I locked the office, went up to see the ganger. What was his name? Dave. No. No. Anyway, the ganger. I went up to him. I just took him to one side. I said, ‘I found a package.’ He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I found a package,’ I said, ‘And it’s got all the men’s wages.’ ‘Come with me.’
HB: Right. Yeah.
DH: So, he went there and he counted how many wages there were which was right. He said, ‘Ok.’ He wanted to make sure —
HB: Yeah.
DH: I hadn’t put one aside. But that was some of the interesting things as a very young boy.
HB: Yeah.
DH: At fourteen years old.
HB: Yeah. Who, who were you actually working for?
DH: At that time it was a company called O C Summers.
HB: Right. Right.
DH: That was the name of the company.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Eventually, I mean I got rather well known and when that job finished I came back to London, worked with another ganger in [pause] it was in Shepherd’s Bush. Which is near, well not near but reasonably near home. I could go there by bus. So that was the second one. Then [pause] when that work finished, you know we’d go to another job. And it was then that my brother was reported missing in Burma.
HB: Oh right.
DH: I did get a lot of information because a friend of mine daughter went up to London and got a lot more information about them. He was the 3rd Carabiniers, which was tanks and they did a silly thing. They drove their tank up and they saw a tank, a Japanese tank on its own. And as far as they can learn all the people, there were five, four members of that tank that were captured by the Japs. They don’t know what happened to them. Never found any remains or anything like that.
HB: So, what year would that be Don?
DH: Oh, fairly early in the war.
HB: Yeah.
DH: When they first got to Burma.
HB: Right. Right. Yeah.
DH: That’s when it was. But she got a lot of information. Although they couldn’t find the graves or anything like that they itemised the four people that were missing because that’s, they had to report them missing.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: They put up a memorial then. I think it was Calcutta. With their names on it.
HB: Right. Yeah.
DH: But that’s all.
HB: Right.
DH: I got to sixteen so it must have ‘39 or ‘40/41 time.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Then I decided then that I would want to go in to the Service and the eldest brother was in the Royal Corps of Signals.
HB: Right. Yeah.
DH: He was the eldest.
HB: So, let me just stop you there, Don. So, there’s you, two brothers.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Mum. Dad. Any other family in there? There? Sisters?
DH: No. My sister died before the war.
HB: Oh right. Right.
DH: She was twenty five.
HB: Oh dear.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. So, yeah. Sorry. So, yeah. You decided that you were going to join.
DH: Yeah.
HB: The Services.
DH: I wanted to join it. Now, there was a unit in Acton, in the school there which, what the devil was the name of the people training for the Air Force?
HB: Air Training Corps.
DH: Yeah. It was. And that was in a big school. High school. Up in there. And I went there once a week. Only to once a week and it was quite interesting because we went through lots of things. Not guns. Not guns.
HB: No.
DH: But radio. Morse Code. All that lot. You know.
HB: Yeah.
DH: So that was interesting. Then I got a letter to report to a place up where the balloons flew from. I can’t get it yet because I do forget.
HB: Yeah.
DH: But anyway —
HB: Oh, well, that’s understandable. Yeah.
DH: Where the in the balloons. We went there and we went through several tests and it came out that I’d remembered some of the Morse Code [laughs]
HB: Oh right. Right.
DH: Anyway, it was a little while later on when I got a letter to report to St John’s Wood.
HB: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Yeah. Report there. And they entered me as a wireless operator air gunner.
HB: Oh, w/op. Yeah.
DH: And once I got used to being in London the next place I moved to was Bridlington.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Just to make sure I wasn’t near home like.
HB: Yeah.
DH: But I had a sergeant. Brilliant. Blakey. Sergeant Blakey. He was absolutely brilliant. And our particular unit we got the highest recommendations. He was brilliant. Absolutely. Only a small fella but a sergeant and he really was good.
HB: So, was it, was this your, like doing your basic training —
DH: Yeah.
HB: Don.
DH: Oh yeah.
HB: Right. So, so we’d be talking what now? We’d be talking, coming up 1943/44.
DH: Yeah.
HB: That sort of the time.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And we had twelve bore guns shooting out to sea.
HB: Oh right. Yeah.
DH: It was great. And this was the first time in my life I’d ever run six miles. Run. And I had to run from the coast back to my camp. And I thought oh. I laid down on a bed when I got back and I was puffing and at my age I should have been fit. Anyway, that was that. Then I got sent to [pause] oh Christ. A wireless school was at [pause] isn’t it funny? I can’t remember. Big city. Big city and, you know Hartleys Jam and things.
HB: Yeah.
DH: They owned the land that we were on.
HB: Right.
DH: And they said if ever you want to work come and work in the fields with all the fruit —
HB: Lovely.
DH: Got paid.
HB: So that, so that would be [pause] was that north? Did you go north?
DH: No. Never.
HB: Or, I’m just trying to place because there were one or two wireless schools.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Knocking about.
DH: Yeah. No, that was [pause] Hereford.
HB: Hereford. Right. Yes. Yeah.
DH: Hereford.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And while I was there I got ill and of course the sick quarters was well, kind of a hospital. Kind of. But the girls who were nurses only went for the officers. And then they sent me to a hospital. Credenhill Hospital. I’ve remembered that right down to the last word. The nurses there were like lady so and so.
HB: Oh.
DH: Oh yeah. And they were really good. They were good. And I met another bloke named Don and we both could play darts.
HB: Oh, right. Yeah.
DH: And we used to go in to town, go in to a pub. That was our first shall we say attempt of them getting their beer for nothing but instead of that we both could play darts.
HB: Right.
DH: And so we didn’t buy a pint. They did. Yeah. No, this is all reacting because I was ill. I really was. How I got to the hospital I don’t know. I was out.
HB: What did you have? Did you have some sort of pleurisy? Or —
DH: Cold and chill and something else.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: It was all luck. And that, then I went back to the school. You know the —
HB: Yeah. The wireless school.
DH: Went to see the officer in charge and I said, ‘We’re not getting anywhere.’ I said, ‘Nobody is wanting wireless operators. There’s plenty of them.’ There was. I said, ‘I want to remuster. Air gunner.’ He said, ‘Yeah. If you wish to do that we could do it.’ So I remustered as an air gunner. And do you know what they stamped on my docs? Lack of moral fibre. Yeah. If you found my documents you’d find it’s got, “Lack of Moral Fibre,” on them because I remustered. I remustered to a more dangerous bloody job.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Anyway, I wanted that and they sent me to the island at the beginning of the Thames.
HB: Sheppey.
DH: Sheppey. Which was a Fighter Command. They sent me there. They were Typhoons, Tempests. That’s what they were and they used to start them with a long cartridge. They’d be turning it over with the battery and then he’d fire it which would kick the engine over and start.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Well, the engine was a Napier. Made by Napier’s anyway and oh they were powerful things. God, they were powerful. It only took a very short distance to take off.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: And it was really, talk about noisy. Christ. Totally different to the Spitfire.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Totally different, but it was good. So, from there I was sent to Bridgnorth.
HB: Were you? Yeah.
DH: Bridgnorth was a Gunnery School and there we did all the necessary flashlights and bit of this and bits of that and stripped the gun down and put it back. But it was just right. I liked it. I really did. And anybody that didn’t read the Morse Code with the lamp didn’t get in.
HB: Right.
DH: I did. I could read it easy. It didn’t make any difference. So, I finished there and sent me home. Home.
HB: Right.
DH: Until I got a summons to go to Aylesbury.
HB: Yeah.
DH: There was a main aerodrome and a sub. A little one.
HB: Yeah. Little satellite. Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Yeah. And we were in Wellingtons. Lovely aircraft but a bugger to fly and even at one time the skipper, who was, who was New Zealand, he called me up from the turret, ‘Come up and help me.’ So of course, I went up there and said, ‘What’s the matter, skip?’ He says, ‘Help me push this bloody thing down.’ [laughs] Because Aylesbury is all hilly.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: And the draught coming up was coming up and lifting us instead of going down.
HB: Oh dear.
DH: So I got in to the co-pilot’s seat and shoved it and we got down.
HB: Was this, so this was an Operational Training Unit.
DH: Oh yeah.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Yeah. Well, we used to have to turn the engines over by hand.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. How did, how did you get in to a crew there? Did it —
DH: When we went to the main aerodrome.
HB: Yeah.
DH: There. We got all the crew sorted out. We didn’t do it.
HB: Oh right.
DH: They did it.
HB: Right.
DH: So, the pilot was New Zealander. The bomb aimer was New Zealander. The wireless operator was Irish. Irish. Not Northern Ireland. Irish. Our mid-upper gunner was Scotch. Bob. I even remember where he lived. Edinburgh. The main road. That’s where he lived. And me. So that’s six of us. We hadn’t got the engineer.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And we went oh several times. We went over, we had to fly over London to let the air people shoot at us. But they were told to shoot low [laughs] and also the searchlight.
HB: Oh right. Yeah.
DH: Because the searchlights taught them and us.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: And then we flew back to Aylesbury. That’s where we were going. So we landed at the auxiliary aircraft because the other place was busy. We landed and we, you know that type of aircraft the Wellington was kind of a big aircraft. But it’s also marvellous for keeping flying even if it had got a hole in the side, you know.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And all of a sudden we got a warning and all the lights went on. Americans landed because they couldn’t land at their aerodrome so they could land at ours and of course they’d got all these big fur coats and Christ knows what else on. Oh, and they were, got their big aircraft with four engines, you know. All this. A couple of the English blokes there said, ‘Yeah. You go underneath our wings, don’t you?’ Almost caused a fight but never mind. From there we went to just north of Stamford. There was an aerodrome on the farm land that done it and they had Stirlings. Bloody great things. Seventeen foot to the bottom of the aircraft. We weren’t interested in that. We transferred from there to Lancasters and we were trained on the Lancasters. Now —
HB: Can you can you remember what that airfield was? Was it Woolfox? No.
DH: It was about three miles outside Stamford.
HB: Right. Yeah.
DH: On the main road by the way. A1.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And the airfield was on the right, and we had interlopers follow our aircraft in and they bombed the bloody girl’s place. WAAFs. Killed a lot of them.
HB: Oh dear.
DH: But anyway, that’s good. We did further training and for the skipper’s point of view nobody else. Him and me. And we practiced corkscrewing.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Do you know what that is?
HB: Yeah. Well, you. You tell me what it is.
DH: Well —
HB: I presume you were a rear gunner.
DH: Oh yeah.
HB: Yeah.
DH: We took off. Got up to a height and then we were looking for fighter. And it was there was the fighter. The skipper said, ‘Can you see what it is?’ I said, ‘Yeah. A Spitfire.’ [laughs] So, he said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘So, is he within range?’ I said, ‘No. Miles away.’ It was amazing I could recognise it. Anyway, all of a sudden I saw this Spitfire getting closer and closer and when it got to about six hundred feet I said, ‘Corkscrew port go.’ And of course, where does the tail go? Voom.
HB: Straight up in the air.
DH: Straight up [laughs]. And I had a camera.
HB: Yeah.
DH: On the guns and I followed it to the word. Down, port, up starboard oh. Got a complete film. Complete film. So the Spitfire broke away. Waggled to say good. And that was it as far as I was concerned. And then we got back, landed and that afternoon of course the cameras went in to the photography department and they, we got a call over a tannoy, ‘Warrant Officer Mitchell and crew attend the Photography Unit.’ I thought oh, I must have made a mistake. Instead of that the bloke that did it, it was an officer and he said, ‘Watch it.’ He said. It only goes for a short while because you’re down. Up. Up. Up. You know. So we did. The film was absolutely perfect.
HB: Oh right.
DH: And this officer turned around and he said, ‘You’ve got one of the best gunners that I’ve tested.’ He said, ‘That pilot was dead from the first shot.’
HB: Really?
DH: Yeah. I thought well that’s —
HB: Yeah.
DH: And then we had the other test to show that we were fit for action. It was, you know, the usual things. Aircraft recognition.
HB: Yeah.
DH: How to load your guns and all that kind of thing. And then we all had to attend a meeting with the people who were in charge of all of that and he said, ‘We’ve got some good results.’ What was he? A squadron leader, I think. And he said, ‘We’ve got some exceptionally good people.’ So, he said, ‘136.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘You’ve got nineteen and a half points.’ I said, ‘Out of how many?’ ‘Twenty.’ Nineteen and a half out of twenty. And the one thing I forgot. Where [pause] you know how the bullets go down a tray.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Into the turret. Up into the guns. Right. Now, when you stop these continue to run.
HB: Yeah.
DH: So something has got to stop them. At the bottom of the tray here there’s a hole like that which just fits the bullet. So it goes into that hole and it stops running.
HB: Right.
DH: And that’s what I missed.
HB: Oh.
DH: And my mid-upper gunner got nineteen. Just shows you doesn’t it?
HB: That’s, it’s still pretty good.
DH: To me it was of interest because I wanted to be perfect as a —
HB: Yeah.
DH: It’s a, I’m a defender.
HB: Yeah.
DH: You know. So, we did. It was good.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And then from there I went to oh I can’t remember the name. I did tell you.
HB: Was this being posted to a squadron?
DH: Yeah. 625.
HB: 625, yeah.
DH: Which was, come on. It’s six miles outside. North of Lincoln. It’s a permanent station.
HB: At Scampton.
DH: Scampton.
HB: I wasn’t supposed to help you there but —
DH: No.
HB: I thought I would.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Being as you got nineteen and a half for your gunnery I thought I’ll let you have that.
DH: Yeah. Yeah. We were Scampton. We did. We did. I’ll tell you what I liked about what we did. I’m not talking about killing people I’m talking about what I liked. We flew to Holland. Instead of bombs we had sacks of food.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Marvellous. I was so pleased to see that.
HB: Do you remember what that operation was called?
DH: Yeah. Because we had to follow the sign on the, painted on the roof of the hospital. And it was two fields beyond and we had to drop the food there. One silly pilot flew underneath another one and when [laughs] it went straight through the cockpit.
HB: Blimey. Yeah.
DH: Flew. Flour everywhere. Daft.
HB: Did you know that was called Operation Manna?
DH: No.
HB: Manna from heaven.
DH: No.
HB: Yeah.
DH: I know I liked it. We were only a hundred feet high.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And as we flew along, I mean the roads and everything else I got a clear view because as you know there was no back in the turret.
HB: Yeah.
DH: I was amazed to see this German and a machine gun but he wasn’t anywhere near it. He stood well back.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And when I looked at him I thought Christ he could only be fifteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. And we were told not to get near the guns. Good job because I mean we were all loaded.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: And we flew back over the sea at a hundred feet. I didn’t like that.
HB: No. I can imagine.
DH: No. Not really.
HB: Yeah.
DH: It was alright but I mean we trusted the skipper obviously but I just didn’t like it. It was too near the sea.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Which is going to, but no. They said we mustn’t fly.
HB: Had you actually flown any night operations before that, Don?
DH: We were on the battle order two or three times.
HB: Yeah.
DH: But we didn’t go. We went out to the aircraft. Went to the nice little café in the middle of the airfield. You know where I mean?
HB: Yeah.
DH: And it was nice because we got eggs and bacon and a few —
HB: Who was running that café? Was that —
DH: Yeah. Lovely.
HB: Was that the WAAFs running that or —
DH: No.
HB: No.
DH: No. The Air Force.
HB: Yeah.
DH: They ran that.
HB: Yeah.
DH: It was really nice. It really was. We thought we would get a call in a minute which you were liable to do. If you get one of the others calling with the breakdown of engine or whatever else then we would have gone.
HB: Yeah.
DH: But I think we, four, four times. Yeah. And that was at Scampton.
HB: Right. Right. So you were, you were like the reserve group.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Ready to fill in.
DH: We were the first reserve. Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
DH: But that’s what they said when you said you were on the Battle Order. You are. You’ve got to obey whatever. Another thing we did there was when the, when the troops were advancing over in Germany and France and Belgium directly they got to this Air Force place. Well, it became an Air Force place. It was Belgian place. We were told to go there, land, switch off your engines. Switch off.
HB: Right.
DH: Yeah. Because there were still some bomb holes in the [laughs]and they were filling them in quick.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And we were bringing in prisoners of war home. And we brought them to England.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Buckinghamshire, I think somewhere. And then we flew home.
HB: Right.
DH: And we did that twice.
HB: So you, so you flew from Scampton.
DH: Yeah.
HB: You flew over to Belgium.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Parked up if you want to call it that.
DH: Yeah.
HB: And then how would the prisoners of war arrive?
DH: Oh, they were there in, this was the stupid part. They were there and they had fed them. Fed.
HB: Oh.
DH: Yeah. You can imagine. They fed them beautiful meals and when we got them on board. Oh —
HB: Yeah.
DH: It was a bit rough. But anyway, we got them home. Directly we landed in Buckinghamshire somewhere and unloaded them. Then we flew back. And then they had the job of cleaning the aircraft.
HB: Who? Who cleaned the aircraft?
DH: Ground crew. Yeah. They had power hoses and everything.
HB: Yeah.
DH: But there again at least we got some of them back home.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: We then got orders to move to [pause] I can never remember the name. I wasn’t there long. Where the bombers are? Where you went.
Other: Coningsby.
HB: Coningsby.
DH: Coningsby. We got there. We were just getting settled in and what’s the squadron? 97? [pause] And about three days later we were called into operations room. We had to fly to Italy.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And we went. There’s two areas which we could have gone to. But the one we chose was at the foot of Vesuvius. Right at the foot. We landed at Naples Airport but we couldn’t take off because the runways weren’t long enough with a load of people on board.
HB: Oh.
DH: We were —
HB: So this was all still part of Operation Exodus.
DH: Oh yeah.
HB: Bringing the prisoner of war home.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Right.
DH: But those there were mainly officers.
HB: Yeah.
DH: What was it called? Lamy? Lamy camp?
HB: Could be. Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Yeah. I think it was.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And they were nearly all officers. So —
HB: This is, this is still in Lancasters.
DH: Oh yeah.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Oh yeah.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: The dodgy bit was with a load of people on board. As the gunner it would have been my job to dash about with an oxygen mask for each one to have a puff. But I never made it. I was ill.
HB: Right.
DH: Yeah. I went into this hospital in [pause] just south of Naples. It’s a little place. And I was in there for two or three weeks. When I came out I went and saw the sergeant that was in charge of getting people home and I said, ‘Right. When can you get me home?’ I said, ‘My skipper’s gone.’ I said, ‘He’s already taken off.’ Because the Yanks came and right at the end of the runway was trees.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And I’m afraid their big load of stuff took off and they had all the trees [bulbed] out and the runway lengthened.
HB: Oh right.
DH: So that they could get off.
HB: Yeah.
DH: It’s purely luck. Not anything else. It was warm.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Naples.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Warm. Christmas time. And we had our Christmas dinner in the palace at Naples.
HB: Oh right. Yeah.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. What rank were you at this stage?
DH: Flight sergeant.
HB: You were a flight sergeant. Right. Yeah.
DH: Nice. Everything. Then they said, ‘You’ve got to fly.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Good.’ So, I said, ‘What do you want me to do?’
HB: ‘Act as a rear gunner.’
DH: I said, ‘Well, I won’t act at it,’ I said, ‘I am one.’ So, he said, ‘Oh. Alright.’ So, he said, ‘Well, you’ve got to look after the men on board.’ Twenty. Twenty men. Apart from the crew, you know.
HB: Yeah.
DH: We couldn’t take more than that because we had to go over the Alps.
HB: Oh yeah. Yeah.
DH: The air is different.
HB: Yeah.
DH: So, we did go over the Alps. And it was a bit of job to go amongst all the people so I got the mid-upper gunner to do the same for the other ten. So I did ten and he did ten.
HB: Right. This was with the oxygen.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Well, up there over the Alps there is no oxygen, virtually.
HB: Yeah.
DH: So —
HB: So, did they give you extra oxygen bottles for them? Or —
DH: Oh yeah. Portable ones.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Or you could plug it in where ever you had it.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Where the hospital bed was, you know.
HB: Yeah.
DH: There was one there.
HB: That’s up, so that’s up by the main spar.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Going through. Yeah.
DH: So, you’d got all kinds of things that you could use. But we did. We got over the other side of the Alps and we came down to a nice level. Twenty thousand was nice. And we suddenly got a broadcast. The skipper, we still had plug in and this skipper whoever he was, and I’ve still no idea who he was said, ‘We’re not going home.’ I said, ‘What?’ ‘No.’ He said, ‘Fog in England. Covered in fog.’ So we couldn’t land. I knew we could if we’d have gone on FIDO.
HB: What, what was FIDO?
DH: Fog dispersal. They had the runway covered in a pipe with loads of holes and big huge tanks of petrol and they pumped it through and lit it and that just lifted the fog. Very dangerous if the skipper wasn’t alert because the heat from the [pause] would lift it.
HB: Lift the aircraft. Yeah.
DH: Anyway, that, we didn’t go. So we had to land in southern France. Now that was not popular. We landed. We were told to switch off the engines and sit in the aircraft. Not leave it. That was the Frenchmen. Well, didn’t like that.
HB: Yeah.
DH: We were fighting for them as well. Anyway, we sat there and it must have been about midnight I think because we took off at 9 o’clock in Italy.
HB: Yeah.
DH: When we got down in France as I said we sat there and then we got clearance from England.
HB: Yeah.
DH: So, the engineer went out, primed the engines, started them and we took off and we landed somewhere near the Wash. Well, that’s where FIDO is.
HB: Oh right.
DH: Yeah. I mean it was quite interesting actually to know that we couldn’t use FIDO. Mind you it would have used a hell of a lot of fuel.
HB: Yeah.
DH: It gets pumped through at a hell of rate.
HB: Yeah.
DH: But we knew all about it because we were told about it. We couldn’t train on it but we were told about it and it was quite interesting but then I wasn’t at my aerodrome.
HB: No. Of course not. No.
DH: The people there were looking at it. How can I get home? And suddenly this officer came and he said, ‘I’ve just been brought down here by a vehicle. He’s going to go back. Not quite to your aerodrome but he will take you there.’ I thought oh thank God for that. You know.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And we went up through Boston. Lovely.
HB: Yeah.
DH: What was that? Bloody hell. What was that station? Dogdyke.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DH: What a name for a station. Dogdyke.
HB: Yeah.
DH: That’s the station’s name. So, we went back there. I said, well I’ll need a bed.
HB: Just bear with me a second, Don. I’ll just pause this a second just while the tea —
[recording paused]
HB: Right. We just turned the tape back on after we’ve been provided with tea and biscuits. So, we’ve got these officers from Italy. We’ve come back and we’ve landed.
DH: The van.
HB: At Dogdyke.
DH: It was a van.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Took me right back.
HB: Took you all the way up to Dogdyke.
DH: Yeah. They took me to the entrance.
HB: Right.
DH: Yeah. Yeah. I walked in. Well, I didn’t walk in. They, I got stopped at the gate but when I said who I was and what I was. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yeah. The adjutant wants to see you.’ So, I thought how did he know I was. I thought to myself they must have told him in Italy. Anyway, I said, ‘Well, it’s a bit late now. I doubt very much if he’s there.’ So, I said, ‘Is he still there?’ ‘No.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll need a bed for tonight.’ The bloke said. ‘We’ve allocated you one already.’ So I went there and evidently it was a new crew that had just, there was a spare bed.
HB: So, I bet you were popular.
DH: Well no. There was a spare bed. I don’t know why. But anyway. I went to bed and I did sleep. I really did sleep. I didn’t know what was going on. The next bed to me the bloke said, ‘You were dreaming.’ I said, ‘Was I?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘And it sounded pretty bloody awful.’ ‘Oh.’ I felt alright you know.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Anyway, I got up. Got dressed. Went to see the adjutant. What’s going on. I didn’t know then so I said, ‘You wanted to see me sir.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Alright. What’s going to happen because my crew’s not here.’ He said, ‘No. They’re on your way to New Zealand.’ I said, ‘What?’ ‘Yeah. Two have gone to New Zealand, one’s gone to Edinburgh, one’s gone to Ireland, the other one to London.’ I thought, ‘Oh.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘And you are on your way to Uxbridge. Do you know where it is?’ I said, ‘Oh, yeah [laughs] Do I know where it is?’ So, I said, ‘Why am I going now for?’ ‘Demob.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘You sound surprised.’ I said, ‘Well, I am. I like the Air Force.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘You can’t.’ Just like that. He said, ‘You’re going. In front of me are all your train passes. All your leave passes. And you will be going to Dogdyke Station.’ That’s why I remembered it.
HB: Right.
DH: So that I had to go from there to Boston. Train to London. Get another train from there to Uxbridge. You get out at Uxbridge and there would be a vehicle waiting for you. It was well organised. It really was well organised. I mean that. Everything was like he said. Got to Uxbridge. Looked. There was a vehicle. I said, ‘Where are we going now?’ ‘Oh, Wembley.’ ‘What for?’ He said, ‘Demob.’ I thought, Christ. They’ve done that all in the time that the phone message going from Italy. Now, that is some organisation.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Bloody well is. Really is.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And of course, when I got to Wembley they were ready for me. Gave them my paper. I got my shoes [laughs] blue suit, shirt, tie. All complete. Everything was there.
HB: What did you have? Did you have a cap or a trilby hat?
DH: Trilby.
HB: I thought. Yeah. Trilby.
DH: And that was it.
HB: Yeah. After those years that you’d spent just finished.
DH: Yeah. No, they, once he said, ‘You’re going back,’ I knew what he meant because obviously the amount of damage created by the bombs was tremendous in London and that’s where we worked.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Oh Christ. We even laid a main on top of the pavement. On top of it. To pump water because water mains down below were broke.
HB: So how quick did you go back to doing your job from being demobbed?
DH: Straightaway.
HB: You didn’t have any leave or anything or —
DH: Oh no.
HB: No.
DH: No.
HB: Right.
DH: Straightaway.
HB: And did you go back to, was it OC Summers, was it?
DH: Yeah.
HB: You went straight back to them.
DH: Yeah.
HB: And they, had they kept your job for you?
DH: Oh yeah.
HB: Yeah.
DH: They had to.
HB: Yeah.
DH: So then —
HB: So, what job did you go back to, Don?
DH: As a joint maker.
HB: Right.
DH: A joint maker. It’s one that the sockets and spigots enter one another and then you put yarn in and then you run hot lead in. And then you set it up.
HB: Yeah. Ok.
DH: Good. It was very very complicated. I used to go with a ganger and then they’d come and get me to take me to another ganger to run his joints for him.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And then go back to it.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Like that.
HB: So, what, what year would this be then, Don?
DH: The end of the war.
HB: ‘45/46.
DH: Yeah ’46.
HB: ’46. Yeah.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. Can I just take you back a little bit, Don?
DH: Yes. Yes. Yes.
HB: You know, before you joined you were in Acton. You would have gone through the Blitz.
DH: Oh yes.
HB: And your family. You had bombing around Acton.
DH: Yeah. We had a bomb in the bottom of the garden [laughs].
HB: In the bottom of the garden.
DH: Well, I had a big garden.
HB: Oh right. Well, yeah.
DH: We had a long garden.
HB: Yeah.
DH: It must have been about a hundred feet long. Something like that.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And the bomb was at the bottom. It did kill a boy. Sixteen year old in the house opposite [unclear]
HB: Yeah.
DH: He got caught, you know.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Terrible. Yeah. I was there when the fires were roaring like hell. A big red glow in the docks.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Yeah.
HB: And so, so obviously you’ve come through that. Did you actually ever fly a live, I’ll call it a live operation to actually drop bombs?
DH: No.
HB: Right. Right. So, you come towards the end of the war. You’re what by now? You’re nineteenish. Twentyish. What about girlfriends?
DH: No.
HB: Social life.
DH: Not interested.
HB: Did you not have a social life in the RAF?
DH: No. The only social life was in a pub in Lincoln.
HB: Right. Right. Right. Yeah.
DH: And it was in the cattle market. There used to be a cattle market.
HB: Yeah.
DH: There was a cattle market in Lincoln and there was a pub in the cattle market.
HB: So, yeah, so you come to the end of the war. You’ve gone back to OC Summers and you’re now doing a jointer, a jointer’s job and did you, did you just carry on with them then?
DH: Them. Yeah. For forty years.
HB: Forty years.
DH: Yeah. Because they count service as working for them.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: That was, oh before, before the forty years I was made a ganger and I went in to a gas works which I never expected.
HB: Oh right.
DH: Because that was a vastly different type of job. You do all kinds of heavy lifting. Crane work and everything else.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Now, I was the ganger there. The original ganger was ill and died and I took over.
HB: Right.
DH: Directly I took over they started to do big work. I ended up with, you know twenty five men doing different jobs.
HB: Yeah.
DH: I couldn’t cope because I couldn’t be everywhere at once.
HB: No. No.
DH: So, I asked the governor who I knew personally, I asked him if he could get me some men with knowledge. And one of the men he sent in was a ganger that I worked for.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And he came, he came in and he says, ‘Hello Don.’ I said, ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘Christ, I haven’t seen you — ’ because he was very experienced. And he said, ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘Don’t let it worry you.’ He said, ‘You’ve got the responsibility. Not me.’
HB: Yes.
DH: See. And he was a very nice bloke.
HB: Yeah.
DH: He really was.
HB: Yeah.
DH: I mean, we used to go fishing together. We went, particularly when we worked night work I drove him home in the morning and then we’d drive out. —
HB: Oh right.
DH: And go fishing.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Anyway, Sammy Jefferies his name was. A really, a nice bloke. And he was [pause] amazed at the work I was doing. We had a forty eight inch main, gas main which gathered all the gas out the tanks into pumps, in to a main and so forth. And I had to cut a bit out of the gas main. We used to cut. Put a collar on and then put another bit of pipe in and draw the cord up. And that’s the first forty eight inch joint I’d run.
HB: Right.
DH: And what we had to do was we had a twelve inch ladle. Twelve inch. Quite deep. We filled that up first and then one bloke stood there, one bloke stood there with another nine inch ladle to top me up if I said so. Because if I couldn’t see that we were going to run it we could run out of lead so we pulled it in to my ladle and then I ran it.
HB: Yeah.
DH: So we did it. And the senior engineer in the gas works he had done a bit of district work, what we called district work and he stood there the whole time that I got it apart. Because we put gas bags up the main.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: To stop gas coming through. Well, we shut the valves but I mean —
HB: Yeah.
DH: If they leaked.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And that was me. I came. They took me out of the works, Summers and put me in charge of a gang that’s going on holiday. A gang of men. So, I did that. Then they sent me to another one by St Pancras Station where there was a T-junction. And the lid was around but it was leaking bad. So the main there was eighteen. Eighteen. Eighteen inch. What I had to do was shut it off. So I ordered twenty four inch bags to put in there so that a twenty four inch bag would fill it.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Up.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Take the lid off. Re-drill it. Put new bolts in. Whip it out. And put it in. You’d be surprised. It’s really quite a technical job.
HB: I wouldn’t be surprised. I’d be terrified.
DH: Bloody hell. But after I’d been there for forty years John Laing —
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: Bought Summers because we were making money. So, they bought OC Summers. I lost [pause] well, twenty one years pension because Summer’s pension wasn’t as active to buy me equipment.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. I see what you mean. Yeah.
DH: So this posh speaking man from Laing came down to one of Summer’s depots which I was then responsible for all depots and he came down and he said, ‘Well, I’m afraid this is what is going to be.’ I said, ‘No. It isn’t.’ I said, ‘You’ve knocked twenty one years off my pension,’ I said. ‘And that’s not on,’ I said, ‘And I’ve got with me several agents who have got over twenty years on sites and I want twenty years pension.’ He said, ‘Are they the agents that’s running the area?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Oh, I’ll have to see what I can do.’ And if they all packed up the jobs would stop.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: And eventually he came back and he said, ‘We’ve made arrangements that when you do get to retirement we will give you a gift of money to go in to your pension. Not to you. To the pension.’
HB: Right.
DH: No.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Actually, they did. I did do well in a way. The firm because the old managing director came with the job, got six thousand pound.
HB: Right. Right.
DH: When you put it in the figures to get six thousand pound like that meant a little bit each month. Only a little bit.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DH: But there you go.
HB: Yeah. So, so you’ve, we’ve gone up to retirement. But you must have got married at some stage.
DH: Oh yes. I did. Oh yes. She was a typist in the gas works.
HB: So that would be, what? Nineteen —
DH: Oh God.
HB: Fifty something.
DH: A bit later than that I think. Well, you can work it out if you like. I didn’t get married until I was thirty eight.
HB: Oh right. Right. So you were thirty eight. Right. Well, yeah. Yeah. That’s, yeah, yeah so you —
DH: My wife.
HB: You were well on. Yeah.
DH: Yeah. And because I’d lived in a house all my life I could not live a flat.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And she had three boys.
HB: Oh right. Right.
DH: Eighteen, sixteen and fifteen. And I said to her, I said, ‘I can’t live in a flat.’ She said, ‘What are we going to do?’ I said, ‘We’re going to buy a house.’ She said, ‘We haven’t got any money.’ I said, ‘I know we haven’t.’ I said, ‘But I know what I’m doing. We’ll go and find a house first. Then we’ll go to Lambeth Borough Council and because this is a flat owned by Lambeth Borough Council they’ll willingly give us the money so that we get out.’
HB: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
DH: It’s true. That is what they did.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And then the first house we bought was in Mitcham, Surrey and it was six thousand pound [laugh] And don’t laugh but that six thousand pound.
HB: Yeah.
DH: But that was a hell of a drain on the money.
HB: Oh, it would have been yeah in those days. Yeah. Yeah.
DH: So, yeah and then the firm decided to make me the depot manager of Watford.
HB: At Watford. Right.
DH: Yeah. But on condition I moved.
HB: Right.
DH: Because I had to be near it because we were on duty day and night. Still mending gas mains.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: So, the pleasant surprise was that it was the firm’s solicitor that dealt with the sale. That means that they paid.
HB: That saved you a few pounds that way. Yeah.
DH: Oh yes. Yes.
HB: Right.
DH: So, we lived in Bushey Mill Lane, Bushey. We lived in there for quite a long time.
HB: Right.
DH: I don’t know how long. Graham would probably tell you.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And we bought a house in Slip End which is near Luton.
HB: Right.
DH: Lovely house. Beautiful house. It was ideal. The first job we did was have double glazing.
HB: Because of the airfield. The airport. Yeah.
DH: Yeah. That was the first job. And unfortunately, she didn’t like it.
HB: Oh dear.
DH: It was a lovely house. You remember it. You liked it didn’t you?
Other: What I remember of it. Yeah.
DH: It was a really nice house. Four bedrooms. About two garages. Lovely. Anyway, she didn’t like it. Move. So we had to find somewhere to move to. So we moved to Sawbridgeworth.
HB: Yeah.
DH: So that is three miles north of [pause] Oh God. Shopped there long enough. Harlow.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Yeah. So, it wasn’t far from Harlow. Three miles. But it was a lovely little village.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Beautiful little village. And it had a direct train line to London.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Which of course is a benefit.
HB: Absolutely. Yeah.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. So you, so we’ve got we’re sort of coming to the end of that part. Just take you right back. Right back. Just something that’s sitting in my mind. When you went, when you did your training and you ended up at the Radio School at Hereford.
DH: Yeah.
HB: You, you were actually doing wireless operator training.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Operator training.
DH: Yeah.
HB: Did you do any air gun training at all there?
DH: No.
HB: No. So you were doing your wireless operator with a view eventually like a lot of them did you would go wireless operator and then you’d do an air gunner course and then you’d be wireless operator air gunner. Right. So I’m about right thinking like that. When they, when you said it’s not, you know it’s not working for me. I’m, you know I’m not happy with it. Did they ever give you a reason why they put it down as lack of moral fibre?
DH: No.
HB: They never gave you a reason.
DH: Never. I didn’t know they did it.
HB: Right.
DH: Until somebody found out for me.
HB: Right. Because were you keeping a logbook or a diary at the time?
DH: No.
HB: No? How strange.
DH: Yeah.
HB: How strange.
DH: No. It’s, it’s stamped across my documents. Where every they are or whatever they are.
HB: Right. That’s [pause] yeah I’ve, it’s just it suddenly, suddenly came to me. I’ve just never heard of that before. Ever. But then to become a rear gunner on a Lancaster. It’s a little bit contradictive to some extent.
HB: Yeah.
DH: Well, look I think we’ve come to a sort of a, bit of a natural conclusion, Don and thanks ever so much for tell me that to consider, considering that before we turned the tape recorder you said you thought that you wouldn’t be able to remember anything I think you’ve done really well. I really do. I think you’ve done well. And it’s, and it’s interesting that you’ve done Operation Manna feeding the Dutch, you’ve done Operation Exodus bringing the prisoners of war back because people only ever think of the Lancasters steaming off in to the night dropping bombs and like you say they were the humanitarian side of it.
DH: Yeah.
HB: As well. Yeah.
DH: I think that’s important.
HB: It is. It’s very important.
DH: And when you look at it the ones we picked up in Belgium some of them were ex-RAF.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
DH: It’s inevitable isn’t it really when you think about it because the planes came down.
HB: Yeah.
DH: And they were put in the prison camps.
HB: Yeah. You were bringing your own home. Well, Don thank you ever so much and we are going to stop the recording because it is nine minutes past four and I think you’ve done an exceptional job, Don and thank you very much. Very useful.
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 Donald Raymond Harris
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harry Bartlett
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
2019-05-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHarrisDR190508
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:20:56 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Donald was born in Acton, London. He stayed at school until he was fourteen and then worked as a tea boy/general help for O. C. Summers, a firm that laid gas mains in Slough. When that job ended, he worked for another ganger in Shepherds Bush. Soon after he heard that one of his brothers was missing in Burma.
When Donald was sixteen, he joined the local Air Training Corps and later went to St. John’s Wood, where he was entered as a wireless operator / air gunner. He did his basic training at RAF Bridlington and was then posted to a wireless school in Hereford. While there he was taken ill and sent to hospital. On his recovery he asked to be re-mustered as an air gunner and was sent to the Isle of Sheppey to be trained on a Napier. He was then posted to RAF Bridgnorth gunnery school. After finishing the course, he was sent home until he was summoned to form a crew. The crew was posted to RAF Halton where they flew on Wellingtons. Their next posting was to RAF Wittering where they transferred to Lancasters. Donald was then posted to 625 Squadron at RAF Scampton. The squadron flew to Belgium and later to Italy to bring prisoners of war home. They also took part in Operation Manna over Holland. On returning to England the crew were split and Donald was posted to RAF Uxbridge and then demobbed. He went back to work at O. C. Summers until his retirement. At the age of 38 Donald married a typist who also worked for O. C. Summers.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Belgium
Italy
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
England--London
Netherlands
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--London
England--Kent
England--Kent
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
625 Squadron
97 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
crewing up
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Eastchurch
RAF Halton
RAF Scampton
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/363/6086/AJossDA151007.2.mp3
e6f59399c580ffcb25c07f1869f9492e
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
Joss, Douglas
Doug Joss
D A Joss
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Douglas Alexander Joss (632261, 56113 Royal Air Force), and two wartime photographs of him and his crew. Douglas Joss completed 32 operations as a rear gunner on 626 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Andrew Joss and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Joss, DA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: We’re rolling now. My name is Chris Brockbank and we are in Wendover speaking with Squadron Leader Douglas Joss, and the witnesses today are Brenda Ponton and Janet Ford and we're talking about the background experiences and the wartime experiences of Squadron Leader Joss. So over to you Douglas.
DJ: Oh, where do you want me to start?
CB: So if you start, please, with your earliest days in the family.
DJ: In the family?
CB: Yep.
DJ: I was born in Aberdeen, the eldest of five, and I was born in Aberdeen and then my father at the time, who had been in the First World War, he and his brother came back. He wanted to be a vet but his parents couldn't afford to send him further. The brother, the older one, got the money and he went to Aberdeen University and became a very well-known doctor in Nottingham. Dad wanted to be a vet and he couldn't anyway, but they said you can go out to East Africa as an assistant with the vet's out there doing research on sleeping sickness in cattle [coughs]. I think it's quite amusing that when I was born, he and my mother [coughs] decided what I was, should be called. Charlie after one of her twin brothers. When somebody you know, these people said he got killed in the First World War and somebody told her if you name him after somebody who's dead, your son will be dead within a year and she was daft enough to believe that so she changed my name to Douglas. We turned up eventually to join my father in Uganda and Kampala and he, she called me Douglas, and he said, ‘what's this Douglas business’, so she told him that. He said, ‘bloody madness. We said we’d call him Charlie and I'll call him Charlie’, so for twelve months he called me Charlie and she called me Douglas so you can see why I'm a bit of a mixed-up kid. Oh dear [coughs], anyway, while we were out there my sister Dora was born In Kampala. My son last year, year before, went out with my other son. Two sons went on a tour of Uganda, I said call in to Saint James's Church in Kampala and you’ll find out that I was baptised there by the Reverend Pitz, Pitz, you can never forget a name like that [coughs], I beg your pardon, sorry which he did and they did and they made him very welcome and said to him — well that's by the way. When we came back, he couldn't get back into the veterinary business at all and then he went in for post office and became what they call an SC and T In those times, sorting clerk and telegraphist and we went to Angal, which is not far north and he was postmaster. It's a tiny little post office and I recall visiting him there because I was fascinated how he would sit and receive telegrams with a Morse key which he’d learnt during the war in the Army, you know they'd took the old Morse out and you remember telegrams used to come out on a strip of paper, which they stuck on a telegram when it went out. So that's why we went there and we stayed there until he was offered a better job in Coventry and we moved to Coventry, and he was there. I met one or two lads who were in the Air Force, well [unclear] it might slip off a bit, I was in the Scouts while I was there, there’s a bit that comes up later on that. I remember the two lads, they were in the RAF and they came on leave, I became interested so I said to the family I think I'll go and join the Air Force and seeing mum was having a struggle to pay our fares and everything, we moved from our house at twenty-one shillings a week to a council house at fourteen shillings a week because we were hard up. I can't believe it, I can remember her crying because she hadn’t got tuppence to go to the Women's Institute and get cup of tea. However, err — where was I. I'll just remember there, it's there I decided to go in the Air Force anyway and she didn't want me to go in. Then the war was loomed. Jimmy Wales was my, if you like, Patrol Leader in the Scouts and I — mum didn't want me to go in the Air Force. Anyway this business of war looming in thirty-eight, I says well if I don't go there you know what will happen, I'll go and be called up in the Army and that will be worse. So she signed up to let me go. My father was uninterested, he says you please yourself and that's what I did and I went in Air Force in the [coughs], in the end of thirty-eight [coughs], October thirty-eight. I was tested then but because they were having trouble filling or building all the training schools which were expanding so rapidly at that time, I was sent home and they said we’ll call you back again, so go home. After I'd been tested and I actually went in, in the January of thirty-nine. You can get my number off that 632261, which I remember well. And I was sent from there down to Pembroke Dock just – I was sent as HCH, aircraft hands, labourers if you like. I'll interrupt you there, that's the first place I got a chance to fly in a Short Sunderland. Can I get you off your seat? Come here. My brother found a poster somewhere and he bought it for me. Now look in the right-hand corner. Can you see that poster was painted from the spot I was photographed in 1939? The beginning of thirty-nine and you can tell he stood — the photographer must have been, the painter must have been standing where I stood there from, absolutely [unclear] so that's it. So that's literally the first aircraft I flew in, the Sunderland.
CB: Right. Very interesting. Yes.
DJ: By that time it had been decided I should be a flight rigger. I don’t think there was any choice. I think I was told I would be a flight rigger, chippy, as it had an element of woodwork in it which fascinates me, I wasn't, I guess, I loved it. I became a chippy rigger and went from there to do basic training at Henlow, and then from Henlow down to — what’s the name of it? Weston-super-Mare, Locking, from Locking, down to Locking where I did my twelve months training as a rigger and passed out as a glorious LAC Leading Aircraftman. Whilst I was there I had a bosom pal, Ernie Morton, with whom I remained in close contact till last year. He died last year, didn't he?
BP: A few years ago.
DJ: Ernie.
BP: A few years ago.
DJ: Was it two years ago?
BP: A few years ago.
DJ: We remained close all that time and we were bits of lads, we were a bit naughty and we heard that on King’s Birthday they have a parade and then a day off, and we said we'll try and get out of parade, you know. We hated them but they had big boxes there and the two of us got into this great big box [coughs] to keep away from this parade and after, I don't know how long, everything was so quiet we got out. We were fools, they’d all been given the day off and they'd gone and we stayed in this, this bloody box for hours to get out of this. My memory of Ernie all these days. Anyway from there, when I first passed out as LAC, I was posted to Upavon which is the Central Flying School. Now Central Flying School, I went in as a rigger. You, you, I don't know what you did in the Air Force
CB: I flew.
DJ: Well, well you weren't an airman fitter or rigger then?
CB: No, No.
DJ: No. Well in those days we were given an aircraft, that was your aircraft and you serviced it to give it all its flying. I was allocated to a very famous bird called George Stainforth, the last Schneider trophy pilot who won the Schneider trophy for us and he had the last Fairey Battle, not bigger [unclear], not Fairmount. What's it called? Oh dear. He had the last — left in the Air Force. It will come to me in a minute. Anyway it was his he didn't like anybody flying it. It was a biplane, fighter biplane.
CB: A Gladiator was is it? Was it a Gladiator?
DJ: No, no it was very sharp and almost a forerunner of the Spitfire, if you like.
CB: Hawker Fury?
DJ: I've got a picture.
CB: Well we can pick it up in a minute.
DJ: Doesn’t matter it will come and he was — two things about him. Upavon had its own golf course, it still has I think, or it’s an Army unit. He made me act as his caddy when I was due days off, which hacked me off no end and he also, when he was away (it's a Fury, the Hawker Fury, his aircraft), he would say to me, ‘Joss, put that out of service, I don't want anybody else flying out, make it unserviceable so if anybody else had it, you could in all honesty, say it's unserviceable’. So I made it unserviceable, I’d take something out or I’d do something anything I used to do to make it unserviceable until he came back and there. Another chap came along at the time to get his wings back, a bloke named Bader, Douglas Bader, he came back there to be trained back up to get his wings back because you know he'd lost his wings when he'd lost his legs, and he came back there and I — he was being taught first of all in a Tutor a Hawker a, a –
CB: Avro Tutor?
DJ: Avro Tutor.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: He went in a Tutor and I helped him in and out of the aircraft. I have a memory of him, bearing in mind he was a Flight Lieutenant that day and I was still the LAC, a lady came up in a red sports car, about this high it is, and she said ‘do you know Douglas Bader’ and I said ‘yes ma'am’, she said ‘I'm his mum, can you tell me where I can find him?’ So I found him and introduced him, didn't introduce him and I says ‘come on, your Mum's waiting to see you over there’, which was lovely. And she — one thing that was ridiculous to me at the time was, isn't it lovely two of Douglas’s friends, and as for an LAC and a Flight Lieutenant being friends was just hairy fairy stuff, I laughed. Now if I might go right back to Halton they got Douglas down and told him a, an open day here and I reminded him of this case. I said ‘your mother came up to me’ I said, ‘she had a red MG that was half painted, it was being repainted, it was red and half grey and an MG’, and he said ‘I can't remember that’. I said ‘well she came’, he said ‘I know she came to drop it’. I said ‘I flew with you there’, you know, because if you did a major inspection, you flew with that aircraft if you could just to make sure you've done the job properly and he couldn't remember this at all. Anyway he was very kind. When he went back to the station [unclear], another Battle of Britain pilot a [unclear] at Halton, he came to see me one day and said he'd had a letter from Douglas thanking me for looking after him with his time here and it says if you see Joss you can tell him. I have now checked my log book and he was dead right, we did have a car which was half painted, ‘cause my mother was alive in those days, well his mother and I said ‘well yes she came along with a half painted car’. A fond memory. Well I thought that was touching. I’ve got a cutting of a newspaper cutting of Douglas Bader and I having a chat which was rather nice. Anyway, going right back to Upavon, a notice came up said volunteers required to go abroad in a not too pleasant surroundings. Now this was where my friend Ernie and I split up. I said ‘come on Ernie, let's go to that’, I talked him into everything except that. He wouldn't go, he’d met a girl, fool that he was [laughs], you see [coughs], and he preferred to stay with the girl rather than the excitement of going abroad [coughs]. I was told ‘we're not telling you where you're going but you've got to go up to London Hospital, in London with a bunch of other boys, to have special inoculations against yellow fever’ and I didn't know where that was. Anyway we went to London and we came back and went on a troop ship eventually in [pause], just south of Glasgow, whatever it was. Anyway it was a troop ship we got on and half way out we found out we were all going to the Gold Coast, to a place called Takoradi and what Takoradi was doing there was aircraft. The Maryland Kitty Hawk, Mohawks were coming in pieces and we were then, we were assembling them there. And it was known as the white man's grave in those days. All the expats that lived out there, all had spine pads you wore on your shirt, a big padded cloth which went shoulder to shoulder and down your back so your spine didn't get hurt. Needless to say, the RAF took no notice whatsoever and we worked in shirt sleeves all the time for they could get away with it, and the locals were very hacked off with this as it reduced their income because they got paid for that job. So I was there for a bit and once we hadn’t been there all that long and I got malaria three, four times while I was there. Which wasn't very nice. Again a request came up for volunteers to go up country so, like an idiot, ‘yes please I'd love to go’, and I went there and I went via Nigeria Lagos, to a place called Maiduguri in northern Nigeria and funnily enough it was a place called Jos, which is, which is where, where the locals lived. All the expats would go there because it was higher and it was better climate. But I was there and I went for — there for up to Maiduguri. We were in mud huts. I've got photographs of them here somewhere [coughs] which wasn't very nice, the water was fetched from the river of Lake Chad and boiled. All the water used for cooking, for washing, for everything else was from there and we were invited to the Lake Chad Polo sports club. They do Polo, they do most sports but there was all the expats and Europeans over there and there were two people and I heard two people talking and they said the name Joss, you see, and I said ‘yes’, and the chap turned around and he said ‘yes what?’ I said ‘you mentioned Joss, that's my name’, he said ‘no, I was talking about the town Jos where we go for a break’, he said ‘where do you come from?’ So I told him as much as I’ve told you and he said ‘any other relatives named Joss?’ I said ‘yes, my uncle's a doctor’, he says, ‘I shared a billet with him in Edinburgh would you believe’. He said he's quite honoured really and we became very friendly with him, he was the local civilian white Doctor and he used to [coughs], used to treat all the, the — his favourite story of the West African Winter Force, before the WAFs, before the RAF WAFs they were called, the WAFs, West African Winter Force, he used to have job finding his shoes to see them, because the smallest they would take were tens, they were big but he said ‘they're brutal’. I said ‘what do you mean they're brutal?’ he said ‘well one of them got me to circumcise him and next day he came back and he asked me to put stitches back on him’, you know because he was out with his girlfriend performing, tore his stitches and could he put them back in again. I thought that seemed a silly past time to me [laughs] [coughs] so that was there. And while I was in fortinamy, I went from there to French Patrol Africa, fortinamy on Lake Chad, and while I was there de Gaulle visited us. I got another rollicking there because he came in there called a [unclear] Flying wing. I've got a photograph of it there. There was only three of them ever made. They were given to de Gaulle. One was his private plane. Whatever happened to the other two I don't know. His pilot was a civilian, it was Jim Mollison, Amy Johnson's husband and he flew him about all over the world and over the country. After his visit I had a French Captain say ‘you come here English, English come here, you're very rude, very naughty’ he said, ‘they’re playing the National Anthem and you're walking around taking no notice’. I said ‘I was taking photographs’, which I was. ‘I'm sorry I didn't recognise it’. ‘Didn't recognise our national anthem? Well, that's disgraceful’ he said and the other thing he said ‘that flag of yours is higher than ours, get it down’. We’d got an old pole and put up our RAF Ensign [laughs] [coughs] so we had a Sergeant and a Corporal, Ginger Bunsen and Willie Downie which was four of us. He said ‘well you better fetch it down’, so he fetched it down this homemade flag pole and I fetched our flag down about four inches. I wasn't going to do anymore I thought it was enough but he got a bit stroppy with me about that and made me fetch it down another foot [laughs], so I was there and I got malaria again. Then he had a very, to me, unusual treatment. I had beforehand was being, was — quinine and all sorts but he said ‘no, lie on your stomach’, which I did and on my back he had little oval bottles which he heated and he placed on my back. He says ‘that will take all the fever away’, and I thought he was, he was a Martinique and I thought the man’s a bloody witch doctor. I don't know what he did but it worked beautifully and I mentioned it to doctors since and said that we’ve heard of this but never known anybody, and I says ‘well I had my malaria taken out of me by little bottles which are heated up and put it on’. My back was covered in bruises after they all came off. Anyway, I was in the village one day and we were on the edge of the British, of the Foreign Legion village and I saw a young lad, an Arab lad, come running out and a Legionnaire running after him and kicked him from behind and knocked him flat and started to kick him. I didn't know what he was doing, but I picked up a bit of wood and I hit this Legionnaire on the back of the head and said ‘stop doing that to that boy, he's only a boy’, and what he says, he says ‘I caught him stealing something’ and I said ‘I don't care’. The next thing is I'm picked up by the Legion and put in their billet with some Italian prisoners. Now this was interesting though, because if you wanted to go to the loo, you all had to go or none. If you're all bursting they’d say right outside and march and you’d march to the loo and you stood there and you performed if you did and you were taken back. Anyway, the French Captain at the time was Mercenaire, Captain Mercenaire, he said ‘I don't think you’d better stay here in the in fortinamy’ and he sent me back to Maiduguri and they sent up an Army Captain who took me back to Maiduguri. ‘What the devil did you do?’ I said ‘I only knocked this bloke out with a bit of wood really’ and he thought that was worthwhile.
CB: [laughing]
DJ: They took me back to Maiduguri and I stayed there and the doctor there, (isn't it funny how you remember these things talking), was South African, a Doctor Tatz, T A T Z, and he said ‘well I'm not letting you back on the airfield, you can become my assistant. I'll find you jobs to do in the, in the sick quarters’, which was a sort of a mud Hospital. South African [unclear] which I did until I had a – what do they call it? A rigor, you know, a relapse of the malaria, of the malaria. He said ‘well you're not much use to us out here, you'd better go home’. So I went home and they flew us down to, to Lagos and we got on a French troop ship that brought me back to the UK. And there when I came back my first visit, to would you believe, Lincoln, where I was in Newark. I was posted to Newark, Ossington which is just outside Newark and I was there but I kept getting relapses and they sent me to Cranwell to hospital there for a long time until I was — got rid of it and they came in one day and said ‘we need some volunteers and you people have had malaria’. And I was in a ward with others and they said they're some expert to [pause] examine me, tests going on, on some tests that I was told you’re having these relapses. I’ve got — a moment [unclear], I forget there was, two eights, three eights, twenty-four of us put in this ward and they said ‘any of you willing to go on these examinations’, yes said I and they said ‘we will draw for it, one of you will have a liquid one, one of you will have pills, the other one will have a jab in the bum’. You can guess, of course, which one I got.
CB: [laughing]
DJ: A jab in the bum and that's that but it worked. After that I didn't get a relapse, well I did some years later but a very mild one. It worked and they said and I [unclear] here used to be the centre of tropical medicine for the RAF and they told them about that and they took notes that you're taken and they said we've heard about those tests can you, can you tell us, can and I said yes, and they said can you remember the doctor, but I couldn't but I remember the day and they took notes of this and I've never had any since at all no relapses. Anyway, where are we now?
CB: What year are we in now and month?
DJ: Oh, now I'm at Ossington, Ossington which is B42. Whilst I was there we had — oh, I applied to be a flight engineer and I got back on from a general office saying no your application is turned down, they got so many applicants for flight engineers, every fitter and rigger wants to be a flight engineer and so you've had it. Anyway, you may remember they had an Inspector General, well used to have in the RAF, and he came on inspection that day and I'd been on nights and I was the standing by the bed and he came along the billets and talked to everybody and was very friendly, and he came down our billet and the old station officer said ‘attention!’ And we had to stand there out of bed and we’d been on nights and we were made to get up out of bed, and I was standing there in my pyjama trousers only. Anyway, he came and he was quite amused and said ‘I'm sorry you shouldn't do that. Anybody got any complaints’. [unclear] well what’s your trouble and the old Station Master was glaring at me, I said ‘well, I applied to be a flight officer and I've been turned down, I want to be air crew’, and he turned to his ADC, take this man's name, who turned to the station master and said take this man's name and I thought well that's the end of that. Two weeks later the tannoy went. I was a corporal then. Corporal Joss report to Station Commander immediately, don't stop to take your overalls off. So I went over and he said ‘you're a cheeky bugger Joss, aren't you? You stopping the Inspector General’, he was only an Air Vice Marshal, I said ‘well he asked’ and he said ‘well he's replied, and he says if you're prepared to take a gunner, you can go’. Which section? [unclear] Oh well I said ‘I can go Wednesday, tomorrow’, he said ‘don't be ridiculous, I'll let you know when you go’. He said you've got to go for selection first of all. So it was only about a week later I went down to — what’s that place near the Zoo in London?
CB: Lords, Lords.
DJ: No it was all blocks of flats. It was near there, anyway they were big blocks of flats just outside London Zoo because we were was [unclear] London Zoo when the selection went on and who turned up there, going right back now to my scouting friend, you'll see his name on there. Wales [coughs], and by this time I've done three years service you see, so I was an old hand, I'd got a GC, you know the one stripe you have for three years behaviour. Well he didn't want to go so I said stick with me, I'll look after you, I'll see you through, we’ll stick together on this.So we went through the things and he said we'll both [unclear] and I went up to the people, the class taking notes of sending and posting or whatever, and I said this chap [unclear], he's got to come with me, his parents asked that I look after him. And they said I've heard some tales but they said alright. So — where was the first place we went? Bridlington. Now I've got a very happy memory of Bridlington. They billeted us in — they emptied the council houses in the town and put us all in the houses, but I don't know where the whole Village went. And then one day we were parading all over the place, down near the Harbour and they said right, back here tonight at, I think they said eight o'clock, at the harbour. So we went back at eight o'clock to the harbour and we were all given a flying suit, just looked like an overall, and a life jacket and the other thing is, we were given a thing which was like a whistle, he said fasten your whistle onto [unclear] you must have seen it [unclear] on the collar, he said ‘what you are going to do in the dark. You are going to jump in the harbour in the dark and you will find a dinghy upside-down. You've got to find it, put it the right way up and as soon as you blow your whistle so they all come together, soon as you fill it with seven people, you can come in and have some supper’. And that's what we did. I remember pitch black, freezing flipping cold and we had a man named — I remember him [pause], Mogford was his name, no it wasn't, it was whatever it will come to me — Shadmaniham. He said ‘I can't swim I'm not going in there’. They said if you don't go in there, you're off the course and you're finished and we all liked him. He was a — I remember, he was a Sheffield steel worker or had been. Anyway we're all lined up, eleven o'clock, it was pitch black and we saw them throw this dingy and move it right out to the middle of the harbour in the dark. There wasn't a light anywhere and, and this man Shadmaniham says ‘well I'm not going in’ so one or two of us nodded like this you see. We just grabbed him and ran with him and jumped and took him with us. He was screaming like mad and he jumped in with us. Anyway we kept hold of him. Jimmy Wales was still with me then, we grabbed him and we started blowing our whistles and he wouldn’t move, you know swam or floated whatever you like until we got near the whistle. And we eventually found the dinghy, got in to it and we managed to turn it upright and dragged this lad in, and he said ‘I would never have done that if you hadn't done that’ but he says ‘I didn't want to lose my place, I didn't want to be thrown out’. So that's my one and only fairly memory of Bridlington. I hated it, it was terrifying, it really was awful. I don't know how many people they did that to but we did that. Anyway from there [pause] Andreas on the Isle of Man, where we did [unclear] re- training. Now then [long pause] my log book. Can I, can I read it out of my logbook because I'm very proud of this. If I can find it. Where is it? Where's the front page?
CB: This is one of the first entries in your log book.
DJ: Yeah. It says here, D Joss, air gunner. With affect from the 21st June forty-three. Squadron Leader Tooth signed it. Qualified air gunner and this is the bit I like, over the page. Theory - above average. Practical - outstanding and I like that, and the reason I got that is, I used to go four or five in the back of an Anson at the time and you had to climb into a turret on the back of the Anson and [unclear] flew with a dinghy trailing way behind and you shot at that. The rounds in the gun were dipped different colours so they’d know who had red or green or blue and they know who had hit the drone. Two of the other lads were terrified they wouldn't, they didn’t get out they didn't want to go in the turret, they didn’t, so I said let me go in there I'll do yours, I'll do yours, you see as a result, of course, I got no end of drogue colours. My, their colours and mine were in there and I got the credit for it. Anyway, above average theory. Outstanding - practical. Results - average. Recommended for commission at a later date after first experience and that was signed by Squadron Leader Tooth, OC Training Wing, Number One Air Gunnery Squad. So that's my proud possession. Exercises [pause] I shot two hundred rounds there and two hundred rounds there and so on. So there, that's that.
CB: That's really good. Do you want to have a break for a bit?
DJ: [Unclear]. The other four of us. My grandparents and her brother said ‘we’ll send two of them up to us in Aberdeen and they can stay with us until you get posted’. So I went and stayed with the grandparents and my sister went with my mother's brother. [Unclear] we were only going to go for a short time until she felt better but both of us stayed, lived up there for a further eighteen months. Really until we were summoned back.
CB: This is when the youngest was born?
DJ: Yeah.
CB: Right
DJ: And when mum had got over all that lot, she said she wanted us back and back we went. And we left Aberdeen and went back there. But I, I've been back once, only once since [unclear] the and memories came flooding back. Yes I have a brother, who is going to stay with us next week, he was also born in Aberdeen. Anyway where had I got to?
CB: Just, just briefly there, you moved, the family moved south and went to Coventry.
DJ: Yes.
CB: So we’re now from the narrative you've reached so far, got to 1942.
DJ: Two.
CB: But what was the experience of the family of being in Coventry during the bombing?
DJ: Ahh. This thing says we moved in the November and I was on a troop ship on the way to West Africa, and on the radio we heard this and I knew nothing about. I didn't hear from them and anyway, when I went at Takoradi [unclear] just, I was getting quite desperate I want to see the padre. One always visited the padre [unclear] and I told him about this and I said can't you do anything for me and he said he’d I’ll do what I can. He apparently had got permission to signal the police in Coventry to find out what had happened to family.
CB: This is Operation Moonlight Sonata so 17th, 18th November forty, yeah. OK.
DJ: And he did and they were very good. They said, police Coventry said to [unclear] the family were alright and well. They were all well and alright. I got a letter eventually from my mother and men used to [unclear] phone the [unclear] and what amazes me they got the pleasure when it used to take three weeks or three months sometimes to get the mail. There's only one amusing bit that I know of at the time. They could hear, where we lived in Radford in the corner of Coventry, they could all hear the bombing going on further in the town and Mum apparently, when she went to have a look to see what was happening, see if there's any flames and she opened the door and a bomb went off not far away. Blew the door and her in the kitchen and she laid on her back with the door handle in her hand. The rest of family thought this was hilarious and they all burst out laughing she says ‘there's me lying there, in pain and didn't know what happened and the kids are all standing there around laughing and I'm still holding the door handle in my hand’ [laughs].
CB: [laughs] what an extraordinary thing.
DJ: So for the rest of the time the letters, I got they referred about the tin can they had in the garden and they baked on for some months before they got power back on in the house. She did that. Dad was, he did, I don't know what he did during the war there, he did something. I think he was a, a warden for the Post Office, he used to go on the roof in the Post Office and do things there, an air raid warden.
CB: Umm.
DJ: That's the only thing, his contribution there. I tried to persuade him to go and join the Army. Now we weren't very friendly, I don't know why, he didn't bother, he didn't like us kids, he, he had nothing to do with us. He never came to school, he never came to anything. We weren't unfriendly but he was never, never friendly. Took no part in us. And I said well you were in the Army experience with the First World War, why don't you go and see if you want to go in the Post Office at Nottingham. Why I said that, his brother was a doctor in Nottingham, had been. He got an MC in the First World War and a Barterat in the second, would you believe. However, I said the Army Post Office is in Nottingham, you can go and stay with Uncle Joss as he was called or something, they'll give you a job in the post office but he wouldn't. He said no he’s staying at home and that was it as far as I was concerned. That was his contribution to the war, it was nothing at all.
CB: Ok, thank you very much. So now picking up on where we were before, you’re at, in the Isle of Man.
DJ: Oh yes.
CB: And you’ve — so we’re talking about 1943.
DJ: Yes.
CB: And the practical outstanding recommended for a commission later.
DJ: Yeah.
CB: So at that stage, what happened next?
DJ: Well, I was the most senior, if you like, cadet or recruit at the time in the thing because I’d done a bit of service in. So when our course had finished they said you're all going back to Loughborough, which I was pleased about because we did our college at Loughborough. You're going to Loughborough to join an aircrew, a bomber crew. It was quite amusing ‘cause the old ferry port of — and there were some RAF police on the side shouting ‘can we have the Senior NCO for this lot’, you see, and we said ‘where is the Senior NCO for this lot’, and all our lot are standing there looking round until one of them reminded me - you're the senior. Oh God I said the first time I've been given a Senior NCO job, you see, so I had to get them off and march them there and we were put on coaches, some of us and we were posted, moved to Loughborough. Now I don't know what the system was to become crewed down there in those Bomber Command days. Do you know what they — well I'll tell you anyway.
CB: They put you in a hanger.
DJ: Well.
CB: To crew up.
DJ: Well what it was, it was a big place anyway and there was enough to make seven, you know there's so many gunners. Two of each and there’s navigators and bomb aimers and flight engineers and pilots. Now I didn't drink, never drank and when we went there, I’m with Jimmy and I, I said stick with me Jimmy we’ll get on the same crew and they, they got us all together and they said now we're going to leave you and we’ll assemble tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock or whatever, and if you haven't formed yourself into a crew of seven or six because we picked up [unclear] late, then we will form you. So we didn't want to be [unclear] Jimmy and I looked round, we didn't know what to do. He didn't drink either and he was very proud of the fact that he was a Kings Scout. He was always on about this being a Kings Scout was Jimmy. We used to get him to do all sorts of jobs because he did that [coughs] and we saw a bloke sitting in the corner, quiet, ‘cause all the others did the obvious thing and said let's go down the pub and sort ourselves out, you see. Jimmy and I didn't want to go and we saw these chap sitting quietly in the corner and we said why do you [unclear] and he said ‘well I don't drink, I don't like bother’. ‘Well’, I said, ‘well Jimmy and I don't drink, shall we join up’, and that's how we got Len the Navigator and we looked around and there was other people about, and we said any of you teetotallers who don't like pub life and we picked up the bomb aimer and that was [unclear], and there was some flight lieutenants there, pilots so, oh no they were pilots, just commissioned or NCO pilots a lot of them. You know, most of them were sergeants in the early days and we said, look at him, he's a flight lieutenant, he must have experience, so we went to him and said ‘have you got a crew’, and he said no, so we said ‘well look, we've got a crew here, there’s him, there’s him, there’s him and him, we’ve got them all, would you like to be our pilot?’ Yes he says, alright I'll be that, which was a mistake.
CB: This was Wood, Chippy Wood this was, was it?
DJ: No this wasn’t.
CB: Oh it wasn't, oh right.
DJ: No this wasn’t Chippy no, this was a pilot whose name I can't remember. It's in here, it doesn't matter
CB: Yes, ok.
DJ: We got him and they said right you as a crew are going to Castle Donington to do some twin engine to enable you to practice, you see on Wellingtons. So we all turned up there and they told us we were going to do service and bombs first of all, you see, which was fair enough. We all did service and bombs, except that our pilot could have — whatever it was we don't know. He took off three times and he landed straight ahead three times in ploughed fields or in the grass. He went helling off like a mortal fire bell, as you know.
CB: I was coming to that, ok, go on.
DJ: They took him off and there so there was us crew as referred to as a headless crew and then they said, well you go to your training in your own various department, gunners, navigators or what, but we didn't, we used to go into Derby and to dances and all the rest, you see, much more fun. Anyway the old [unclear], whatever this chaps name, I must find it, if I can find it, in here.
CB: So he was shipped away?
DJ: Would you believe it, a flight lieutenant, he was made OC Station Bicycle.
CB: Oh right.
DJ: And I couldn't get over that.
CB: Right, nice one [laughs]
DJ: I just couldn't believe it.
CB: Interesting connotation, station bicycles.
DJ: I can't find his flipping name.
CB: Some of them were even metal.
DJ: It doesn't matter. Sleight, s, l, e, i, g, h, t and we all — the tannoy went and the crews were to assemble in OC Flying Wing, Wing Commander. So we all trooped back in there and marched in and stood there, and he said ‘right crew, we've got you a new pilot. There he is’, and there's a chap sitting in the corner. He unfolded himself and he was six foot five. He'd lost his crew, he was the only survivor from a crew that had bailed out somewhere and he was the only one surviving.
CB: Gosh.
DJ: And the first thing that happened he said to us, I thought this was hilarious he, he says ‘come on what will we do, I tell you what let's go down the pub so we get to know each other’ and I said ‘you're going to be upset about this, you’ve just inherited the only all teetotal crew in the RAF’. ‘God Almighty’, he said, he said ‘I'm going to have you stuffed and put in the Imperial War Museum after the war’. He said they can't be, I said yes that's what you've got. Anyway we came good. Chippy and I fixed up particularly and we became very, very good personal friends as well — he was a terrific pilot, he was lovely. Anyway, by the time we did a few ops. I don't have it in there. At, from Castle Donington we were posted to [long pause], I can't remember but this is where I was put on a Halifax.
CB: Yes, this is the HCU now.
DJ: Yes, the HCU. Yes, Heavy Converse Unit, yes [long pause], Wellington, Wellington, Wellington, Wellington. I can't find it [long pause], Wellington, Wellington, Wellington, the Wellington, Wellington HE [pause] and we had instructor pilots. We had different pilots there, one was an Officer Pilot Palmer and one who was [unclear] and one who was a Woodland and one was a Palmer [pause], but we only did five hours on that, on thingme there. There was one interesting incident there.
CB: Are we on Halifaxes now?
DJ: No it was —
CB: Are we on Wellingtons or Halifaxes?
DJ: Halifaxes.
CB: Right, ok
DJ: Three. Where we met, I did three ops in the Halifaxes, I can't see why I haven't written it in here. I suppose it was in my log book, I don't know. Anyway there was an incident there which I thought was interesting, nobody else did, but I did. We were doing service and bombs and we used the Halifax at nights, at night cross country and come back but they told us, the gunners, keep your guns loaded because the Germans have been coming and if they saw lights, go on in a — you maybe know all of this, they would attack aircraft landing. The German fighters would get you so we had to go round and if you're going to land and old Chippy would say are you loaded Doug, and I would say yes I am and loaded up my guns just in case. What happened then is we went in for a very nice landing, the tail goes down with a bit of a bump, my guns, which I hadn't switched security on went - brrrr, brrr - right across the Officer's Mess.
CB: [laughs]
DJ: When we came off the aircraft and back in, he said your crews wanted by the station commander. He said ‘how the hell did that happen?’ I had to put my hand up and I said ‘well I forgot to put on my safety catch when we landed’. He said ‘at least you had the sense to land them loaded’. That's all he said. He says ‘well bugger off, use your loaf in the future’ but that's it. And I said, was it Honington? Is it Honington? There's a place up I think it was Honington. Anyway, I was shown the bullet holes later on, on the side of the Officers Mess. It was just one burst that went, you know, I quickly switched off. So there's a memory. Anyway I thought, I hate this aircraft because you know, we were right down and to get past that big column at the back of the thing into the turret was [unclear], I thought if I have to get out of this it will take me hours. Anyway we were sent for and were told we were going to a place called Wickenby. That's 12 Squadron. They've taken A Flight off 12 Squadron and made it into 626 Squadron and you're going to join 626 Squadron at Wickenby. And I've been in touch with them ever since.
CB: So the Halifax was 12 Squadron?
DJ: No the Halifax —
CB: No, the HCU was the Halifax
DJ: Yes, HCU, and the 12 Squadron was all Lancs.
CB: Yeah, ok. Do you want to stop for a bit?
DJ: It so happens that the only apprentice which got a VC was at 12 Squadron and they’ve got a memorial service to him — 3rd of November?
BP: Yes.
DJ: Yes, 3rd of November this year they're doing that. He was the only bloke that got a VC. He was an apprentice there, but anyway we were there so we started. Now then it's all — you’ve got it all here written down for you in that thing I've given you.
CB: Ok.
DJ: Every operation is in there and we were the first crew to go for three months. Complete a tour in three months, while the others were being [unclear]. The first crew to come back in three months, you know, only with a minor injury or [unclear] and you were hit by flak occasionally but if you look in that you can get every op in that one. So there.
BP: You did an extra, you did an extra one.
CB: Just to, just to recap. So you were on Halifax, you did only three ops on that.
DJ: Yes, and then we were transferred to, to Wickenby.
CB: Yes, to Halifax.
DJ: To help form 626 Squadron.
CB: Yes, yes Lancaster. Ok. Good.
DJ: We did a — it's all there, I won’t go through —
CB: Where, where —
DJ: But they're all in there.
CB: Yes.
DJ: And when we came home, we were hit by flak sometime, quite a peppering we got and the — it burst in the perspex cover of the bomb aimers nose bit.
CB: Yep.
DJ: And old Dom was there and he said ‘no skipper, I've been hit, my face is covered in blood’ and skipper said ‘well come on back up here, we’ll look at you on the bench’ and he said ‘no I'll stay here’. I thought, here we go, here’s a medal going and left him. Anyway, he says when we were coming back, he radioed in, injury aboard, medical standing by and it really is funny, well it was at the time. When they came and the ladder that went in to came out at the front, he’d got a bit of perspex stuck in his oxygen mask in the end of his nose. No wonder he was covered in blood, it was going in there, about as big as a pencil [laughs], we thought all this was absolutely hilarious [laughs]. Anyway, the medics took him off and they said, ‘well bit of shock here, we better put you in bed you know, to see that you're alright’. Anyway, he was alright. He came back to us two days, well three ops later. Towards the end of the tour, because we’d finish the tour, the station commander came down. He used to meet those that had done their tour and he said congratulations, you know, all you can go off now on two weeks leave except you [unclear], you missed a couple of ops, you've got to do a couple or two to pack up. Chippy didn't even hesitate, he said, no he's not, we’ll do another tour because we're not letting him fly with another strange crew. He just felt infinity and we were all such good friends and we knew each other so well, so we did the extra to make a total of thirty-two and make him finish his tour and that was alright [long pause].
CB: Amazing.
DJ: So, and that's me in the Bomber Command.
CB: When you, when he wasn't around, who was the stand in air bomber?
DJ: Oh I couldn't tell you.
CB: No but was it one person who — both times or a different, sorry, the same person both times or how did they select them?
DJ: Where, which bit?
CB: When, when your man was wounded.
DJ: Oh we were just told that there was a spare bomb aimer, you know, come and join our crew. I couldn't tell you his name now. Well I don't think it's even in my log book, I'm pretty sure it's not. We were just given a gash one and he would have been a gash one, you see, for somebody else had he done another tour. Ok [pause]
CB: Ok. So that's fine, thank you. So you did thirty-two ops. What happened after that?
DJ: Oh, well I volunteered for [pause], what do they call, a song about — Dambusters for the, what do they call those that [pause].
BP: Don’t know. Pathfinders?.
DJ: No, no, which lay the markers. What do they call that?
CB: The —
DJ: Always used to lay markers.
CB: The markers, the markers.
DJ: The markers.
CB: Well they were, they were the Pathfinders.
BP: Pathfinders.
DJ: Pathfinders.
CB: Yes.
DJ: Well I volunteered for the Pathfinders.
CB: Right.
DJ: And they said no. I said well alright can I go overseas, they said yes [laughs]. So the next thing is, after a bit of time, I’m on a troop ship on the way to India. I got about three weeks leave I think, and then I — Gourock was it, is it Gourock, yes I was in Gourock, and I sailed from there, again not knowing where I was going at the time until we were well on the way, and then they said we were going to India, first to Bombay and that happened. Went to Bombay. Went ashore. I chummed with a bloke named — for a pilot officer to chum up with a wing commander was just not very friendly, but I chummed up with a dentist who was, who'd been to India and was an old hand and knew it all, and we got on very well. So we went to India and then we went ashore at Bombay, under the gateway to India, opposite that beautiful hotel that got attacked. The Taj, it was named after the famous Taj, it was the Taj hotel. And there, from there I was sent to Delhi which was then the Far East Air Force Headquarters, and they said ‘well we've got no use for you here, we’ll send you down to a place called Chittagong’, which was in Assam. And I said what am I to do there and they said [unclear] and we were hoping we might be able to release or get some prisoners released, in which case you'd be responsible for sorting them out and touring them home. So we went to Chittagong and I got a real rollicking there, because amongst other things I did, was issue a certificate for the amount of alcohol to each unit. Five to airman and NCOs and a bottle, you could have whiskey or scotch, went to officers. Terrible that in the middle of the war, wasn't it, and I, somehow I forget one of the blokes [unclear] he was a group captain, he wrote me a snotty letter because he’d been late in getting this chit to get the stuff from the Indian we had there, not a NAAFI, it was a sort of, I don't know they weren't called NAAFI, I forget what they're called now, but it was, it used to issue the sort of stuff that NAAFIs issued, and I got this stinking letter from this group captain that said he was delayed and nobody had their drink, and don't you realise we’re at the frontier, and all the rest of it. So I was just a flying officer then, I wrote back a stupid letter to him saying that I'm very sorry I couldn't get the Japanese to coincide their retreat with your thirstiness. About sixteen years ago, I phoned him up from [unclear], who was Air Officer Banham who was the OEC. What do they call it? In the air — Middle East Air Force. No it wasn't, it was called — it was, whatever it was.
CB: Far East Air Force.
DJ: They used north just off — what’s the capital? Rangoon. He was, he was a very good AOCH. He sent me for there. He says now come and I’d stand to attention for him. He said, I can see him standing there, he says ‘you don't look like an idiot to me, Joss’ and I said ‘what makes you say that sir?’ He says ‘you write bloody rude letters to [unclear], not even in the third party, you write it in the English party, you don't do service mail like that’ and he says ‘will you go back up to Chittagong, we've got a job for you in a bit’. So I went back up to Chittagong and the next thing is new we’re assembling up all the air, Middle East Air Force. that bit of it anyway, HQ 22 Group or 24 Group. We were going to assemble, going down to Bangalore.
CB: This is all in Burma?
DJ: No, this is —
CB: No the earlier bit?
DJ: No going down to India. He said ‘we're sending, the whole units moving down there. The train had come in, a special train loaded with all our stuff. We're going to fly the others down or they're going to go down eventually. You, Joss, for being an idiot, are going to be in charge of that train down to Bangalore’ and I said ‘who will I have with me’. He said ‘you've got six Indians’, or what do they call them, followers. ‘ You've got six followers’. And I said ‘what about rations and food?’ He said ‘use your initiative boy, you've got six followers, tell them you need to be fed and they’ll sort you out’, and I thought, god this is awful. Would you believe it? It took me over six days to go from Chittagong to Bangalore, we were right down the outside of India. It was a one trick track and if there's trains coming up, we'd park, we parked sometimes overnight, sometimes just for a couple of hours, sometimes for five or six hours and the old [unclear] would come along, ‘hello Sar, we stop here and make you cha?’ ‘Yes’ I says ‘please make me cha’. I said ‘I want some food, any chance?’ They said no money. I said ‘I've got some money’, I give him some, he said ‘I buy chicken, I buy eggs’, and that was my journey and it was fascinating, absolutely. I was the only European, if you like, on the train all the way round to Chittagong to, to, to — what did I say it was?
BP: Bangalore, Bangalore.
DJ: Bangalore, yes. What was the place called outside? Yelahanka, and we were all in Yelahanka, and he said, told us what we're going to do, we’re moving back up to Bombay now, to assemble for re-entry in to Malay in Singapore. And you're joining the Army in Bangalore for landing in Singapore. So l thought lovely [unclear] stuff, you see. So we got — oh, while we were there, they announced that the war in Europe, VE, where you know — the war, peace was there. It went hilarious. We were very stupid really. We had decided, everybody wanted a paddy and we went into Bangalore and we got a little [pause] bola. Oh, what do they call them? You know the two-wheeled carts you pull it, the two wheeled cart. The cha bola? Oh no cha is a tea. Well whatever it was. He was the bloke that used to tow these things and we said to him ‘how many rupees you get if you work all day?’ ‘Oh Sar [unclear] five, six rupees’. So we had a whip round and we took the money and put it in his hand and said no more work today. We will take you home and we put him in the cart. No, no, no, I can't do that. We put him in and made him show us the way home. We towed him to his home and we were told afterwards that we did him a grave disservice. He’d lost face [unclear] towing him, you know and about five Europeans towing a thingme right through the Indian quarter in the back of the [laughs], so we were surprised why he wasn't very grateful. Anyway, from there back up to Bombay. Troop ships again. On our way and we were, we were in the Indian Ocean. We stopped at, what is, what is the place in the South? Sri Lanka, but we weren't allowed ashore, but we carried on sailing and the announcement made then that Japan had packed in and we carried on, and we went to the, the, the pass between Malaya and, and a bit of land, I forget what it is. Anyway, we moved off a place, the stip, Malacca. We moved off the stip and we had ropes on the side of the ship to get down you see, and I might have a photograph of it, and a sailor says to me as I was going down the ship, he says ‘mate’, he says ‘if you had any sense in you, why don't you load that gun of yours’. I’d got a pistol in here but I hadn’t loaded it. He says ‘you're going ashore, you don't know what's going to happen to you there, you want to load that’. Oh yes I thought, I’d better, which I didn’t. But we went into LST, Landing Ship Tanks and we went ashore, not a — no opposition whatsoever and this, a chap I'd got pally with too always seemed [unclear] we decided to walk into Kuala Lumpur as best we could. So we said, they said find your own transport and so we went there and two Japanese came along in a little van sort of thing, which we told to come out and surrender and they came out no bother. And we took the key off them and pinched this car, you see. We went into Kuala Lumpur and this chap and I. I remember he was a Glasgow policeman, he was a big strong chap. He says ‘come on let's get out the way, we don't want to get involved in this’. So we stood and watched the rest of the troops march into Kuala Lumpur, you know, we stood by the side of them. It was, it was fascinating and there again the same air commodore that I met at Bangalore, Paddy Banham , The Air Commodore, the Earl of Banham was known as Paddy Banham. He sent for me. He says ‘Joss, you can use your intelligence, I've got a little job for you’, and I said ‘oh yes, sir’. He says ‘have you got any transport?’ I said ‘yes sir, I've got a very nice thing’. ‘Oh good’ he said. We did — this lad says shall we hand it in now? I said ‘no, no, no if we do hand it in the senior officers will take it off us’. We’ve unclipped our gold bands, which we’d kept. He says ‘if you go down to Singapore, and there's a conference call there by the Army to reallocate accommodation for the Navy, the Air Force and us. Now what you’re to do, you’ll find the instructions down there, you’ll find some [unclear]’ and he produced a list of who or what we needed accommodation for. His own, something and various other officers and the various units. Six health units and he says you're not to take up any new units from the Japanese. It’s only the units only previously [unclear], you know, used by the Japanese. So I thought — so I went down there. I, this lad, who's quite a [unclear] we looked in, we were told, we knew where the Japs had come out of. And you've heard of Raffles Hotel, well next to that used to be Raffles Institute, which is a block of flats overlooking Padang, so we went in there and they were very nice flats, so we said that's ours, his and mine. Paddy then came down and, oh yes, there’s an interesting thing, I was sent for by an Army colonel and he says, I was a flight lieutenant by now, I'd really got on, he says where's the RAF representative on this allocation and accommodation? I said I'm it. He sent a signal up to Paddy Banham saying, you know, we've only got this. I think I was a flight attendant or a flying officer, or whatever I was there. He said, he says we haven't got any proper representative and Paddy said, I don't know what the Army and Navy do, but flying officers here are perfectly capable of sorting out accommodation for their officers. Which the army didn't like that. I did.
CB: [laughs]
DJ: But it didn’t matter we were sent in there. Anyway, Paddy Banham came down about three days, four days later and he says ‘right, could you arrange to meet at the Raffles Hotel’. He says ‘now you're taking me to the accommodation reserved for me’, and we’d found him a rather nice place. And the bugger he says, ‘no before we go there, can you take us to where you're going because we know what’ll happen’. So we said ‘yes sir’. So we took him in this place and he said ‘and I'll have that, I'll have that, you can move that to mine’. He took all the prime bits of furniture and statues and all things that the Japs had collected, removed into his flat. He said ‘right you can keep it now’ Joss’. So I was there. Now then if, I go right back to the beginning, when I joined the Air Force, originally I joined for six years. My six years came up round about that time and I got a message. You are entitled, now the war is over, to be demobilised as you’ve performed your six years and you'll be shipped home, you see, so there's that. I thought — oh, and the job I had there was sending Prisoners of War and families, wives at Siam Road. Very few people have heard of Siam Road which was a women's prison where they kept them interred. I was to sort — I sorted them all that and put them on ships home or flew them where there was aircraft possible, so that was my job while I was there, which I quite enjoyed. Lots of, few people knew about Siam Road but the women had a rough time because it was very difficult. Some of the women started fighting with each other ‘cause of extra rations allegedly. Some of them were given favours, some Japanese in exchange for food which they would give them because they had their kids, and they slept on raffia floors and their child beside them. These huts had about forty or forty-five women and kids all inside Siam Road. Anyway, we got them on troop ships and sent those home. Then the signal come, I was to move and go home on the next suitable troop ship, which I did. Came home, went to Padgate, was signed off, given a civvy suit and, and I think some money, I don't know how much. Went home on two months demob leave. I’d been home forty-eight hours and a telegram came. Please get in touch with me and a number to ring. We’d like you to stay in the Air Force. Would you like to cancel demobilization, if so, you’re to report to a place, you’ll know about, Silverstone. Now, you are to join a squadron leader, god, I can’t remember his name, and close the station down. So here again, I have affected history because I went there with this bloke, he lived in Towcester. He was a farmer and he’d been sent there for his demob but to close this down, you see. He used to go home every night, he’d phone me every morning as a station hand, do you need me? No. Alright I’ll ring you tomorrow. So I was left to close the station down which was just getting trucks, taking stuff and all these instructions came in about where it was all to go and the rest of it was funny. Now going away to my sister and my middle sister was very pally with a girl called Ken Richardson who was a Senior Engineer for Raymond Mays, a [unclear] war. Have you heard the name Raymond Mays, a racing driver before the war? He was his engineer and he was on the, the testing and research for Jag, and Lou sent me a note saying can you get me on the telephone, which I did. She says he’s looking out for an Air Ford, a disused Air Ford to do track runs, round and round the track. So she says can he come to you? I said well I don’t know, I’ll check with Air Ministry, which I did, and they said yes, providing they’ll take out one hundred thousand pounds third party insurance, which I did, they did. The rest is history. They’ve stayed there ever since, so there you are. I opened up Silverstone. Yes I did. Really, I was on old telly. Was it my fiftieth Birthday?
BP: I can’t remember now.
DJ: They came and interviewed me here. And they says, can you show us [unclear] looking at photographs. I said I’m not doing any of that sort of cliché, I said, everybody wants to look at photographs, I haven’t got any, but there you are. I closed Silverstone and that was it. And then I went to [pause] Bridgehill, I was based there, I went to Bridgnorth to close that. RAF Bridgnorth was where all recruits came through at the time. You know of it? And I closed that. And then from there I was posted to [pause] Acklington was it? Acklington, Northumberland. Was it Acklington? Yes it was, close to Acklington. They rebuilt that, I stayed there and I had the only really unhappy days there. I had a CO who was a real bully, a rank bully. He made my life purgatory [coughs], the kind — I was there SAO, Senior Admin Officer. The, I was squadron leader by this time and he. Oh I’m sorry. Oh hold on, I’ve jumped, I’ve jumped because —
CB: From Silverstone?
DJ: Before that. Oh, I was sent back to Upavon. The one place where I’d been as an airman, as command drafting officer with the peace staff, dealing with a post in every rank below officer, and then they said, well we’ll move to the intake shelter recruits. You’re to go to Cardington, you know, the lone hangers.
CB: Yep.
DJ: And I was there, I forget, about six months and then we got a signal coming through, your posted. Upavon, back to Upavon where I’d been as an NAC. I said lovely ‘cause I knew it. You’ll go back there as command [unclear] officer. The night before a phone call said ‘we forgot to tell you, you’re promoted to squadron leader. Get your rank put properly on your dress and report properly dressed to the AOC there CNC’, so that’s when I got squadron leader. Anyway, that was lovely, I enjoyed that. I had a good time RAF [unclear] when I was back up to Acklington now and I had this CO. The kind of silly things he did. If I was duty officer for the day, he’d ring me up and says the horses from a field are loose on the airfield. Get rid of them. I said ‘yes sir’. So I did what any squadron leader would do and rung the orderly sergeant. I said ‘there’re some horses on the airfield, get rid of them’. He said ‘yes sir’ he said, ‘I’ll get the orderly corporal to do that’ which I through was perfectly right and proper.
CB: Yep.
DJ: And anyway, this damned Dennis Sutton his name was, he was called Zebedee by all the troops, Zebedee, he said the next day ‘did you get the horses off the airfield Joss?’ I said ‘yes sir’. He says ‘no’ he says, ‘you didn’t hear me. I said did YOU get the horses off the airfield’. I said ‘no, I told the sergeant, who I believe told the corporal’. He said ‘I told YOU to do it’, and that’s the way he behaved with me. He, he disliked me as much as I disliked him, we didn’t get on. So I then put in an application to get posted. Wing commander admin was Tanner, wing commander, he came to my office and said ‘can you withdraw this?’ I said ‘no, I want to get away from here as soon as possible’. He says ‘well, he says the station officer has had to move, the station medical officer has asked for a move and now you’ve asked for a moved’. I says ‘what about you?’ He says ‘never mind me, will you withdraw it?’ I says ‘no’. Anyway, I had a phone call from Air Ministry. Oh, going back a bit before I closed Padgate, I’d had all the recruits came into Padgate so I had three hundred troops at anytime there, anyway, when the phone call went and said this application of yours to get moved, how soon can you be ready? I says in about two hours, I said ‘where am I going?’ And they said ‘well we thought we’d send you to, to Halton’. ‘Oh’ I said, ‘you couldn’t do better if you’d given me the choice of the Air Force, I’d go back to Halton apprentices’. It would just suit me down to the ground. I like the area and I like working with the youngsters, so I said alright. They said ‘we’ll give you ten days’. I said ‘you can give me 10 minutes. I can be on my way’ and I stayed here until — I don’t know how long I’d been here, nearly four years, and then my son here was saying one day, he says ‘I suppose you will be on the move again sometime, you’ve been here sometime’. I said ‘yes I will’, and it dawned on me. I’d never, all my moves, I’d never consulted my family but anyway, I just excepted I’d come home and say were going to here were going to there and I said [coughs], ‘do you not want to move?’ He says no I’d like to stay here. My wife said the same and my younger son said ‘well if you’re asking me, I’d like to stay here too’. So, I was chatting with somebody that I was thinking of coming out and these lovely coincidence. I had a pal here who was a training officer at Handley Page Aircraft Company. He came round one day, he says you’re talking about leaving, I said yes. He says the training officer, the welfare office, training officer at Handley Page has died, they’re looking for another one and they’re looking for an ex-Air Force chap, you’re just the man says he. He knew me and I said I am so he put me in touch with their [pause] whatever he was, director of personnel, who, would you believe it, was an ex Halton apprentice and he says would you like to go for an interview. I says ‘can I be very rude to you and say would you like to come over here and look round your old alma mater and have lunch in the MESS and that’. I did. He did, he came over and it was lucky, everywhere I went people couldn’t have been nicer to me and very polite, and he said, ‘by god, you get on well, just the lad for the job’. He said ‘how soon can you get out?’ I said ‘I don’t know’ and I waited. I put in my application to get out. They made me wait three months. I came out, stayed here until [coughs] sixty-nine, and then I thought it’s time I came out and be bone idle and there you are. That’s your lot.
CB: Fantastic.
BP: Lovely.
DJ: Sorry.
CB: Right let’s have a break. Thank you.
DJ: I had a nice refreshing cup of tea with a [bleep] bloke named Bob Martin who used to be my boss and he was —
CB: This, this is interrupting a moment. This is when you were posted to Spitalgate?
DJ: Yes.
CB: And the Dutch people?
DJ: Yes the Dutch people there. My boss was Bob Martin who was responsible for flying aspects and I was responsible for the admin of these Dutch recruits, which was lovely. I was there and when they passed out Prince Bernard came across to inspect them and give them their wings and the rest of it. Now Bob and I had been very kind to these Dutch boys, we used to take them into Nottingham for parties and took them home and did all sorts, and Prince Bernard he said to me he said, ‘the lads have been saying you’ve been so kind and very good, I’m going to send you an honorary George the order of the honorary of something or other. It came. The bloody station commander kept one and the, I think his equivalent officer kept the other, we never got it at all, they kept it. It’s a pity, I fancied that ‘cause the thing went round your neck.
CB: What an extraordinary thing.
DJ: The station commander, it’s interesting. I told you I was teetotal, I didn’t have any, the Mess had — what was it a we just mentioned it — at Grantham.
CB: Oh Spitalgate.
DJ: Yes Spitalgate.
CB: Yes.
DJ: Yes, pre war officers didn’t stand in a bar, you gave all your drinks to stewards. Were you pre war?
CB: No, no.
DJ: No, you gave a steward your drink and —
CB: You were served it at the table.
DJ: But they, they — what you call it? They split off the mess main lounge and put a bar one side and a lounge the other, which was fine. Now the lads I was there with were good fun, they really was, and bearing in mind, I wasn’t very old. We decided we’d have a cycle race in the lounge one day, so they moved the settees and the chairs, piled them all up in the middle and we all got the cycles, went round. I hit this wall, went through it, I got off the bike to meet the station commander standing against the bar, and I said ‘good evening sir’. ‘Evening Joss’. He shook his head like this. Anyway, you may remember, they used to fill in a confidential report regularly and in the column, thirteen sixty-nine it was called, and besides when he put in mine, drinks regularly but drinks unwisely, and he says, you can’t put that about Joss, he said he doesn’t drink at all he is teetotal. He says rubbish. He says ‘I’ve seen him as pissed as a fart. He rode through a wall, took his hat off to me and said hello and walked out again as though nothing had happened’. Anyway, that was alright. He sent for me for a bit, he said you’ve been posted again. I shouldn’t have missed this important bit because it’s really important. He says you’re going to Germany to PA to Air Vice Marshall Spackman. That was a lovely job, oh I did enjoy it. He was, he was a bachelor. He was big, about six foot four and he was a joy to work for, AVM Spackman, CBS, Charles Basil Slater and I was his PA and he lived alone in a house just up on the hill, you know. A German had been thrown out and he was there and I, everywhere I went, I went with him. What he didn’t know and I knew now because I’m about five foot six and he was about six foot three, well everywhere we were known, everybody else referred to here’s mutton Geoff coming along, you see, we were and I was there — my little office I had was between his air vice marshal and the CNC was [pause], it will come to me, I can’t remember. His CNC was in a room that side. These had been bedrooms in a hotel at Buckeberg, [unclear] rather, and every time the two of us would meet each other, they’d go through my office, you see, and I was leaping up and down and they both said ‘don’t keep jumping up and down Joss, when we come through, if we want to speak to you we’ll tell you’. Anyway the CNC came through and stood in front of me one day and he says I’ll be, I’m posting you Joss. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘I don’t want to go and leave the air marshal here’. I says ‘I do enjoy it here and I don’t want to be posted thank you. Can’t you stop it?’ and he says and he called Spackers, ‘Spackers, come in here’, he says ‘I can’t get your PA to leave you. He’s crying his eyes out here because you’re moving him’. Of course, Spackers came in and said to him ‘now your being unkind sir, tell him what you’re going to do with him’. He says ‘I want you to be NCO at Scharfoldendorf which is Leave Centre in the Harz Mountains’. I says ‘goodbye sir’. I’d just refused to go and I said goodbye. Now I was there just over a year and Korea started, and they wanted gunnery leaders to go onto Sunderlands and out to Korea, and I was to be posted home, which really hacked me off. Anyway, the post had come through and I couldn’t do anything about it but I can show you something if you can lift this across. When I left the Germans there, I had got on so well with them they, they commandant of whatever the Germans call these camps they had, he’d been very good to them and the, the people —
CB: What the prisoner of war camp?
DJ: He didn’t want him tried at all.
CB: Right.
DJ: This colonel. Anyway he was a good — he made this at my station as a farewell present. That’s Scharfoldendorf [laughs]
CB: Amazing.
DJ: It really is lovely. He knew he had me in tears.
CB: Amazing model complete with swimming pool.
DJ: Yes, yeah. That was the [unclear]
BP: Oh, I say.
DJ: It was a sort of Officers Mess.
BP: Wow.
DJ: And that was my house in this corner, I didn’t even know. No, no that’s the Mess, the red roof’s the Mess. That was my house but I didn’t live in it, I preferred to live in the Mess with the blokes, it was just paradise. In, in the winter you could skate down the hill, we had skating into [unclear] and then [unclear]. It was a gliding school as well and the gliders were launched, you will like this, if you didn’t know of it, they launched them with elastic bands. They would get three either side, six elastic bands and it was a very steep drop and they would run pulling this elastic band and shoot the gliders off the end. We put up barriers to stop them falling over. And then as they were, what upset me there was I was posted home. I had arranged for my brother to come here [coughs] and when I got home, I met another old air gunner that I knew and he said ‘oh you lucky devil, I would love to go there’. By that time I was married, and my wife had had our first. He said ‘I’d love to do that job you know’. I said ‘well I didn’t want to go if I could help it’, so we put in a joint application to swap. I got to stay there and he went to thingme, so he went there and I stayed there, so that was it. What the devil did I do after that? Oh yes, went to Aden [laughs], sorry about this.
BP: [laughs]
CB: It’s alright.
DJ: I forgot about it. Went to Aden, did a good two years in Aden and came back [pause] to Bridgnorth to close it. That was a bit before Bridgestone. So that’s it, I’m sorry I missed that bit. Good job you’re sitting there [pause].
CB: Well we’ll have a break now. Thank you.
DJ: I, I —
CB: Hang on.
DJ: I got a —
CB: So we’re now back at, when you were in Germany and the Berlin airlift.
DJ: I was at the hospital, RAF hospital [coughs] and this little redhead was there and I was, I shared, four of us in a bay, two soldiers and two airmen, and we made a hell of a lot of noise apparently with our radios and that, and the matron said to her go and stop them making that noise or I’ll be in trouble. She came in and said ‘you stop it’, I said ‘if you marry me, I’ll stop making the noise and I’ll stop there’. She died after we’d been married fifty-two years.
CB: Really.
DJ: Yes.
CB: Fantastic.
DJ: Every time she was on duty she’d come there or I’d go and fetch her and there we are, so that was that business. What else have I forgot?
BP: The Berlin airlifts.
DJ: Oh yes. Well that was during the Berlin airlifts, yes. That was, you know we went down to the airlift. I don’t know which one he wanted.
CB: So Spackman was something to do with the Berlin airlift?
DJ: He, he was the senior air staff officer. SASO, Senior Air Staff Officer, in fact, he was acting CNC for a while. Oh yes, there is one interesting bit on that. He couldn’t and he was pally with an American called, he was very popular name down the American staff, oh he was well known. Anyway it didn’t matter. They couldn’t decide whether the first airlifts should be fighter escorted or not because the Russians, and he debated with him and anyway we were there. Anyway he said ‘we’ve got to make our mind up’. He said ‘get me onto the Prime Minister’. So we had a call to the Prime Minister, who was Clem Attlee at the time, and oh yes I’ll tell you about him in a bit. He used to get through to his secretary and he would switch on a recorder and so would I, and I would say the airbus was at the scene and wants to speak to the pilot, and they had a [unclear plane noise in the background] and [unclear] in fact. You as a man on the door must make a decision. Whatever decision you make I promise to back you. Are you recording it? He says yes sir I am. He says alright. I will leave it to you. Let me know. So they rang off and he rang off, this was about, oh, two in the afternoon. He says ‘I don’t want to be disturbed or spoken to’ he says ‘I don’t want to be disturbed’ he says put me through to General [long pause] oh dear, well known American General. Anyway, whatever it was put through to him and they nattered away. I said ‘do you want this recording’, he said ‘yes I do’, so we did and then I had to listen on all the time and they decided no escort, no fighter escort. He says alright. And he came into the office with me and he says put me through to the Prime Minister again, and so I put him through to the Prime Minister again and his, his secretary or whoever it was says, are we recording, and I says yes, we’re recording, I said, do you want to go through there as it was lonely, he says I’m going through and then I’d hear him say message to Mr Prime Minister and I suspect them on to you and I would put them through. And he says ‘we’ve decided sir, no fighter escort’. ‘Very good’ says the Prime Minister, Clem Attlee, ‘I’m glad. That’s a decision I was hoping you would make’. But when I thought of it afterwards, there’s a bloke he could of incited war his rate of pay as an air vice marshal at the time was three thousand a year. Can you believe it? An air vice marshal, a bloke, the future, the country was on his hands. So that was it and that was old Spackers. He and my only collusion with the Prime Minister. He came out later on to visit, he says ‘I’ll come out and visit you’ said the Prime Minister. By this time I was up at [unclear] and old Spackers rang me and he says ‘I’m bringing the Prime Minister, he’s coming out Joss. He says can you lay on a reasonable lunch’, I says ‘yes sir’. He says ‘I’m bringing the Prime Minister, he’s coming out and spending a day, a look round [unclear] and he and I want to chat informally’. So that’s fine. He did — that week, the lass that become my wife was just visiting me at the time, she used to have to get a lift back to her, her thing which was near the same place in Buckeberg and so I said to old Spackers ‘look’ I said, ‘I’ve got a nursing sister here, got to get back tonight. When he’s taking Clem back to Buckeberg to fly home, could you give her a lift back’. He says ‘yes, she can sit in the front with the driver’. Anyway later on, old the Spackers said to me, ‘that nurse, that lovely nurse, are you going to marry he?’ I says ‘quite likely sir’. He says ‘well I would, she spent the whole bloody journey telling me how lucky I was to have you as one of my commanding officers’ [laughs].
BP: [laughs]
CB: [laughs]
DJ: It sounded fairly typical so fancy me forgetting that. There you are.
CB: Thank you. Let’s, let’s have a break now.
DJ: Yes please.
CB: Because you could do with a lemonade of some kind.
DJ: Yes.
CB: Let me start [pause]. So we’re restarting with Douglas talking about the operational experiences after HCU where the squadron was on Halifaxes, and then changed to Lancaster’s and so could you just tell us your experience as in operations, please, including the nice bits and the not so good?
DJ: Well, it’s very different. There were some bits that were less worrying. It would be much easier if I look at this as we chat.
CB: OK.
DJ: Because I remember, I can remember some instances which were, you know, when we were hit by flak and another one you see there’s one op that I remember which after D-Day.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: We did north of Caen and we were bombing when the Germans were still north of Caen on the Tuesday, and we were told to bomb Caen but to miss the church. It had a big red cross on the top, it is being used as a hospital. So as we bombed north where the Germans were, you know, nearer the sea, and they said — now beside me there’s another Lancaster and I knew the squadron because you all had squadron numbers, and it hit by flak and its engine went on fire. Within seconds we saw two jump out, paratroopers. Now the sad thing is, they jumped a bit early because if you’re on German lines, you got taken prisoner, but the pillar, the, the, their pilot was an ace really, you, you could see this hell of a mess, this thing was burning, it got worse and worse and he banked it round, going over the sea and the others all bailed out then. We counted them out so we know they all went out, dropping in the sea. My skipper, he went down as low as he could and he said to the wireless op, signal that there’s all these aircrew in the sea, signal the position, exactly to the wireless op. And the wireless op says to Len, what Len, what position, what position and there, anyway we didn’t bother because we saw the Navy about four or five small aircraft come and pick these up and would you believe they were back on the squadron alright the next day, anyway which was lovely. But their pilot, I think, did a superb job because eventually it, it just burst into flames and went into the sea and he got an immediate DMC when he got back. He did. But that was, that was really quite exciting. It was worrying really.
CB: Did you see any scarecrows?
DJ: Oh yes. Well, the flaming balls they used to shoot up and they’d look like an aircraft had exploded. might be seeing exploded aircraft so you weren’t sure which was which.
CB: Did you, did you know what the scarecrow really was?
DJ: Well, well we were told it was a, a sort of offensive bomb which exploded in the air.
CB: Right, but, but what was the reality?
DJ: Well, we just used to feel sorry for them. Really you didn’t —
CB: OK.
DJ: You didn’t have any sort of — you’d say Christ, and we were — I remember a bomb going down and we said look there’s one going down, come on, get out. It was a shout for them to come on get out of —
CB: Yeah.
DJ: The skipper said ‘never bloody mind them, you look round to see what’s coming to us. Ignore them’.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: You can’t do anything for them.
CB: Yeah, yeah. What, what I meant is did you, the, the official line was that these explosions were from a particular type of German munition. Were you aware of what the reality was and how they were hit?
DJ: We were told.
CB: And what was that?
DJ: Because we couldn’t recognise, well we were told this is what they were called. Were they exploding dustbins or something they called it.
CB: Oh I see right. So the, the reason for the question is because this was a way of concealing to air crew.
DJ: Yeah.
CB: The fact that the German night fighters had upward firing cannon.
DJ: Yeah.
CB: Which shot the plane down from underneath and I just wondered if you were aware of that?
DJ: No.
CB: Right.
DJ: No, no at least if I was I can’t remember.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: Yeah.
CB: And that was called Schrage Musik.
DJ: Was it?
BP: You, you had the incident where it was very cold. Without the electricity, you didn’t have the electricity. Douglas?
DJ: Sorry.
BP: You had your incident —
DJ: Oh well, this is, we’d been, you know mine laying, was dropping mines outside —
CB: Yeah. Gardening.
DJ: Outside the port, gardening.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: The other side of Denmark, you know.
CB: Yes.
DJ: The sea there. On the way back there was a hell of a storm. It was quite bad and the skipper he says ‘I’ll try and get over this’, and he climbed and climbed and said, ‘I can’t get over it so I’ll go down’. As he went down, we were struck by lightning. He said ‘Christ I can’t see, I can’t see. It’s blinded me. Come on’. He called to Jim and Don, ‘hold this prop for me, hold the stick for me, hold the stick for me I can’t see’. And my — four turrets, there’s a stream of flames. What are they called? Whatever lightning calls it. There’s a name for this I gather.
CB: Right.
DJ: And they were just circles of flames and I thought, God, it’s going to set us on fire too. But he couldn’t see, and Don and Mac were, were together flying the plane, that’s the bomb aimer and the flight engineer, they were flying the plane together. They were talking, I was listening to all this which wasn’t very nice at all.
CB: Oh.
DJ: Anyway, and the skipper then says, ‘its coming back, its coming back, I can see a bit, it’s coming back’ and eventually he said ‘yes it’s cleared’, now which was about I suppose ten minutes, quarter of an hour and he says ‘I still can’t get over this thing’ and he says ‘we’ll go under it’. So we went down and he crossed the North Sea at about two hundred feet, which is frightening in itself. He went down and down to get under it and he says ‘well I can’t go down any further, are you holding on’, holding on and climbed back up and as it was, you know the, the storm cleared a bit and he got up to a reasonable height and got us back, but I don’t know if it’s in my log book that a pilot was blinded.
CB: So what about other experiences that were slightly or considerably disturbing? What was the most disturbing situation?
DJ: Well it was — you know, it’s memories.
CB: When was your Le Havre operation?
DJ: September the — I’ll tell you here, because that’s in here [long pause], the 21st of [unclear] bombs brought back, low cloud, in danger of hitting our own troops so the trip was disallowed.
CB: Right.
DJ: We’d been there and were shot at but we weren’t allowed to do it. Then the very next day we went to [unclear] troops and armoured concentration. The last commission that day. So that was handy, that was nice.
CB: What date was that?
DJ: That was the 26th of September forty-four.
CB: When you were commissioned?
DJ: Yeah.
CB: OK.
DJ: And —
CB: So could you just tell me —
DJ: It was 17th Le Havre, it was the 6th of September, 17th Le Havre. To accentuate the surrender of German Garrison, which I found out later was [unclear], there was no German Garrison in Le Havre.
CB: At all?
DJ: No.
CB: Right
DJ: They were out, this as I say, there was this big, very almost mountains behind it, hills all the way round Le Havre.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: They were all up there.
CB: Not in the town?
DJ: They told us they were laughing like a drain at us busy bombing the centre and killing off the froggies.
CB: Yeah. So they didn’t get hit at all?
DJ: Well —
CB: The Germans?
DJ: No not much because we weren’t aiming at them, we were aiming, you know, right in the centre. Even though our aim was good, it was just it shouldn’t have been there.
CB: Did, did you have Pathfinder that day?
DJ: I couldn’t tell you.
CB: Oh.
DJ: It doesn’t mention here so it would mention in there if they were, it would tell you.
CB: Yeah. OK
DJ: In that thing it tells you how many Pathfinders accompanied us.
CB: Yeah. OK. What other experiences were memorable in your —
DJ: It’s difficult to say. Yes, Dijon, I can’t remember the date, we got one engine hit, put it out of commission and the skipper decided we’d come back, we wouldn’t come back straight up, north of France. He turned out towards the Wash to the Bay of Biscay and we went out there and he went as low as he could, and we were going quite low, about four or five hundred feet, something like that and a very brave pilot, a JU88 came up behind us, even lower, and I blasted him and I know I hit him but I never saw him go down, but I thought he had bags of guts to come under there but he disappeared. There but that was —
CB: This is day time is it or night?
DJ: And the next. Sorry?
CB: Is this night time or day time?
DJ: Night time.
CB: Right.
DJ: And so we went out over the North Sea and came in on the Channel and we were sort of over Southampton or somewhere like that, and the next thing, I don’t know why I wasn’t paying attention but, I suddenly looked and there right behind us was a Beaufighter. He’d seen a Lanc come in there and he’d got in behind us and I hadn’t seen him coming. It was disgraceful, but I didn’t tell, I didn’t own up to this until later on, but this Beaufighter was there. He realised it was us and ‘cause, you know, we’d, we had the different colours of the day you could shoot, and then he veered off and left us. But we got back, but we come back on three engines all the way.
CB: How many times did you engage fighters?
DJ: Oh god knows, again I’ll have to look. So let’s say about ten or twelve.
CB: Right.
DJ: But some of them just came and didn’t stay, you know, like I remember when we went to — we were going to the Rhine somewhere and I saw a Messerschmitt come round behind me and I just, I saw him there, he was going to bank in to come round and I blasted him when he went up. I did about four hundred rounds something like that, and when he saw that he cleared off. And then another one. And we saw, but we didn’t realise at the time but, Jimmy and I both thought it was a Jet. It came on and it started blasting in our stream, you know the four hundred, sometimes in the stream, four hundred loads, sometimes —
CB: Yeah.
DJ: You’ll see in that how many each op had. And he started blasting, you could see him blasting and they had a point five cannon at our stupid 303s, which was the worst thing ever they gave us, and he just came through blasting and then cleared off, but we didn’t see him get any Lancs at all.
CB: Right.
DJ: But sometimes you were in the middle of four hundred loads, it could be a bit frightening, you know there was the odd occasion when Jimmy would shout, you know, cooks report, cooks report because a bomber tumbling down from a Lanc, you know. Some of the naughty ones would fly too high and their bombs would come down between our main plane and tier one, two or three times I remember that happening.
CB: So explain, could you explain what you mean by that, I mean why were they bombing from too high?
DJ: Because they, the, the story was they wanted to get away from the flak and leave us to get the flak.
CB: Oh, I see.
DJ: It was a bit naughty to let the lower aircraft have the flak and they would get up above us, but it was one of those things we were told about.
CB: Yeah. So they released their bombs, not on the target, is that right?
DJ: No, mostly on the target.
CB: It was? Right.
DJ: But too high.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: Above other Lancs.
CB: Yeah, yeah.
DJ: I mean it was mentioned about, on many briefings it would be mentioned.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: You know, just remember who you’re flying above.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: Do take care.
CB: Right. So what other times do you think you hit other, hit fighters? On what other occasions?
DJ: I don’t, I don’t, I, I can’t remember. There’s two, the two Messerschmitt. There was Jimmy [unclear] from the BFM.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: I’m not positive on them because I don’t know. This was, these are not very accurate, you just bung in what you think at the time. It’s a reminder.
CB: You’re just looking at the log book at the moment.
DJ: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: I got a few there. Incidentally you know the French Governor decided to give the —
BP: The Légion d'Honneur
DJ: Légion d'Honneur, it was an honour to people that were on the thing. Then they sent one to Len and they sent me a note saying I’d be getting one but I don’t know when it was coming but I haven’t had it.
CB: Right.
DJ: That was some time ago.
CB: So that’s a French Embassy job isn’t it? Are you following that up by any chance?
DJ: It was on my fifth op. Yes. Dijon.
BP: We tried but —
DJ: Come back with query fighters but no damage.
CB: What date was that?
DJ: That was on the 5th of July.
CB: Right. Forty-four?
DJ: And then going on to the 18th of July at Caen. Hit by flak. Starboard fuel tank holed, which was frightening because we were worried that that was on fire.
CB: Yeah.
DJ: And then next week, 20th July, Martin Lars at [unclear], we had two combats. Number one was [unclear] 210. Number two I couldn’t identify what his name was.
CB: Just in general terms, how did you feel about going on these bombing raids?
DJ: Well I never doubted I’d get back alright. I used to get, my mouth used to get a bit dry, as a bloke said that’s when you discover that blood was brown, you know you get a bit [unclear]
CB: This is right. Yes.
DJ: You get a bit excited.
CB: Your underwear changed. Yes. How did the crew in general feel about these operations?
DJ: Well I don’t think we discussed, you know, unless there was an incident we did.
CB: Yeah. Well I think we’ve covered an awful lot and thank you very much for all the time.
DJ: The other bit that might be in your log. On my twelfth op to [unclear]. We were fully escorted by USA Thunderbolts and Mustangs.
CB: Oh. That made you feel better.
DJ: Yes, oh to see any fighters on your side. Yeah.
BP: I think the fact that they concluded all their ops means something.
CB: Thirty-two of them.
BP: I mean were they lucky. I mean, what, how, you know —
CB: I’m going to stop it now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Douglas Joss
Identifier
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AJossDA151007
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:47:00 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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France
Great Britain
India
Singapore
England--Lincolnshire
India--Bangalore
India--Yelahanka
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Douglas was born in Aberdeen, the eldest of 5 children. He signed up for the Royal Air Force in October 1938 and trained as a Flight Rigger, becoming a Leading Aircraftsman after training.
During his time as a Leading Aircraftsman, he tells of working with George Stainforth, the last Schneider Trophy Pilot for Britain, and his experiences of meeting Douglas Bader whilst he was training to get his Royal Air Force wings back.
Douglas spent time in the Gold Coast, assembling aircraft such as Maryland Kitty Hawks before moving further inland to Nigeria and tells of his run-in with the Foreign Legion, before contracting Malaria and being sent home.
After recovering from Malaria, Douglas then trained as a Flight Engineer before being posted to the Heavy Conversion Unit on Handley Page Halifaxes, and then on to Avro Lancasters with 12 Squadron.
After his time in 12 Squadron, Douglas volunteered for the Pathfinder Force but was sent overseas to India and Singapore instead where he was involved in the sending home of wives and families from Siam Road, who were interred by the Japanese.
Douglas completed 32 operations, doing 2 extra operations to allow his bomb aimer to completed his tour of duty and he left the Royal Air Force with the rank of Squadron Leader.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
626 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
fitter airframe
ground crew
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
RAF Bridlington
RAF Castle Donington
RAF Halton
RAF Honington
RAF Padgate
RAF Silverstone
RAF Upavon
RAF Wickenby
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/566/8834/PEvansE1602.1.jpg
70edd28e823fd9b3701eb02ab8fcb037
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/566/8834/AEvansE160331.1.mp3
0f5ef1aaf69856347003131f4e77cce5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Evans, Eric
E Evans
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Evans, E
Date
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2016-03-31
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Eric Evans (1923 - 2017, 2211558 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 463 Squadron but also served as a Captain in the Royal Tank Regiment. Also includes a letter from prisoner of war senior British Officer to Russian authorities.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Eric Evans catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright, I am interviewing with Sergeant Eric Evans of 463 Squadron, who served in the RAF, initially as sergeant, then warrant officer and finished as captain in the Royal Tank Regiment. It’s taking place at his home in Liverpool on Thursday the 31st of March 2016 at 10.30. So, would you like me to call you Eric or Mr Evans?
EE: Eric.
BW: Eric. If err, you wouldn’t mind just starting us off please Eric, could you confirm your service number and your date of birth please?
EE: The 31st of the first 1923 and my service number was double two, double one, double five, eight.
BW: OK, thank you. And you were born in Liverpool, is that right?
EE: I was.
BW: And, along with your parents, did you have any other brothers and sisters?
EE: I had two brothers.
BW: Ok. And how was it in your early life growing up? What was your family life like?
EE: It was very pleasant. A good middle-class family.
BW: A good middle class family.
EE: My father was a major in the Army.
BW: Right.
EE: My two brothers were err, both commissioned, one in the Navy and one in the, one in aircrew.
BW: Right, and were you the middle brother?
EE: I was the youngest.
BW: The youngest.
EE: I was sixteen when the war broke out.
BW: And you had a brother in the Navy. Was he the elder or the middle?
EE: The elder.
BW: The eldest brother was in the Navy, and so, your next eldest would have been in the RAF. Did he go straight in as an officer or did he go in —
EE: He went on training, to Canada.
BW: I see.
EE: And he flew as a navigator.
BW: Right. And what happened to him —
EE: He just got through the war.
BW: He came through OK?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, at that time it was common for people to leave school at fourteen. Is that what happened to you?
EE: No, I stayed at school until I was sixteen. I went to a private school.
BW: I see.
EE: We were all privately educated.
BW: All privately educated, right. And whereabouts did you go to school?
EE: Quarrybank
BW: I see.
EE: A local school.
BW: And what was it like there? Was it pretty strict or was it a good school?
EE: It was a good school. I didn’t like school very much it was very strict but it was a good school.
BW: And then, when you were sixteen, you say the war broke out.
EE: That’s right. My father arranged for me to do an apprenticeship. He got me a position as an indentured apprentice marine engineer.
BW: An indentured apprentice marine engineer. I see.
EE: Yes.
BW: I see.
EE: With a fee of fifty pounds.
BW: And whereabouts was that? That must have been in Liverpool as well?
EE: In the docks.
BW: Right.
EE: Liverpool docks. It was a firm called Grace and Rollo and Clover Docks Limited.
BW: Grace and -
EE: Rollo
BW: Rollo
EE: And Clover Docks.
BW: And Clover Docks. I see.
EE: Limited.
BW: Right, and how long were you there? A year or two or less?
EE: A couple of years, and then I tried to get in the Army but I couldn’t get out because I was in a reserved occupation.
BW: I see.
EE: So, eventually they announced, if you joined aircrew, you could, you could leave.
BW: All right.
EE: So, I joined.
BW: (laughs).
EE: I joined aircrew.
BW: And what drew you to the RAF? Why them and, obviously, you said —
EE: Well, it was the only one I could get into –
BW: Yeah, I see, of course.
EE: The Army wouldn’t take me.
BW: Yeah.
EE: I joined the Army twice.
BW: Any you didn’t fancy the Navy?
EE: Well, I couldn’t get in the Navy.
BW: Same, same rule applied? They wouldn’t take you from a reserved occupation?
EE: Only aircrew.
BW: And, did you err, intend to fly or did you —
EE: I intended to fly, of course, there again, I could only go into a flying branch —
BW: Right
EE: Or they wouldn’t release me.
BW: So, if you had wanted to go in as a fitter or mechanic, you, you—
EE: No, I couldn’t have done.
BW: I see, so it sounds a pretty important job you had at, in the Docks.
EE: Well, they considered it to be so.
BW: What sort of things were you doing there as a —
EE: I was just an apprenticeship, with ship repair. We did the, we did the Campbeltown, the one that did the dockade at St Nazaire.
BW: Yeah.
EE: We worked on the Campbletown.
BW: Right, and was that re-fitting the Cambletown for that raid, or —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Really?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And was the purpose of fitting Campbletown out at the time known to you, or was it just given to you as a —
EE: No, we didn’t know. It was just filled with concrete all the bows were filled up with concrete.
BW: Right.
EE: [unclear].
BW: So, were you involved in filling the bows with concrete or —?
EE: No, no.
BW: It was just part of the fitting.
EE: It was part of the fitting.
BW: Right and so, when the raid took place on St Nazaire, that must have been, I’m assuming the only time you knew that was what the purpose of that ship was?
EE: She was an ex American destroyer.
BW: Right, that’s fascinating. So, when did you join the RAF?
EE: Err 1943.
BW: Ok. When about was it roughly?
EE: I don’t know.
BW: Okay. That’s all right, there’s no, we don’t need an exact date. All right, so, we’ve just had a look at your RAF service and release book and it confirms your date of service from 13th September 1943 to the 5th February 1947.
EE: I joined six months before that —
BW: You joined six months before?
EE: I waited six months to get in.
BW: I see.
EE: I went to Padgate for all my exams.
BW: So, you did your exams at Padgate, and that’s at Warrington, that’s one of the recruitment centres, isn’t it?
EE: That’s right.
BW: Err.
EE: Six months before.
BW: Right, and once you’d done your basic training, where did you then go?
EE: I went to err oh, [pause] from Padgate to Bridgnorth.
BW: Bridgnorth.
EE: And then I did all my square bashing at Bridgnorth.
BW: Right.
EE: And then I went to um Yorkshire, Bridlington.
BW: Bridlington.
EE: And I went from Bridlington to err, gunnery school in Northern Ireland. Bishops Court.
BW: Bishops?
EE: Bishops Court.
BW: Bishops Court in Northern Ireland was a gunnery school. I see.
EE: We went from gunnery school to [pause] —
BW: And this is your log book we’re looking at now?
EE: Yeah, [pause]. Let’s see, start on my log book.
BW: OK.
EE: It was gunnery school, a continuation of gunnery school.
BW: And so, this starts in January 7th of January 1944, and you’re flying Ansons at this time.
EE: That’s right. That’s at gunnery school at Bishops Court.
BW: Uh-huh.
EE: And you turn over.
BW: This is just details, the number of rounds that you fired in practice on, on targets.
EE: That’s right.
BW: I see, and that confirms you flying twenty-one hours and ten minutes at 12 Air Gunnery School, Bishops Court.
EE: What’s this?
BW: And then a move to 14 OTU Bosworth.
EE: That’s it. And Wellingtons.
BW: Flying Wellington mark tens. This is April ‘44, so this is very nearly err, seventy-two years, almost seventy-two years to the day actually, since you started —
EE: Yes.
BW: How did you find flying in Ansons and target practice compared to flying in Wellingtons?
EE: It was all right. It was just normal [indistinct] you just gave, you just took what they gave you.
BW: And were you given much instruction about the arms, the guns that you were firing?
EE: Oh yes. [unclear] blindfold and all that kind of thing.
BW: Right. You had to take them apart in a certain time and do it blindfold.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And how did you find that? Was it—
EE: It was easy enough.
BW: Ok. And what was your, I mean, these detail your different sorties, how did you find your um, accuracy on the guns?
EE: Reasonable. I think I was average.
BW: Mm-hmm.
EE: I didn’t expect to be more than average. But err, you just went out and did what you had to do, to the best of your ability.
BW: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm So, looking at this you’ve had, you were flying pretty much every day almost, maybe the odd day or two in between and that lasted up until May, the end of May ‘44. But there’s a mark here, where you’ve got bullseye.
EE: Yeah. [pause] That’s it.
BW: I see. And some of these are marked on duty as cine, is that right so were they filming you, is, that right?
EE: We had cine instead of bullets —
BW: I see —
EE: They had cine film on. I think err, what kind of aircraft, oh no [unclear].
BW: I see
EE: We used to fly against Spits and things —
BW: And this was what they called fighter affiliation then —
EE: That’s right.
BW: So, the Spitfires would be flying dummy attacks —
EE: That’s right, and we would film them.
BW: There’s a description here, fifteen minutes, I think that will be fighter affiliation, infra-red, what does that entail?
EE: I don’t know, don’t remember, oh night time, night time I think.
BW: Right.
EE: End of 14 OTU. Operations Unit.
BW: So, same type of aircraft here now. This is the 8th of May ‘44 err, where you have moved to 14 OTU at Market Harborough —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Still flying Wellingtons, and [pause] it’s a mix of live ammunition and cine film. Were the bombers flying straight and level or were they taking part in manoeuvres?
EE: Oh no, they were doing corkscrews and things. All the manoeuvres one would normally do.
BW: And so, while the pilot is putting the aircraft into a corkscrew manoeuvre, you are still having to fire at a —
EE: That’s right
BW: At a target approaching.
EE: Yes.
BW: And I’m looking here there’s about the same time, equal time, spent day and night.
EE: Yeah. [pause].
BW: I see. And then from there, you had presumably a couple of months leave between May and July. This is when your heavy conversion unit training starts.
EE: Yeah, Stirling, horrible aircraft.
BW: What didn’t you like about the Stirling?
EE: Big and ugly. Big, awkward thing.
BW: Some crew found it quite spacious, did you -
EE: Too big.
BW: Too big?
EE: it was like a bus.
BW: [laughs]. Did it feel like it handled like a bus?
EE: Yeah, didn’t like the Stirling at all. Never felt safe in the Stirling.
BW: And that was simply because of the amount of space around you?
EE: Just a big ugly —
BW: Right
EE: Big ugly thing.
BW: And so, you’ve done between the 14th of July 44 and the 11th of August ‘44 at 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley, you’ve done um, best part probably of six weeks training thereabouts, maybe a month’s training?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, were you, um, placed as a rear gunner or in different positions?
EE: A rear gunner the whole time. Never changed, or I wouldn’t, stayed as, never took any other position.
BW: And is that a role that you asked for, to be a rear gunner?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And was your preference for that? What drew you to that?
EE: I dunno.
BW: And then, moving on from err, the conversion unit, this is Number Five LFS,
EE: Lancaster Flying School.
BW: Lancaster Flying School, at Syerston in Nottinghamshire, and 27th of August 1944, this presumably was your first flight in a Lancaster?
EE: Yeah.
BW: How did that feel after being in Stirlings and Wellingtons?
EE: Good, but they were all clapped out old aircraft. They lost ten percent of all crews in training. Ten percent, it’s outrageous.
BW: Right.
EE: Because they were all clapped out old aircraft.
BW: Gosh.
EE: They weren’t fit for squadron use.
BW: And, did you know any guys on your courses who were lost as a result of —
EE: Oh yes, I don’t remember their names now.
BW: But there were guys who —
EE: Oh yes, ten percent.
BW: Right
EE: One out of every ten.
BW: Mm. So, you’ve not long, really, you’ve probably, only literally a few days, maybe a week at a Lancaster School thereabouts, and then you join —
EE: 463 Squadron.
BW: 463 Squadron, RAAF at Waddington. How did it feel to finally get on your squadron?
EE: Well, it was, what it was all building up towards. It was quite a, quite a do. First trip was to France.
BW: And do you recall what the target was in France?
EE: Yes, troop concentrations, it’s written down.
DW: Ah ha
EE: It’s written down there
BW: And then same again, troop concentrations around Boulogne? And this is after the invasion.
EE: Yes.
BW: Was there a sense of having missed out on what they call the big show, the invasion?
EE: No, it wasn’t a big show for the RAF. We did all the bombing for it. For the Legions of Honour. For those two trips.
BW: I see, so because you took part in raids over France, you became eligible for the Legion D’Honneur.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And did you take up the offer from the French government for that?
EE: I’ve taken it up, but I’ve not heard from them yet.
BW: I see.
EE: Very long winded.
BW: Well, I hope it comes through soon. There’s a note in your book here and it looks like you were flying in the group captain, group captain’s Lancaster, Group Captain—
EE: Bonham-Carter
BW: Bonham-Carter, over Germany?
EE: Yeah, right.
BW: And then a note about Guy Gibson.
EE: Well, he was missing. He [unclear]. He went missing on that trip.
BW: And what was he fulfilling?
EE: Master bomber.
BW: Master Bomber?
EE: Yes.
BW: Did you hear anything about what happened to him?
EE: No, they kept it quiet for about three weeks.
BW: I think he was killed in a Mosquito.
EE: He was. I’ve been to his grave.
BW: Have you?
EE: Yeah, in Holland.
BW: Presumably you never met Guy Gibson, just heard of him.
EE: No, I never met him.
BW: What was the err, I suppose the legend about him, how was it at the time—
EE: Nobody liked him.
BW: Nobody liked him?
EE: No, he was an arrogant bugger.
BW: And then, from October ’44, you are flying still Lancasters with 463. You had a regular aircraft it looks like, Q —
EE: Yes, you eventually got your own. Queenie.
BW: Queenie?
EE: That’s right.
BW: And do you recall the names of your other crewmen?
EE: Oh yes.
BW: There was a chap called Sunderland.
EE: Yeah, he was my pal.
BW: Was he?
EE: The navigator, Stanley.
BW: There was a Stanley Harding.
EE: He was a mid-upper.
BW: And —
EE: He was killed.
BW: Now your mate Sunderland, what was his first name?
EE: Cecil.
BW: Cecil? And so, Cecil Sunderland is navigator, Stanley Harding is the mid-upper, and, there was a chap called Lynch.
EE: We were pals.
BW: What was his first name, can you recall?
EE: Joe.
BW: Joe?
EE: Yeah.
BW: His first initial was a C but he must have gone —
EE: C J Lynch.
BW: And your bomb aimer was a chap called Rogers.
EE: Was a chap called?
BW: Rogers.
EE: Yes, that’s right.
BW: Do you recall his first name? It was R C Rogers, couldn’t -
EE: Can’t recall it.
BW: No problem. The flight engineer was Sergeant Haywood.
EE: Yes.
BW: And what was his first name.
EE: Don’t know.
BW: And there was a chap, he was an Aussie, the wireless operator called Woolmer.
EE: Eric.
BW: Eric. So, there were two Erics on your crew.
EE: I saved his life.
BW: Say again?
EE: I saved his life, I got him out.
BW: Really.
EE: It was in the write up. You read the write up.
BW: I ’ll ask you about that in a little while, um, do you recall any particularly memorable raids out of this lot?
EE: Yes, this one. That one.
BW: This is to Nuremburg.
EE: I could never have done that again. I’d have gone LMF I think.
BW: And, what was it that you particularly recall about that raid?
EE: Well, we flew in to a mile squared of predicted flak. A mile square of predicted, imagine what that was like.
BW: A mile square of predicted flak. So, it’s -
EE: We had to fly though that to get to the target. It was impossible, but we got through.
BW: And so, you could see, the rest of the crew could see this? You were obviously in the rear turret.
EE: We cut all our Perspex out. We cut all ours out, from the top to the bottom so there was better sight.
BW: I am just going to temporarily pause the recording because there is some background noise.
BW: So, were you briefed about this particular flak hazard at Nuremburg, did you know about it beforehand.
EE: No. They told us very little about this kind of thing. They didn’t tell us about the upward firing guns.
BW: Schräge Musik
EE: Never told us. There was a plane shot down in 1943 with complete, seventy-degree guns fitted, they didn’t tell us about it.
BW: And, in terms of um, general preparation for a raid, just talk us through what, what would happen, from the base, from your point of view. You would attend a, a briefing about a raid, what, what sort of things went on? How did you —
EE: Well, there were maps all over the wall. Loads of maps, you knew where you were going, and you just prepared for wherever it was [laughs]. Everybody moaned.
BW: So, were there particular trips that everybody moaned about, particular targets that were notorious?
EE: All the Ruhr targets. My three COs were killed on the one I was shot down on. Three COs killed there.
BW: On the same raid?
EE: Different raids.
BW: Different raids, but same target?
EE: Yes. Most heavily defended target in Germany.
BW: Gosh. And why was that? What was significant about —
EE: Dortmund-Ems Canal.
BW: I see. You obviously knew your crew pretty well. How did you get to meet them? How did you crew up in the first place?
EE: Just in the hall. Just crewed up. Found the pilot and found the navigator and we just crewed up.
BW: Just got talking and liked the look of each other. There were only a couple of Aussies on your crew and yet it was an Australian squadron.
EE: We were lucky. Best squadron of them all. No bullshit whatsoever. Superb squadron. Had the biggest losses of the war, my squadron.
BW: I read that, yeah, the Australians and your particular squadron had the highest loss rate, probably because you had such heavy targets to go against.
EE: Well, that’s it. We were 5 Group, which was one of the top groups. All the dirty work was done by us.
BW: All the dirty work was done by 5 Group. Did they have a reputation amongst the air force separate from the other groups?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And what was that?
EE: They were a bit gung-ho.
BW: And was that, do you think, because of the mix of I don’t know, let’s say, colonial crew and squadrons —
EE: I don’t know, I don’t know why.
BW: What sort of preparations would you make before actually getting on board the aircraft and taking off? What, what kind of things would you do? Were there any mascots that you took, or rituals you had as a crew?
EE: No, no. Just got on board and got on with it.
BW: So, you weren’t a superstitious bunch at all?
EE: No. Not that I knew of. I didn’t take anything.
BW: And did you socialise as a crew on base as well?
EE: Oh, always. I used to go out with my navigator.
BW: And so, whereabouts did you go into?
EE: Into Lincoln. All the pubs in Lincoln.
BW: And what was that like? Were you treated well in the pubs?
EE: Yeah, except in Yorkshire. They didn’t like us in York.
BW: And why was that?
EE: I don’t know [unclear].
BW: Mm.
EE: But Lincoln was a stinking place.
BW: Did you meet any of them before you joined the squadron, or did you meet the all at —
EE: Met them all there, met them when, when we became a crew.
BW: And what was your pilot, Joe, like?
EE: Nice fellow. He was a year younger than I was, he was only twenty.
BW: You were all young and Stanley was only nineteen at the time as well. So, you were all in your late teens, early twenties.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And what were you wearing as a rear gunner? There were electrically heated suits, did you have one?
EE: Yeah. It was a silk suit, on your sort of skin and then underwear and a pullover and pants, and a denim overall, and an electric suit. The electric suits were useless. Used to short out and you’d get a red-hot leg and a cold one. Bloody useless. They never checked.
BW: And how did you find your position in the, a rear turret of the Lancaster? They said they were made to get in to and not out of. Was it fairly cramped?
EE: Yes, yeah. Very cramped, but there was space to do everything, except if you get a bad stoppage.
BW: And did that ever happen?
EE: Yeah. I had a separated case.
BW: And how did you manage to clear the guns when you had the stoppage?
EE: Well, you couldn’t, just isolate it. Stop the feed.
BW: And the guns you were using at the time were the 303s, is that right?
EE: 303’s, they were just being converted to the point fives when they got shot down.
BW: Did you ever get the chance to use your guns in anger?
EE: Yeah, I shot down a 110.
BW: Really.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Talk us through that. What happened?
EE: Well, he suddenly appeared about a hundred yards behind me. I say I shot him down, but I don’t know if I ever did, how can you tell at night? Anyway, he got a full, full load in the face. I got two that night, I hit two that night. I don’t know how many, I don’t know what happened to them. I never claimed them.
BW: That’s interesting, that you managed to hit two separate aircraft and didn’t claim them. Why did you not go through the —
EE: Well, how could I claim them, I just fired at them.
BW: So, they didn’t go down in flames but they stopped their attack.
EE: I don’t know, they could’ve done, you don’t wait around, do you?
BW: No.
EE: They’re both down there [pause], Brunswick.
BW: Okay, op number eight over Brunswick. Two fighters, so actually on the same raid —
EE: Yeah. One, I’m certain I got him. He was only about a hundred yards behind me. Hit him full on. I could see the pilot.
BW: And, that’s a really close range for them to, to be attacking you. They’ve obviously come in to a very short distance before attacking, were there —
EE: They didn’t realise. One night we were flying along a fighter between our tail plane. Flying along with us. Main partner tail plane, we suddenly looked and we both peeled off.
BW: And so, because it’s at night, even, even so it was very difficult, so you were lucky in that case that you didn’t have a mid-air collision.
EE: Yeah.
BW: With a fighter between your tail plane [laughs]. Were there any other raids that were particularly eventful or memorable? For you.
EE: All the Ruhr raids.
BW: All of them on the Ruhr?
EE: And when we got lost.
BW: Wilhelmshaven?
EE: We went to Bremerhaven by ourselves and then turned back and went to Wilhelmshaven by ourselves. Nearly got sent to Sheffield. You know about Sheffield, do you?
BW: Not in detail, tell me about —
EE: You don’t know Sheffield?
BW: I know of the city but —
EE: Nobody seemed to know about Sheffield. It was a punishment camp for aircrew.
BW: I see.
EE: An RAF punishment camp.
BW: And this, presumably, was a result of you flying to um Bremen, instead of Wilhelmshaven, but you didn’t drop your bombs on the —
EE: We did eventually.
BW: But only on Wilhelmshaven.
EE: No, we were going to Wilhelmshaven but we went to Bremerhaven.
BW: Bremerhaven.
EE: We turned around, we saw the fires so we turned back. Went to Wilhelmshaven and dropped them.
BW: And, as a result of that, you were then sent to Sheffield which was a punishment —
EE: We weren’t sent —
BW: I see.
EE: We were threatened with it.
BW: You were threatened with the punishment camp?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And would that have applied to all the crew? Or just —
EE: The whole crew.
BW: Gosh.
EE: People don’t know about Sheffield. It was, it was, an Army camp like a glass house. You got about a couple of weeks or a couple of months of strict discipline, then sent back to the squadron. But the Argies wouldn’t stand any of that nonsense. They had their own, no Argie was ever punished by the British.
BW: I read somewhere that they were paid by their own government, not by the British.
EE: They got twice the pay that we got.
BW: So, did your pilot buy the rounds in the pub [laughs].
EE: No [laughs].
BW: [Pause]. And then, on your last mission, this was November 6th, 1944, and this was significant for a couple of reasons. Clearly this was going to be your last trip in a Lancaster, but you mentioned as well that you saved the wireless operators life, and there is a description in the book, or the memoir that you have put together. Would you just talk us through what happened on that, on that night?
EE: It’s all written up there, yeah.
BW: So, this is fairly early on. This is a target at the Dortmund-Ems canal system at Gravenhorst, and then you were hit by a night fighter, and this was just as you were on target, and it says that you were flying straight and level with a bomb load of fourteen, one thousand-pound bombs of high explosive, and the impact was just behind, your, your turret.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And so, can you describe what was happening at that particular point, did you see the fighter?
EE: No, he was underneath. He was way, far away, he would be under, under the main bar.
BW: And so, you didn’t see the fighter because it came underneath, behind your turret, and —
EE: We didn’t start firing until they were seventy degrees, so if you took an aircraft and you were firing here, and I was here — [background noise].
BW: OK. I’m just going to pause the recording for a moment briefly, partly ‘cos of background noise but just to have a quick look through the description too. So, there are bullets coming through the fuselage behind you, and your turret is partly rotated to the beam position you said. Can you describe what you recall next?
EE: We were trying to get out through one door, with the seat back, I got out and didn’t touch the sides, went out like a ‘rat up a spout’, into the fuselage and found the wireless operator. The mid upper came down and he told us to grab the—
BW: And the mid upper got hit in the second attack by the —
EE: Yeah, cut him in two, right through the middle we stepped over to the osam position. Obviously, they had all gone on the first attack, apparently everybody had gone. I don’t blame them for going, we were still there.
BW: I’m just going to pause this one moment, we’ll just continue, there was some background noise. And at this point in the raid, you said there were a number of others that had already got out and you didn’t blame them. There was you and the wireless operator left in the aircraft, is that right?
EE: And the mid upper.
BW: And the mid upper? And you describe in your account how you got him out, with the aid of a foot in the back?
EE: Yeah. I got him on the step. He passed out on the floor and I dragged him to the step and kicked him out, a hand and a leg over the step and pushed him out. I never told him.
BW: He survived the bail out, but he was unconscious when you pushed him out.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Was the aircraft still straight and level or was it going down gently?
EE: I don’t remember, she was going down. Then suddenly she banked and caught me. I got trapped.
BW: And you were pinned against the fuselage by the seat by G force.
EE: That’s right, he’d gone.
BW: And there was nobody else in the aircraft at this point.
EE: I was the last one. Had a minute and a half to go according to records, before she hit the deck.
BW: And so, the aircraft is in a steep dive, your pinned to the roof of the fuselage—
EE: Right opposite, I could see the door below me.
BW: And, at a critical point, the aircraft banked—
EE: She banked, let go of me and away I went. Hit the tail plane going down [laughs].
BW: And at that point, the aircraft banked, did you go straight through the door, or did you have to crawl to it and get out?
EE: I don’t know. I don’t remember. And then I hit the tail plane.
BW: And you were lucky, in the sense that you had a seat pack parachute —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Most gunners, fitted their chute to the side of the aircraft.
EE: Yeah
BW: Did you have choice to have a seat pack?
EE: No. Just issue. Very lucky, been lucky all my life. Very lucky man.
BW: And it saved your life in that respect.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, the hit against the tail plane didn’t knock you out. Did it injure you?
EE: No, I hit it with my back. I remember I was crouched up, and I straightened me up and skidded over the top of it, and after that I don’t remember much.
BW: You managed to pull the chute.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Did you see any of the other crew in their chutes?
EE: No, no.
BW: There were two other aircraft lost on that raid, that same night.
EE: Four altogether.
BW: Four altogether?
EE: We were the only ones that survived.
BW: So, the others went down and the crews were all killed?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, were you given an order to bail out by the pilot?
EE: No, no, they’d gone.
BW: So, there was no order, they sensed the attack because of the bullets hitting the aircraft and they just took their own decision to go.
EE: Yeah. They may have got an order to go, but I didn’t get one. They probably did, I don’t know.
BW: Do you know roughly what height it was when you bailed out?
EE: No. No idea.
BW: How long do you think you were in the chute before you landed?
EE: No idea. I can’t remember now, too long ago. Not very long [pause].
BW: You then landed on your backside, it says here.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And I think you had another lucky escape, where you landed.
EE: I did.
BW: Just, can you explain why that was?
EE: Just sheer luck. Sheer good luck.
BW: Were there sharpened spikes in the field?
EE: Yeah, they had trees sharpened, planted in the field.
BW: Trees, planted in the field, that were sharpened, specifically to stop guys like you landing there.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: And, out of all of that, you missed all of them.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: So, you’re now down, and safe, in the sense that you have survived, but you are in Germany.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What did you do next?
EE: Started looking for somewhere to hide.
BW: And, you describe here that you started to run, but you ended up in a bog.
EE: Yeah, lost me boots.
BW: Both boots?
EE: One boot.
BW: One boot. And, you tried to shelter in a, in a wood.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Can you recall, how it felt at this point?
EE: I didn’t believe I was in Germany. I just hoped I was somewhere else, but obviously was in Germany, but you just hope against hope you’re not.
BW: Did you find any of the escape kit that you were given useful?
EE: Oh, yes, I ate the Horlicks tablet and the chocolate.
BW: And, at this point, you were on your own, you didn’t run into any of the other crewmen.
EE: No.
BW: And you were trying to avoid Germans and dogs.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: And you ended up by a jet fighter base?
EE: Yeah.
BW: What was going through your mind at this point, do you think?
EE: To get away from the jet fighter base as quick as possible.
BW: And shortly after that you were —
EE: I’d been attacked by a jet over [unclear], 262’s, over Brunswick.
BW: Over Brunswick?
EE: Yeah, over Brunswick.
BW: And was that a daylight raid at the time?
EE: No, night.
BW: Night?
EE: It was over Bremen, Bremen. Five fighters [pause]. Went to Bergen in Norway as well.
BW: So, there’s a possibility, perhaps, that when those five fighters had intercepted you at night, and those jets that you had seen attacking you —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Possibly were from that base that you were now sat in front of.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What prompted your decision to approach a farmhouse?
EE: Well, I had been three days out, absolutely soaked, would have died of the cold, never stopped raining. So, I had to approach somebody, I would have died of exposure otherwise.
BW: Can you recall the moment that you knocked on the door?
EE: Yes, old lady came to the door and an old guy, they were obviously the mother and father of the farmer. I saw a picture of Hitler on the wall. I knew they were German and that was it.
BW: And how did they treat you?
EE: Okay. They were a bit frightened of me. They were worried about me, as one would be.
BW: Were you able to communicate with them at all?
EE: No. I said I was an Englishfleger
BW: You said simply that you were an Englishfleger
EE: That’s right.
BW: And from your account, they must have called somebody who then came to arrest you.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Can you talk us through that period?
EE: Well, this guy, this fella came through in a very resplendent uniform, he was a forest warden. And err, he took me off to the pub, dragged me through the wood, which I’ve since then I’ve followed my route, I’ve been back to Germany. Followed my route, and he dragged me through the woods and then he took me in to the pub to show me off to his pals, and then the Luftwaffe came for me.
BW: And were you still in the pub when the Luftwaffe turned up?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And what happened?
EE: Well, they put me in a cell and then eventually I finished up on the Dortmund, on one of the canals.
BW: So, were you imprisoned at this, at this point?
EE: Not really. It was a guard house.
BW: It was a guard house by the canal?
EE: That’s right.
BW: That you actually been attacking near the canal, you said it was the Dortmund-elms canal.
EE: I don’t think it was the Dortmund.
BW: Was it not? And you mentioned that there was an American pilot brought in.
EE: No, he was already in there.
BW: He was already there.
EE: Yeah, all his face was bandaged and his hand.
BW: And an American thunderbolt pilot joined you as well.
EE: Yeah, he was okay, he wasn’t injured at all. He would just curse.
BW: How did he take to being captured?
EE: Very badly, very badly [laughs].
BW: And then you were taken by train to Frankfurt —
EE: To Oberusal and to Dulagluft.
BW: And put straight in an air raid shelter, ‘cos there was an air raid going on.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What did that feel like, being under an allied air raid, that only a few days before you would have been —
EE: Whilst I was in, I was bombed by the Americans, the Russians, the British and the Germans during my full-time service.
BW: So, at this stage then, you are in Dulagluft and you have been ordered to fill out information, and it seems they weren’t quite convinced you were RAF, is that right?
EE: Well, they always do this [unclear], tried to frighten you.
BW: Did it work?
EE: Yeah.
BW: There were um, rules about information you were able to give —
EE: Name, rank and number.
BW: And how effective were those rules do you think.
EE: God, I just told them my name rank and number, that’s it.
BW: And you weren’t mistreated because of holding to that?
EE: No.
BW: But you were put in a cell with a radiator at the end of it —
EE: That’s right.
BW: That, that was turned hot and then cold.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Seems pretty grim.
EE: Wasn’t too bad. There was a lot worse.
BW: ‘cause you had met people who had been injured —
EE: Yeah.
BW: And then been captured.
EE: Yeah
BW: And the food was not much to go by, was it?
EE: Oh God, no.
BW: Can you describe what they fed you?
EE: Yeah, two pieces of black bread and some watery soup, that was it.
BW: And this was very thin bread.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And nothing to look forward to there for a meal each day? And somebody lent you a book while you were in there.
EE: Yes, the fellow opposite. They opened the door and this bloke pushed a book across, it was Zane Gray, western.
BW: Zane Gray, western. Did the guard do anything, did they see it?
EE: They didn’t notice, just the door opened and he pushed it across.
BW: And was that the first contact you’d had with anybody?
EE: Yeah. Anybody from England. I don’t know who the guy was.
BW: And how did it feel? Did it give you a bit of hope knowing there was some others in there?
EE: Well, I suppose so.
BW: At, at this point, you snuck a shave when you shouldn’t have done apparently.
EE: Yeah [laughs], I went down the [unclear], waved my book and he sent me down to the library at the end, saw these, these blokes shaving so I joined them, and had a good wash and shave.
BW: And apparently having a wash and a shave was only a privilege not a —
EE: You had to, had to chat with them.
BW: And the colonel who was in charge of holding you, was not very impressed with that was he?
EE: He wasn’t. He went berserk.
BW: And then then there’s an interesting incident here, where a German officer told you that you were going to be shipped out to a POW camp, asked you to swear an oath that you would not escape.
EE: Yeah, he got shouted down and that, it was a stupid thing to say to us.
BW: And were you all taken out and lined up at this point?
EE: We were in a group, in a big room.
BW: And am I right in thinking that this was must have been the first time you had seen all the other prisoners together?
EE: Oh yeah, Americans and British and Canadians, Aussies and everybody, all mixed up.
BW: How did it feel, being, you know, in a larger group of your —
EE: Very impressed, hearing English spoken again.
BW: You were then taken by train and packed into trucks um, and then during the trip, you stopped at some marshalling yards at Ham. What happened there?
EE: We got bombed by the Americans.
BW: Your guards deserted you, didn’t they?
EE: Oh yes, they locked the carriage and buggered off.
BW: And so. You’re all trapped in the railway carts while —
EE: And they were all jumping off the bloody rails. The damn thing was jumping off.
BW: Because of the concussion of the explosion?
EE: Yeah.
BW: So eventually, after the best part of a week, five days and six nights you say here, you arrived at Stalagluft 7 —
EE: That’s it.
BW: At Bankau, and you managed to get some boots and a great coat.
EE: A polish hat. A new American great coat, new boots, and a Polish hat and that was it, oh, and a pipe.
BW: A pipe as well? And you’ve still got it.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And this looks just like a regular pipe but it’s got the inscription —
EE: I put that on, carved it with a razor blade.
BW: And you carved an air gunners brevet, into the bulb of the pipe, with 463 squadron on it.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Do you still smoke it?
EE: No.
BW: Did you still smoke it after you came out of service?
EE: No.
BW: Just kept it as a souvenir?
EE: Yeah
BW: It’s wonderful. And how did you manage to find boots that fit you?
EE: Well, they, they made sure they fitted. We got underwear as well, we got underwear and socks and things.
BW: So, the Germans issued you this or was it —.
EE: Oh, yes, it was all American.
BW: Was there any indication where they got it from?
EE: The Americans. Obviously, it was all American, new American army. Boots saved my bloody life.
BW: So, you were issued with underwear, socks, shirts, towels, comb, toothbrush, razor, razor blades and the pipe which you’ve shown that you still have, and this that your showing —
EE: A dog tag.
BW: Is a dog tag, which is about two inch long by one-inch wide, and it’s numbered one, two, four, zero, and German initials, which presumably are standing for Krieg —
EE: Fangelager.
BW: Kriegsgefangenenlager. D —
EE: Number seven.
BW: D dot, LW, dot number seven. And it’s inscribed top and bottom —
EE: I broke it in half. If you died, they broke it in half and buried one half with you and the other went to records.
BW: I see. So, there’s, there’s a hole in each corner, apart from one, and there are serrations in the middle, and so the inscription is top and bottom of this and, as you say, is used if the prisoner happens to die, then they separate the two halves and send one half back and bury the other with you. Fortunately, they never had to use that.
EE: No, now here’s my —
BW: And, now this is your Caterpillar Club card. Name, Flight Sergeant E Evans. Am I right in thinking that you had to return your chute handle to get one of those?
EE: No.
BW: No?
EE: [Unclear] as a squadron, says here. Letter’s in here.
BW: Okay, and a bit of luck I suppose, in the sense that you arrived at your prison camp just before Christmas.
EE: [Laughs] yeah.
BW: You describe getting Red Cross parcels.
EE: Yeah, the only one we ever got.
BW: And was that, do you think, because the Germans were intercepting them, or they were just no —
EE: Well, when we left, we left ten thousand in a place nearby, ten thousand parcels we should have had.
BW: And it sounds as though, from what you’re saying, that the Germans kept them and just used them for themselves and didn’t distribute them [Pause]. And there was a brew made for Christmas with raisins and prunes.
EE: I don’t know who made it. Some of the old lags.
BW: And it sounds pretty potent.
EE: [Laughs], it was, make you go blind.
BW: How would you describe life in the prison camp at that point?
EE: Boring.
BW: What did you do to relieve the boredom?
EE: Nothing. Nothing, bloody boring. Just walked round and round and round the perimeter by the trip wire.
BW: When you mention the trip wire, what springs to mind perhaps, is a scene in the Great Escape where there’s sort of a trip wire in front of the fence, was it accurate what they portrayed?
EE: Yeah, you just didn’t go over the trip wire. Got shot by the guards. One fella did get shot.
BW: And do you think that was because he’d had enough or was he trying to escape or —
EE: He’d had enough.
BW: And by this stage the war is coming to a close. We know this retrospectively, but at this time —
EE: Well, there was another six months to go.
BW: And the Russians were advancing.
EE: Through the Vistula. Always the Vistula. We were jammed between the Russians and the Oder and the Vistula. We were trapped in the middle, so they had to get us over the Oder before the Russians got us.
BW: And just describe, if you can, that period where, where, the Germans decide to evacuate the camp.
EE: Well, what can you do? You’ve got to go, you’ve no choice.
BW: Did they tell you what was happening?
EE: No. We thought we were going to be shot. We thought they were going to take us to us a wood somewhere and shoot us.
BW: Did they order you out of the huts in to the —
EE: Yeah, in to the main compound. Told us we would be leaving in half an hour. The previous night we had been bombed by the Russians, the camp was bombed.
BW: Were there any hits in the camp or was it just around —
EE: No. No.
BW: And, so, you start walking, and you mentioned previously that it was about a three-week trip. Can you describe the conditions with the sort of weather or the terrain or —
EE: Well, it was the worst weather for fifty years in Germany. Twenty below and we were living out. They were rushing to get us over the Oder before they blew the bridges. We were the last people over the Oder, they blew the bridges after we got over.
BW: And you joined a long line of columns, you mentioned people fleeing the Russians.
EE: They didn’t get over the Oder. They were turned left, just turned the off and then blew the bridges. We were the last people over the Oder.
BW: So you were given preference over the civilians to cross the river.
EE: Well, they wanted to get us away from the Russians. Civilians, they didn’t give a damn about them.
BW: And you pitched up at a brick works and it seems like a bit of black humour here, where there was German aircraft attacking and —
EE: Yeah. We saw the columns, and we used to look up and [laughs] there were black crosses on them and they were one of ours.
BW: By this stage you were saying, ‘it’s one of ours’, and on the 8th of Feb you arrived at StalagLuft 3-A Luckenwalde near Potsdam, and the Germans were looking for volunteers, is that right, to join their forces?
EE: No, that was previous, that was at the first camp.
BW: Oh, I see.
EE: Oh, at Luckenwalde, that’s right, they were. They were, that’s right yes [unclear]. I’d forgotten.
BW: And there were Russian prisoners there too, but they were badly treated.
EE: Yeah, different compound. There were thirty thousand when we camped.
BW: And again, harsh conditions in that there was no bunk or beds to sleep on, just straw, and no food as such, no medicine.
EE: And they brought the prisoners in from the Ardennes, the Americans came in and they had new accommodation for them, put them under canvas. There’s a picture of them in here [taps].
BW: Let’s have look. There’s a picture in the scrap book that you’ve got [pause].
EE: They’re there.
BW: I see, so these are large, I suppose, marquee style tents —
EE: Yeah.
BW: There would be several dozen to a tent. And the pictures show prisoners just sat around on the ground around fires, trying to keep warm and cook food. There looks to be clothes hung on the fence as well on the —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Where did you get the photograph from?
EE: A bloke took them, and he, I gave him my address and he sent them to me after the war.
BW: There’s a photograph of a football match going on too.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: And a picture of Russian soldiers. And I think you describe, when the Russians turned up, that Zhukov’s forces were pretty professional and disciplined.
EE: Oh, they were, it was all the ‘rag, tag and bobtail’ that came in afterwards. They wanted to jump on the tanks and go to Berlin with them. We were the last camp to be liberated and we were passaged to Berlin, about twenty miles away. We just had to ‘bugger off’.
BW: And so they left you for their err, second line, or reserve forces to pick up.
EE: Yeah.
BW: But you felt they were much more poorly disciplined.
EE: They were just ‘rag, tag and bobtail’. No rations. No official rations.
BW: And then there’s a letter here, ‘senior British officer communicating the following in writing to the Russian authorities today the 7th of May’ —
EE: We were held hostage for a month by the Russians, that’s why I escaped.
BW: And so, the Russians took over the camp, and, and this is at the point that Zhukov had arrived and you stood right beside —.
EE: Marshall Zhukov.
BW: What, what, did he look like, can you describe him?
EE: Not really, one of the guys had trouble firing his gun, so he jumped down and fired it for him.
BW: So, the firing of the gun was presumably to, was it to keep people back or was it just a celebration?
EE: No, it was a firing of the salute to the [unclear].
BW: I see. Were you able to communicate in any way, with the Russians at all?
EE: No. they were savages.
BW: And was that through their temperaments or their —
EE: They were peasants.
BW: So, these weren’t the professional soldiers that you’d seen, these were the ‘rag, tag’ ones you mentioned.
EE: Yeah, millions of them.
BW: And, on the 21sth of April 1945, there was a battle nearby, and you were watching dog fights between American Air Cobras, Russian Yaks, and Stormaviks, a German fighter. That sounds quite a melee, completely disorganised.
EE: [laughs] Yeah.
BW: And you were lucky not to be hit by the shell fire and tanks, and fighters strafing the camp.
EE: Well, the bombers were coming over at night as well. They were dropping on Berlin. There was a short fall of twenty mile [unclear], so we used to dig in. I was a month late getting home from Germany, I was held by the Russians.
BW: And what was, what was happening during that time?
EE: Well, they were just ignoring the fact that we were prisoners of war.
BW: And the point you mentioned, the Russian troops were trying to persuade you to join them, you refused and they fired over your head.
EE: Well, that was when we were, the Americans sent the trucks to enter the camp.
BW: And it was at this point or thereabouts, that you, and a Canadian and two other Brits decided to make a run for it.
EE: We did. Let ourselves out of the camp, and took off. The most dangerous thing I ever did. Stupid really. We just got fed up being amongst the, we thought we were going back home through Russia, God knows what would have happened then, I would never have been seen again.
BW: So, it was a real fear that you were going to be held properly captive by the Russians —
EE: Oh yeah.
BW: Not just temporarily.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And you picked up err, or rather, you describe a man coming towards you on a bike, it turns out he was a British soldier.
EE: Yeah. He’s still in Germany, took over a farm [laughs].
BW: And he met a girl and was quite keen on living in Germany still.
EE: Yeah. There were a few of them.
BW: And then, trying to cross the river Mulde, you were at a ferry point and a sort of KGB type officer appeared and persuaded the ferryman to take you across.
EE: Yeah [unclear] we were just wondering whether to throw him in the water, the German, we had no need to.
BW: You ended up in an abandoned inn and met some Russians there, who insisted on feeding you, and, plying you with beer.
EE: Schnapps, schnapps, there was no beer.
BW: Just schnapps. The atmosphere seems to have changed a lot.
EE: Well, they were just Russian troops, they were quite friendly [laughs]. Told them we were American.
BW: And, so, these must have been the regular professional soldiers perhaps?
EE: Well, I don’t know [unclear].
BW: And what was the town major like that you met?
EE: Well, she was ok, a woman, a middle aged, sort of, no, late thirties I would say.
BW: And she had a few grenades with her, didn’t she?
EE: A belt full of ammunition. A belt with grenades, very fearsome looking.
BW: A fearsome looking woman with a belt full of grenades.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And this is pretty close to the full end of the war now and you are um, moved on, and given bicycles, and you met a young German girl. What happened there?
EE: Yeah. Well, she was obviously going to be raped by the Russians, so we took her with us, took her to the Russian, err, American lines. Got her through in the American sector. Very lucky, you couldn’t get, once you got to the Americans, the Russian wouldn’t let anybody across, people, one fella swam and got drowned, trying to get across. We just walked across with our bicycle.
BW: There was no bridge at this point I think you said, because—
EE: The bridge was down.
BW: And so, when you say “walk across”, what —
EE: We climbed up, rope ladder —
BW: And were there remnants of the bridge, perhaps rails or whatever —
EE: It was just collapsed. Huge iron bridge, huge metal bridge.
BW: And so, you clambered across the steel structure across the river, is that right?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, even though you had to push through the, or pass, the guards at this point, from your description, is that right?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And you weren’t stopped. So, you managed to get this girl across —
EE: They didn’t stop us, threw her bike in the air and we were on our way. Someone took a film of it, an American took a film of it so somewhere there’s a film of it.
BW: And what sort of welcome did you get on the other side?
EE: Oh, wonderful. Food and drink and cigarettes, as much as you want.
BW: And how did the girl feel when she got across?
EE: Well, we handed her over to the Americans, they took her to a DP Camp.
BW: A displaced person’s camp, a DP camp.
EE: Yeah, and she was safe.
BW: And so, you, you were obviously well treated by the Americans —
EE: Oh, very well.
BW: Well stocked, and then you flew out of Germany on Dakotas, landed in Brussels you say, and you were talking with an old soldier, but what was your view?
EE: I want to get home, as quick as possible. He was left for weeks, you’d get ten pounds a day.
BW: And you just wanted to get home.
EE: Wanted to get home.
BW: How did you manage that?
EE: Well, just queued up the next morning, shouted my name, and away I went.
BW: And you, you arrived back by Dakota into the UK.
EE: Yeah.
BW: How did that feel after all that you had been through?
EE: Can’t remember now, felt good obviously.
BW: And, so, you’re, you’re back in the UK, what, what happened from that point up to being demobbed?
EE: I wasn’t demobbed then.
BW: Not at that point, but between arriving back in the UK —
EE: I took over prison camps. I ran prison camps.
BW: And, so, you had a long leave and returned to run two camps for German POW’s, one at Woodvale which is not that far from here, near Southport and the second one was a maintenance unit at Bramcote in Warwickshire.
EE: That’s right.
BW: You mentioned before, and it says here that you joined afterwards the 40th Kings Royal Tank Regiment and served for six years as a troop commander.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What, what led you to join the Army at that point?
EE: Because of the rotten treatment I had from the RAF.
BW: And —
EE: All my thanks were, a couple of weeks before I left the RAF, I was stripped down to a sergeant.
BW: Really?
EE: Yeah, and that was my thanks.
BW: And what was that for?
EE: Oh, God knows.
BW: So, you’d been through all that, and been a, I think you were a flight sergeant, you weren’t commissioned during your service, were you?
EE: No.
BW: So, you had been a senior NCO and promoted up to warrant officer, and then the thanks you got from the RAF, as you put it, was to be then stripped down to sergeant.
EE: That was it, no thanks.
BW: And they didn’t give you a reason for that?
EE: No.
BW: Understandably, that must have been pretty galling.
EE: It was. Of course, it was only a couple of weeks before I left the service, so I was a warrant officer for about a year. Best rank in the service.
BW: And what, what gives you the view of it being the best rank do you have?
EE: Well, you’re neither “fish nor fowl”.
BW: [Laughs].
EE: All aircrew should have been commissioned. It would have given us better rights under the Geneva Convention and a decent pension in the very likely event of your demise on ops. We were all doing the same job. Do you know seventy five percent, twenty five percent of air crew were commissioned, seventy five percent weren’t? Of the gallantry medals, seventy five percent went to the commissioned, twenty five percent went to us. Seventy five percent. That’s how fair it was.
BW: And in general, the rule was that, the reason airmen were given the rank of sergeant when the joined aircrew, was to at least guarantee them better treatment as prisoners.
EE: Yeah, but we were all doing the same job. Why commissioned?
BW: Yeah, and there were even, on your crew, there was a mix, one of them, I think the pilot, was a flying officer, and the rest were all NCO’s weren’t they?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And the rule has changed in the post war years, that all aircrew now have to be —
EE: That’s not the rule.
BW: Have to be officers.
EE: I have something else to write.
BW: So, you decided to join the Army.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Did you experience a better appreciation of you as an individual in the Army?
EE: Yeah, yeah. The Army was an established service with proper ranks. Proper rules and regulations, good background.
BW: And you didn’t have to go through any other training, did you? Apart from trade training as a tank commander.
EE: I went to the War Office Selection Board to enlist.
BW: And they put you forward and you became —
EE: To be a lieutenant, and then a captain, a substantive captain.
BW: And where were you based during that time?
EE: Bootle, near here, it was a TA regiment.
BW: At Bootle?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And how did you find the um, your colleagues, your Army mates, how were they? Officers’ final dinner. This is a —
EE: Well, we were disbanded.
BW: Right. Monty’s Foxhounds, your troops called. What sort of tanks did you use? Lieutenant E Evans yeah? Presentation of the colour on the 11th of April 1954, this is a sort of service, an order of parade document. Did Montgomery, as Commandant of the regiment, did he attend this parade at all?
EE: No. Err, Err, Lord Whatsername did it. Can’t think of his name, a Liverpool man.
BW: Just pause the recording there for the background noise. I say, I’m looking here for the official who attended the parade when you were at Bootle. Presentation of the colours.
EE: We had to learn sword drill for this.
BW: You had to learn how to salute with a sword, there’s a way of doing it isn’t there?
EE: Yeah, the new colours.
BW: Uh- huh.
EE: Can’t think who it was.
BW: And what do you recall of your time with the troop? Was it all home service? You weren’t sent abroad anywhere?
EE: No, we used to go to camps every year, firing camps and tactical camps. It was good, Comets and Centurions.
BW: Comets and Centurions.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And did you enjoy that?
EE: Great, yeah, I would still have been there but they disbanded that regiment. That was the final dinner.
BW: Hmmm. And what happened after you then left the Army in 1956?
EE: I was working for my father, in his business. I was a sales manager.
BW: You were working for your father, and what was his business?
EE: A motor business.
BW: I see, selling motor cars?
EE: Yes, and a workshop. Quite a big business actually.
BW: And how long did you stick at that?
EE: About ten years. Then we fell out and I started my own company. Had four businesses, I finished up with four.
BW: Right. And what were they?
EE: [Unclear], ship repair business, hydraulic business and workshop, machine shop.
BW: Right, that’s quite a broad base of business to have. Four business in com, in pretty different sectors, so, and you had all those four companies, for twenty, thirty years maybe?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And through all that time, you were presumably married, there’s a lot of family photos in your house.
EE: Yeah, three girls.
BW: Three girls?
EE: My wife died about ten years ago.
BW: Uh-huh.
EE: All three daughters are still alive. I’ve got nine great grandchildren now.
BW: (laughs) And do you see them regularly?
EE: Oh yes, my daughter will be here very shortly.
BW: So, how have you err, heard about the commemorations of Bomber Command, and what do you think of the activities to now try and restore a bit of err, pride or honour to Bomber Command?
EE: Well, the RAF ignored them after the war. Totally. He and Churchill, they turned their backs on us. No doubt about that, everybody said ‘shouldn’t you mention Bomber Command’ and they all came up with the bloody target in Germany. I was very sick of it.
BW: How do you feel about the recent recognition in —
EE: Well, it’s about time, fifty-five thousand of us died. Biggest loss of the war.
BW: Mm.
EE: Much bigger than the first world war even.
BW: And its err, at least commemorating you and your comrades and what, what you did. Have you seen, you went to the unveiling last year. How was that?
EE: Yes.
BW: How did you feel about that?
EE: It was okay.
BW: Yeah, it doesn’t seem fair does it, that there’s, there was only a clasp awarded for it?
EE: It was ridiculous, a bloody insult.
BW: Well, I think Eric, that is all the questions I have for you.
EE: Do you want to look through there?
BW: I will have a look through your, your scrap book, I will just pause the recording. Now this is an interesting telegram, it’s, is that from Liverpool to British Army staff at Washington DC, or is it that other way around?
EE: Not it’s from my mother —
BW: From your mum?
EE: In Liverpool, to tell my father.
BW: And your mum was Madge?
EE: That’s it.
BW: And you father was abroad at the time, was he?
EE: He was on the British Army staff in Washington [unclear].
BW: So, you mentioned he’d been a major in the Army, was he still in the Army all the way through the war.
EE: Yes. You can see a photograph of him later on.
BW: There’s a photograph of him?
EE: My mother and my eldest brother.
BW: That’s it, mother and eldest brother, who was in the Navy. Now this is a, this is quite a service family photograph, there’s five of you, including, your, well there’s three sons in the family and your father and mother.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Your father’s in his Army uniform, there’s you and your middle brother in your RAF uniform and your older brother in the middle of both of you, stood in the middle of both of you, in his Navy uniform. What rank was he in the Navy?
EE: Lieutenant.
BW: And your other brother is wearing an observers brevet.
EE: That’s right.
BW: What did he get up to in the —
EE: Navigator.
BW: Navigator.
EE: On the squadron at Waterbeach. That’s the guy that saved his life.
BW: Yourself and the wireless operator, taken, taken on D Day.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And that looks like he’s wearing the Australian uniform.
EE: It’s a bit dark.
BW: It’s a bit darker than the RAF one,
EE: Better quality.
BW: And did you keep in touch with him after the war?
EE: No.
BW: Do you know what’s happened to him since, not heard a thing or anything through associations or —
EE: No. That was a TA, he became a general. General Sir Richard Lawson.
BW: Sir Richard Lawson! And he sat across a table from you?
EE: Yeah, he was my adjutant, Dicky Lawson.
BW: [Laughs].
EE: He did very well.
BW: So, he must have transferred regiment then, presumably, if your unit had been —
EE: He was a regular adjutant.
BW: He was a regular adjutant, I see, so you were in the TA branch.
EE: [Unclear]
BW: Then there’s pictures here of a V1,
EE: Yeah, a piloted one.
BW: A piloted one.
EE: Yeah. I saw a V2 launch.
BW: Where did you see that?
EE: In Poland
BW: In Poland?
EE: Yeah.
BW: So, was this —
EE: On the march.
BW: Actually during the march?
EE: Yeah. We got to Sargan and we saw it launch. It went crazy.
BW: So, when we see the archive footage of these rockets going off, and there’s a few that do spin off and crash into the ground, and this was one that did, was it? It was lucky it didn’t come over your way and —
EE: We were a few miles away.
BW: I bet you could hear the bang from where you were.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And this photo is of May Schmeling.
EE: That’s Max Schmeling.
BW: Max Schmeling.
EE: He was a world championship boxer.
BW: Who visited at Stalag 3-A Luckenwalde in the uniform of a paratrooper, 3rd March 1945. Did you get to speak to him?
EE: Yeah, he gave me his autograph.
BW: What was your impression of him?
EE: He was all right, very broad.
BW: That must be your wife.
EE: Yes [laughs].
BW: I’m just going to pause the recording. I was just going to say, this is a —
EE: An AVM
BW: An Air Vice Marshall who has his own sort of service medals, stood with you, and where was the unveiling?
EE: At Green Park.
BW: At Green Park, so this would be in 2012 in London.
EE: Yeah.
BW: There are, it looks like, these, these must be the, the Germans there are some names here —
EE: I took a trip back. Went to the Dortmund Ems canal.
BW: I’ll just pause that again. May I just briefly ask you, the scrap book contains details of your visit to Germany. How did it feel, going back, and re-tracing your route?
EE: Very interesting actually, because there was. This is a telegram.
BW: Yeah. And you actually met the pilot of the—
EE: No, I didn’t meet him, I didn’t want to.
BW: I see, I was just seeing a photo of a German pilot there.
EE: I didn’t meet him.
BW: You didn’t. I see. Was it, did he happen to be at an event that you were also at
EE: This is an escape photograph.
BW: I see.
EE: Have you seen those?
BW: These are your escape photos. ‘Escape photos, issued to air crew, and the only personal things taken on ops’, it says here under description, ‘the photographs were to be used on forged identity documents etc, in the event of an escape or invasion. It was always difficult to obtain photos for this purpose, there were extra copies left at base, usually only two were carried. Note: unshaven appearance to add authenticity to photos’.
EE: [unclear] typical.
BW: And so, these were actually taken in civilian clothes because of course, then they can be used on forged documents, but it never came to that though, did it?
EE: No.
BW: And you went back and visited the graves of Sandy who’s your navigator, and Stan, the mid upper gunner, in Germany, seems you’ve been back a couple of times, is that right?
EE: I only went back once.
BW: You only went back once? And the barn demolished, it shows here, by the impact of the Lancaster when it came down. And they’ve managed to recover a prop, or a prop blade.
EE: Yeah. And a wheel.
BW: And a wheel. Wonderful, well, as I say, thank you very much for your time, Eric. If there is anything else you would like to add, by all means, but I shall end the recording there if its ok with you. There’s a picture of, there’s a coloured drawing of a camp.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Eric Evans
Creator
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Brian Wright
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-31
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AEvansE160331, PEvansE1602
Conforms To
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
Format
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01:53:53 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Eric Evans was born in 1923 in Liverpool and was just 16 years of age when war broke out. He served in the Royal Air Force, and serving with 463 RAAF Squadron, going from the rank of sergeant and leaving the service as a warrant officer, before joining the Royal Tank Regiment, rising to the rank of captain.
At the age of 16, Eric had an apprenticeship as an indentured apprentice marine engineer at Liverpool docks, however wanted to serve, however he was classed as being in a reserved occupation, so therefore could only volunteer as aircrew.
Eric flew Avro Ansons, Vickers Wellingtons, before moving on to Short Stirlings with 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Wigsley where he trained as a rear gunner. He then flew Avro Lancasters with 463 RAAF Squadron at Waddington.
He flew missions to France, Nuremburg, Dortmund-Ems canal, Brunswick and targets in the Ruhr. Eric was shot down on 6 November 1944 and was taken prisoner of war, and he tells of his escape from the camp when it was liberated by the Russian forces.
After returning to the United Kingdom, Eric ran the Prisoner of War Camps, before leaving the Royal Air Force and joining the 40th Kings Royal Tank Regiment, and served 6 years as a Troop Commander.
Eric left the Army in 1956 and worked for his father as a salesman in the motor car industry. He started his own business and by the rime he retired, he had built up four businesses which he ran for approximately 30 years.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Merseyside
England--Cheshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
England--Liverpool
France
Germany
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
14 OTU
1654 HCU
463 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bale out
Caterpillar Club
Dulag Luft
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Me 110
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Padgate
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Wigsley
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
Stirling
the long march
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/544/8785/AHookerFJ160525.2.mp3
03e38dd3495780227f67637e5adb86f4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Hooker, Fred
Fred J Hooker
F J Hooker
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Hooker, FJ
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. Two oral history interviews with Sergeant Fred Hooker (b. 1924, 1850487 Royal Air Force) and his scrapbook containing photographs and documents. He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 102 Squadron and became a prisoner of war on 12 September 1944.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-25
2017-08-26
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Fred Hooker. The interview is taking place at Mr Hooker’s home in -
FH: Church Crookham.
DM: And the date today is the twenty -
FH: 25th
DM: Fifth of May 2016. Ok Fred. Well if you could perhaps start off by telling me a little bit about your childhood, growing up and your family.
FH: I was born in a little hamlet called Dipley under the control of Hartley Wintney Rural District Council in 1924 which makes me ninety two now and I’m one of nine children born to my parents Minnie and William Hooker. I’m the last one living now. The rest have all passed on. My elder brother was a prisoner in Japan when Hong, captured when Hong Kong fell in 1941. Unfortunately, he died on the same day as I was released from the German prisoner of war camp. I done all my schooling in Hartley Wintney walking about three and a half mile each day to school. I only had a secondary education and joined the Boy Scouts at the age of eleven and then in 1941 when the Air Training Corps was first formed we heard, a friend of mine and myself heard of a squadron being formed in Basingstoke which we made, we found out where the squadron was meeting and we visited each week to their meetings until the flight of the same squadron four four, 444 squadron was developed in Hartley Wintney.
FH: So, when, when were, when were you old enough to be called up? I mean did you get called up or did you volunteer first?
DM: Yeah. I was just coming to that one.
FH: Right.
DM: In 1941 I made an application to the air ministry to volunteer for air crew duties in which I went to Oxford for an assessment test which unfortunately I failed on the first attempt but the following December, 1942 I once again applied and was successful in passing out and was put on the waiting list to be called up to train as a wireless operator/air gunner. In March 1943 I received my calling up papers and I had to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London along with a load of other chaps the same day and there we were, had our usual injections, issued with our full RAF uniform which I was very proud to, to receive and from there I was in London about a fortnight and then posted to Shropshire. A place called Bridgnorth where I done my ITW training which consisted of a lot of square bashing as we called it and school classroom work. From there we were sent on leave and had instructions while on leave to report to Yatesbury in Wiltshire for the wireless training which was all new to me although I had done Morse, a certain amount of Morse sending and receiving while in the Air Training Corps. Unfortunately, when we got on to technical side of the wireless I’m afraid I come unstuck and I had to leave the course and then sent to Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey, re-mustered and became, was put on the list to train as a straight air gunner. Once again I had to go through the, an ITW which was at Bridlington and we done all our square bashing and PT exercises along the front on the promenade which was rather draughty being that it was in the January February time. Having passed out there we were sent on leave once again and on the 28th of December 1943 I left home and travelled overnight to [Carn?] in, sorry it wasn’t [Carn?]. It was Stormy Down in South Wales. Number 7 AGS. Air Gunner School. From there, very disappointingly we’d done nothing for three days until the 1st of January when we was all called on parade and was instructed that we would be training as straight gunners. I was in a section of chaps who was posted to the satellite station at Rhoose which is now Cardiff Airport. Greatly changed these days. There we was in, put in classes of about ten or twelve chaps. My instructor was a Sergeant Walmsley who I, we had a photograph taken of the group in our little classroom. When we finally passed out as air gunners which was somewhere about April the same year, 1944.
[Recording paused]
I passed out as a sergeant air gunner in April if I remember right and from there we were sent on leave not knowing what initial training wing we were going to which turned out to be Moreton in the Marsh, Gloucestershire where we met up, or where I met up with some old pals I had been training with right throughout the, my service life and while waiting on Reading Station to travel to Moreton in the Marsh I spoke with a warrant officer who was going to the same station and apparently he was a pilot who had been flying high service ranking officer’s about the country and wanted a change and fly something much larger. So when we were at Moreton in the Marsh we were instructed to mix amongst all the other lads that had arrived there at the same time. Navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators, pilots and Phil, this chap from Devonshire, the warrant officer, we palled up together straight away and I introduced Leslie, a lad I’d been with since leaving Sheerness to go, to start my training as a straight air gunner and introduced him to Phillip who eventually introduced us to a bomb aimer by the name of Yon Davies from Wales and Jock Munroe from Aberdeen who was a navigator. We had a nice long chat together and decided that we would form a crew together but we was minus a wireless operator which on the following day we had to parade again and while we was in the assembly hall Phillip notified the officer in charge that we, he was short of a wireless operator who then introduced us to Dougie, a chap from Yorkshire who was looking for a crew and we all shook hands and we were then classed as a crew which was the only all British crew on the course at the time. The remainders had New Zealand, Australian and South African pilots. From there we done a lot of landing, circuits and bumps. That’s the word. Circuits and bumps. Giving the pilot a chance to get used to the twin engine aircraft which was a Wellington and we done quite a lot of cross country running while we was there to keep fit and of course cross country flying where we done our, the gunners done their firing, air to air firing over the Irish Sea. We, we then moved on, having passed out as a crew from the Moreton in the Marsh we were posted to a place called Dishforth in Yorkshire near the city of Ripon. There we converted to four engine Halifax bombers which was rather exciting in a way because there was the first time I had my own turret. During our training at Stormy Down Les and myself used to take it in turns firing from the tail turret as there was only the one turret on the Wellington air craft. The turret was a Boulton Paul manufactured and being in the mid-upper I could see all the way around which was a marvellous experience for the first few times seeing that I could look in all directions, scanning the skies for other aircraft that were sent up for training purposes to help us identify various aircraft which was, we’d done a lot of of course at Stormy Down but it increased as we got into Moreton in the Marsh where we crewed. From there we finally passed out but not before we lost our wireless operator. Unfortunately, Dougie got into trouble while visiting Harrogate one night and we, before we left we contacted or we was introduced to a Canadian wireless operator/air gunner and we all agreed that we’d welcome him in to the crew which we did but in the conversation that took place while we was being introduced he told us that he’d operated on Marauders from Blackbushe Airport and I looked, I said nothing and after a while he enquired where we’d all come from so when he got around to me asking where I lived I asked him if he knew much about the area that he’d been stationed at at Blackpool er Blackbushe Airport and he mentioned that he’d used to go to the village of Hartley Wintney and drink in the Lamb Hotel and the Swan Hotel which made me smile and from then on he realised that I knew something about Hartley Wintney.
[Recording paused]
Our new member. His name, we called him Pacqi, Pacqie Pacquette but he was known as Pacqi. I can’t pronounce his proper name but not to worry. He turned out a good pal of all of us and he was very good at his job. And at times we, during training we changed positions and done each other’s jobs just for a few short while, time. Sometimes you’d, I’d go in the bomb aimer’s position just to get used to using the sight just in case of an accident while we was on operations and at one stage I actually took the controls of the Halifax which was a dual aircraft at the time and of course the skipper was there in readiness in case of rather sharp dives or anything but we, as a crew we melled together and it was quite a, good companions. Les, the gunner that I trained with right throughout and myself were, became very good pals and one weekend when we had a weekend pass we travelled down to Hartley Wintney together and Les met my parents and the family that was home at the time and we had quite a nice weekend together there but finally of course we was posted, had a posting come through for South Africa after we passed out as a full crew on conversion unit which was a Canadian unit at Dishforth. We were in, actually in line at the headquarters to get our passes to go to South, leave in Africa and we heard the voice on the tannoy to say that Pilot Officer Groves’ crew and two others that were there. I can’t remember the pilot’s names, to report back to the flight office as leave had been cancelled. Very disappointingly we walked back to the flight office and we were informed that we, that our posting had been changed and we were going to 102 squadron at a place called Pocklington, twelve miles from York, that same day. We would be replacing three crews that had experience that were being posted to South Africa where we were originally going to be posted to. Well, no leave so off we went. We got everything packed ready to go and the three crews were instructed to be ready to leave the squadron at 2 o’clock, if I remember right, on that same afternoon which was the 18th of August 1944 and on our journey by coach to Pocklington we arrived along the road, I can’t tell you the actual number of the road but as we were about to turn into the ‘drome we saw a Halifax bomber that had crashed in the field right opposite the ‘drome and we learned later that it had failed to take off but they were lucky nothing exploded and the bombs were still in the aircraft as we landed on, arrived at the aerodrome which wasn’t a very good sight for us. We weren’t very pleased about it. But I did fail to say that when we got to the, when we first got to the squadron my pilot, Warrant Officer Groves was, got his commission, was then Pilot Officer Groves who, for the first time had to go to his quarters and the, us NCOs to our quarters and the first time we’d been parted from that angle but everything turned out right and we settled into out billets taking over the beds of a crew that had failed to return the previous day.
[Recording paused]
DM: Ok.
FH: On the, as I said we arrived at the squadron on the 18th of August. Unfortunately our stay wasn’t too long but we’d done a few flights from there. I think we started on the 16th of August, just local flights landing and taking off and we done, was called, or we noticed our name on standing orders on the 3rd of September to go on our first bombing operation which turned out to be an airfield in Holland named Venlo. Venlo Airfield. Of course everything was new to us with regards the information we gained from the camp commander, the bomber, bomb aimer officer, navigation officer, the gunnery officer giving us instructions where the different gun emplacements were on our route but fortunately for us they were few and far between and our flight was quite straightforward although there was just a few puffs of flak exploding as we got near to the airfield but the bombing went straight and good. The pilot, not the pilot, the bomb aimer I should say, took photographs of the bombs exploding and on our return journey our wireless operator called up to get permission to land and we were diverted to an aerodrome in the Midlands, just close to Cambridge if I remember right. The name I’m afraid I forgot there, the actual aerodrome but it turned out to be an American ‘drome and when we arrived there the weather was as bad as it was at Pocklington but after three attempts the pilot said, ‘Well I must go in this time,’ he says, ‘We’re very short of fuel,’ and the Americans switched on the ground lights to give us assistance but unfortunately the weather was so bad we only got glimpses of the flare path and as the pilot went in so we realised there was a hangar coming towards us. I was sitting in the top turret and I could see this hangar coming towards us but fortunately the engines were cut and the aircraft came to a standstill rather abruptly but lucky enough everybody was safe and wasn’t hurt in anyway but once we got out of the aircraft and taken to the debriefing room of the American forces that were stationed there we were swore at by the Americans for making such a bad landing but it turned out they hadn’t given us any warning of the ground wind and as Phil went in so he was blown off the runway on to the grass and the Americans weren’t very happy and neither were we actually. Anyhow, we had a debrief, a short debriefing and then shown to our billets and from there we were taken to the dining room. We were all starving hungry by this time. Unfortunately for myself I didn’t enjoy the meal so much as the others. It was a whole partridge and vegetables. Having been instructed not to fly with dentures by the medical officer at 102 squadron I’d taken my dentures out and which gummed me and of course where the other lads were gnawing the bones I had a job to gnaw them. I cut some of the meat off and was able to eat that but with regards gnawing the bones which I could see my pals really enjoying I was absent from that part. But our stay there was, lasted a week which we were rather surprised about but one of the reasons why we weren’t allowed to land at Pocklington there was a hill, I understand, about eight hundred feet high, where we had to fly in over to make our approach and it just wasn’t safe to do so and apparently the weather was bad for a whole week there. We finally got back and again we had a severe debriefing, wanting to know exactly everything that happened from the time we took off ‘til we landed. We mentioned at the time during the debriefing of witnessing an American aircraft while we was at the American unit being flown by an officer, a Lightning aircraft, a twin boom one and he was doing a shoot up of the ‘drome as he’d finished his tour of duties apparently and was going to be posted home the following day but unfortunately he went too low, hit some cables and shot up in the air, ejected his seat and out he come but the plane crashed and we understand that he would have been promoted to a major on his return and would have to pay for the aircraft. How true that was we don’t know but knowing the Americans we took it along with us like you know. Anyhow, the following day, the, that was the 10th of September we returned to Pocklington. On the 11th of September our names were again on the list to go on the bombing trip that was scheduled to take place the following evening. When we arrived at the briefing rooms we sat down waiting for the senior officers to arrive and of course with one movement everybody stood up as the CO come in and we were told of our target and shown it on the map which had been covered by a sheet until the officers arrived, turned about, turned out to be Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr and there was a load of, ‘Ahh’ because a number of the lads apparently had been there before and were very lucky to return. Anyhow, we each had our listen to the briefing and then we had our own section officer, like with Leslie and myself we had the chief gunnery officer of the squadron talking and warning us to be on lookout from the time we took off until we returned to the aerodrome as a lot of fighters used to return following the aircraft back to the stations especially if there was one crippled and as it goes in to land so they would attack and fly off again. Well the experience I had on that 11th of, on the 12th I should say, no, I beg your pardon, on the 11th of September was one I shall never never forget. We was miles away from the target and we could see this smoke in the, in the distance and as we got closer so the shells were bursting all around us and of course we was in formation going in to the target and it was just, the sky was full of black specks where the shells were exploding. The way I often explain it to people the sight was, visualising the modern day fireworks that’s, explodes with coloured lights and flares imagine that as being shells exploding all around you and that’s exactly how it was and while we was on the bombing run, the actual bombing run in the Pathfinders were telling, or giving instructions what to bomb. The red targets or the red flares and then a voice came over. ‘Number two take over. Number two take over. I’m going in. I’m going in.’ And everything went silent on the wireless and at the same time there’s planes at the side of us exploding, mass of flames. Oh it was horrible. We eventually got on course to come home which was a very pleasing one and the journey home was reasonable. We got rid of the flak and on our landing we taxied around to where our parking area was. The ground staff was there waiting for us and as we climbed out the aircraft they greeted us and we, as a crew, wandered around the aircraft and was amazed at the amount of holes we had in our fuselage. We, we wondered how lucky we’d been and as we got, looked up under the nose of the aircraft right where Taffy had been laying, his legs spread out, there was a hole in the bottom of the, where he’d been laying right up through the top and had gone right through between his two legs and out the top and he fell to the ground, Taffy did, and hands together and we all did the same and it was very quiet for a few minutes. We was all in prayer I assumed and we continued with looking around the aircraft with the ground staff and saying how lucky we’d been to return. And -
[Recording paused]
DM: Ok.
FH: We finally arrived at the tail of the aircraft and the transport was waiting for us to take us back for debriefing which, as a crew as we arrived we received our little tot of rum which went down really well. Apparently it’s a thing that happened each time a crew came back from a bombing raid, was given a tot of rum and debriefed which lasted quite a while and we explained to them as a, as a crew that we’d inspected our aircraft and it had quite a few holes and that in it and thought we were very lucky to arrive back on English soil. Anyhow, after that we had a nice evening meal and went to bed. I think we slept but it was a while before we went off if I remember right. Now, the next morning arrived and had our breakfast, had a look at the standing orders and there we were again down for the next bombing raid, which was our third. Two within two days and we all prayed, hoped and prayed that we wouldn’t be going back to the Ruhr which it turned out our target was a town called Munster in Germany and we were due to bomb the marshalling yards and if my memory is correct there was two hundred aircraft every half hour on the target, on numerous targets as well throughout Germany that day. Well our flight over Germany, the North Sea and Germany was quite usual with aircraft either side of us and we flew on and got close to the target when we got a few shells exploding quite close but, all these raids incidentally were done in daylight which I hadn’t mentioned before. So we could see what was happening in the skies to other aircraft but this particular day we didn’t see any damage to any aircraft. This was the 12th of September when all of a sudden I realised I was sitting in mid-air. There was no Perspex around me and I could just see my guns hanging over the tail turret and the ammunition across the, from the turret across to the tail of the aircraft. I guess I shook my head. I don’t know. And I realised that I was sitting in fresh air and had no guns to fire if I had to so I decided best to go up to, along with the pilot and sit with him which I got out of the aircraft seeing a big hole on the port side of the aircraft and the whole plane was full of flames and I saw one chap diving through the hole in the front so I picked up my ‘chute which was burning all across one corner of it. So by this time I guess I was losing oxygen and didn’t realise what I was doing and I can remember throwing it back on the floor, just standing there wondering what to do. With that, my saviour, Charlie the engineer, flight engineer saw me. He came running back, pulled me forward, picked up my ‘chute, I remember seeing his arm going across the ‘chute like this. He clipped it on and pushed me out but as I was going out I could see the pilot, white, his face was absolutely white and he was holding the stick back into his stomach trying to keep the plane on course I guess but that was the last I saw of him. As I went down in the parachute I don’t remember pulling the cord and I guess it was because the parachute was blown, blown to bits, or blown, the small auxiliary ‘chute was blown out and pulled out the main ‘chute which I think I went down rather quickly. I can’t honestly say how long it took me to come down but it didn’t appear to be in the air long but I do remember seeing a Spitfire circling around us who had been escorting, we had the Spitfire escort that day and that was the first I’d seen of them in actual fact but it must have come down within three hundred feet of the ground, flipped his wings and flew off again and I guess he was, he’d been circling to see how many parachutes had jumped out. I also witnessed this aircraft which I assume was ours make a belly landing in just one mass of flames. Make a belly, belly landing on the ground as though he was, he was just making a normal landing but it was just one mass of flames. With that I hit the ground and witnessed that there was a whole load of civilians and troops emerging on the area where I was about to land which turned out to be a field of sugar beet and away from buildings it was but there was a load of civilians but seeing a couple of soldiers I had no chance of escape I merely put up my hands and just stood there. With, with that they came and stripped off my parachute harness and was searched. Can you -
[Recording paused]
These Germans brushed their arms all over me. Made sure I didn’t have a pistol or anything with me and indicated that I had to pick up my parachute and being the size it was it was rather a armful to carry and I indicated to walk across the field and these two chaps was following me. Well we come to a barbed wire fence so one of the Germans put his foot on the barbed wire and held it down, indicated for me to crawl under and believe me that was quite a task with the silk parachute all rolled up and trying to get through which actually brought a smile to my face for just a moment. Being an English gentleman as I thought I stopped the other side to give them a chance to get through but that was the last time I stopped until I had to climb aboard a coach out on the road because one of the guards put his jackboot right where it hurts and believe me that did hurt and it lasted for several days. I just kept walking. Put into this coach which was parked alongside the side of the road and there I had a strip search, naked, everything, put on and then I was told to dress or indicated to put my clothes back on but of course my flying suit and all that kind of thing was pushed to the back of the coach somewhere. I didn’t see that again. It was only a few minutes before I saw Charlie, the one that had pushed me out the aircraft coming towards us and he was come in to the coach and we went, went -
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
Yeah Charlie went to get on the coach we went to shake hands with each other but that didn’t last and we didn’t really shake hands because my guard, one of my guards hit me across the wrist with his, with the butt of his rifle and Charlie just looked at me. He had scratches on his face which were bleeding a bit. Nothing too severe and he had the same treatment as I did. A strip search and we weren’t allowed to talk to each other. He sat in the middle of the bus and we was about to move off when Taffy turned up, the bomb aimer, with his two, couple of guards. We didn’t shake hands knowing that we’d get another hit across the wrist and he was searched and put in the back of the bus and we were then driven to some army quarters which we assumed was a local barracks. There we were put into a big dining hall or assembly hall and facing a door. Charlie was on the left hand side of Taffy, Taffy in the middle and I was on his right and we stood there for a number of minutes. We couldn’t talk because being warned that microphones or things might have ears, and they’d listen to what we were saying. All of a sudden the door opened and a big tall German officer stood in the doorway. Taffy started falling, falling forwards and we grabbed him, both of us so that he wouldn’t fall and the voice said, ‘It’s alright Taffy,’ and he raised his hand. He said, ‘It’s alright Taffy. The war for you is over.’ And nobody said anything and Taffy was by this time standing upright again and the chap disappeared and we never saw him again. We were eventually marched out from the building all along the canal bank or at least it was a towpath. I assumed it was the canal or a river and to our left the houses were all burning and people shouting and screaming. We were being hit with pitchforks and broom handles all across the backs and the two guards were trying to protect us from them which they did and we were very grateful actually to them for that and we finally got to these, some more barracks. We assumed they were barracks and -
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
FH: Yeah. We eventually arrived in some army barracks and were put in to a cell, the three of us together and there was only one bench along one wall which we sat on looking at each other and not saying anything, the fear of perhaps a microphone being placed and we just sat there. We eventually had a cup of very black coffee brought in to us and the following morning, oh we spent the night sitting on this bench trying to sleep but I don’t think we got much. Anyhow, the following morning we were brought in a slice of black bread which was horrible but later on we got used to eating it and it wasn’t bad but the first bite was ugh we didn’t like it at all.
DM: I have to just ask did you have your teeth with you? Did you have your -?
FH: No.
DM: You didn’t. No.
FH: No. No teeth and during that day or later in the day we had another cup of coffee brought in and one of the guards, the chap that came in spoke English and we had a conversation and he said, ‘We, we shouldn’t be fighting each other. We should be fighting the Russians together.’ Anyhow, we didn’t see any more of him and the following day, the following morning we were, we started our journey to Dulag Luft which is the main interrogation centre for air crew. It was quite a long train journey. I can’t remember the exact days it took us but it was, as we got on the way one guard that Taffy was sitting with went to sleep and the other one soon nodded off and Charlie was close to the guard, saying nothing to anybody just fiddled about and took the revolver or Luger out from the holster of the German’s strap he had around his waist, looked at the Luger and there was no bullets in it. A little relief but nothing, no words were spoken and we, I don’t know to this day what made Charlie do it or why. He, nothing was ever said about it afterwards. Anyhow, we arrived at Dulag Luft and that was the first time that we’d been separated and we were actually on our own. How close we were to each other in the cells I don’t know but it was a very strange feeling being alone in a foreign country not knowing anybody or be able to speak to anybody. After a while a Yankee voice was, I heard as though he was coming from the next building, next room and he said he had a gangrene foot and was calling the Germans all names but I didn’t answer because it could have been a stooge you know. We’d been warned so many times about these things that took place but anyhow finally after, I don’t know, I think I was in Dulag Luft about a fortnight but most of the time spent on my own in this cell being tortured as I put it because right next door was the loos and if one wanted to use them they had to drop an arm, pull a little cord and the arm would drop down outside and warn the guards that was up and down the passageway that they, they were needed. Now arriving in the loo the tap was dripping and I went to get a drink and wash my hands, sent away. You weren’t allowed to wash your hands after using the toilets or have a drink and believe me that was real torture that tap dripping day and night, day and night. It was horrible. Anyhow, eventually I was called out and taken outside of the building along what I call a, it was a pathway along the edge of a parade ground and then they took me down, down some stairs and in this room which was quite a large one underground and it had doors all the way along which I assumed was individual cells and I had to stand in the doorway of one of these that was open and in front of me there was a clock and two German officers come through, stood in front of me, one with a Luger and the other started asking questions and asking where, what happened on the squadron before I left and about the briefing and how many aircraft was taking off. All that kind of thing. I didn’t answer. Just my rank and name which annoyed them and they kept pressing this lever on the Luger, the chap did, which I assumed was the safety, safety lever and I was three quarters of an hour I was standing there thinking, ‘Well, why don’t you pull it?’ At the same time thinking in my own mind nobody knows whether you’re alive or dead. So what. And I remember that even now I can see, see myself in that room. But eventually they said, ‘You’re too young to die now Sergeant Hooker. Go back to your cell.’ And it was quite a relief actually to walk back in to a cell and be on my own. Funny thing to say and think no doubt but that’s what it was. Anyhow, the following morning the door opened and I was marched out again. This time to an office a few doors along. ‘Oh good morning Sergeant Hooker. Have a cigarette.’ ‘No thank you.’ ‘Take a seat.’ ‘No thank you. I’ll stand.’ ‘Please yourself.’ We had been warned that this kind of thing again took place and he started asking questions again eventually ringing a bell and another chap came in with a book and he started flicking through the pages of this book and in the end he’d flicked through the pages and named every place I’d been to from the squadron backwards to when I joined up. Even naming Dipley as the place I was born which I was absolutely flabbergasted with and I thought well none of my crew knew I was born in Dipley. They knew I’d lived in Hartley Wintney but didn’t actually know I was born in the hamlet of Dipley so I thought well they can’t have spoken and told the Germans. Anyhow, he said, ‘You see sergeant we know all about you so what’s the point in killing you? You’d better go back to your cell and we’ll send you with others to a main prison camp.’ Can you for a minute.
[Recording paused]
FH: Yeah. We was, I was sent back to my cell a little relieved. Still not knowing how long I was going to be in this cell on my own. Was brought in some food. Another slice of this dark bread and coffee. The following morning the door opened, ‘Come out. You’re moving.’ And as I walked down the passageway so I could see the rest of my crew and several other chaps.
DM: When you say the rest of your crew -
FH: Well when I, yeah -
DM: How many survived? How many?
FH: I say and the rest of my crew that survived the aircraft. Unfortunately my pilot and my very good friend Leslie, the tail gunner didn’t survive the aircraft when it crashed but it was a pleasure to see then the rest of the crew and these two strangers who seemed to be on their own. They palled up together and stood together and Charlie and myself spoke with them. One was a flight engineer and the other one was a sergeant and we was all put on a train to go to a camp called Bankau in Poland which at the time we didn’t realise was in Poland. We was told we was going to Luft 7 and, which took several days train journey with no food but Charlie and myself spoke with Frank Meade the engineer and the tail gunner Tommy Beech and we stayed pals right throughout our prison life actually and when we finally arrived at Bankau we were walked from the station to the camp and there was this barbed wire fence right the way around. We could see, it seemed to be for miles but inside all we could see at first was a load of garden sheds. Rows and rows of them. And after being photographed and I think we had a couple of photographs taken which was, turned out to be for identity cards we were informed afterwards and then waiting outside for I’d say about a half hour we were eventually allowed into these, amongst these huts which held about six or eight people and no, no windows in the huts if I remember right but we was, had to sleep on the floor in these huts or sheds as we called them, garden sheds but fortunately Charlie and myself managed to stay together and Frank and Tommy they were in the same shed which, we didn’t get much sleep at night because first one wanted to use the loo which was the old drop of the arm again. Sometimes the guards would take notice of it and sometimes they’d make you wait and anyhow eventually a number of weeks after we were put in to proper billets as we called them. They were huts similar to the English military huts with, divided in to rooms and each room catered for eight, eight chaps. We lost touch, Charlie and I lost touch with our bomb aimer, navigator and wireless operator in this time and, but Frank and Tommy stayed with us and we had two tiered bunks so Charlie and I was on one bunk and the rest of them, there was a New Zealand pilot, two Canadians. What was the other one? Two Canadians, a New Zealand pilot, I forget who the, what the other one was and the four of us but anyway we, we got on very very well together and after a day or so we decided to, that whatever rations we got from the Germans we’d put, would pool into one bowl ‘cause we each had a, been given a small bowl and a knife and fork, or fork and spoon I think it was so that we could eat our soup which was rather a mixture. Sometimes it would be what we called whispering grass. It looked like grass been boiled up. Another time it was cheese which tasted of fish and as you bit it it was like chewing gum as you pulled it out your mouth to break it along with a slice of their dark bread but anyway we decided share it and the Red Cross parcels which we had very few of but sometimes we had a whole parcel for oneself which was very rare. Normally one parcel between four and it was all pooled and shared out evenly and we made quite decent little meals from the tins of meat and mashed potato but had we had our own parcel we felt that we’d open a tin of meat, everybody would open a tin of meat and just eat that whereas if we shared it we’d have a slice or two of meat, a bit of potato or dried egg mixed up. We thought it would work out better, the rations. Which in our opinion it did and we was quite pleased and we, the eight of us got on very well together. The times, day time there was a mass of people marching or walking all the way around the perimeter track for exercise. It was quite a sight. Some in clothing that had been issued, I forgot to say that we went to a transit camp first before going on to the main camp where we were, had a good shower and a good meal and issue of a Red Cross case which contained clothes. Fresh new underwear, pullovers, socks etcetera cigarettes and we shared this food all together when we was in Bankau but the, pardon me. During the daytime we used to walk all the way around the perimeter track for exercise and perhaps meet up with strangers and have a chat and because we were free to speak there although there were guards patrolling around the inside of the camp but you kept your eye open you could talk freely and it was during this time that we discovered from Charlie, no, not Charlie, from Taffy our bomb aimer how he knew this chap that stood in the doorway and spoke and apparently in 1938 he was working with, in a factory in South Wales with Taffy and they got on well together apparently and not knowing that he was a German, in early part of ‘39 he left to take up a job in Cambridge which they thought nothing more about you know. One moved on in their life. He had no idea he was a German until he saw him standing in that doorway which you know absolutely shocked him and he couldn’t explain any more about it, you know. But that was one big shock to all three of us actually that day. Walking around as I say for entertainment and exercise was something we done each day besides perhaps playing a game of cards which we did manage to get hold of a packet of cards, playing cards, when we was in the room but failing that life was quite boring until in the early part of, well until the Christmas time, I suppose, 1944 being our first Christmas in the camp we all thought of Christmas at home, Christmas puddings etcetera so we decided to have our own Christmas pudding which what we done we saved the crusts off the bread each day for several days so we just ate the bread. We saved the stones from the prunes that was in the Red Cross parcels. We cracked them open and cut up the kernels, we cut up the dried fruit that was in the parcel as well and the prunes, a few prunes, mixed it with the dried milk powder and margarine. A little bit of cheese was put in to it and margarine and it was all mixed up together and we had a what we called a blower stove which was made up out of empty tins and another tin with a little bit of fuel in which, wood shavings or whatever we could find and we turned the handle and turned a fan, make a fan, blow the flames and we cooked this concoction up for quite a while and it turned out to be very solid so when it was emptied out the tin it was just a solid lump of mixture but the taste was beautiful. We each had a couple of slices, each of the eight of us and we had a cream which we made out of the klim, klim milk, dried milk, mixed it all up and it was delicious and we celebrated our first Christmas away from home as you might say, with this pudding. It was delicious. It really was.
[Recording paused]
FH: After that of course or during that time we could hear gunfire in the distance which we assumed was the Russians advancing on the German line because we, there was a radio in the camp unbeknown to Germans of course and we were kept up to date with what was going on with the war and a chap used to come around and everybody was on guard, you know, different schemes each day to, so the Germans didn’t know anything about it you know and little messages were read out to groups of people of what was happening in the war but eventually we were informed that we were being moved out from the camp so the Russians wouldn’t, wouldn’t kills us and the Germans would look after us, with a smile from everybody. But the first time we was ordered out on parade I think it was, I’m not sure if it was the 17th or 18th of January but we stood on the parade from 3 o’clock in the morning for several hours in the snow and blizzard just with the, we had two blankets which we had in the hut which were wrapped around us trying to keep us warm and we had our little Red Cross cases with a little bit of food in that we’d shared out when we knew we were on the move and the clothing we, we had on, you know. A couple of pullovers and a couple of pairs of socks and that kind of thing. But anyhow on the 19th of January we were called out again early in the morning and I think it was about 8 o’clock, I’m not too sure, we were started out on this forced march. The Germans not even knowing where they were taking us. Just told to march in a certain direction. Then of course the march didn’t last long. It was just an amble of walking both by the German guards and ourselves and we was put in to an old brickyard to have a rest later in the day and we managed to find somewhere to sleep, the four of us, that’s Charlie, myself, Frank and Tommy and we covered ourselves with the blankets to keep warm. 8 o’clock in the evening we were ordered to get up, go on a night march which wasn’t very pleasing and we sort of hung about in the brickyard and most of the chaps had gone by this time out on the road and something made one of us move some pallets that were stacked up. We don’t know why. Nobody said anything but we all crept in behind these pallets and pulled them back in position thinking we wouldn’t be found but unfortunately a sniffer dog with a guard just saw the pallets move, apparently. We learned this afterwards and so the guard pulled them out and out we had to go. Fortunately the dog was kept away from us and we were just ordered out whereas he could have shot us there and then but at that time the hundred and, what was there, twelve hundred chaps that had left the previous camp were out, all lined up and we were marched to the front of the queue or almost to the front of the queue where the leaders of the Germans and the leaders of the camp were all standing ready to move off which was, turned out to be a very terrible night for us. We marched and marched and the snow seemed to get deeper and deeper. Eventually we were actually up to our waist in snow trying to get through it and of course the marching had ceased by that time, we, it was just an amble and people was passing and others were trying to get in, you know in to the walkway that the leaders were making. Had a photograph been taken I would have loved to have had one of it but no and during the night we were informed through the, and seemed to go right through the whole column of men that if we didn’t get over the river Oder by 8 o’clock in the morning we’d be left to the mercy of the Russians and how this came about I don’t know but we, we got the message and by this time loads of people were in front of us and we, all of a sudden the four of us woke up sitting on our cases. Nobody else in sight. What happened I don’t know but we must have sat down for a rest and everybody else had passed by and of course by this time the snow was flat as a pancake where twelve hundred people had gone over it, you know and who came around first or who moved first I don’t know. I don’t think either of us did but we eventually I remember all four of us standing there. I can see them now or see us now there. Standing. Looking. And we just took over, we, while we was in the brickyard we’d broken up a ladder and made a little sledge several, which several other chaps had a part of and put our cases on and we was pulling it along which helped us as we all linked arms, the four of us walking along you might say like kids linking arms and we had this sledge pulling our four cases on. Anyway, eventually, how many hours after I don’t know but eventually we caught up with the tail end of the -
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Fred Hooker. One
Creator
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David Meanwell
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-05-25
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHookerFJ160525
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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02:18:06 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
South Africa
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Oberursel
Poland
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944-09-11
1944-09-12
1945-01-19
Description
An account of the resource
The interview begins with some details of Fred’s life before being called up for service, including that his brother became a prisoner of the Japanese captured Hong Kong. Fred joined the Boy Scouts aged 11 years, and then the Air Training Corp when it was formed in 1941.
He volunteered as aircrew, in 1941 but failed the assessment test on his first attempt. He passed on his second try and went to Bridgenorth for his Initial Wing Training. After progressing through Yatesbury, Sheerness, and Bridlington he was posted to No. 7 Air Gunnery School and was successful at becoming an air gunner.
After ‘crewing up’, and further training which took them to various bases in the UK, they took part in operations to bomb Holland, were diverted to an American Airbase in extremely bad weather, bombed the Ruhr valley, and on 11 September 1944 they were hit by flak.
Fred goes on to describe having to bale out of his aircraft. He was picked up by the Germans and made to board a coach together with his flight engineer and bomb aimer. Fred was taken to a prisoner of war camp in Poland and describes life there together with the value of Red Cross food and clothing parcels. A hidden radio kept the prisoners current with the progress of the war.
The Germans moved the POWs out of the camp before the Russians could advance too close and they were marched through heavy snow and sometimes at night. Fred’s small group of friends tried to escape but were caught and made to continue the march.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Claire Campbell
102 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
animal
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
briefing
crewing up
debriefing
Dulag Luft
faith
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
perimeter track
prisoner of war
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Dishforth
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Pocklington
RAF Stormy Down
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1160/11719/ATillerF180716.2.mp3
1667a269199ffe3a900d4247189b5461
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
Tiller, Fred
F Tiller
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Fred Tiller (1925 - 2018 1853810 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as air gunner with 10 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-07-16
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
Tiller, F
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
SP: So this is Suzanne Pescott and I am interviewing Fred Tiller, who was an air gunner with 10 Squadron. Today, for the International Bomber Command Digital Archive we are at Fred’s sister’s home and it’s the 16th of July, 2018. Also present at the interview is Fred’s son. So thank you Fred for agreeing to talk to me today. So, do you want to tell us a little bit about the time before you joined the air force?
FT: I worked in engineering and from there, I was in the ATC and of course they were keen to get you in, and that’s how it sort of followed on. I don’t remember the exact details but there was one or two fellows there, in charge of us, quite keen to get a story, and we, that’s how we got on to it.
SP: So what made you want join the ATC?
FT: ‘Cause it was the nearest thing to the air force! [Chuckle] I was too young to get in the air force, but I could get in the ATC.
SP: And what sort of things did you do in the ATC?
FT: We did aircraft recognition and go round various camps, to get you used to service life, I think was the idea of that.
SP: So what area did you say, you were round Crawley was it, you went?
FT: What age was I?
SP: What age were you when you were in the ATC, yeah?
FT: I was sixteen, seventeen, something like that, you know.
SP: That was based around Crawley was it?
FT: No, that was, I was in, living in Bexhill then. And you’d put your name up and you’d go on tours, that sort of thing, you know. Anything to do with the air force they’d take you on.
SP: So from the ATC you then decided to join up?
FT: Say again.
SP: You then joined up.
FT: Oh no I’d been in then.
SP: Yeah, and in the air force?
FT: That’s it, I was out of the air force when all this went on.
SP: So you actually signed to up to go in the air force in what year? About.
FT: [Sigh] I’ve got to think about this as I had to get my parents’ consent, I was too young.
SP: Right.
FT: Oh god, Dad was awful, mum, I had to get mum to sign up. When did I go in Fred? Which year?
[Other] I think it might have been late ’43, somewhere in ’44 you managed to get far enough on.
SP: So it was about ’43, ’44, yeah. Where did you go to first of all?
FT: Where did I go first?
SP: Yup.
FT: Went to Lords cricket ground. That’s right.
SP: And what happened at Lords cricket ground?
FT: Oh, they evaluated you and took all the information they could, and then we’ll be in touch and off we went. Got a rail pass to go home, you know, that was all right. And then they got in touch with us, wanted us in. At the time, aircrew ACRC was up in Lancashire. We went there. What was the nearest railway station? Preston, Preston Northend. We got there, got out, looked like fish out of water, you know. And they took us in and fed us, and talked to us and they just went on from there.
SP: What did you do up at Preston?
FT: Pardon?
SP: What did you do up there, near Preston?
FT: Only went for interviews, that’s all. Oh, and they had, they had the Dance Hall in Blackpool. We were all for that, weren’t we, young fellers. That’s what we mainly did. We did a lot of chat and we all wanted a piece of the action, you see, right enough. And then we went. Where did we go for goodness’ sake? [Sigh] I can see the place. [Chuckle] Along the front, where did I say I was? Preston?
[Other]: Were you at Kirkham.
FT: Were we at Kirkham, that’s right, Kirkham.
[Other]: That’s right.
SP: So Fred, we were talking about Blackpool and then after Blackpool you went to Bridgenorth. What happened at Bridgenorth?
FT: Further indoctrination. There were some radio schools there for morse code and all this, and RAF law we had to know. Then, then we were given a pass to get home, and then we were give a pass to come back, to the Isle of Man. So that was quite a little journey for us to come up from the south coast. Up to London and out to Preston, and then worked our way across, yeah, the Isle of Man.
SP: So what were you doing on the Isle of Man? What?
FT: That was gunnery school, the Isle of Man was. Most of it was written work, you know. There was some outside work.
SP: What was the Isle of Man like then, at that time?
FT: Lovely! Absolutely beautiful [emphasis] for us. ‘Cause we come from where we were at home, everything was rationed. We get to the Isle of Man and you could go out and have a feed, you know, a blow out, when you liked. It was very, very nice and I’d never been before. Andreus, that was it, the Isle of Man. It was lovely. You could go out in the evening, and the pubs and all, they all did food, you know, to get business, obviously. But we enjoyed ourself there. Then we went it on. We were sent home and then recalled back to, where? Kirkham.
SP: Did you say you went to Bridlington as well?
FT: Yes.
SP: What did you do at Bridlington?
FT: Marched up and down! Did dome morse code, you know, sort of things like that, you know.
SP: So that was all your training. So where did you crew up, where did you meet the rest of your crew?
FT: Somewhere before we went to the Isle of Man, on the coast somewhere, must have been Preston.
SP: Right.
FT: I would think so.
SP: Who else was in your crew?
FT: Pardon?
SP: Who else was in your crew? Can you remember all the names of your crew?
FT: Yeah, I know the names. Nugget Werkham was the pilot, New Zealand, nice feller. Wireless operator was a New Zealander. Flight engineer was a Canadian. I thought that was Ken. He was the navigator what did he, what function did he play when we crewed up? I don’t know. Ken was from London and he was the navigator. Cookie was the flight engineer. He had the gift of the gab, from North America to take us all along. We didn’t have to speak at all, he nabbed it all. Oh dear, you look back on it now and think it’s a laugh, serious at the time. ‘Cause we were asked questions on it and I didn’t know where we’d been or what we’d done. Got a head like a sieve in one ear and out the other, straight through – what was that draught! [Laugh] That’s how it usually was. [Chuckle] Yes, we formed good friendships there. Oh well, you know I got on well, he was the wireless op. Ken Stewart we got on all right with, he was the navigator, Nugget was very good, he’s the pilot, New Zealander, yeah, he had us all buttoned up, no two ways about that. Couldn’t step out of line with Nugget, no way. He was good. It was all new to us. [chuckle] Starry eyed we were.
SP: How old were you then?
FT: Seventeen and a quarter I think I was. Only a nipper.
SP: So where did you get based as a crew?
FT: Melbourne believe it or not. Yeah, we got Melbourne, which was very good, so we knew it, you know. Up and down on the train, that was quite a journey. Get on the train at, where was that? Preston. Get on the train at Preston. Go down to Euston. Going across to Waterloo on the underground. [chuckle] Can you imagine it, hanging on! [Laugh] Gawd, we were daft as brushes. Wet behind the ears. Didn’t know from nothin’.
SP: So what were some of the things you got up to then, in London?
FT: We were in and through in no time. No time for anything, you know. We had a receiving centre there, we went to that and then we were whisked away to Waterloo to get on a train. You, you walked round and you liked the look of a bloke, you say, ‘Have you got gunners with you?’ ‘No’ he said, I said, ‘well, can we join your group?’ ‘Oh, all right’ he said, ‘over there.’ It was just like that, so you could bond together without, you, you’re with him. Shut up. We’re with the bloke we’ve chosen. Nugget was a short stocky New Zealander; he was a good pilot.
SP: So you were saying that you think that the crewing up was somewhere near Abingdon rather than Preston, so you crewed up down there, met all of your crew there, or was it your flight engineer joined you later?
FT: Cookie was the last one in; he was the flight engineer. He was a Canadian, Malcolm was, I shouldn’t say that, he was a good fellow, but, he wasn’t like Nugget and them, was he?
[Other]: I wouldn’t have known.
FT: No he wasn’t.
SP: So Fred, the crewing up was near Abingdon and you did some flights from Stanton Hardcourt.
FT: Got it.
SP: Which was just outside of Abingdon.
FT: Yeah.
SP: So what sort of planes did you fly from there?
FT: Whitleys and Wimpys. Glad to get in a Wimpy. Go like that, and you, Whitley we had to get it up and then keep going, out over the ocean, turn back over the land, to start getting it to get out there! Wasn’t great power there, they were in line engines. Whereas the Wimpy had radials, good strong stuff. As you, you know, remember it now, thinking back.
SP: Did you have any, you know were the flights good flights from there, or did you have any challenges going from there?
FT: No, no we were lucky. Well, I say we were lucky but we had a good pilot and a good navigator, that’s what you really wanted. Ken was from London, north London, he was a good navigator, he was, was good. But old Nugget was the key to it, wasn’t he, he was old enough to put a bit of authority on it all. At seventeen, terrified of Nugget. [Laugh] Oh dear.
SP: So did that help when you were on operations?
FT: Say again.
SP: Did that help when you were on operations then, knowing, that authority from Nugget?
FT: Yeah. Yeah. We only did some training ops from there, and then we went on up north to get the real crew. Where were we, up North?
[Other]: You went to Topcliffe, didn’t you, for -
FT: Heavy Con Unit, Heavy Conversion Unit, yep.
SP: So there you first met up with your Halifax?
FT: Yes, I think so, yeah. Then we went out to Melbourne which was gonna to be the base and we were introduced to the aircraft we were going to fly in, which is the Halifax, and that was good. [Sneeze]
SP: Can you remember which, which plane it was, can you remember what the letter was of the plane you flew?
FT: No! I had to have to, when I wrote to get my air gunner’s badge, and you say you trained on so-and-so, you know, and you fired so many rounds, because the target plane used to tow a drogue which was out on a string so you that didn’t shoot the aeroplane, you shoot at this drogue and the bullets were all painted. So when it come down with the drogue, they counted the holes and what colour was on the holes, and that’s how many shots you used to hit it, and that’s how it went, you know. And it punctured it, so it left a trace of paint. I’d forgotten these little details, but it all comes out now, don’t we, when we talk about it. Oh, we were young and had no idea what it was about really, I think.
SP: What was like, life like on the base at Melbourne?
FT: Well I found it excellent.
SP: What was a typical day for you there?
FT: Pardon?
SP: What was a typical day for you there, when you weren’t on ops?
FT: Well, you had to go to school. [Laugh] You had to learn morse code or use semaphore flags and all this sort of nonsense. It was a lot of ground work. My old noddle wasn’t good enough for it, I don’t think, but I got through. No, I enjoyed time there. It was the first time that we got in to touch with the reality of it without any bull, without anybody saying how, you know, good it was. Don’t you tell me, we’ll tell you [emphasis] how good it is! We’re the blokes at the sharp end. No, I enjoyed the, Melbourne.
SP: So what was life like in the sergeants mess?
FT: Good, all good, very good food. We were always [emphasis] hungry, always hungry! Couldn’t wait to get in, in the mess and feed. Food was good, they fed us well, they really did. I mean young men you need some feeding. And in the midst of all this we are learning morse code, aircraft recognition and all sorts of things, yep. So, trying to memorise things, I couldn’t remember me name never mind anything else! Oh I laugh now, but we got through somehow.
SP: So obviously, this was training for operations. This was training you for operations. So how many operations did you do?
FT: About thirty, which was a tour.
SP: Yup. And do you want to tell me about an operation? Are there any that particular?
FT: It was all very exciting at the time. [Laugh] We weren’t exposed to it. What was that! And we’d go on fighter affiliation. You were supposed to spot this plane coming at you, course he would come along underneath you, came up over the top, shoot across the top. If you didn’t get a film of it, you were in trouble. ‘Cause when you pulled the trigger on the gun, it worked the camera, not the bullets.
SP: So that was in fighter affiliation, yeah?
FT: Pardon.
SP: That was when you were doing fighter affiliation.
FT: Fighter affiliation, yes.
SP: Did you have to, you know, use the gun much when you were on operations?
FT: No, no, no, there was no time for it. Everything happened so quick, and we weren’t geared up to be quick, you know. ‘What happened?’ ‘Never heard’ ‘Never saw it, Nugget’. ‘It flew right by us!’ ‘It may well of done, but I never saw it!’ ‘It wasn’t fair, he didn’t wave to me!’ [chuckle] Oh dear. But it was serious at the time, dead serious. And our ability to get on and pass, reflected on the crew, because we were part of the crew, and if we failed they’d have to get somebody else, you know, and we didn’t want that, so we really tried. But they kept us separated so you couldn’t sort of, use the pilot’s knowledge of us to say well I want to keep him on as a gunner, you’d have to prove yourself. It was all very good. And then when we got to a station on operations that, that was fun! [chuckle] Go in the mess, not the mess, in the hall and on the end wall was a great big map of Europe and here was a little projector, putting a sign up where we were and all that, and where we were going. We had to pick off what the direction was, how many miles it was, all this, we had to write all this down, all be checked to see what our memory was like. Four guns, eleven fifty rounds a minute for each gun. So that’s four thousand six hundred rounds a minute you were popping out some lead in that. Everyone pumping out that at that rate.
SP: So Fred you were talking about your operations, and you did thirty plus of those. What sort of places did you go to on your operations?
FT: Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, one up in Norway. Och, can’t remember now. Where’s my log book, Fred? Not in the bag?
[Other]: No.
FT: Did I give it to you put it in the bag?
SP: It doesn’t matter. You did one to Chemnitz.
FT: Yes.
SP: And that was a very long trip, wasn’t it. Was that the longest trip?
FT: At that time I think it was. It was a long way down that was. We went right down, down the Ruhr, down almost into Switzerland, you could see the lights and everything and then we turned to port. Yeah, then we got there, then when we’d done that we come back. Once we’d dumped everything, bombs and that, we could head for home, quick as we can. Hurry up Nugget: we shall miss the tea!
SP: And did you have to wear something special on that trip because of the distance?
FT: No. Did we wear anything?
SP: Did you say you had to put something round you on that trip in case you were shot down because it was so far over?
FT: Oh, so the people on the ground would know we were ex aircrew.
SP: And what was it you had?
FT: We had a scarf round our neck and armbands that identified us.
SP: Was that quite unusual, was that the only trip you did that on?
FT: No, that was a regular thing.
SP: Right.
FT: After x, x number of these sort of things you are then qualified to go on. Right.
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 Tiller
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Susanne Pescott
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
2018-07-16
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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ATillerF180716
Format
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00:23:42 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Fred was too young to get in the Royal Air Force, so he joined the Air Training Corps where they did aircraft recognition and visited various camps. He joined in 1943/44 and went to Lord’s cricket ground where he was evaluated to become an air gunner. He was called up to Preston for interviews and crewed up at RAF Abingdon. The crew worked on Wellington and Whitley aircraft at RAF Stanton Harcourt. Fred went to RAF Kirkham and then to RAF Bridgnorth to learn Morse code and to RAF Bridlington for further training. After a few days at home he was posted to the gunnery school on the Isle of Man and later to RAF Hardwick
Heavy Conversion Unit to work on Halifax. Fred carried out about 30 operations, including ones to Stuttgart and Chemnitz.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Anne-Marie Watson
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lancashire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Norfolk
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Germany
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Chemnitz
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
10 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
RAF Abingdon
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Hardwick
RAF Kirkham
RAF Melbourne
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Topcliffe
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/PPayneG1702.2.jpg
2f46ef1a16000254b14a168175fe9b28
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/PPayneG1701.2.jpg
b039d51b699a66b9cdfd0a9ed039e2d9
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1066/11522/APayneGA170528.1.mp3
4f2ec096b73aad4bee119f3e1be46588
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
Payne, Geoff
Geoffrey Albert Payne
G A Payne
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Geoff Payne (b. 1924, 1584931 Royal Air Force) and his memoir. He flew operations as a wireless operator / air gunner with 115 and 514 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Geoff Payne and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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
Payne, G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BJ: So, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Brenda Jones. The person being interviewed is Geoffrey Payne. The interview is taking place in Mr. Payne’s home in Cumbernauld on the 28th of May 2017. Mr. Payne, thank you for agreeing to talk to me today. Could you tell me about your life before you joined the RAF?
GP: Well, my life was a bit raggedy, I was an apprentice to Sheet Metal Work and worked in a company in the centre of Birmingham and we were manufacturing spats for Lysander aircraft and making fire pumps, things like that and more interested in sports than anything else [laughs].
BJ: And how did you come to join the RAF?
GP: Well, I joined the Air Training Corps, which I was one of the original members and it was the Air Training Corps was at Birmingham was the Austin Motor Company Squadron which was 480 and 479, there were two squadrons in the, ATC squadrons, and that’s why I started to get involved with the, with the Air Force, thinking a lot about the Air Force at the time. We went to camp to RAF Weeton, which was a Pathfinder Squadron, 7 Squadron, which were flying Stirlings and the most funniest part about us, we wanted to go into St Yves for the evening and we had to know a password to go out of the place because there was operations on that night and they said the password was WATER, which was this, I think they were pulling our legs or something like that, they said because the Germans can’t sound the w’s is wasser, so that was the sort of thing, that gave me a great interest in the Air Force.
BJ: OK. And when did you come to join the Air Force?
GP: I joined when I was seventeen and a half and I went to Vishyde Close in Birmingham to get assessed and I was assessed as a pilot and I was given a number and then sent back to work again because they wouldn’t call me up until I was eighteen but in the meantime I had a letter from them saying that it would possibly take far too long for me to become a pilot and that they’d had other vacancies in the Air Force which was an air gunner so I decided to do that.
BJ: And what year was this?
GP: 1943, yes.
BJ: And what happened when you started with the RAF?
GP: What happened?
BJ: Yes, what did your training involve?
GP: The training, we went to London, to Lord’s Cricket Ground and then we were put into high-rise flats and then we had our meals at the London zoo and used to march there every, for breakfast those [unclear] and tea and there’s one occasion there when there was a heavy air raid and at Lord’s Cricket Ground there’s the Regent’s Park and [unclear] anti-aircraft comes and we had to move out and go to another set of flats which was a hospital, which the RAF hospital, and carry all the patients down from the high floors cause they wouldn’t, couldn’t go down in the lifts and carry the, down in stretchers into the basement and back up then and then after that initial training, I went to Bridlington for ITW and that’s a nice seaside place, enjoyed it there and then off we went to Air Gunners School which was in the Isle of Man, just outside Ramsey, a place called Andreas and then, after three months of training, we were sent to an ITW, which was in Banbury where we were crewed up and flew in Wellingtons and from then we, we had to go to Heavy Conversion Unit which was a Stirling set-up, a place called Wratting Common in Cambridgeshire and we did that and then also we moved to, did an escape course at Feltwell and which was hilarious and then.
BJ: What did they teach you there about escaping?
GP: Unarmed combat and this sort of thing but it was, it just became a laugh actually [laughs] so, but we were there for the week and then we went back onto Wratting Common on Stirlings but at that time the Stirlings was being phased out from operations in the, for the main force in Bomber Command and we were transferred to, onto Lancasters which were radial engines Mark II, Hercules engines and from then we did a couple of weeks training there before we were put onto the squadron.
BJ: How did you find the Lancasters compared to the Stirlings?
GP: I didn’t like the Stirlings at all.
BJ: Ah!
GP: No, they frightened me because whilst I was converting onto Stirlings, I had to go to Newmarket to do a short gunnery course there and in the meantime my crew then crashed one of the Stirlings at [unclear] market so and but I, they phased these Stirlings out and that’s why I went on to Lancasters and then from Lancasters on Waterbeach we moved to a squadron which was RAF Witchford.
BJ: Ok. What happened when you got to Witchford?
GP: [laughs] We arrived at Witchford and then the following day we had to go round, signing in, which is a normal thing, you go to all the various sections and sign in and so forth like that and you get your billets and that and I went to the gunnery leaders office to sign in there and he says, ah yes, he says, you’re on tonight and that was the second day I was there [laughs] and I was, I said, what for? He says, well, there’s a rear gunner taken ill and you’ll have to, you’ll be flying with Lieutenant Speelenburg who was South African.
BJ: How did you feel about that?
GP: Terrible, it was, it was, to do a first op with a sprog crew which, the crew was a, they hadn’t done any operations before anyway and I hadn’t done any operations so they obviously bloodied with a new crew and that was one of the most horrendous air raids I’ve been on and that was to Augsburg, in southern Germany which was an eight hour journey, it was the most frightening experience I’ve ever had in my life so.
BJ: What happened on the mission?
GP: Oh, we got attacked over the target by a, by two Messerschmitt 109s, well, we got through that alright but it was, I never in my life would have expected to witness such a melee which was over the target, and I thought to myself I’m not coming out through this loss.
BJ: Do you remember what the target was?
GP: Augsburg.
BJ: Yes.
GP: It was the MAN works.
BJ: Ok.
GP: So that was, it was a night trip, eight-hour trip.
BJ: And did you stay with that crew then after?
GP: No, no.
BJ: No. So, how did you get assigned to a crew?
GP: I’d already got my crew,
BJ: Oh, ok.
GP: From, from Banbury, from Chipping Warden. I’d already got my crew, my crew were there but they were doing cross country south. So that was me doing me first op and I thought, I’ll never gonna get through this. So, that was my first operation and in the morning I couldn’t get off to sleep so I decided to, I walked into Ely and the Oxford and Cambridge boat race was on there so that was the, because they didn’t have the boat races in London because of the bombings, so I saw the boat race there.
BJ: Oh, ok.
GP: And came back, that’s it, so I said, no, that’s it, you can’t, you got to, maybe get through this alright but just forget about it and take it as it comes.
BJ: Ok. So, what, what was, can you tell me a bit more about some of the other missions you flew from Witchford?
GP: Well, I only did, I only did five operations from Witchford and I got frostbite, because we got attacked by a night fighter which destroyed all the communications and heating in the aircraft, but we managed to get back ok. So, that was alright and that was me put away from frostbite to Ely hospital for some time and then I was transferred to Waterbeach for recuperation and then I picked up another crew at Waterbeach which is Ted Cousins’s and I finished my tour of operations at Waterbeach with that crew.
BJ: What were you flying in at Waterbeach?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: What planes were you flying in from Waterbeach?
GP: Lancaster IIs.
BJ: Lancaster IIs. Ok, right, and can you tell me as what it was like on the base there, day to day life?
GP: Base was good because Witchford was a wartime place and everything was so dispersed you could walk miles for meals and things like that. But Waterbeach was a pre-war station and everything was on tap and there were nice billets and cosy, not like the Nissen huts that we did have, so these were brick-built, brick-built buildings and quite comfortable in a way.
BJ: And what did you do in your time off?
GP: Just going home [laughs].
BJ: Really? Aha.
GP: If you could get home. [unclear] the time off just mainly drinking [laughs].
BJ: What was it like coming home after being on operations?
GP: It was very strange and it’s a funny thing, I haven’t been away from home until I went in the Air Force. It’s a very strange feeling when you come back home and see that, it was a good feeling, but it didn’t last long so I had to go back again and that was it.
BJ: And what did you tell your mum and dad about your life in the RAF?
GP: I didn’t tell them anything, I didn’t think it was fair.
BJ: Ah.
GP: Because my brother, my brother was a navigator wireless operator on Mosquitoes, he was out in Burma so there’s both of us, there were three boys in the family and just my elder brother and myself were in the Air Force and the younger brother, he went in the army, just after the war. It was, it was quite strange because all your friends were away and we just had to nosy around, just going to the pictures or something like that. It wasn’t all that pleasant, it’s nice to see your family but as I say, it was quite boring.
BJ: And what sort of missions were you involved in, when you were at Waterbeach? Where were the targets?
GP: The targets, Witchford was, the targets were German targets, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Augsburg and one or two others. From Waterbeach there was quite a variety of targets which are sometimes daylight raids and night raids, sometimes were French targets, and then all of a sudden you’d be onto a German target at night, which is [unclear] sorted it out.
BJ: What did you have a preference for daytime or nighttime missions?
GP: I used to like to rather go at night time, I didn’t like daytime [laughs]. You could see too much.
BJ: Right. Were there any particularly memorable missions that you flew on?
GP: Actually, most of them were quite memorable, we did a raid to Beckdiames which was in Southern France and that was an eight hour trip and this was a daylight raid and we went out at under a thousand feet all the way and until we got to the target, the target was a port actually and we climbed up to the bombing height, bombed and dropped down to, under a thousand feet again because of the radar, that was the idea of it but it was a long trip, it was an eight hour trip and it was quite a dangerous trip because the Bay of Biscay it was the, the Junkers 88 used to wonder around there quite a lot, you know, so. And then, there was another one which was to Stettin which was in Poland and that was another long trip, under a thousand feet all the way, this was a night time raid and we flew over Denmark and we could see the lights of Sweden and the anti-aircraft fire was coming up from Sweden, things like that [laughs] and then we went to, got to Stettin which we got to the bombing height and came back down again and what [unclear], we just lost one, one squadron, one aircraft on that squadron. So, and there was, there’s quite a few things which, one of the most scary attacks that we had was my last operation really to Duisburg. And that was the, the squadron went out early to bomb Duisburg, there was over a thousand aircraft to do it, and then, as soon as we got back, over the target the air was black with flak and it was the most frightening experience, I was in daylight did not expect to go to a German target in daylight and then it gradually settled down then but when we got back, we were sent down to, the air gunners were sent down to the bomb disposal place to help to load bombs up again for the same target and then the following day the German, the Americans bombed the same place, that was a disastrous place, terrible. That was about it, you know, but most of the trips were rather scary cause you never knew what was gonna happen there [unclear], you could be attacked by fighters any time.
BJ: What was it like being up in the turret?
GP: Very cold. Very cold [unclear] with ice all the way down there because we didn’t have any Perspex in the turret, we had it taken out because you can just imagine if you are flying at night and you can get attacked by a fighter and if you get any dirt on your Perspex you wouldn’t, it would be a, you wouldn’t know whether you got a fighter coming through, you see but where I got frostbite was around about forty degrees below but you see, your oxygen mask you had a lot of breath dripping down you know, froze up and all that.
BJ: What were you wearing to keep warm then?
GP: Well, I had a heated suit actually, the first time was one of these urban jackets and trousers which were all [unclear] and things like that. Eventually they got full heated suits which you’d plug into your boots and plug into your gloves, they heated up all over so you, you weren’t so cumbersome in the turret so, so that wasn’t too bad. It was when, the one time I said when the, the heating got shot up but it was cold.
BJ: Ok. And anything else that you remember about your time in the two squadrons?
GP: I’m just trying to think about it now. I was involved in athletics with the squadron so I did [unclear] got plenty of time off, things like that, apart from my flying, I was excused duties because I was, I got involved in football and things like that, I didn’t have to do any guard duties and things like that so.
BJ: Ok. Did that involve you going around to other bases?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: Did you go to other bases doing that?
GP: It was just the odd at lib sort of things, you know, you compete against the Americans or something like that, you know and,
BJ: Ok, how did you get on?
GP: We weren’t as good as the Americans, I tell you.
BJ: [laughs]
GP: No, we weren’t as good as the Americans, no, they got far greater facilities and that sort of things like that, you know.
BJ: Ok, and what did you do at the end of the war? What, you know, how did you get demobbed and that sort of thing?
GP: Well, when the, as I finished mature, I was sent up to a place in Northern Scotland, place called Bracla and that was for time expired men, aircrew you see, had [unclear] virtually offices and things like that, and my, my flight commander was up there as well, Lord Mackie, he ended up as Lord Mackie and we just had to march about and things like that and then we were selected for ordinary jobs in the Air Force you see and I wanted to become a PTI which is a Physical Training Instructor because I would’ve had the opportunity to go through to Loughborough and take sports right the way through and then that’s what I wanted to go for but they put me down as a driver [laughs]. So I moved from there and went to driving school at Weeton in Blackpool which was quite good actually, it was quite enjoyable and then from then I was, I went to various camps in this country and then my final camp was in Germany where I was with a microfilm unit taking microfilm documents of all the machine tool drawings and things like that and that’s,
BJ: Where was that?
GP: That was at Frankfurt, Frankfurt but we wondered around Stuttgart and other places, went round all these factories and taking these microfilms of these documents and things like that, that was the, that was my end, I ended and came back to Weeton where I was demobbed.
BJ: So, what was it like being in Germany, down on the ground, this time?
GP: It was, it wasn’t too bad, we weren’t allowed to fraternise at all, you know, we did play football against the Germans and things like that and got thrushed.
BJ: Oh, alright [laughs]
GP: So, I played for the army when we were in Frankfurt and we played a game against the Germans, select team which is if we really got thrushed and that was the first time we realised what sort of football the continentals played as compared with our football but anyway that was, I enjoyed my time in Germany and I learned to speak German quite fluently and which stood me in good sted with my civilian job so that was good and
BJ: How did you learn to speak German?
GP: Well, I had to speak German [laughs].
BJ: Yeah?
GP: Well, I mean, if you were driving around and things like that and you lost your way, you had to talk and things like that so that’s how it went [unclear] I wish I had kept it up actually, which it would have been useful to me but it was useful anyway because I dealt with the Germans, a German company in me civilian life more so than anything and of course was a strange thing that the fellow that I dealt with in Germany, he was a Luftwaffe pilot [unclear] [laughs] and something I know quite well actually.
BJ: Did you tell him you’d been in the RAF?
GP: Yes, yeah. So, I mean it was no end to the, not at all, not with service people [unclear] so they got a job to do, we got a job to do and that was it but
BJ: So what did you do after you were demobbed then?
GP: Sorry?
BJ: What did you do after the RAF? After you left?
GP: I went back to my old company and I gradually progressed there, we were manufacturing cars, Standard, the Triumph and the Triumph Spitfires and these sort of things, and but there was so much, so many problems down in the Midlands with the car industry of strikes and all that sort of thing and I just got married and we bought a new house and things like that, it’s becoming very difficult because we’re going on short time, even when you’re on staff you’re on short time so, I decided to make a move and come up here and that was that.
BJ: What did you do up here, in Scotland?
GP: I ended up as a production director at Carron company in Falkirk and but I set up a, came up and set up a plant for manufacturing steel bars and that sort of thing and then I did twenty-three years there and that’s it.
BJ: Ok, and how do you think being in Bomber Command affected the rest of your life?
GP: It did affect me because the, the people, the people that you met in Bomber Command, they were virtually like your brothers, a wonderful set up, it was great and as I say, it was still, we’re still getting involved with reunions and one of the addresses, the two addresses that I gave you, these are the people that I flew with, so, it was, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Really.
BJ: Ok. Alright, anything else you’d like to add, Mr. Payne?
GP: No, I don’t think so. I think that’s about all, that’s, I summarised quite a bit.
BJ: Alright. Thank you very much.
GP: Ok, thank you. [file continued] I’m trying to fill it all in you, you can’t.
US: I know you can’t [unclear], I just.
BJ: Right, this is the interview with Mr. Payne continuing.
GP: Right, one of the most horrendous trips that I did was to Frankfurt. And after the target, we were coming back, we were about half an hour away back from the target when I spotted a aircraft with about four hundred meters behind below and it turned out to be a Messerschmitt 109 and I wanted, I tried to warn the, I tried to warn the pilot but the intercom had frozen up, my mouthpiece had frozen up and I tried to Morse coding with the emergency light and the emergency light wasn’t working so that was it, there was actually nothing I could do about it and as the aircraft came closer to me, which was below at about a hundred meters, I opened fire on it and the guns jammed so therefore I was completely at a loss, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t warn the captain or anything about cause I’ve no intercom and no emergency lighting so I just had to hang on a bit and then after a minute the aircraft came underneath us and opened fire and blasted all the centre of the aircraft and the smell of cordite was amazing and then the aircraft started to manoeuvre all over the sky doing very violent evasive action or I thought that we were out of control, completely out of control so I got out of my turret and walked back and found that the main door was swinging open and then I got up to the mid upper turret and the mid upper gunner had gone, he’d bailed out and there was all cannon shell holes all around his turret there, so eventually I thought, that so quiet I thought the rest of the crew had gone, now I walked up, gradually I got through into the main cabin and found the rest of the crew were ok and so forth and that we went back to the sit in the turret, well, I couldn’t do anything anyway, so we were coming in to land, but we got back home ok, coming in to land and I started to smell cordite and I, I looked about at the back in the, in the ammunition panniers and there was a fire in there which must have got hit by an incendiary bullet and we had to land, emergency land and it was, it was an incendiary bullet, that was wedged in the bullets, so [laughs], that was that day but there was also another one, no, I don’t think I will talk about that, just [unclear].
BJ: Ok, thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Geoff Payne
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brenda Jones
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
2017-05-28
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APayneGA170528, PPayneG1702, PPayneG1701
Format
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00:32:26 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
United States Army Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Geoff Payne has his first experience of the Royal Air Force with the Air Training Corps, at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire, where he had one of his first experiences of military humour. He joined in 1943 at the age of 17 and a half hoping to become a pilot - he took the faster option because of his young age and trained as an air gunner.
Basic training was carried out at Lords Cricket ground in London. One clear memory is helping to carry patients down several flights of stairs from a nearby hospital during an air raid.
Time was spent at RAF Bridlington on Initial Training Wing before attending Air Gunnery School in the Isle of Man. Further training was undertaken at RAF Banbury where he was crewed up on Wellingtons, before moving to the Heavy Conversion Unit at Wratting Common to convert to Stirlings. During his time here he attended an escape course at RAF Feltwell and was instructed in unarmed combat, which he dismissed as pitiful.
He and his crew were posted to RAF Witchford, Cambridgeshire, where he flew his first operation in February 1944 replacing an ill air gunner. He later discovered this was an inexperienced crew. He remembers the target was around Osnabrück in Germany and it was a melee over the target where they were attacked by two Me 109s, which they successfully shook off. On his return, he remembers being unable to sleep and went for a walk into Ely. There he discovered the Oxford Cambridge boat race was being held and watched it
Target areas of Germany included Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Augsburg. On his 5th operation, the aircraft was attacked, and the aircraft lost its heating and communications. He suffered frostbite and spent several months recovering in Ely hospital.
On regaining fitness, he was transferred to RAF Waterbeach and was allocated to a crew led by Ted Cousins. Waterbeach was a pre-war airfield with comfortable facilities. Time off was spent competing in athletics and football along with drinking at the local public houses.
When time allowed, he went home, but found the experience boring: all his friends were serving away, and there was little to do except drink or go to the cinema. His elder brother was serving as a navigator in the Far East, and he felt it unfair to talk about his experiences with his family.
At RAF Waterbeach there was a greater variety of operations. Targets varied from Germany to Southern France. He also remembers one trip to Poland. This entailed flying over Denmark and they could see the lights from Sweden and anti-aircraft fire.
He has a clear memory of most of his operations but does not wish to dwell on some. On one occasion he spotted a Me 109, he tried to warn the pilot but his intercom had frozen and emergency light was inoperative. He tried to open fire but his guns jammed – the night fighter opened fire and hit the centre of the aircraft. The aircraft began violently manoeuvring and he wasn’t sure if this was deliberate evasive manoeuvres or if they were out of control. He made his way forward and discovered the aircraft door open and the mid upper gunner missing. There were cannon holes all around the centre of the aircraft. He still wasn’t sure if he was the only one on board until he reached the main cabin and found the rest of the crew in position. They made it back home where they realised an incendiary bullet was lodged in the ammunition pannier.
His last operation was one of the thousand-bomber operations in Germany, the air black with anti-aircraft fire. On his return, the air gunners went sent to the bomb dump to assist the armourers in preparing the bombs for the following days attack which was carried out by the United States Army Air Forces.
After completing his tour of operation, he was posted to RAF Brackla, hoping to be retained as physical training instructor, but ended up at RAF Weeton near Blackpool to be trained as a driver.
He served at several locations across Southern England before his final posting which was with a microfilm unit in Frankfurt. Fraternising with locals was not allowed, but he did manage to learn German. He played in a football match against a much better German select team.
After demob, he returned home and was involved in the manufacturing of cars at the Triumph factory. He married, and because of unrest and strikes in the car industry, he moved to Scotland and was employed at the Carron company in Falkirk as a production director manufacturing steel bars, where his ability to speak German became an advantage in his dealings with foreign companies. He met an ex Luftwaffe pilot and experiences were exchanged - there was no animosity whatsoever and it was accepted they both had been carrying out their duty.
Geoff looks back on his time in Bomber Command with great fondness. It was like a big family. He still has contact with surviving crew members, and still attends reunions.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Ely
England--Lancashire
England--London
England--Norfolk
England--Northamptonshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
France
Germany
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Stuttgart
Denmark
Sweden
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Scotland
Scotland--Falkirk
Scotland--Nairnshire
Scotland--Stirlingshire
Germany--Osnabrück
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-02
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Peter Schulze
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
115 Squadron
514 Squadron
7 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
crewing up
Heavy Conversion Unit
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
Me 109
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Brackla
RAF Bridlington
RAF Chipping Warden
RAF Feltwell
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Witchford
RAF Wratting Common
RAF Wyton
sport
Stirling
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2103/34735/PMercierCG2102.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2103/34735/AMercierCG211021.1.mp3
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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
Mercier, Gordon
Cyril Gordon Mercier
C G Mercier
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Gordon Mercier (1924 -2024). He flew operations as a mid-upper gunner with 171 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-10-21
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
Mercier, CG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: It’s Harry Bartlett interviewing Gordon Cyril Mercier on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre at Lincoln. It’s the 21st of October 2021. Gordon is ninety six and three quarters old, and he served from 1943 through to 1947 in Bomber Command and Gordon was a mid-upper gunner. Now, Gordon, now we can make a start? Can you, can you tell me a little bit about your early life please?
GM: Yeah. I was born in Jersey in 1925 and I had a very bad childhood. I was always ill. Always ill. I spent so much time in hospital it was unbelievable. My mother used to say when I was born, the doctor said, ‘You won’t have him long mother but he, but treasure him while you’ve got him.’ And here I am [laughs] ninety six. I came, I went to school in Birmingham, High Street Harborne in Birmingham and I was fourteen at the start of the war. And the moment the war started I helped the ARP people. I used to carry the stirrup pumps for them when I was fourteen. When Mr Churchill came on the phone, on the radio in 1940 to ask for volunteers to join the LDV which was the Local Defence Volunteers sixteen and over. I was fifteen and I went and joined the Home Guard. And I was in the Home Guard until I joined the RAF in 1943. My nickname in the Home Guard was Sealevel, and I spent all those years, and I was a very very good shot. It was amazing. I just, it didn’t matter. I could hit anything. Not with a revolver but with a rifle I could hit anything.
HB: I think just, just to explain your nickname. Do you want, do you want to tell us how tall you are?
GM: [laughs] I’m only about [laughs] I’ve shrunk. I was only about five foot two.
HB: Right.
GM: And I was —
HB: That explains Sealevel.
GM: I was eight stone. I used to, I was eight stone. I boxed at eight stone in the RAF. Anyway, I joined the Home Guard. And then I was in a Protected Occupation so I couldn’t join the forces. The only forces you could join in those days was the submarines or aircrew.
HB: What was your Protected Occupation, Gordon?
GM: I was, I worked in a factory making munitions.
HB: Was that, was that in Birmingham?
GM: In Birmingham. Yes. I worked in factory. From fourteen, I worked in, I was a fitter in the factory.
HB: Do you know the name of the factory?
GM: Belliss and Morcom.
HB: Ah right. Yeah.
GM: Belliss and Morcom. The factory. And I, I decided that I wanted to join the Air Force. I’d always been interested in the Air Force from the very, I’d always had the comics and everything all about the Air Force. I had, “Flight,” every week and all this sort of thing but, so I went to Cardington in March 1943 to take the exam to join the Air Force. I believe there was two hundred of us who came through and fifty two of us finished. And, and as we’d gone, as we’d gone through all the exams, exams, medicals and psychology and you had written exams, and all this sort of thing and you passed at the end. You passed and there was fifty two of us. We took the King’s Shilling on that day, and on that day I joined the Air Force in 1943 at seventeen and a quarter. I was called up very shortly afterwards and I started in the RAF in London. We, it was my first posting to London where we got kitted out and all this sort of thing. Three weeks in London. I did some boxing, got knocked out and decided I didn’t want to do any more boxing after that [laughs] So, and then I was posted to 14 OTU at Bridlington which was the Operational Training Unit at Bridlington, as an aircrew cadet. I believe we had about sixteen weeks there and you passed out [pause] You passed out and I was posted to Bridgnorth for a fortnight. Because it was Bridgnorth I used to come home at nights, at the weekends, and I got seven days jankers for being back late. But I never did the seven days jankers because I was posted the next day to Stormy Down in South Wales. And I’d been there a fortnight when they called me in to the adjutant’s office and said, ‘You were on jankers and you never did it. You start now.’ [laughs]
HB: Oh no.
HB: So, I had —
HB: A long memory.
GM: Yes. I did that, and I don’t know how many trips we did but we flew in Ansons and there were three of us in training. One sat in with the pilot and winded the undercarriage up, one sat in the rest position, and one sat in the turret and you fired two hundred shots. You had collected your two hundred bullets and you painted the bullets a colour. Red, blue and green. And you put your bullets in, and the plane would fly out and you’d shoot the drogue. And you all had a go and you swapped over until you all three had fired and then they dropped the drogue and you had to collect it on the, on the airfield and count your shots, because the, how many red bullets holes, and blue bullet holes, and green bullet holes there were.
HB: Right.
GM: And you got a, you got a score from those bullet holes and we did a lot of flights. They didn’t stint of the training. We did an awful lot of flights. I don’t know. It’s in my logbook but I did an awful lot of flights.
HB: Yeah. Your logbook does list a lot of training flights.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Right, right through.
GM: Right through.
HB: All through the —
GM: Yeah. And after training you passed out as a sergeant, and I passed out and I had passed out at Christmas. Christmas ’43. I came home on leave as a sergeant.
HB: Right.
GM: And then I had a week, a fortnights’ leave, and I was posted to 14 OTU, Bridlington. No. Not Bridlington. Abingdon. 14 Operational Training Unit where you got crewed up. The system for crewing up was very strange. All the officers and men shared the same dining room. You were given a fortnight to form a crew. It was the pilot’s job to find a crew, and I met a fellow called Ken Adams who said, ‘Shall we go and find a pilot?’ And we walked round, and we met Warrant Officer Digby. He was the pilot, and said to Mr Digby, ‘Would you like a pair of gunners?’ He said, ‘Certainly.’ And when you’d finished, after the three weeks they had a crewing up meeting in the hangar. Seven seats. Rows of seven seats all the way along. All the way through the hangar. Pilot, bomb aimer, navigator, wireless operator, flight engineer, mid-upper gunner, rear gunner, and those were the, and you sat in those seats as a crew. But not all the seats were full. All the people who were standing at the back that hadn’t crewed up had to fill in the places.
HB: Right. Yeah.
GM: To fill in the places. But we were. We had formed a crew.
HB: So, you’d got the full seven.
GM: We’d got the full seven. Yes. My skipper’s name was Warrant Officer Digby, the bomb aimer was named [Wamm] and he was a southern Rhodesian, white. The navigator was Johnny Dibbs. The wireless operator was Brown. I can’t remember his first name. The flight engineer was [pause] oh dear.
HB: Robertson?
GM: Robertson. Yes. Robertson, and he was quite, he was forty so he was quite old. The rear gunner was Ken Adams and, have I missed anybody out?
HB: Well, there’s one missing. Yeah.
GM: The bomb aimer.
HB: He’s a bloke who used to stay in the middle of the aircraft and man a gun there.
GM: No. The mid-upper. Me.
HB: Exactly [laughs]
GM: Yes. And then there was me.
HB: You remembered everybody bar yourself.
GM: That was me.
HB: [unclear]
GB: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Then we started flying in Ansons, in err Whitleys, and on our second trip in the Whitley, I think it was our second trip we went, we bombed the, the hill in the middle of the Irish Sea. What’s that mountain called? Rockall.
HB: Rockall. Yeah.
GM: We bombed it with, with nine pound bombs, and on the way back an engine packed up so we landed in the Isle of Man.
HB: Oh right.
GM: At Jurby.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We landed in Jurby. So that was the first time that we didn’t get back to camp. This happened a lot of times, and we were known as, ‘Land away Digby and his crew.’ We finished our training at 14 OTU, and we were posted to Riccall for conversion to Halifaxes. And, so you went from two engines to four engines and you all flew together. And we weren’t at Riccall very long, and we passed out at Riccall, and we were sent to 51 Squadron, Snaith, and we started our bombing career on the 9th of June. And our first trip was Amiens. Is it there?
HB: Yes. Yes, it’s there.
GM: And our second trip was a disaster.
HB: Oh, no. Sorry. You’ve, on your logbook you’ve got Massy Palaiseau.
GM: Massy Palaiseau, oh that’s, sorry.
HB: That was your first one. Yeah.
GM: That’s right. That was Paris.
HB: And it was Amiens.
GM: Paris.
HB: Amiens. That was your second.
GB: Paris.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Amiens was the second.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And on my second trip, Amiens, we were flying over, towards the target and I said to the skipper, ‘There’s a plane being attacked below us,’ because I could see tracer, and that plane that was attacking the plane below us, as he broke away, he must have seen us and he managed to get one shot in to our nose. The bomb aimer was sitting in the nose, and it blew his behind off. And the plane was flying like this [pause] because it was gulping air in.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Due to its form.
HB: So, the nose.
GM: Yeah.
HB: The nose having disappeared.
GM: Yeah. Yeah.
HB: It was sucking air in.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We got back to England and that was the first time I’d ever heard of Darkie. The pilot used Darkie. ‘Hello Darkie. Hello Darkie.’ And all the amateur radio operators in the country was, were called Darkie, and they had to listen out every night, and if you got a bomber you were fifteen miles away from him.
HB: Right.
GM: Because he couldn’t hear more than fifteen miles. And he had all the aerodromes in his book. ‘Hello Darkie. Hello Darkie. Can you find us an aerodrome please?’ And an aerodrome lit up over there, and it was called Dunsfold, and we landed at Dunsfold. They didn’t bother about us. I had to run to the control tower to ask for a doctor and an ambulance and the bomb aimer was very badly injured and the navigator had got a bit of shrapnel. A bit of stuff, metal in his leg but he, no not the bomb aimer. The navigator had got a bit of stuff in his leg. They were seen to. So, we had to go back by train.
HB: Right.
GM: Which was quite an experience in those days.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We got to London and we got in the Tube with all our gear, and they had a collection for us on the train and they gave us about a hundred fags. They’d been all the way down the train collecting for a crew that had crashed and they gave us the hundred fags we got. Packets of fags.
HB: Blimey.
GM: And then we got back to Snaith.
HB: Yeah, that was in [pause] that was C6 E-Easy. Yeah. What happened to the, what happened to the aircraft?
GM: Oh, I don’t know what happened to the aircraft.
HB: So, you never, that never —
GM: No. No.
HB: You never saw that back again.
GM: No.
HB: No.
GM: He put the wheel in, he put the wheel in a trench so, but the plane was fine.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Except for this one hole.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You know.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And the bomb aimer went to McIndoe’s hospital.
HB: Right. Yeah.
GM: Had sixty skin graft operations and he lived. He came back to visit us. We went for a drink in the pub. Put him on a, put him on a bike. Took the pedals off, put him on a bike, his crutch went through the wheel and he fell off and broke his arm. His name was [Wamm].
HB: Yeah.
GM: And he was the bomb aimer. We had a new bomb aimer. Eventually we got a new bomb aimer called Smith. Ted Smith. Oh no, I can’t remember his first name. Smith he was, and he flew all the rest of the trips with us. I flew spare. That’s why I did more than the rest of the crew.
HB: Right. Yeah.
GM: I flew with a Flight Lieutenant Gilchrist, I think.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Like that. Yeah. I flew a couple of spare trips because we hadn’t got a crew and then when we got a crew we, because in those days you get a weeks’ leave every month you know because there was, two crews to every plane.
HB: Oh, right. Yeah.
GM: But only if you lost a crew. You didn’t get your leave. If you lost a crew, you didn’t get your leave.
HB: Yes. So that’s, that’s around June. You’ve got Gilchrist as your pilot.
GM: Yeah.
HB: That’s, that’s towards the end of June.
GM: Yeah.
HB: That one. But, blimey. Yeah. Right.
GM: What? What happened?
HB: It’s alright. You just have that and then at the end of June you fly a daylight operation to the Maquis at Mimoyecques.
GM: Mimoyecques. Mimoyecques.
HB: Yeah. And you’re hit by flak again.
GM: Yes. We got hit by flak but only hit. Nobody was hurt. Just holes. There was, always holes in our plane. And then we came to the fateful day of our last trip. No. Something nasty happened. We were due to fly to Kiel. We were due to fly to Kiel and there was something wrong with the plane and we turned back. The CO was very, very angry about us turning back and we went to bed and they woke us up at half past six in the morning. We’d only just, we didn’t get to bed ‘til about two. They woke us up at half past six and said, ‘You’re flying.’ And we were briefed to go and attack the Gneisenau ship in Brest Harbour. As we took off, we hit the bump on the end of the runway. The plane wouldn’t come off the runway, we went through the trees. An engine, engine went rogue. It wouldn’t stop. Got faster and faster. The plane was shaking to bits. We asked for an emergency landing. We dropped the bombs in a reservoir and we came down to land on the runway. Because we were, the plane slewed off the runway and we were heading for the petrol dump and so the skipper opened up another engine and turned the, slewed the plane around and we hit the bomb dump, the side of the bomb dump. Right there. The big, they’d got a big [pause] We hit the side of the bomb dump. The CO came out in his, in his [pause] ‘You’re all posted. Get off my ‘drome.’ That was his exact words, and there were three people injured. Only slightly. Only slightly. They all went to the, they were taken to the, but they all came back with no problem. The only time a clearance chit got signed in one hour. It used to take two days to get a clearance chit signed because you had to sign. It had to be signed.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You had to hand your bike in. You had to do this and do that and you had to find everything and our, our clearance was and we were at, by 2 o’clock in the afternoon we were at the bus stop waiting for a bus to take us somewhere.
HB: And the whole crew.
GM: The whole crew. Yes. Because the ones that were, they were only slightly injured. We were all in the rest position when we crashed. We were all in the rest position, you know. Ruined the aeroplane anyway.
HB: Do you know that in your logbook?
GM: Yeah.
HB: This is purely for the purposes of the tape.
GM: Yeah.
HB: For people listening to this. In your logbook on the 17th of August 1944.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You did an operation to Brest. DNCO.
GM: Not carried out.
HB: And it says, “One engine u/s [pranged].”
GM: That’s all.
HB: That’s all it says in your logbook.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And that is the story you just told me.
GM: Yeah. Anyway, he sent us back to Riccall again.
HB: Right.
GM: To the Conversion Unit, and the skipper said, the CO said, ‘Oh, it’s nice to have a crew that have got experience. Do a couple of trips for us.’ And we, we flew a couple of trips, I think it was, at Riccall. I don’t know. They were only training trips.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And the pilot, the CO said, ‘You’re fully trained. There’s nothing wrong with you. You can go back on ops. Where do you want to go to?’ ‘51 Squadron,’ we all said because we’d got friends. He picks the phone up [laughs] speaks to the wing commander. No. Group captain he was. Speaks to the group captain, ‘I’ve got a fully trained crew that want to come back to you.’ ‘What’s the pilot’s name?’ ‘Digby.’ ‘Don’t send him here. Send him somewhere else.’
HB: No.
GM: He said, ‘You can’t go there.’ So, he sent us to Breighton. 78 Squadron, Breighton.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And our first trip at Breighton, believe it or not was Kiel. It’s almost, it’s almost poetic.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And I can remember the skipper saying, ‘We’re going. We’re not turning back.’ And we went to Kiel, and we were the last wave and you could see the, you could see the fires for miles. You could see the fires from two hundred miles back, on the way back, because the whole place was, the whole of Kiel was ablaze. We got, we, the Master Bomber told us to bomb on the edges. ‘Bomb on the edges. Bomb on the edges. Don’t bomb in the middle. Bomb on the edges.’ And we went to Kiel. We did five trips at Snaith. I think it was five, and the CO called us in the office and sat us down and said, ‘You’re posted.’ And the skip, I can remember the skipper saying, ‘What have we done wrong?’ He said, ‘You’ve done nothing wrong but you’re the, you’re the, most experienced crew and we’ve been told to choose the most experienced crew to send them to a new squadron being formed called 171 Squadron in Norfolk.
HB: Can I just ask you —
GM: Special duties.
HB: Can I just ask you something Gordon?
GM: Yes.
HB: In your logbook.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I’m, I’m just curious really. You’ve done the Kiel operation on the 15th of September.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Which was a night op.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And then on the 17th of September you do a daytime op to Boulogne.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And you’ve got a little note in your book saying —
GM: We saw a dinghy.
HB: Gun positions which are obviously Boulogne.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And then you’ve got dinghy sighted and reported.
GM: That’s right. We found, we sighted a dinghy. We went around and around it. Got it and sent a message back.
HB: And did you know, did you ever find out what happened?
GM: No. No. We never found out.
HB: No.
GM: But we did report it. We found a dinghy.
HB: Right.
GM: You know.
HB: Yeah, you, yeah you were at, you were at Breighton ‘til the end of September. You’re right, you only flew —
GM: Yeah.
HB: Five ops.
GM: Can I tell, tell you a very special story now?
HB: Of course, you can. Yeah.
GM: This is absolutely, I used to live with my aunt. I did not live with my father. I used to live with my aunt and she had a brother. His name was Jack [Elson], and he flew in Lancasters as a gunner and I had a weeks’ leave while we were at Breighton, and he had a weeks’ leave, and he came to his aunt’s and I went to my aunt’s and we had a weeks’ leave together. On the first day we went to the pictures and the girl that took us to the seat, her name was Mona, he chatted her up and they were friends. And by the end of the week, they were in love. We both went back to camp on the Friday. Both. He left on that platform and I left on that platform. We were both flying on Tuesday and he was killed. He was killed on the Tuesday and he’s buried in Lyons, in France.
HB: Oh, sad.
GM: Yeah. But that’s just by the by.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
HB: But that’s there, you know.
GM: There but by the Grace of God go me, you know. Yeah. Anyway, then we were sent to special duties, 171 Squadron and all brand new aircraft. Never been flown other than their delivery with this very special wireless equipment in the, in the, in the middle. Two great big things, and we had a new wireless operator. A special wireless operator and his name was [pause]
HB: A Scottish name.
GM: A Scottish name. Yes. Yes. He lived in —
HB: MacDonald.
GM: MacDonald. That’s right.
HB: Can I just say for the purposes of this interview —
GM: Yeah.
HB: You have written some brilliant notes and I’ve abandoned doing notes. I’m following yours because they are far better than mine. Yes. Sergeant Macdonald who operated the —
GM: Well, I did that a long time ago.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Because I thought I might forget.
HB: Yeah. Well, you’ve got him down as he operated the secret wireless jamming equipment.
GM: That’s right. And the operations we did were the strangest operations you ever flew because you flew out in to the North Sea and you flew around an oblong course for two hours. And there would be two planes, two planes, two planes, two planes, two planes, two planes, and we always flew at eighteen thousand feet and the other plane flew at eighteen thousand five hundred feet so that you didn’t, and you were both in the same place going up and down while he operated the Mandrel. I know the name of the one equipment was called Mandrel, and he operated these jamming, and while these formed on the screen that the Germans could not see the planes lifting off from England. The first time they’d see them was when they went through the screen. So, all, all the people were told not to fly at eighteen thousand or eighteen thousand five hundred feet. And then when our stint was finished, we used to go and bomb a place. We had a, we had a small bombing. Some, a few bombs to take and we used to go and bomb. I think a lot of them were holiday places on the coast although we went to Monchengladbach once I think. And the, we did thirteen trips and our last trip, which was our worst trip was Leipzig. Why we were sent to Leipzig I do not know.
HB: It’s alright. I’m just having a quick look to see if I can find that [pause] Leipzig. Leipzig. Oh sorry. Was that your last trip with 171?
GM: That was my last trip altogether. As we approached the target at Leipzig, we were coned by about fifty searchlights and all hell broke loose. The skipper chose one searchlight and we went straight down it. Straight down the searchlight. When we were at about three thousand feet from the ground I started firing my guns at the searchlight, and believe it or not it went out. There was no side of the plane left. All the side, the whole side of, the whole side of the plane was missing. It was draughty and the skipper said to the navigator, ‘Give us a trip home, and we don’t want to go near any mountains.’ He said, ‘I don’t even know where we are.’ And we got back. Got back to camp and we landed and the CO came out and he looked at the plane. He said, ‘You’ve ruined another one.’ He said, ‘Digby, you’ve finished.’ He said, ‘You’re finished. Don’t do any more.’ And so that was —
HB: That was your stand down.
GM: That was our stand down and we finished.
HB: And that was, sorry that was the whole crew stood down then.
GM: Yes. No. Except for, except for the flight, the special wireless operator.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Because he had to carry on.
HB: MacDonald. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: He got another crew. He died. He died at Christmas.
HB: Oh.
GM: This Christmas just gone. Last Christmas. Yeah.
HB: And did you, did you keep in touch with him?
GM: No. No. But my flight engineer’s son did.
HB: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Kept in touch with him. I kept in touch with my skipper’s daughter, and I know his granddaughter and his grandson. They kept in touch with me.
HB: Did the whole crew survive the war?
GM: Oh yes. We all survived.
HB: Right.
GB: We all finished. I got a cracking job. I was posted to Number 1 Squadron. Spitfire squadron at Hutton Cranswick as a flying controller assistant.
HB: Well.
GM: I did that for about a year and then one day, I became a flight sergeant and one day they called me in to the office. They said, ‘You’re posted.’ And I said, ‘I’m posted?’ He said, ‘Yes. To Llanbedr.’ I said, ‘Where’s Llanbedr?’ He said, ‘In North Wales. They have, they want a controller.’ I said, ‘I can’t be a controller. I’m a near beginner.’ He said, ‘They’ve got nobody else to send.’ So, I went home for the weekend and got arrested when I got there because I should have been there two days earlier. And the CO, the CO he was only a, he was only a wing commander and you won’t believe this [pause] he’d, he’d been, he’d disgraced himself fighting or something and he’d been brought down from group captain to wing commander and he was in charge at Llanbedr. And it was being closed. And they used to fly Martinets.
HB: Oh yeah. Yeah.
GM: And they used to fly Martinets. They used to have a drogue a mile away. A mile away. And these drogues used to fly over to a place called Tonfanau in Wales where there was an Anti-Aircraft Gun School and the anti-aircraft used to fire at the drogues. I flew a couple of times. I had a couple of rides just for fun and that. Martinets they were.
HB: Oh no.
GM: Yeah. Anyway, there is one or two little, little stories in between that I’ve missed out. When I was stationed at Snaith one of the officers came from Birmingham and he said to me one day, ‘Gordon, do you want to go to Birmingham?’ ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘We can go for the weekend, you know.’ I said, ‘Can we?’ He said, ‘Yes. I’ll fly you there and I’ll fly myself there.’ So, he flew us to Castle Bromwich.
HB: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: He flew us in a, in a Tiger Moth. I was supposed to be the navigator [laughs]
HB: Yeah.
GM: We got lost the one day. In the end he said, ‘I’ll fly down and see if you can see the name of the station.’ [laughs] So I looked at it, and they’d started putting the station names back because they were all obliterated in the war but they started putting them back and I said, ‘Oh yes.’ I gave him the name of the station. He said, ‘Ok. We’re going this way,’ and we got, we got to Castle Bromwich.
HB: No. Yeah. Because, yeah Castle Bromwich there was a factory there wasn’t there?
GM: Yeah. There was a factory at Castle Bromwich.
HB: That made the, made aircraft, didn’t they? They constructed them.
GM: Yeah. Did parts of them.
HB: Yeah. Well —
GM: My mother, my mother made Spitfire parts at Fisher and Ludlow at Castle Bromwich.
HB: Right.
GM: And she was a lathe operator.
HB: Oh right.
GM: In the war.
HB: Yeah. That’s good. So, just, just going back because, because we’ve got you, you know getting in trouble.
GM: Yeah.
HB: When, you said to me before we started the interview about you somewhere down the line you went from flight sergeant to sergeant.
GM: No. I went from sergeant to flight sergeant, and then I became a warrant officer.
HB: Oh.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I wondered if you’d got busted down you see.
GM: No. No. No.
HB: Ah, no. I misunderstood what you said.
GM: No. No. I made a mistake there.
HB: No. I was going to say. No. That’s fine. That’s fine.
GM: Yes.
HB: Yeah.
GM: No. I got to warrant officer.
HB: Oh great. Yeah.
GM: I was the actual controller at Llanbedr and —
HB: When would that have been Gordon? That was —
GM: After I’d left Hutton Cranswick but of course I’d got, I’d got no dates for those.
HB: Yeah. So that, so that, we’re now in to late ’45.
GM: ’45.
HB: Yeah. Late ’45.
GM: About ’46. Probably ’46.
HB: Yeah. So, so how long, so you, you said to me earlier that you stayed in ‘til ’47.
GM: That’s right.
HB: So, what, so did you just carry on as a controller?
GM: Yeah. At Llanbedr.
HB: All the way through.
GM: All the way through. Yes.
HB: Til ’47.
GM: Yeah. And it was being closed. I can remember the, I walked in to the office and the CO said to me, threw me a folder, ‘Mr Mercier, here’s your first job.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘I want an inventory of the WAAFs quarters. Everything in the WAAFs quarters. I want to know exactly what’s there in the WAAFs quarters because it’s all being shipped away and we want to know what we’re going to ship. So, here’s all the, you go around. Five hairdryers. There was a half a one. Eighteen barrels. None.
HB: Barrels?
GM: Barrels. Yes. Eighteen barrels. None. I don’t know what the barrels were for or where they came about but there were all these sort of things on the list. Sort of bedding for, I think the bedding was about thirty three sets of bedding and thirty three beds. Those were all there, you know. Pillow cases. None [laughs] Because the WAAFs had gone and they left shortly after. They all left after I got there, and I gave him the list back. He said, ‘We can put it in a van.’ He could practically, he said, ‘I thought we’d have to hire a pantechnicon to take it all away.’
HB: Good grief.
GM: Anyway —
HB: Good grief.
GM: He was, he was a smashing bloke. He used to say, ‘Don’t forget to come on my parade on Sunday unless you’ve got something better to do.’
HB: It sounds as if it was starting to get a little bit relaxed in 1947.
GM: Oh, it was more than relaxed.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And he was, he was, he’d been brought down in rank.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Because he’d disgraced himself. When I came back to work I worked at Triplex. When I came back to work.
HB: Yeah.
GM: I worked at Triplex making aircraft windows and the first, my first boss, no, my second boss was Wing Commander Duncan Smith. He was a Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain.
HB: Was he?
GM: And his son is the MP. His son’s the MP. Duncan Smith. And when he was sixteen, he had a mini on our car park when he was sixteen, and he used to drive it around like a mad thing. Around and around the car park at night.
HB: Yeah.
GM: That was Duncan Smith.
HB: Wow.
GM: And his dad was a wing commander. Duncan Smith.
HB: Can I, can I just you know if you’re happy to carry on for a while.
GM: No, it’s alright.
HB: Can I just take you back to, you did your training.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And your OTU, your Operational Training Unit.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And you get posted to your first squadron. 51 Squadron.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And it’s a question I always like to ask. What was the social life like?
GM: Oh, it was great. Marvellous. We used to have a dance every week and the girls used to come from factories all around and they’d bus the girls in. The girls used to come from factories all round. There would be about six or seven buses full of girls coming from factories and you used to have a great big dance in the big hangar. We used to have great, absolutely great time, and you made friends with the ground crew and all that sort of thing.
HB: Yeah.
GM: It was, it was a grand time. I’ve got to admit that on my second trip I was terrified. I really was. I was really, really terrified. But I must say that I was never frightened again. Never. It didn’t frighten me at all, and I don’t know why that was but it didn’t because I gave, got to the point where if it happens it happens.
HB: Yeah. I can understand that. So is, you’re lucky enough to do all of your ops —
GM: Yes.
HB: As one crew apart from losing Sergeant [Wamm].
GM: That’s right.
HB: You’re lucky enough to do all your ops with the same guys all the way through.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And you come, you come to the stage when you’re flying your last few operations and you’re going to end up at Llanbedr. How, how did, how did you cope? Well, not cope that’s not the right word. How did you see the crew reacting as you come off to finish?
GM: You didn’t. You didn’t because we finished. We finished on that day. The next day we were posted to Kirby and at Kirby we were reassigned our posts. The next day we were reassigned our posts and we were given a weeks’ leave. We were given a weeks’ leave and a chit, and then you’d be told where you were going. They’d send you a message. Send you a letter.
HB: So, literally within three days the guys —
GM: Within three days we were split up.
HB: The guys you had spent —
GM: All that time with.
HB: Two years with.
GM: Were gone. All different places.
HB: All gone to different places.
GM: Yes.
HB: Right.
GM: I don’t know where any of them went.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Not one.
HB: That’s, yeah. Did you, did you meet your wife while you were still in the services?
GM: No.
HB: Or was that when you came out to work?
GM: We met after that.
HB: Right. So, what, so you’ve, you’ve been told you’re finished. You’ve gone to Llanbedr.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You’ve tried to resolve where all the stuff from the WAAFs quarters have gone, and the place is closing and you’re going to be demobbed. What, was what was your feeling at that time?
GM: Well, you didn’t. You were given a number right at the beginning, and all the people that were in the Air Force before the war were number one. They were released. All the people. The ones that had been in the Air Force longer were number one. The ones that were, and number two and number three and I was about number 178. And your number, your number came up. You heard what number it was each, sometimes it says number 111. Oh. I’ve only got another sixty eight.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Until your number came up and the CO had got a big parade, and he called me into the office and he gave me this slip of paper. He said, ‘Are you coming to my parade on Sunday?’ I said, ‘Yes. Yes, of course I am.’ He said, ‘No, you’re not. Read your piece of paper. You’ve been posted to demob.’
HB: Wow, where did you actually demob? Do you remember?
GM: I think it was West Kirby.
HB: Right. And what, what was that process like?
GM: Very strange. You handed your uniform in. I wish I’d, you could have kept it and I wish I’d have kept it but it was a lot of stuff and I didn’t want to carry it but I’ve regretted it ever since that I didn’t bring some of it back with me. And you were given a suit. You were given shirts, underpants and a suit. Shoes. Socks. Everything. And it was all in a, it was all put in the box, and you were given a ticket home. And you went through the gate with your box in your arm and there was about fifty spivs outside the, outside the airfield. ‘Buy your box.’ ‘Buy your box.’ ‘I’ll buy your box for you.’ ‘I’ll buy your box off you.’ ‘I’ll buy your box off you.’ And they were sending, I think they were getting five pound for a box. And some of them, you know, ‘Here you are. Here you are. I don’t want it. I don’t want it.’ I said, ‘No. I’ve got nothing else.’ But a lot of them sold them to these spivs.
HB: Oh right.
GM: I think it was a fiver they were getting for them. And they were white fivers in those days.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And on D-Day we were all given a white fiver, a fiver and sent home. Only kept a, kept a skeleton staff on the aerodromes on D-Day. On VE Day.
HB: VE day. Yeah. Right.
GM: VE Day.
HB: Yeah.
GM: I got home just in time for the evening festivities.
HB: And what was that like?
GM: Well, the whole, the whole country was mad.
HB: Where were you living then? Had you gone back to your —
GM: In Harborne. I was living in Harborne and I was on my way to my auntie’s but I got dragged into a party on the way.
HB: Dragged in.
GM: Yes. I, I was never a drinker.
HB: No.
GM: But I used to drink but I was, I couldn’t hold my liquor very well but there was a lot of booze that night. And they kept stuff. They’d taken food out that they’d been saving for years. You know, tins of these, tins of that. I went into this one house in Harborne. I knew the people and they said, ‘Come in, Gordon. Come in Gordon. Lovely to see you.’ Put my box down. And then when I went I took my box with me to my auntie’s.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Just up the road.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And how, how long did it take you to sort of come to, because it’s obviously we all know that was, that two years or so was very very intense.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You know, and you know like you say you, you just reached the stage where you thought, well if it happens it happens.
GM: Yeah.
HB: But how sort of long or what sort of, what sort of period of time do you think it took —
GM: Well —
HB: To get yourself back to Civvy Street.
GM: Well, you went back to Civvy Street straight away because your firm was obliged by law to take you back.
HB: Right.
GM: They made a law that every firm had to take back for six months. They had to guarantee you six months work or six months wages and I went back to Belliss and Morcom’s. But I didn’t like it in the factory and I, I left to be, I became a milkman. I became a milkman with a horse and cart delivering milk.
HB: Did you enjoy that?
GM: Well, I’ve got a story. I don’t know whether you, are you still taping this?
HB: Absolutely. Yes. This is, it’s important we know.
GM: Well —
HB: How your feet came back down to earth basically.
GM: I got, I got a job at [pause] that’s Alexa telling me to take my tablets.
HB: Do you want to have a break to take your tablets?
GM: No.
HB: No. Crack on then. Crack on.
GM: Yes. I I got a job as a milkman and had a horse called Ginger, and Ginger didn’t like nuns, GPO huts in the road, shadows. He didn’t like them. He used to shy at shadows. I’d been delivering. I’d been working for them about three months and we’d, he knew the round better than me. He used to stop at everywhere and we used to do, we used to do Knowle, and then Dorridge and then back to Knowle which is near Solihull. And we used to have to go, after we’d finished Knowle we’d turn around the corner from the pub and we’d go up a hill. Up a great big hill to the other half of the route and this one day [laughs], one day we turned the corner there was an elephant [pause] The horse took one look at this elephant and he went berserk. I had a girl with me because she used to deliver. There was two of us delivering milk. He, he galloped and I got the reins and I got my feet and I said to her, ‘Jump off. Save yourself. Save yourself.’ And the crates of milk were falling off the back all the way down, up this hill and of course by the time he got to the top he was absolutely shattered and I managed to stop him and I tied him to a tree and I lit a fag. I can remember lighting a fag. And the woman came out. ‘Shall I ring the Dairy for you.’ ‘Yes, please.’ I’m smoking this fag and the Dairy bloke, and he looked at all the milk in the road and he kicked the horse.
HB: Oh no.
GM: So, so sorry. He really, he kicked the horse and he shouldn’t. He was the, he was the, the boss of the Dairy and the farm and all the horses and everything. It was most unkind.
HB: You’ve got a visitor.
GM: Oh, it’s my paper coming.
Other: Paper boy.
GM: Come in John. I’ve got the interviewer here.
Other: Oh, sorry.
HB: Do you want me to, do you want me to, no it’s alright. I’ll just pause the interview. Bear with me.
[recording paused]
HB: Resuming the interview that was paused so that Gordon could take his tablets and speak to his, his visitor. Right. So, we’ve got the elephant frightening a horse. Frightened horse. Blimey. So, you went to work as a milkman, and then obviously you started to get right back into civilian life.
GM: Yeah. Yeah.
HB: And what not.
GM: Then I went to work. Decided I wanted to go to work, and I went to, I applied for, my uncle worked at Triplex and he said, ‘There’s some jobs going at Triplex. Do you fancy doing that?’ And so, he got me an interview.
HB: Right.
GM: And they took me on at Triplex.
HB: You know, when we go right back to the beginning.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I’m just a little bit intrigued. You were born in Jersey.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And obviously your mum and dad were in Jersey. Did they [pause] Oh right. Obviously.
GM: There’s a very strange thing I’ve got to tell you. My father was a Francophile. He loved France. And when he was a lad in Jersey, when they were eighteen, they had to join the Jersey militia. It was an army. Because of the unruly going on with the eighteen year olds. But he and his friends decided to join the French Foreign Legion. He was stationed in Aleppo in the French Foreign Legion, and he went, and when war was declared on the Monday morning, he had a letter from the French Foreign Legion calling him back to France and he went.
HB: Right. So, when did you leave Jersey to come to England?
GM: I was about three, I think. They brought me back here.
HB: So that would be like the ‘30s.
GM: Yes. It was the ‘30s.
HB: Mid ‘30s.
GM: Early ‘30s. Yeah.
HB: Right. So, so your mum and dad were separated then.
GM: No. No. No.
HB: Sorry.
GM: Then he went. When he went on the 3rd of January err the 3rd of September he went back into the French Army.
HB: Right.
GM: Yeah.
HB: But by that time, you were obviously living over here.
GM: Yes.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We didn’t hear from him at all for, ‘til 1942. And in 1942 a man came to the door. He said, ‘I’m from Special Branch. You’ve got a husband named Jack Mercier.’ She said, ‘Yes. He’s dead.’ He said, ‘No. He’s not dead. He’s alive and he wants to come back to England.’ She said, ‘Well, I hadn’t heard anything so I assumed he was dead.’ In 1942, by then you see. And he said, ‘No. He’s alive and he wants to come back to England.’ We had a lot of interviews. Wanted to know all about him and everything, and then we had to give him forty five pounds which was a lot of money in those days for his fare back from Spain. And he’d got to get to Spain on his own so he walked about six hundred miles from France down to Spain and then he got a ship from Spain to England. And they came from Special Branch again and said, ‘We want seven pounds please.’ ‘What do you want seven pounds for?’ ‘For his fare.’ ‘His fare from where?’ She said, ‘Oh, he’s been in Scotland six weeks. He’s been interrogated as a spy.’
HB: Right.
GB: But they decided that he’s not a spy and he can come home.’ So, we had to give the seven pounds for his fare to bring him home. I never got on with my father. The moment he came home I left. My auntie took me straight away and she said, ‘Come and live with us.’ Never got on with him.
HB: That’s a shame. Yeah.
GM: He was quite brutal.
HB: So, he’d been, so he’d obviously been a prisoner of war.
GM: No, he got, he was in unoccupied France.
HB: Oh, he was in Vichy. Right.
GM: He was in Vichy France.
HB: Yeah. Right.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Oh yeah. Of course. ’42.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. That explains it.
GM: Yeah. I think he was somewhere, somewhere in the middle of France somewhere.
HB: What, just going back to your time, you know.
GM: Yeah.
HB: If you could just put your mind back to when you did your training and what not.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And you became part of Bomber Command. What do you think? It’s quite, it’s almost a bit too specific but what do you think was the best part? If there was a best part of your time.
GM: Well, you felt as though you were hitting Germany. And because I came from Jersey which was occupied by the Germans and badly treated by the Germans and, and I wanted to, I wanted to fight, and we really did. I mean we, Bomber Command, Hitler should have packed it in. I mean we just kept on destroying. I mean all these cities were destroyed totally. In this country we lost six hundred and fifty thousand houses to the bombing. In this country. They must have lost six million.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. And how, when you look back now do you, do you have any strong feelings about when you look back? Or —
GM: No. No. It had got to be done. It had got to be stopped.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you, you really felt as though you were really taking the war to them because we were, I mean London was bombed sixty seven nights in a row. So, you, you really felt as though you were doing your bit.
HB: Yeah. It’s, it’s something that a lot of people are interested in because, you know in some cases a lot of people think it’s so long ago.
GM: Yeah.
HB: But all of the people who were involved they, they do have very different views when they look back as, as to what they contributed. How they, how they, how they —
GM: Well, of course.
HB: Were involved.
GM: Dunkirk. Dunkirk was the pivotal point. We were beaten. There’s no doubt about it. If he’d, if he’d have attacked then we couldn’t have defended ourselves at all. But as I say when I joined the Home Guard I had a, we had a stick. A broomstick and a knife on the end. That was our first weapon. We used to practice arms drill with the stick until we got, finally we got one rifle, and we all were allowed to touch it [laughs] And then we got we all had a rifle and every night we went out we took our rifle out with us every night.
HB: And then you then went back to work the following day.
GM: Went to work the following day. Yes.
HB: Yeah.
GM: I was on, I was on duty, Home Guard duty when Coventry was bombed and we were taken by, by a lorry that would be shovels to, to Coventry and our job was to clear the roads. Make the roads passable. And we spent three days in Coventry where we had, we had tents. We were just tidying up. That was the first time I’d ever seen a dead body. The very first time. Probably the only time I’d ever seen a dead body.
HB: Yeah. Yeah that’s, yeah —
GM: That was Coventry.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And we all our job was to make the roads passable for transport. Shifting great big pieces of, you know six of us moving great big pieces of concrete out of the way.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
HB: What [pause] what we’ve talked about that side of it. What, what do you think was your, your sort of happiest memories of, of that time? If, you know, I mean because there must have been some fun.
GM: Yes.
HB: You must have had fun.
GM: I was always happy in the Air Force. I loved it. Couldn’t cope with it sometimes. They made me take a parade once which was [laughs] which was horrible because my voice isn’t that loud. I could shout a bit but because you’re a sergeant you had to take a parade, and I got them marching up against the wall of the hangar and that. Hit the wall of the hangar in front of them. I couldn’t say turn around or anything. That, that was one moment that I remember where I regretted being a sergeant. I also made the cook do another dinner because the dinner they’d put out that day was vile and I was on what do you call it? Mess duty.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And my job to go around the mess for any remarks about the food and anything. The whole place was, ‘This food’s rubbish.’ ‘It’s rubbish.’ ‘It’s rubbish.’ I made the chef prepare something else.
HB: I bet you checked your food after that for a while, didn’t you?
GM: I had to be careful where I went, I must admit. I didn’t go anywhere near the cookhouse I’ll tell you. But that was when I was flying control at Llanbedr.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: But with 21 Squadron they flew Spitfire 21s at Fifty, at One Squadron. There was one squadron and there was another squadron called the Baroda Squadron. All Spitfire 21s, contra rotating props and they used to take off like that. Go straight up. They were a fantastic plane.
HB: Did you ever get to go in one?
GM: Four hundred and fifty mile an hour.
HB: Did you ever get to sit in one?
GM: No. No. No. I don’t think. Never sat in one. But I was there a sizeable length of time.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. It was —
GM: I was there a long time.
HB: Well, well ’45 through to ’47.
GM: I’d never done any office work and I walked in to the office and they said, ‘Your first job is to do the Wilmotts.’ I said, ‘What on earth is a Wilmott?’ ‘A Wilmott is the station, the readiness of all the aircraft stations in the country,’ he said,’ And if there’s anything wrong with the aircraft, with the aerodrome, they issue a Wilmott and that Wilmott has to be plotted so that every station knows if there is anything wrong with any other station.’ So, I’d got this pile of, little pile of Wilmotts they’re called and I’d had to look and find the aircraft and put number one runway is out of action because they’re resurfacing the [unclear]. Put it back and then take the next one. Leuchars. Leuchars. Flying control is not operating today so no planes in or out of Leuchars, and write it down so that if anybody was sent to that they’d put out a Wilmott to see —
HB: Right.
GM: What the status of the station was.
HB: Status was.
GM: And I remember it took me all day. The whole day, I think. Morning, sort of morning, dinnertime, afternoon and evening you know, I was still doing these Wilmotts. Putting it in.
HB: I’ve never heard of a Wilmott.
GM: No. Wilmott it was called and, and then a job I did like doing was on the waggon at the end of the runway.
HB: Oh yes. Yes. I’m with you. Yeah.
GM: Yeah. And you used to have two aldis lamps, and two verey pistols. A green and a red. A green and a red. And you had to, and I can remember watching the planes landing and watching them and then all of a sudden, this Spitfire came and he’d got his wheels up. He hadn’t got his wheels down. Prang, I fired off, moved and it went off.
HB: Blimey.
GM: And he was only a few feet from the ground by the time I’d fired it. I thought to myself I’d nearly blotted my copybook there.
HB: Yeah.
GM: He hadn’t put his wheels down.
HB: That, that would have been expensive.
GM: Yeah. Another thing that happened which was most amazing was I was on the waggon this one day and it had been raining very heavy and the sun came out and a flock of swans, about six swans flew over and they thought it was water and they all flew down to land on the runway and of course they crashed. Every one of these swans. Because they thought it was water and I’m watching these swans and all of a sudden, they crashed. All these swans rolling around. They got up and they waddled around and then they started running and took off again.
HB: Blimey.
GM: A load of swans.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah. About five or six swans crashed on the runway.
HB: You know if, if you go back to 171 Squadron.
GM: Yes.
HB: And you were, you were flying these special operations.
GM: Yes.
HB: With this special jamming thing did they, did they use the aluminium strips?
GM: Yes.
HB: At the time.
GM: Yes.
HB: Was your aircraft doing that as well?
GM: We, we had special ones. When we’d finished our flight we didn’t put any of the aluminium strips out until we’d finished our flights, and then we’d go, some of the targets. I can’t remember the targets. We did go to Monchengladbach once I think while we were at [pause] I don’t know, give me a target from 50, 171 squadron. Give me.
HB: Right. That would be [pause] Liege.
GM: Liege. Yes. So, so, we were not far from France that day. Going round and round. Then as soon as your stint had finished we bombed Liege.
HB: Right.
GM: And as we went out we had very special strips of foil. Ours were fifteen feet long. The ones that the bomber, the main force took were, were only strips like that.
HB: What was that?
GM: Ours were fifteen feet long.
HB: What’s that? About three feet long.
GM: Something like that.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And they stayed in the air longer.
HB: Right.
GM: They didn’t fall so flat. They stayed in the air longer so, so our, our two planes would look like thirty planes heading for Liege.
HB: Right. Right. Yeah, that, that sort of makes sense now to me. Yeah. It’s alright. I was just looking back because you were on 51 Squadron when it was D-Day weren’t you?
GM: Yeah. We just arrived at 51 Squadron just before D-Day.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. [coughs] excuse me. Oh yeah, because that’s when, that’s when Sergeant [Wamm] got injured, weren’t it?
GM: On our second trip he got wounded.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Gordon, I can only thank you really. It’s, it’s, you know, I’m not just saying this it really is interesting. It’s really interesting you know and to know that it wasn’t all deadly serious all the time.
GM: No. Oh no.
HB: That’s —
GB: No. I can, I’ll tell you something. You’re not recording this now?
HB: Yeah. Yeah, we are recording you. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Oh right. Well, when I was stationed at Stormy Down as a cadet with a white flag in my hat, we had a visit from Anna Neagle, a film star.
HB: Oh right. Yeah.
GM: And she did a show for us. It was a show and she came in to the airmen’s mess and she said, ‘I will dance around with the youngest airman in the room.’ And it was me.
HB: Oh lovely.
GM: So, I [laughs] danced with Anna Neagle. I don’t know whether, she was in, who wants to sing in Barclay Square film.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Yeah. And that —
HB: Oh yeah. She was a big star.
GM: Yeah.
HB: She was a big star.
GM: Anna Neagle. Yeah. So, I danced with Anna Neagle.
HB: Ooh, now, there’s a memory for you.
GM: Yes. Yes, it is.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Funny things happen.
HB: Yeah. Oh, that’s great. Right. So obviously you got your job at Triplex.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And life moved on and you got married.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And you got your family.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And eventually you ended up here in Alvechurch.
GM: Yes. It was all fields. This was all fields.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And there was a hut at the end of the road and we were given a number. We got there at 7 o’clock and were given a number. The hut opened at ten, and I think we got in for an interview at about 12 o’clock and as we walked through the door he said, ‘There’s only one property left. It’s a bungalow, a two bedroom bungalow at the beginning of the site. Do you want it?’ And my wife said, ‘Yes, please.’
HB: Wow.
GM: And that was number 2, Rise Way.
HB: Brilliant. Right. Well, I think we’ve sort of come to a bit of a conclusion for the interview Gordon.
GM: Yes. Thank you.
HB: And I really do appreciate, and thank you very much on behalf of the IBCC.
GM: I hope it —
HB: But more on behalf of myself.
GM: [Unclear}
HB: Oh, yes. I think it’s great for you to do this. I’m going to end the interview bit now.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Because obviously we need to have a break and get something to eat, but as I say I do thank you for that.
GM: Do you want to come down the pub for a pint?
HB: The time is now coming up to half past twelve.
[recording paused]
HB: This is recommencing the interview at twenty to two in the afternoon, having had our lunch, a very nice lunch and still interviewing Gordon Mercier. In a chat over lunch, we’ve had two or three things, little things have cropped up, but I think Gordon it would be nice to tell us about it, Gordon.
GM: Yes.
HB: You were telling me about a training flight where you shouldn’t have been over the sea but —
GM: That’s right. We, we were doing, we were going a compass swing and —
HB: Who’s, oh that’s right because you had somebody in the aircraft with you, didn’t you?
GM: We had a WAAF. We didn’t have a WAAF this time. We had one of the air, one of the ground crew.
HB: Right.
GM: But we were out for a compass swing and an engine, engine test but my skipper decided to do some low flying and we went over a field full of German prisoners of war putting hay, taking hay, and they made a lot of rude signs at us and so the skipper turned the plane around. We flew towards the prisoners of war again and as we got there we went straight up in the air and blew them all over. But by then we were facing out to sea and there was a ship, a ship down and we hit a flock of birds and one engine went out. Immediately went back to base and asked permission to land, emergency landing, three engines. We landed and we were called in to the office to explain ourselves and the skipper said, well, we were doing this, ‘We went out for an engine test and a compass swing and we hit a flock of, a flock of starlings,’ he said, and just a flock of starlings. And the CO said, ‘Why is my engineering officer holding two, two seagulls?’ And another story, we were going to bomb Dunkirk Castle, and there were about two hundred planes and we took off as normal but the wheels wouldn’t come up and the skipper asked the flight engineer if we’d have enough petrol to go and get back. He said, well we could get back but we couldn’t get back to camp. We’d have to land somewhere in the south of England. So, we, we went on but we were very slow so that by the time we got to the target all the other planes had finished bombing and we crossed the target on our own and the German, Germans occupying the Castle were firing rifles and pistols at us. But our bombs went straight through the middle of the courtyard and broke down one of the walls. And then we got back and we had to land at Manston because we hadn’t got, and Manston was the most amazing sight. It was the first time I saw a jet plane take off. They’d got them at Manston. I’d never seen, didn’t know we’d got any jet planes. That was at Manston.
HB: Were you on the ground or in the air at this time?
GM: We were on the ground.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And we, we heard this noise and we saw this Gloster Meteor take off. We didn’t know what it was. It was a jet plane.
HB: That’s just [pause] I don’t know.
GM: They used to use them for catching the flying bombs.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Because they were faster.
HB: Yeah. And was it, was it, was it Manston you were telling me about where you had FIDO?
GM: No.
HB: Or was that —
GM: That was at Carnaby.
HB: Right.
GM: There was a very severe fog one night when we were coming back, and all the, all the ‘dromes were fogged out and so we had to land with FIDO at Carnaby. Carnaby aerodrome. And I believe they landed ninety six planes at that aerodrome using FIDO.
HB: And what was it like coming in to land then with FIDO?
GM: It was like going into hell because all you could see was flames.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Flames. Just, it was just flames. You couldn’t see the ground until you were about twenty feet from the ground.
HB: Well, yeah.
GM: But you could land the plane.
HB: Just, just mentioning jet aircraft towards the end of your operations in ’45.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Did you ever come across German jet fighters?
GM: No.
HB: Didn’t. You never saw them.
GM: Never saw them. No. Never saw any.
HB: Because you did quite a few daylight operations, didn’t you?
GM: Yeah.
HB: Before, you know by then. No. I was just curious because obviously at that time they were flying the Messerschmitt jets, weren’t they?
GM: I will mention one other target we attacked. We attacked an airfield called [unclear]. But on that day, it was a Sunday morning and on that day, there were four thousand five hundred allied planes over Germany. All bombing and fighters. Fighters and bombers. There were four thousand five hundred planes in the air over Germany.
HB: That’s the allies. Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We saw two lots of Boeings in, in convoy, you know.
HB: Wow.
GM: And we, we bombed [unclear] airport and our bombs went straight down the runway. You couldn’t miss.
HB: Yeah.
GB: It was one of those.
HB: Yeah. That’s, yeah that’s interesting. When we were chatting over lunch you were saying about the jobs the WAAFs used to do.
GM: Oh yes. They used to do. We used to have a WAAF come with us sometimes when we did a compass swing.
HB: Could you, can you explain what a compass swing is please Gordon?
GM: Well, the compass had to be checked that it was doing its job properly, and there were compass operators and they were nearly all WAAFs and they used to come with us when you’d fly straight line, straight line, straight line, straight line and she would make sure that the compass was working properly.
HB: Right. Right.
GM: It was called a compass swing.
HB: Yeah. So, you obviously that was something you really did appreciate once you were in the air.
GM: Oh yes. Got the compass for just in front of the pilot, wasn’t it?
HB: Yeah.
GM: She was fiddling with the —
HB: Yeah.
GM: Set, set, calibrate it I think it was called. They used to calibrate the compass.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And the WAAFs did that job. One of the jobs that they did.
HB: Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s lovely. That’s lovely. Well, Gordon thanks. Thanks for that extra bit. I’m pleased we had lunch and we had a chat.
GM: Yes. Thank you.
HB: That was really nice and I’ll, I’ll finish the interview now because I just need to work through some of the paperwork.
GM: Yeah.
HB: So, the time is coming up to ten to two. So, we’ll terminate the interview now.
[recording paused]
HB: This is a further interview with Gordon Mercier. It’s Tuesday the 23rd of November.
GM: Yes.
HB: And we’re at Gordon’s house near Birmingham and we just wanted to go back over a few things, Gordon. We’ve just been chatting because obviously as an air gunner you were in that small group of people who, an awful lot of air gunners were lost and you survived. So, we thought we’d like to know what the life of an air gunner was like from, you did your training and that was fairly arduous but, but you know we just wondered what it was like day by day to be an air gunner on a, on a Halifax.
GM: I found it very satisfying. I, I had the best view of anybody in the aircraft. I was sitting on the top. I never flew, I only flew once as rear gunner and I hated it and all the other times I flew mid-upper gunner. The only trouble with being a mid-upper gunner was when you were facing forward the wind came through the holes where the guns are and you absolutely froze. So, if you turned forward it was uncomfortable. Other than that, it was a very comfortable seat and it was easy to get in. Up a little ladder and hung your parachute on the hook just by the seat where you get in and it was very comfortable and the view was fantastic because in daylight you could see for miles and miles and miles.
HB: Did you, did you have any extra duties when you were in there? To, to tell the pilot about things.
GM: No. But I, I told, you had to keep your eyes open. Especially for other aircraft in the, in the stream. That was the most important job actually because all of a sudden you’d realise there was a bomber sitting just on top of you and you’d got to get out of that without hitting him. And we had that several times, and that was the important job that you did that wasn’t written in to the contract [laughs]
HB: Yeah.
GM: And also, when we went, we went to Villers Bocage we’d been told to bomb at ten thousand feet and if you couldn’t see the target you were to come down to five thousand feet. Some went down. We went down. And some didn’t go down. So, the bombs were coming down from above us which was a very, very tricky moment and I can remember one bomb being very close to us as it went past. A stream of bombs. And that was when we bombed the panzer division in Villers Bocage and —
HB: It’s nice you used to word tricky.
GM: Pardon?
HB: It’s nice you used the word tricky.
GM: Oh yes.
HB: For that situation.
GM: Yes. Yes.
HB: I can think of other words.
GM: Yeah. I must, I’ve got to admit very humbly that I was terrified on our second trip. I was really, really terrified. The bang when they hit the nose of the plane, and the getting the bomb aimer out. I heard all about it and I was terrified but I’ve got to admit that I was never frightened again ever and we had some very tricky situations.
HB: Yeah.
GM: But it was very satisfying being a gunner. You felt as though you were doing a good job.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You just had to keep awake and keep warm.
HB: How did you keep warm, Gordon?
GM: The Halifax had a good heating system in the fuselage. It was, it was quite good and we had electric boots which you plugged in. You plugged into the aircraft and it warmed your feet. And you had fleecy boots of course and you were as warm as toast except when you went forward. And I can remember my eyebrows froze. Eyelids froze because of the cold when it was minus fifty, and that was the coldest day I flew in and the engines, the oil went into lumps and you could hear the engine rumbling.
HB: Oh.
GM: With these lumps of oil.
HB: Blimey.
GM: It was, it was minus fifty degrees it was.
HB: So, what height would you be when that was happening?
GM: Twenty two thousand feet.
HB: Yeah.
GM: At twenty two thousand feet we could get to twenty two easily but the Lancaster could get further.
HB: Yeah.
GM: It was lighter than us but it could carry more. We, we carried a lot of bombs. I think twelve five hundreds’ we could get in. Or two four thousand and some smaller bombs and mines. They were, they were big. The mines were big.
HB: Yeah.
GM: I hadn’t, I had to, on two occasions I had to get out of my turret and close the door which had come open.
HB: The side door.
GM: The door you went in to the aircraft. And it was up in the air and me being small I could hardly reach and the skipper said, ‘Don’t forget to put your parachute on in case you fall out.’ [laughs] The wind coming through from that door. And I closed the door for him. And twice that happened.
HB: How had it come open?
GM: Well, just vibration, I think.
HB: Oh yeah. Yeah. I suppose.
GM: Just vibration. Yeah.
HB: So, what, what sort of clothing did you used to have to put on, Gordon?
GM: Well, we had fleecy boots, four pairs of gloves, a gauntlet, a mitten, a woollen mitten. No. A gauntlet, a glove, a woolly mitten and next to your skin surgical, like a surgical glove. Silk. Silk glove. So that if you had to do anything with the guns you took the three pair off and just left the silk glove.
HB: Right.
GM: Because if you touched the guns your fingers stuck to the guns.
HB: Right.
GM: Because it was so cold it would fetch your fingers, the skin off your fingers.
HB: So when, so after you’d, after you’d taken off for an operation obviously everybody talks about as you’re flying towards.
GM: Where ever.
HB: Perhaps the Dutch coast.
GM: Yes.
HB: Or whatever, you used to test fire your guns.
GM: Yes. We used to test.
HB: How did everyone look on that? How did they do it safely when you were taking off in a bunch.
GM: Well, we used to fire down. Fire down at the sea. And the rear gunner used to fire down at the sea. We [laughs] went on a, we went on a trip when we were converting into Halifaxes, and we had to go and bomb Rockall. That little mountain in the middle and we had to go and bomb Rockall and on the way we’d to test our guns. That was in the exercise. The skipper said, ‘Are we ok navigator to test the guns?’ And the navigator said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘What do you mean, Titch?’ I said, ‘I can see land in front of me. Down there. I can see land.’ He said, ‘No. The navigator said we’re over the sea.’ I said, ‘We’re not over the sea. It’s land.’ And he’d missed a leg out on his plan [laughs] He’d missed a leg out on his plan, so his plan showed us over the sea and we were still over the land.
HB: Oh dear.
GM: And Liverpool. Nearly fired my guns at Liverpool.
HB: Blimey.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I suppose he got in trouble for that did he?
GM: Who?
HB: No?
GB: No. No. No. No. The only time we got in trouble was when we went to North Creake. Our first trip at North Creake. Familiarisation they called it. New planes, and we flew, flew anywhere. We just flew round swinging the compass and one thing and another. We went out to sea to fire my guns and there was a trawler and there was a crowd of birds around it and I was firing my guns and we hit this crowd of birds. One engine packed up so we asked permission to land immediately and we landed and we went in front of the CO. ‘What happened? How did you come to hit a flight of birds?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We were flying over the coast and we just hit this flight of birds.’ He said, ‘Oh yes. Really birds.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ The skipper said, ‘Yes. Just birds. Just a flight of ordinary birds’ He said, ‘How come [laughs] the engineering officer has got five seagulls in his office.’ How come he’d got five seagulls in his office.
HB: You shouldn’t have been there.
GM: No. We shouldn’t have been there.
HB: I don’t know.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I don’t know.
GM: But they used to, the clothing was adequate. Really good clothing we had.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We had a bomber jacket and extra long johns.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And very modern vests. Very warm.
HB: Yeah.
GM: They came up to your neck and everything. But you used to get cold here and here, under your chin and your eyes used to get cold. Especially if you were looking forward, which you had to rotate the turret.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And —
HB: So, so on a normal, so how would it work then? How would you be told as an air gunner that you’re going to be flying on operations?
GM: Oh, we, in the morning the skipper would tell us, ‘We’re flying tonight, lads.’
HB: Right.
GM: And he, they used to go to the, the navigator and the flight engineer and the pilot used to go to a briefing. And then before the op the whole crew went to a briefing and the chair, there were seven, seven seats and seven seats and everybody and then there was a big map of Europe on the wall and the CO would come out with a big stick and say, ‘Your target for tonight is Monchengladbach, and your route is this way — ‘’ This way. ‘Be careful of this area here because there’s a lot of flak there. Do a dog leg here.’ The navigator had got all the details and they told us, and then the weapons officer used to come in and say you’re carrying so many bombs, and so many of this, and we used to carry Window which was strips of silver paper and the strips of silver paper were about a foot and a half long. But when we were flying with 100 Group our, our silver paper was fifteen feet long. We didn’t have so many of them.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you used to, before you hit the coast the [pause] I’m sure. I think the wireless operator had to put the, the silver paper in in through the —
HB: And that went down a chute.
GM: A chute. Yeah. It went down a chute and, so that fifty planes would look like five hundred planes on the radar.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Because each piece of silver paper would have been lit as a blip.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And, and when, when we used to fly with 100 Group our fifteen feet long stayed in the air longer, but it didn’t say there was that many.
HB: Yeah.
GM: But and they were all a distraction. Used to usually drop the silver paper just before you changed course.
HB: What was it? As a sort of a deception sort of thing?
GM: Well, yes. That’s right.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. So, you’ve been in. You’ve had your briefing.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Did you have, did you do anything separate as an air gunner?
GM: No.
HB: Or was that it?
GM: No. No.
HB: That was just it.
GM: You were altogether.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And then after briefing you used to go for a flying meal.
HB: Yes.
GM: Bacon. Eggs. Bacon and eggs. Sometimes there was chips but we always had bacon and eggs. And big portions as well.
HB: Right.
GM: We used to collect our escape kit and our parachute and an orange and a block of chocolate which you distributed in your pockets.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you’d wait for the, the bus, the waggon to take you out to the aeroplane about an hour before you took off. You used to go the, and sit on the grass or play football or something like that altogether.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And the ground crew were just finishing off.
HB: What was, can you remember what you had in your escape kit, Gordon?
GM: Oh yes. There was a map. It was only a small box. There was a map. There was a compass. There was some nutritious bar of stuff. I don’t know what it was but they invented this bar of stuff to eat. And there was a whistle, I think. No. We used to carry the whistle. We used to have the whistle always with us. We always had the whistle in case you fell in the sea. [unclear] a compass. Pipe smokers had a pipe and the pipe converted to a compass. Just broke it open and the compass was inside the barrel of the pipe. But the main thing was the map. It was a big map of Europe and all on silk. A silk map. Very posh.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We, it was just a small box which you just slipped in to your pocket. Into your breast pocket as it were.
HB: Did you, did you carry, did you carry photographs of yourself with you?
GM: No. No. Oh, that was one thing you did before you took off and before you collected your parachute. You collected your parachute. You had to empty your pockets so that you’d got nothing to identify yourself with at all.
HB: The reason I ask was I did interview somebody once who showed me some photographs they took. They had. And they took them with them in case they were shot down so they could be used on false papers.
GM: Oh. Well, I hadn’t heard of that.
HB: No.
GM: We, we were, we were told to clear everything out. Especially bus tickets.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And all that sort of stuff. Anything that could identify you or your squadron.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You know, like postcards from the family with your address on. You don’t. All that had to be taken out and put on the —
HB: So, you’ve had your briefing. You’ve been to dispersal.
GM: No. We’ve had our briefing. We’ve had our dinner.
HB: You’ve had your dinner.
GM: We go and collect the parachutes
HB: Yeah. And then you’re waiting at dispersal and the truck comes.
GM: The truck comes, and they’ve usually got two or three crews, and it takes you all the way around the perimeter and drops them off at each plane.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And usually the CO comes around. Just a little chat. And then at a certain time the skipper says, ‘Time to get aboard lads.’ And you just get in and of course I, I only sat in the rest position. I didn’t get in to my turret until we’d taken off.
HB: So that was sort of in the middle of the aircraft.
GM: Yes.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And there was a lot of room in the Halifax.
HB: Yeah.
GM: There was room for eight of us to sit in. Or seven of us to sit in.
HB: Yeah. Yeah, so you, you’ve gone into the plane. You’ve gone to the rest position.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Did you have, did you have any duties at all for take - off? Or was it just —
GM: Just I’d cock my guns
HB: Yeah.
GM: No. I couldn’t cock my guns until we were over the sea in case there was a mistake. We used to cock the guns. We were soon over the sea anyway.
HB: Yeah.
GM: So, that’s the only thing I had to do was make sure that my gunsight was working. Cocked the guns. Make sure that all four were all cocked.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And ready to fire.
HB: Did you, did you always have the same turret? I think you said to me in the last interview that you were comfortable in the Boulton Paul turret.
GM: Yes.
HB: Because it was big and you, you know you fitted in. You had plenty of room.
GM: Yeah.
HB: But did, did you always have the same turret or did you have to change?
GM: It was all, I only flew in the Boulton Paul turret.
HB: Right.
GM: When I did the one in the rear it was a Frazer Nash turret.
HB: Yeah.
GM: The rear gun had a Frazer Nash turret.
HB: So how, so when you were in that turret, what, what guns had you got?
GM: Four. Four 303 Browning machine guns.
HB: Right. And I presume they were calibrated to, to converge, were they?
GM: It was one of our jobs on the ground to calibrate the guns so that it didn’t hit any part of the aircraft.
HB: Right.
GM: That was one of our jobs. We had to calibrate the guns.
HB: Because that’s one of the questions a lot of people ask is how did you manage to not shoot your own tail off?
GM: No. They’d been calibrated so that you used to turn your gun round at the plane and press the, I think we used to press a button. I think it was a button, and so that when, when it was revolving, and when you’re firing, when it hit the, looked at that, the bullets didn’t fire. It stopped the guns from firing.
HB: Right. Right. Yeah. Ah that, that’s, that explains it then.
GM: Yeah. Because you could hit the front of the aircraft quite easily.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you could hit the tail quite easily as well.
HB: Yeah. I can believe it. Yeah.
GM: But you, you calibrated. That was one of your jobs. To calibrate it. When you did a, if you did a pre-flight flight, used to do that.
HB: So, when obviously, when you’re flying at night your vision is, is, is absolutely essential. Your, you know, your skills at looking out into the night. How did you protect your eyes when you were flying at night?
GM: One thing we used to do was we used to have a pair of goggles which we used to put on while we were waiting if it was daylights or, and we were going to be flying at night we used to wear these goggles. A pair of like sunglasses.
HB: Yeah.
GM: So that when you, you took them off and put them in the plane you’d stopped your eyes from going.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Suddenly in to dark when you wouldn’t be able to see anything.
HB: Yeah.
GM: But wearing these glasses, which you were given they, they were very useful.
HB: Yeah. So once you, once you were up and you’re flying. You were flying towards the target.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Would you get much of, much information from the pilot or the navigator or anybody else to tell you what was happening? Where you were going or —
GM: There was always conversation going on. The skipper was asking the flight engineer if all the engines were ok. He was asking the wireless operator if he still had contact with his wireless. And the bomb aimer used to sit next to him and he only used to go in to his position when we were getting, getting close to the target.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And the navigator had his little, he had a curtain all round him and he was, he was giving the skipper instructions of a course to fly. Every, all, every, all the time he was chatting.
HB: Yeah.
GM: The flight engineer and the navigator were doing most of the talking and the skipper was asking questions and everybody else was in their own thoughts as it were.
HB: Yes. Yeah. So as, as you come in you’re coming in towards the target. Obviously, we know the risks were flak and night fighters.
GM: Yeah.
HB: And that sort of thing.
GM: And other planes.
HB: Yeah. And the other planes are all around you. Your own side.
GM: Yeah.
HB: What, can you, is it possible to describe or to tell me what it was like to fly towards a target through the flak?
GM: Well, one of our trips we went was Hazebrouck it was called, and it was a railway. A railway marshalling yard in France. And that was the worse flak I ever saw and the flak was just coming up before. The flak was firing when the planes weren’t there and we were flying along this flak and then we had to go in to it and that was a bit scary, you know. You couldn’t help it. Suddenly you had to go through it because the target was there and if you didn’t turn in to the target you wouldn’t. The flak was, was enormous, the amount of flak there was. Hundreds of flak bursts.
HB: So, sitting in your position in the, you know.
GM: You could see it all.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. So, and, and so that that would be like I suppose flying through a giant firework display.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Almost. But with quite nastier consequences.
GM: Well, you could smell the smoke from the, as you flew through it. The ones that exploded you didn’t worry about because they missed you. It was the one that you didn’t see that hit you.
HB: Yeah.
GM: But it was the amount of flak they threw up, the Germans was enormous. Absolutely hundreds, hundreds of bursts of flak.
HB: Yes.
GM: And nearly always at the right height as well. They’d, they’d got good range finders.
HB: Yeah. What, what were the, what were the searchlights like?
GM: Well, on our last trip we were coned.
HB: Yeah.
GM: By searchlights. About fifty on us. This last trip was our worst trip ever and we were coned and the only thing you could do was to dive down one of the, one of the searchlights which is what the skipper did because they couldn’t change the, where the shells were bursting quick enough because we were going down. And in actual fact I fired my guns at a searchlight. The one we were flying down. It went out.
HB: Oh right.
GM: And that saved us.
HB: Yeah. Was the —
GM: The moment it went out the skipper said to navigator, ‘Which way?’ He said, ‘How the hell do I know?’
HB: So, was that what, was that something you trained for or just something you did?
GM: Something happened. It was —
HB: Yeah.
GM: It had never happened before.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We’d never been hit by searchlights before.
HB: Yeah, because when I’ve talked to others they always talk about the corkscrew.
GM: Yeah. The corkscrew is for fighter.
HB: Yeah. What was, what was the corkscrew manoeuvre then?
GM: It was depending which, where the plane was. You, I, the gunner or the rear gunner had to tell the skipper, ‘Corkscrew right.’ ‘Corkscrew left.’ And if you said, ‘Corkscrew right,’ he turned the plane that way, that way, that way, and that way, and raised, went up and down while he was corkscrewing.
HB: So, he was constantly changing left to right.
GM: Left to right.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: So that the pilot, if the plane was behind you he’d have to readjust every time.
HB: Yeah. What was that like to experience?
GM: Ah, it was like being in a merry go round. You were thrown this way and that way but it only happened to us twice and I don’t think it was necessary actually but the rear gunner called it the two times we did it. And corkscrew right or corkscrew left. Down. Right. Down. Right. Up. Down. Right.
HB: So, so this was —
GM: With, with the Halifax you could do it like. It would behave like, like a merry go round.
HB: Yeah.
GM: It was a marvellous plane for that.
HB: So, so the tail gunner had called it. Were you ever actually attacked by night fighters?
GM: No. The only time we were attacked was on our second trip and that’s when we lost our bomb aimer. I’d, I reported to the skipper there was a plane below us being attacked. He said, ‘Keep your eyes open.’ And I could see the tracer going and I couldn’t see the other plane that he was firing at. And then the tracer stopped and at that moment the one shell hit us right in the nose. Blew the nose off.
HB: Right.
GM: And the bomb aimer was sitting with his legs like that and it exploded under his bum. And the plane was, was doing this all the time then because it was filling with air and then it couldn’t take any more air, so the plane was going like that all the time. It was really uncomfortable. That’s was the only time I was really terrified.
HB: Yeah. Did, I don’t suppose you ever saw the aircraft that —
GM: No.
HB: That did the attack.
GM: No. Never saw the aircraft.
HB: No.
GM: I thought it was a Fokke Wulf 190 that I saw a shape going away but I reported it as a Fokke Wulf 190.
HB: Did you lose, did the other plane, did we lose the other plane? The other aircraft. The first one that was attacked. Did we lose that one?
GM: I don’t know.
HB: Oh right.
GM: I mean he was way below us.
HB: Oh right.
GM: He was way below us.
HB: Right. Right. Yeah.
GM: And I saw the tracer but it didn’t see the plane he was firing at.
HB: Yeah. So, so you’ve been out there and you’ve gone through the flak and the searchlights.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You’ve done, or you’re doing your run to the target.
GM: The bomb run. It was called the bomb run at that time.
HB: What, did you have a job to do while that was going on? While the bomb run was going on?
GM: No. The only job we had to do was keep our eyes open.
HB: Yeah.
GM: For everything. At that moment the bomb aimer, the bomb aimer took over the plane.
HB: Right.
GM: ’Steady. Steady. Steady. Left. Steady. Right. Steady. Steady. Left. Right. Bombs gone,’ and the plane would go wumph.
HB: Yeah. It would jump up in the air.
GM: It would be up in the air.
HB: Yeah. And what would, because obviously you used to take photographs as well. Was that done automatically?
GM: It was done automatically.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: When the bombs were released, it was done automatically. We had some very good photographs of our bombs.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Especially in the daylight ones.
HB: Yeah. So, you’ve, you’ve dropped your bombs. You’ve turned away. You’re heading back.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You’re heading back home. So, what, what are you, what are you sort of experiencing now? What are you feeling now?
GM: Elated actually.
HB: Yeah.
GM: To think you’ve gone over the target, and you’re on the way home but you’ve still got to keep your eyes open.
HB: Yeah. Was that a bit, a bit risky?
GM: Well, believe it or not I think it was when we went to Monchengladbach, we [pause] we went over the coast and there was a flak ship firing at us. All of a sudden, the flak started out of nowhere. Flak in the night, and of course they were a burst of colours. They were sort of glowing, and this flak ship was firing at us, and you didn’t know that it was there until it happened.
HB: Right.
GM: So —
HB: And obviously they moved them about.
GM: Yeah.
HB: So, yeah you could never really predict where they were.
GM: No. No.
HB: Yeah. So then —
GM: Then —
HB: Yes. So, so you’re on the way back.
GM: Yeah.
HB: You’re feeling elated and you come in. You know you’re coming back to your airfield.
GM: Yeah.
HB: What was, what was your procedures for landing then as, as an air gunner?
GM: No procedure for me other than to keep, keep my eyes open because there were intruders at that time. There were intruders. You could be fired on as you were landing by the German, especially they used these JU88s as intruder aircraft and you had to keep your eye open right until, right until the moment you landed. But we didn’t. We were fortunate. We didn’t have it.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We did land on the FIDO twice which was a very, very strange and frightening procedure. I think Carnaby took in ninety six planes in about half an hour.
HB: Blimey.
GM: Because everybody was running out of petrol.
HB: Yeah. And of course, Carnaby was FIDO fitted, wasn’t it?
GM: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
GM: There was three.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Woodbridge, Carnaby and Manston were the three aerodromes that were fitted with FIDO.
HB: Yeah. Blimey. Yeah.
GM: It was like diving into hell.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Because you couldn’t see a thing because of the fog. You couldn’t. Until you were fifteen feet from the ground you couldn’t see anything. The pilot just dived in to the, you could see the lights under the fog. And then when you got to fifteen feet you could see the ground.
HB: That’s low, isn’t it?
GM: It is low. Especially if the ground’s not your runway.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Yeah, but —
HB: So, just going back a little bit when, when you did all your training and, and all that sort of thing one of the things you would have probably have been trained to do was the procedure for ditching.
GM: Oh yes that was, we did that.
HB: Ditching over water and that sort of thing.
GM: We did that at 14 OTU which was at Bridlington.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And it was November. It was cold. It was snowing. And we went, got in the bus for dinghy training. We were taken to the harbour and there was a pile of Mae Wests on the floor. They said, ‘Right. Put your Mae Wests on. What we want you to do is to jump into the sea. Swim to the dinghy. Get in the dinghy. Turn it. Get out of the dinghy and turn it over.’ The next crew was, next ones would jump in to the sea. Turn the dinghy right way up. Get into the dinghy. Turn it over and come back. And I’m sitting there. I’m standing there thinking I’m going to be first. So, I grabbed the Mae West and I put it on. He said, ‘Who’s first?’ I said, ‘I am.’ And I realised that they’d got to put the wet, wet Mae Wests on when they came out. The people after us had to put the wet Mae Wests on and it was freezing cold. Of course, the Mae West was dry and I was a good swimmer, so jumping in and swimming out to the dinghy was no problem. One of the fellas with me doing it wasn’t a very good swimmer but he managed it, you know.
HB: Yes.
GM: He, he couldn’t help turn the dinghy over. Tricky to turn the dinghy over in the water, and it was cold.
HB: So, at what, if you were in an operations or doing this training.
GM: Yeah.
HB: At what stage would you actually inflate your Mae West? How would you do that? Or when?
GM: Oh, not until you were out of the plane.
HB: Right.
GM: You couldn’t, if you inflated your Mae West I wouldn’t have been able to get out of your turret.
HB: Yeah.
GM: No.
HB: So how would you inflate it?
GM: Pull a toggle. It had got a little lever. A little button like a, like a Boy Scout’s toggle.
HB: Yeah.
GM: It was on the Mae West and you just pulled it, whoosh.
HB: So, was it gas filled then?
GM: Gas filled. Yes.
HB: Yeah. Because so the Mae West must have changed because I think early on they must have blown them up didn’t they? With a tube.
GM: Well, you could blow it up yourself. It had got a tube on it so that if you were in the water any length of time you could top up the air in the Mae West. It was sticking out on the side.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You just grabbed it and blew in to it.
HB: Right.
GM: It was —
HB: So, I mean I mean you’ve got a crew of seven. Did, could everybody swim?
GM: I don’t know whether everybody could swim. Everybody was taken for swimming lessons to make sure.
HB: Oh right.
GM: One of the things we did at OTU we did was the swimming baths. We had, but I think most people in our days in school you all went to swimming every week at school.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You know, when you were nine, ten you all went swimming.
HB: Oh right.
GM: I was a good swimmer.
HB: Right. Ah. So on, so on operations on the Halifax.
GM: Yeah.
HB: I presume the pilot, the skipper would actually call for, you know warn you that you were going to ditch.
GM: That’s right.
HB: What would, what would then follow? Who would do what? Do you know?
GM: We would, everybody would, I would get into the rest position and the rear gunner used to get in the rest position and we used to brace ourselves. You had to put your arms, your arms, your head used to close your fingers and put it behind your head and sit like this in the rest position.
HB: You were crouched over. Yeah.
GM: Crouched. Well, sitting down.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you would tightly hold your head. I can’t put my arm up there now.
HB: Yeah [laughs]
GM: Used to put my head down and hold it. When we, when we pranged, that’s one thing we had to do, because you was careering across the runway and then you stopped dead.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: You know.
HB: So that, so if you were going to ditch then you would be in the rest area.
GM: That’s right.
HB: I presume the bomb aimer and navigator would then obviously have to come back away from the nose.
GM: Yes. Everybody would come back away from the nose or as many, and I think there was about six of us [pause] No. Five because I think the bomb aimer used to stay with the pilot to help the pilot on the crash landing.
HB: Yeah.
GM: But everybody else came to the rest position in the middle of the aircraft.
HB: Yeah. And you would have come out obviously if everything went right. You’d try and come out the door I presume.
GM: Yes. The door and then you’d have to swim.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Because the door was away. Was the nearest the tail.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And the idea is you got on to the wing and the [pause] the dinghy used to throw itself out.
HB: Oh right. Yeah.
GM: The dinghy used to self-eject with the smash and the dinghy would, and it was tied and it was, we’d all got knives, and you had to, you had to make sure you’d got the dinghy tight, but you had to free it from the aircraft in case the aircraft went down.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: And then you’d pile into the dinghy. All of you.
HB: Is that something you wanted to avoid?
GM: Definitely. We, we never got, we never, never, never got near to ditching in the sea at all. Never.
HB: Yeah. So, yeah, I was, I was interested in that because a lot of people have talked about ditching, but how you actually got to that level of training and expertise is of interest.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Because some guys I’ve spoken to have talked about doing what they called dry dinghy training.
GM: That’s right. Dry.
HB: On the airfield.
GM: Dry dinghy training. We did that. That was at Conversion Unit.
HB: Right
GM: You did. It was one of the things you did when you converted from, we flew in Whitleys believe it or not. Whitleys [laughs] and changed to Halifax.
HB: Yeah. So, as, as the war, you know you came into the war sort of ’44/45. That time.
GM: Yeah.
HB: What, what changes, what were the biggest changes you saw, Gordon happen, happen?
GM: Master bomber.
HB: Yeah.
GB: That was the biggest change. The master bomber orchestrating the raid. He would bomb to the left of the green indicators. Bomb to the right. Take the bombs forward. And he did the instructions. ‘Don’t bomb in the middle two. Waste of bombs. Bomb on the edges. Bomb on the edges.’
HB: Yeah.
GM: Which spread the target area.
HB: Yeah.
GM: They used to put target indicators down as well which was marvellous. They would tell you what the target indicator colour was every day. Every time you went, ‘The colour of the day is green,’ so that the Germans would light up fake targets.
HB: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah.
GB: But if the, they used to change the colour of the target indicator. Sometimes green, sometimes red, sometimes yellow.
GM: And —
HB: And they were and the master bomber would call the height as well I presume.
GM: No. No. We were all the height we were given. We were told to fly at such and such a height which was between eighteen and twenty two thousand feet usually, at night. The master bomber, if the target indicator wasn’t on target he’d called up the backers up would obliterate that target indicator and they’d put another target indicator down and he’d say, ‘The new colour is — ’
HB: Right.
GM: Made up a different colour for the next target.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s, yeah. Yeah that’s —
GM: The whole time you were on the bombing run the master bomber was talking to you.
HB: Right.
GM: Every minute.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: ‘Bomb to the left of indicator.’ ‘Bomb to the right of indicator.’ ‘Bomb forward.’ ‘Bomb forward.’ ‘Take it more forward.’
HB: Yeah.
GB: In fact, on one of our trips we had to go round again because he moved the target and we’d already passed it.
HB: Oh right. Right.
GM: So, the skipper said, ‘We’re going around again.’ We only did it once, and that was a bit hairy because you had to go around and join the bomber stream again and come back in again.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s doesn’t sound nice.
GM: No. It wasn’t.
HB: No. So, so obviously the majority of the bombing that you did was at night but on daylight you must have done some daylight operations, well I know you have because there’s a couple in your logbook.
GM: Yeah. I did a lot of daylights.
HB: Yeah. What, what was your feeling? This might sound a bit strange, but what was your feeling about being able to see clearly what you were bombing?
GM: Well, there was, you could see the target. Especially if it was marshalling yards like Hazebrouck. It was, the target was very plain, you could see it entirely but the master bomber was there as well. He’d say, ‘Bomb to the right. Bomb to the left again.’
HB: Yeah.
GM: But —
HB: And what did, what was you, what was your overall feeling then as you’re seeing this target clear as day and the bombs are going down? What, what was your overall feeling on that?
GM: Well, the minute the bombs were going down you felt as though you had done your job.
HB: Yeah.
GM: You’d actually done your job so it was all you had to worry about was getting home. From the moment you dropped your bombs you already knew your course you had to take. The skipper and the navigator had all, had got that, were told that so that you immediately went on to that course, and then did a couple of dog legs before you crossed the coast again.
HB: And when you got, when you got, you obviously you, you end up with your end of tour, you know. You’re told that you’ve, you’ve come to the end of your tour.
GM: Yes. That was our last trip.
HB: Yeah.
GM: That was the worst trip we ever did. There was no side left of the plane, on the one side. All gone. I was just looking at looking at, just looking at metal. Bits of metal, and —
HB: So, so you had a bit of an escape there then.
GM: Well, yes because my, I hadn’t fired my guns so that the bullets saved me from damaging. It saved me from my leg getting damaged without a doubt because there was damage to the bullets itself because it took the whole, took the whole lot of the left-hand side of the plane out, from the front nose and there was a great big hole all the way to the tail and they, they hit us a lot of times. But the searchlight went out. We were still flying. I think if a Lancaster had had what we’d had it wouldn’t have made it, but the Halifax was, was so rugged, and it really was.
HB: Yeah.
GM: A very strong aircraft.
HB: Yeah. So how, when you say the ammunition saved you.
GM: Well —
HB: I hadn’t thought of this.
GM: Ammunition.
HB: How did, how did the ammunition get to the gun?
GM: The ammunition was here and here.
HB: Either side of your legs.
GM: Like four. And you used to feed the ammunition into the four guns. There were four panniers of bullets. You feed it into the guns, cock it and so you’ve got the first gun done. Then do the second gun, do the third gun, do the fourth gun. And these, these troughs as it were where the bullets were coiled up, and they were all here. Right here. And all the damage was there and the —
HB: So, yeah. So, from your thigh down you’ve got the bullet panniers.
GM: Yes. When, when we got home it was obvious that the bullets had saved my legs because I never had a scratch. Never had a scratch.
HB: So, the shrapnel obviously that ripped through the side of the aircraft was bouncing off the, it’s amazing they didn’t go off.
GM: Yes. Well, no because they were facing that way.
HB: Oh, of course.
GM: So yeah.
HB: Yeah.
GM: They were facing the point.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
GM: They then made, the bullets were facing outwards.
HB: I see what you mean. So, that the angle of the bullet —
GM: Yeah.
HB: The shrapnel didn’t hit the explosive bit. It hit the nose.
GM: It hit the nose.
HB: Wow.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Well, that was a lucky escape surely.
GM: Yes. It was.
HB: Yeah.
GM: The CO came. Came out in his car. He took one look at the plane and he said, he said to [unclear] and Digby, ‘Well, Digby you’ve had enough. Call it a day. You’ve finished your tour.’
HB: Just like that.
GM: He said, ‘Because you’ve ruined another plane.’ [laughs] He said, I can remember him saying that.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And the next day we were, we were posted.
HB: But did you, did you actually get to go out for a last end of tour drink?
GM: No. Not really because we went to briefing and next morning we handed our, all our stuff in. The bicycles had to be handed in and everything. I think it took two days to get to, you had a, a leaving chit to fill in.
HB: Yeah.
GM: And you had to go to the MO. You had to go to the, all sorts. You had to go to all of these actions handing in this, that and the other thing.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. And that was it.
GM: That was it.
HB: That was it. Finished.
GM: We went to Kirby.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Never saw each other again.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We just, ‘Cheerio chaps. Have a good — ’and I was very lucky. I was posted to 1 Squadron. Spitfires.
HB: Yeah.
GM: Flying control.
HB: Yeah. Well, Gordon, I’ve got to say I could sit here all day. You know.
GM: Yeah.
HB: We’ve had a, we’ve had, you know well over an hour.
GM: We haven’t.
HB: And I really do thank you for that, because —
GM: I haven’t bored you to tears.
HB: No. You could never bore me, Gordon. But I’ve really appreciated it. It’s been a really good interview. I mean we’re coming, we’re coming up towards quarter to twelve so I think we’ll perhaps finish the interview there.
GM: Ok. One thing I would say to you, on our training there was one part of our training that we did when we were posted to Driffield and we were taught how to escape.
HB: Oh right.
GM: We were arrested at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. We were searched. We were given dungarees. Only dungarees. We were given a meal, and at 8 o’clock at night when it was dark, we were taken out in a truck and we were dropped two at a time in the countryside. This was on the Thursday and we’d got to get back to camp on Friday on Saturday. Get back to camp and Sunday was the day we should have been back by. And we were in Yorkshire. In the Dales. And you had to get, you had to fend yourself. You’d got no money. You’d got nothing to eat. Get back to camp. Teach you how to escape. We got on the bus and said to the bus driver, ‘I’m ever so sorry. We’ve got no money. Can we have a lift?’ He said, ‘Of course you can, lads.’ He took us. He took us to Scarborough. Took us to Scarborough. We slept under the, slept under the, slept on the beach. It was warm. It was summer.
HB: Yeah.
GM: We slept on the beach. We went to a, we went to a café and said, ‘Have you got any scraps that you want to throw away because we’ve got, we’re in the Air Force and we’re, we’re trying to escape and they’ve given us no money. And have you got any — ’ ‘Of course, you can. Come in’ We had a meal. A proper meal. We did that twice. Did that twice, and we got back on the Saturday. So, we got back. We had a, got on the bus again.
HB: You must have had some very caring bus drivers.
GM: We went to the bus driver and said, ‘Look, I’m ever so sorry. We’re in the RAF and we’ve been told that we’ve got to, got to get back to camp without any money. Is there any chance you can let us on the bus?’ He said, ‘Course, you can.’ And he dropped us at the gate.
HB: Oh no.
GM: And that was our experience of learning how to escape.
HB: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how many buses there were in Germany and Belgium. Yeah. Yeah.
GM: Oh, well, you couldn’t ask for a ticket [laughs]
HB: No.
GM: Yeah. The only, only German I knew at that time was, ‘Hände hoch.’ ‘Put your hands up.’
HB: Yeah. That would come in handy I suppose. Yeah.
GM: That was the only German I knew.
HB: Yeah. I tell you that’s lovely. A lovely bit to finish on that Gordon.
GM: Yeah.
HB: Thanks ever so much. I really do appreciate it.
GM: Now, are we going to the pub?
HB: Well, the tape’s still running. Do I have to admit I’m taking you to the pub? [laughs]
GM: No. No.
HB: On the tape [laughs]
GM: We can close the interview if you like.
HB: I’m closing the interview now.
GM: Yeah.
HB: It’s a quarter to twelve.
GM: I wouldn’t mind —
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Gordon Mercier
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harry Bartlett
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-10-21
2021-11-23
Type
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Sound
Format
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02:15:42 Audio Recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AMercierCG211021
PMercierCG2101
PMercierCG2102
Description
An account of the resource
Cyril Mercier was born in Jersey in 1925. He joined the Home Guard in 1940 and the RAF in 1943. After initial training, and training on gunnery at Bridgnorth he joined 14 Operational training Unit at Abingdon, where he crewed up. He trained on Halifax, eventually joining 51 Squadron at RAF Snaith. On his second operation to Amiens his aircraft was damaged and the bomb aimer was injured. The pilot made a Darkie call and landed the damaged aircraft at RAF Dunsfold. On their journey across London on the Underground dressed in their flying gear, the passengers had a collection for them of 100 cigarettes. He and his crew joined 171 Special Duties Squadron which operated Lancasters using Mandrel jamming equipment. His last operation was to Leipzig. The aircraft was coned by searchlights and badly damaged. He was posted to RAF Hutton Cranswick as a controller’s assistant with 1 Spitfire Squadron. After being posted to RAF Llanbedr he was demobbed from the RAF.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-08-17
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Surrey
England--Norfolk
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Leipzig
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
100 Group
14 OTU
171 Squadron
51 Squadron
78 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
animal
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
civil defence
crash
crewing up
demobilisation
FIDO
Halifax
Home Guard
Lancaster
Master Bomber
military discipline
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Abingdon
RAF Breighton
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Dunsfold
RAF North Creake
RAF Riccall
RAF Snaith
RAF Stormy Down
searchlight
tactical support for Normandy troops
take-off crash
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/649/8919/ATophamG151018.1.mp3
d9dd7b21999e4ca110c30531867ac913
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
Topham, Gordon
G Topham
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Topham, G
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Gordon Topham DFC (3005086 Royal Air Force) his pilots DFC citation and two photographs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 166 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok. So, this is Annie Moody and I’m here on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre.
GT: That serves you right for a start.
AM: In Lincoln.
GT: Yes.
AM: And I’m with Gordon Topham, who is in Woodton near Bungay, which in turn is near Norwich. And so, I’m going to be talking to Gordon today. We’ve got all sorts of bits and pieces. We’ve got Gordon’s logbook and school stuff and everything. But first of all, Gordon —
GT: That shows you what a —
AM: Right.
GT: Goody, goody I was, look [laughs]
AM: I’ve got it. I’ve got a report here that says the work, his, “Work and conduct have given every satisfaction. He is one of the most capable boys at handicraft that we have ever had”. Anyway, so where, where were you born, Gordon?
GT: Where?
AM: Yeah. Whereabouts.
GT: Where was I born? Salisbury.
AM: Oh right.
GT: My father — he was a steam man. He was in the Army. He learned to drive steam wagons, so, when he came out — this, you know, wheels were virtually not thought of. You had to push things around then, didn’t you? Well no, you wouldn’t know. And anyway, he took steam on as his trade when he come out the Army, and it was going around tarmacking roads. Well in those days, most roads were sort of hard core or something like that, and they were just getting the modern roads up, which were sort of single road traffic, and he used to travel quite a lot. Well, he was one of fourteen children at Salisbury, one of which died in the war, and of course, with joining the company he joined with, they had to travel all over the country. Roads, roads, roads, roads, roads. Tarmacking and, you know, in that business, he drove a steam wagon and that was the thing that did the tarring and the boiling and everything else. So, we travelled all over England, you can say, and he ended up at Wallasey in [pause], where’s that?
GR: Merseyside.
AM: Yeah. Merseyside.
GT: Merseyside, yeah. And from there, I’ve got a picture somewhere when I was knee high to an gnat and I’d got an identical steam wagon that he had, you know, a little toy. A pity I haven’t got that photo at the moment, but I’ve got a photo somewhere of him taking me with this little tractor.
AM: Where did you go to school then, if you were all over the country?
GT: That was when I just started.
AM: Right. Ok.
GT: And from there, that was all infant stuff and things like that. So the first place we settled down was in Norwich, a company there, he got fed up with tracing all over the place so he joined this company in Norwich. I’m trying to think of the name of them now, Trowse anyway, and from there he operated all around Norwich, doing maintenance with roads and steam and things like that. And that’s the first school, to say I’d got a permanent school was Trowse School, but all the others [pause], I always went to school, you know. Where ever we went they would, well the schools weren’t like they are now but, but we were accepted everywhere, go and see the Head, he’s coming, you know. So as a youngster, I went through the school ‘til normal, didn’t know anything different. If we changed villages or something, he’d do the villages around about Norfolk, we’ll say, and anything like that. And of course, we had a varying education, you could say, and we ended up, as I say, in Norwich. I went to Thorpe Hamlet School in Norwich and that’s the first school I had where I was permanent.
GR: Settled.
GT: Settled yeah.
AM: Yeah. Did you have brothers and sisters, Gordon?
GT: I had a brother, they tell me, before me, and he didn’t live.
AM: Right.
GT: So, I’ve got to say yes, I did but I didn’t.
AM: But not, yeah. Didn’t grow up with you.
GT: No.
AM: How old were you when you left school? Ish?
GT: Fourteen.
AM: You were fourteen.
GT: Those were the days —
AM: So what did you do?
GT: Went to Edward J Edwards contractors, where my father took over the first Priestman excavator from Hull and they bought this excavator, and once again, I had a piece of paper but I lost it now. For the first time, that was delivered on a railway truck and Mr Totmer got this new machine and it gravels like a huge, you know, definition of a, made it sound, a huge great machine. It was only a Priestman cub, it tore at hedges and things and tore them pieces. Went to ponds and ripped the whole pond up. A big write up in the paper.
AM: So what was your role then?
GT: Sorry?
AM: So, what did you do then, in that.
GT: Well I was then still at school, wasn’t I?
AM: Oh right, yeah, sorry. I mean, once you left school though. What did you do once you left school?
GT: With the background, he knew the people around about, and Edward J Edwards said, ‘Your boy want a job? Come on. Put him in here’. And that was maintenance in Edward J Edwards.
AM: Right.
GT: Well it was Edwards J Edwards and Harry Pointer were two of the only contractors around then and Harry Pointer said, ‘Well I could do with him, because I’m solely plant’, not lorries and things which the other one was, so I transferred to him. My father was friendly with both of them actually. And that’s where I started, at Harry Pointer’s.
AM: Right.
GT: On plant hire, which was the first thing they had there after the lorries. They had lorries and things like that, first of all.
AM: Yeah.
GT: He built Norwich Football Ground.
AM: Oh, did he?
GT: The new one, yeah.
AM: Crikey.
GT: Anyway, there [pause], where did we go next?
AM: So, you’ve started there at fourteen.
GT: Yes.
AM: And leading up to eighteen.
GT: Yes. I’ve kept there, and they moved up to Aylsham Road.
GR: Had war broken out by then?
AM: Just.
GT: Yeah. Yeah.
GR: War had just broken out.
AM: Just.
GT: Yeah, and of course, that had just broken out and I suppose the big man, I want to fly, I want to fly.
AM: Is that what you fancied doing then?
GT: Yeah.
AM: Because before, so as a fourteen, fifteen year old in Norwich.
GT: Yes.
AM: Do you remember the bombing then ‘cause there was quite a lot of bombing in Norwich, wasn’t there?
GT: Oh yes. Yes.
AM: What was that like then, being on the end of that?
GT: Well I wouldn’t say it was like Coventry or anything like that.
AM: No.
GT: It was very minor.
AM: But there was though. Quite a bit of bombing.
GT: Yes. Yeah, and mainly at St Andrews, the plane, around there, the factories and things, they got those. But, yeah. And from there, the war was on then and that’s when I joined the RAF as a cadet. You know the —
AM: Right.
GT: What do you call them?
AM: So, before you were eighteen you joined up as a cadet.
GT: Yes, yeah., and that was an evening thing that you could [unclear]. So, when I was eighteen, seventeen, about seventeen I think, I went to evening classes and things like that for the ATC. Then I joined for the RAF and that was a case of, yes, you’ve joined. You’re, what did they call them? Reserved service, or something or other.
AM: So, you —
GT: So, I joined that and just waited until they said, ‘Right, you next, come in’. I went to Cardington and joined the RAF from there, from there I went to London. I think it’s all in that book actually.
AM: To Lord’s Cricket Ground.
GT: The large, yeah, Lord’s Cricket Ground. Used to eat in the zoo.
AM: I believe so.
GT: That’s where [laughs] yeah.
AM: I’ve heard stories about the food in the zoo.
GT: Yeah, yeah. So that was where I was, where you had your jabs and things like that and free, sort of, in the RAF. From there I went to Usworth in [pause], Usworth, right up North. In —
AM: Is it in Yorkshire? I’m not sure where that one is.
GT: No. Go up North. One.
GR: Northumberland.
AM: Northumberland.
GT: You go up North.
GR: Newcastle. Durham.
GT: Durham.
AM: Durham. Near Durham.
GT: And there for, I think it was about six weeks initial training.
AM: So that’s like square bashing and stuff like that.
GT: Dead right, dead right, yeah. There was hardly anything there. That was in the middle of winter. You had tents and things like that, just to harden you off, I suppose. It was really, cold taps, outside to wash, and from there went to St Athans.
GR: Yes. A lot of people.
GT: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
GT: And from there, St Athans, we went to Bridlington for training for, you know, the de de da da de da.
AM: Oh, the wireless operating.
GR: Morse.
AM: The Morse.
GT: Yeah, yeah. I went through most of the things that you’d need in the RAF, you know, you didn’t go to a gunner school or this, that and the other. You had a little bit of everything as an engineer.
AM: Right. How did they decide you were going to be an engineer?
GT: I did.
AM: You decided that.
GT: Yeah.
AM: Right.
GT: There was a panel when we joined up. They had this panel of a half a dozen big commander, and, ‘What do you think you’re clever about?’ Of course I said that I joined, I was plant hire and stuff like that, and heavy machinery, and I think they decided that I’d be a engineer. And that’s what I was rated at from there. Flight engineer. But of course, you had nothing to do with flying then, that was purely St Athan’s training. Well with the training I had, there’s paper boys and all that, joined up and I was an engineer anyway and to tell them more than what they were learning, so, I had an easy, well, not an easy run there but anything to do with engineering, they seemed to latch on to me. So, I had a good time there and I’ve got some things in there from that. So what was it? Dates and things. I can’t —
AM: So once you’d done that, yeah, some of the dates are in your log book
GT: Yeah. When was that?
AM: On what date did you go to — hang on. So that’s the first page. So, your air acclimatisation.
GT: We’re in the, yeah, we’re in the Con Unit then.
AM: Right.
GT: Learning to fly.
AM: So, what was that like then? So, you went from the, doing all the on the ground learning, if you like.
GT: Yes, yeah, and we had to go to whatever they put us on to, then from whatever aircraft we were going as training, so that’s when we started flying actually. But I was flying as a flight engineer then.
AM: Right.
GT: And —
AM: So at that point, have you been, you haven’t crewed up yet or anything like that have you? Or have you?
GT: Well, yes and no. That’s, I think you can read more into that, than what I can tell you.
AM: Here we are. So, what I’m looking at now in Gordon’s logbook is that he passed his flight engineer course at St Athan in July 1944.
GT: What’s the —
AM: And then from, yeah, so that was July 1944.
GT: Yeah.
AM: And that was from there.
GT: Yes.
AM: You went to Lindholme in Yorkshire.
GT: On what?
AM: On Halifaxes.
GT: Halifaxes. That’s right.
AM: Halifaxes.
GT: Yeah. And on a Halifax, the flight engineer sat that way on, and you were traveling that way and you do all the machinery, you know, the engines and everything, used them from the side. They decided that when they got the Lancaster, what was that odd guy sitting there doing nothing? We’ve got a spare pilot here. Doing less than if he was [laughs]
AM: Right.
GT: So, they decided that the flight engineer should be second pilot. So, then I went on flying courses and things like that and — no. First of all, I lost my mother, and you get six weeks free, you know.
AM: Bereavement leave.
GT: To sort things out there. And so, when I came back which, there will be a break there somewhere from when I left Lancasters. Halifaxes in to Lancasters.
AM: Yes. ‘Cause that’s July.
GT: Yeah.
AM: And then by September, looks like the first Lancaster. At Hemswell.
GT: Hemswell, that’s right, yeah, for training on Lancasters.
AM: And that was flying with Pilot Officer Nicklin.
GT: That’s right, and I stopped with them in the training and that’s where I started operating, didn’t I? Somewhere there?.
AM: When did you crew up then? When?
GT: Well, whatever those dates are there.
AM: Hang on, let me just put that there for now. So, right, so you crewed up with Pilot Officer Nicklin then.
GT: Yes, yeah.
AM: Got you. Right. I’m with you.
GT: That’s where we decided who should be what.
AM: And you completed your crash landing and dinghy drills and your parachute drills.
GT: Yeah.
AM: I’ve got the certification of that there. So then —
GT: Can use them [laughs]
AM: So, you were at Heavy Conversion Unit by the time you were on Lancasters then.
GT: Yes.
AM: Yeah.
GT: Yes.
AM: And I’m just looking at your first operation. So tell me what it was like, getting ready for that and the actual operation. What can you remember about the very first operation?
GT: Funny thing, you know, people say, ‘Oh you must have been terrified on the first’, and all that, but you didn’t. You took it as a matter of that was your job to do that and you just got in an aeroplane and did it.
AM: Yeah.
GT: So, there was no fantastic, you know, ‘Oh dear, here we go’. or anything like that. So that’s that started. Is it? What’s the first one.
AM: Emmerich. Stuttgart.
GT: No. That can’t be the first one.
AM: Is that not the first one. Where am I looking?
[pause]
AM: Yeah I think it is.
GT: Yes, that’s it. Operation. Emmerich.
AM: Yeah. Emmerich.
GT: Emmerich. Oh yes.
AM: Yeah.
GT: That’s right. Stuttgart.
AM: To Stuttgart.
GT: Yeah.
AM: And then quite quickly after that. So we’re in October.
GT: Operations. Yeah.
AM: Yeah, we’re in October ’44.
GT: Yeah.
AM: You went to Essen.
GT: Essen, yes.
AM: For your second one.
GT: Yeah.
AM: Sighted vertical rockets.
GT: That can’t be the first one, can it?
AM: No, that looks like the second or third one.
GT: Circuits and landings. [pause] Just general flying, cross country bombing. Emmerich, yeah. And that there’s — what date is that? 4th of the 10th ‘44.
AM: Yeah.
GT: To Emmerich.
AM: Yeah. So those are your first ones to Emmerich.
GT: Emmerich, yeah.
AM: And then to Essen.
GT: No, Stuttgart isn’t it?
AM: Stuttgart. Sorry.
GT: Yeah.
AM: And then Essen.
GT: Yeah.
AM: And I’m looking at what you’ve written in here, sighted vertical rockets. So, I don’t know what that would have been.
GT: Well that’s the V1s, you know.
AM: Oh right.
GT: The ones that went straight up and down on to London.
AM: Right.
GT: ’Cause we had to say exactly where we saw them, so they could bomb them out. Stuttgart. Fighter, air to air firing, Essen. Well, that’s Essen there.
AM: Yeah.
GT: Oh yeah. Emmerich. I’m getting the two mixed up.
AM: Ah right.
GT: Cologne.
AM: Flak damage.
GT: Three times to Cologne, Cologne, and flak damage on that one.
AM: What can you remember about the actual flights then? What was it like?
GT: Like flying an aeroplane. Honestly.
AM: Yeah.
GT: You know, you’re doing a job.
AM: What’s it like when you get the flak and —
GT: You get the Yanks, ‘Hey boys, look at this. Hey boys, look at that’. There was none of that. We would fly in an aeroplane, fly, you know, to keep it in the air. And that was a job to do and you were doing it.
AM: And you did it.
GT: No, I never remember any of the Yankee films at all or any of them. So, you know, that was, that was the run of the, you’d been trained for it and so you did it. I think that’s probably what, why we got through it. Because we were trained ready for it and didn’t do the, ‘Hi boys. Hi’ this and ‘hi’ that.
AM: You just went and did it.
GT: Yeah, that’s right. So, Cologne, Cologne. I’ve got some pictures somewhere of Cologne Bridge over the river.
AM: We’ll have to see if we can find them after. And then we’ve got Dusseldorf.
GT: Dusseldorf, yeah.
AM: Bochum.
GT: Bochum, yeah, all of them straightforward.
AM: Yeah. More flak damage at Dortmund.
GT: Dortmund, yeah.
AM: And then when you went to the, I don’t know how you pronounce it. [unclear]
GT: [unclear] yeah.
AM: You were diverted back to Waterbeach. Why would that have been then? ‘Cause then you diverted to Waterbeach and then you flew from Waterbeach back to your base.
GT: Ah, that’s where we landed. We’d been on the [unclear], coming back. I think there was fog in there or something so we had to divert to Waterbeach.
AM: Would they have had the FIDO? That FIDO landing stuff then if it was foggy?
GT: No, they had that at Scampton, didn’t they? Not Scampton, the airport near Scampton.
AM: I can’t remember.
GT: The big one where the AWACS was stationed, yeah. Trouble is Waterbeach. That was just Waterbeach just for a landing.
AM: Right.
GT: Probably fog. Fog or something like that.
AM: Ok.
GT: And Freiburg, yeah, that was the next one. Seven hours, thirteen flying.
AM: Hang on. Two pages.
GT: Yeah, Merseburg, oil plant, bombed that and that was an eight hour flight. That’s a long flight then. Scampton to base because we, once again, fog. Fog was a devil in those days. You know, the old smoke about and London used to black out, didn’t it? So, we got diverted there to Scampton to base, to Scampton, then went back to base.
AM: Then back to base.
GT: Yeah, and Essen. That was a hot spot that was.
AM: In what way? What do you mean by hotspot?
GT: Well, all the factories for armaments were built there, Ludwigshaven. That’s another one, yeah. Fighter combat, oh yeah. That was a JU88. We got caught out with them but that didn’t last long.
AM: Did your, did your gunners actually shoot at, fire at them?
GT: Oh yes, they had several goes, they were chuffed if they could get a shot. But in the air, things like that were - pfft - and that’s all over. So you don’t get big, once again, like the Yanks, ‘Hey boys, look at that one right there’, [laughs] so, anyway.
AM: Because they were flitting about. They were faster than you I guess. Aren’t they?
GT: Well they used to fly in formation. We didn’t, we just, you know, we were at the point where we were going along and —‘Look out’, That was your old man, ‘Look out there’s another one’, ‘Another one’. ‘Cause that’s pitch black, no lights or anything. And there never was a thousand bombers in the air. They used to say a thousand bomber raid, but there’s around, sort of, about eighteen and eight. Thousand, yeah, about eight hundred.
GR: Yeah.
GT: At that time, but with, we’ll say London Airport now, if that has two or three aircraft at the same time, there’s all hell let loose. But with eight hundred of you doing this.
AM: All in between each other.
GT: Yeah. Look out, up and down.
AM: Did you have any near misses?
GT: Oh many, many, yeah, same with on the targets. There was no, ‘you go in first’, ‘You go in’, ‘Come on, so and so. You go in’. That was a case everyone for themselves. So you’ve got to say you were bombing up, down, around. So, there was bombs coming down over your wings. And one night, there was a whole stick of bombs come right across ours, missed our aircraft. It’s luck as well as the skill, you know. And anyway, we got through that. Where have we got to now?
AM: You had a Munchengladbach. Oh, hang on. Before that one. Stettin Harbour.
GT: Oh, Stettin Harbour yeah. Is that the —
AM: It looks like you landed in Scotland.
GT: Oh this, yeah. That was the panic one, when everything in this country was covered in fog, so, we had to land. The only place we could get was in [pause], what’s the name of the big aircraft.
AM: Crail is it?
GT: No, that was where we ended up.
AM: Oh right.
GT: We shouldn’t have gone there. But anyway, diverted to up North, by the time we got up North we were running short of fuel and couldn’t find the station because of the fog, so we were cruising around. Now, I think that’s the biggest scare we had there because —
GR: What date was that Gordon?
AM: December ’44.
GR: Yeah. That was quite an infamous raid where Bomber Command should not have gone out that night.
GT: Yes.
GR: Because of the weather.
GT: Yes.
GR: They knew. They thought the weather would turn.
GT: Yeah.
GR: And I think, if I’m right, Bomber Command actually lost about fifty or sixty aircraft.
GT: Yes.
GR: Due to the weather conditions.
GT: Yeah, yeah.
GR: And the fog and having to crash land.
GT: Yes. Well when we landed in this, or when we arrived in this country, you couldn’t see a thing, just a blanket of fog. So, we got this diversion to, oh, the number one aircraft in Scotland. What’s the name of it?
AM: No. You’ve got me. I can’t remember.
GT: You expect me to remember all this and you can’t remember one [laughs]
AM: It says Crail because then you had to fly back from Crail to base.
GT: To get, yeah.
AM: It says Crail in Scotland.
GT: Yeah, that was right. But that isn’t where we were going.
AM: Right.
GR: Lossiemouth.
GT: Lossiemouth, isn’t it?
AM: Yeah.
GT: Yeah. That’s where we were going, yeah.
AM: Well done.
GT: That’s what I was trying to think of, yeah. We were supposed to be going to Lossiemouth and had just enough to land there. Well, we’ve got to find Lossiemouth for a start, but I’ll always remember we were going along and we got the whole crew on looking out, because it wasn’t too good then, the visibility, and I was sort of looking out the side and making sure. Where are we? And the navigator was panicking, he couldn’t get a fix on it. Anyway I was going along it, the Highlands, you know, to go up to Lossiemouth and I thought, I don’t know, I’m sure there shouldn’t be sheep under a tree [laughs] so panic stakes. I think we’re a bit low. So, anyway, we missed them and we were hunting high and low, that was really locked in then, so we were getting low on fuel as well. So we said, well there’s only one thing, set her out east, last bit of land we see, panic, down, you know. Leave it, let us look after ourselves, but it was just coming to the coast and there was a pundit light in the sky, through the fog, you know. A pundit light. Every aircraft has a pundit light. And, of course I don’t know who saw it first, one of us did, so we said, ‘Don’t let that go, keep on’. So, went around the pundit light and that’s all you could see. We’d come down and we could hear someone say something about, ‘One thousand. One thousand’, well, one thousand, so, they were trying to tell us there was a thousand feet runway, or yard, runway.
GR: Yeah.
GT: And that was, you know, we couldn’t get it in there, we couldn’t get head nor tail of what they were trying to tell us. So, we were round and round and the pundit light must be here somewhere and saw a runway, dumped in the runway, stopped dead, and just sat there, in fog, waiting for somebody or something to happen. The WingCo came out, ‘Hi boys what are you doing here?’ Well we landed, well as you know, that’s a flight, an RAF station built for the aircrew, Air Force. The —what do you call them? For the small fighter aircraft.
GR: Oh, a fighter base.
AM: A fighter.
GT: Yeah, well for aircraft. Air, Air base.
GR: Yeah.
GT: To be landing on aircraft and things like that, and this Crail was a place that used to train for that.
GR: Right.
GT: So it went straight out over the sea, and when they land, that was like landing on an aircraft carrier.
AM: Oh right.
GR: Yeah.
GT: So anyway, he said, ‘You’re on an aircraft carrier’.
GR: No, a training, so —
GT: That was just training flight.
AM: A training flight.
GR: But it was the length of an aircraft carrier.
GT: Right.
GR: So it was practicing short landings.
GT: Yeah, even then the fog had got so thick, you just couldn’t move.
GR: No.
GT: And anyway, they said, ‘Leave the aircraft where you are’, that was in the middle of the runway, but the runway, ‘We’re doing some repairs on it and it’s out of action at the moment’, so that was a bit rough. So anyway, they took us off to see if they could find some, this was the middle of the night, well early morning, so everyone was in bed and they couldn’t find anywhere to leave us and then we were sort of [pause], ‘Is it daylight yet?’ And I know, we all sort of got fed up with walking around, and got there and I went in the hangar, well we were in the hangar, actually, and there was a concrete verge in this hangar, and I thought, I’d got my big coat there, I know where I’m going to sleep tonight. I went and laid in the hangar and went off. I don’t know where the others. Well, sort of went here, there and everywhere. But there was no one about. That was Christmas, so they’d all gone. And that’s where we spent the night. Well from there —
GR: Do you know what happened to the rest of the squadron that night? Did they all go to different bases and —
GT: Well, they all went to different bases.
GR: Yeah.
GT: And some didn’t make it, I suppose.
GR: Yeah.
GT: And [pause] where are we up to?
AM: Yeah. When you, when you flew back from Crail to your base, it was actually on Christmas Day.
GT: That’s right.
AM: Yeah, 25th of December.
GT: Yeah.
AM: 1944.
GT: Yeah. Yes, I remember that, and being a Lancaster on a air, on a sea based runway.
GR: Air base, yeah.
GT: That was quite a thing to have, you know. All there, they all wanted to see our Lancaster and everything like that, then we got, time, they’d done the holes in the runway and it was time, as you say, it was Christmas Day and so, yeah, it was enough to get back home now. Home was Kirmington and they’d put us down as missing, you know, lost, but anyway we set back for there. They gave us some petrol and you know, cheerio, get off home, seat. And so, when we left there, the big boys together, you know. They’d been, they were talking to us and saying, oh what a big aircraft, all like that, everybody there was interested in the Lancaster, they’d never seen one before. So we went, took off, and we decided, well, I suppose we did decide to give them a shoot up on the air base. These are the things that go in your mind. And of course we give them a —
GR: Flypast.
AM: A flypast.
GT: Yeah, yeah.
GR: Waggle the wings.
AM: Waggle, yeah.
GT: And that was a great thing in those days, and they was chuffed as hell about that. So that’s when we got back home there.
AM: So, yeah. An hour and twenty minutes to get back.
GT: Yeah, and we knew where we were going then.
AM: And still in December, you’ve Münchengladbach, an abortive one because of engine failure.
GT: Yes, we had three engines and one was a bit dodgy at that, so we came back, and I think that’s the one we dropped the bombs in The Wash. Here.
AM: Yeah.
GT: ’Cause, well we couldn’t land with them on, so we landed and so we dropped them there and come home, abortive. So we didn’t do that one, did we?
AM: No, that don’t count does it?
GT: No.
AM: Dotted line for that one.
GT: Yeah.
AM: Instead of a proper line.
GT: Yeah.
AM: Scholven/Buer oil plants and range bombing.
GT: Who?
AM: Scholven/Buer. It’s near Gelsenkirchen.
GT: Oh yeah, yeah, oil plants, yeah, I’ve passed there. I can’t name it either.
AM: No, there’s so many.
GT: Nuremberg.
AM: Yes, that’s another.
GT: So, in January ’45 now.
AM: All these are in the Ruhr.
GT: Yeah.
GT: Where people say they did these trips but a lot of them were all little places, Freiburg and places like that where, you know, anybody could have gone in and bombed them.
GT: Yeah.
GT: But the ones with the red, they’re all in the Ruhr. Armament businesses, you know.
AM: Yeah, yeah. They’re all again —
GT: Mind you —
AM: Ludwigshafen.
GT: Ludwigshafen yeah.
AM: Wiesbaden.
GT: Yeah.
AM: Dresden.
GT: Dresden, yeah.
AM: That’s your furthest one, nine hours thirty.
GT: Yeah, Dresden, Dresden, Dresden.
AM: That was the one that caused all the trouble wasn’t it?
GT: Oh yes, yes. I knew there was something about it, yeah, that’s right.
AM: Did you, did you know anything about the trouble it was causing at the time? Or was it only afterwards.
GT: We knew it was a pottery place, you know, it was a marvellous for pottery, Dresden pottery was the thing. But there were still armaments there, there was still people there that worked in the armistry business, that was done for a purpose. No one will ever know who did it, Churchill or what, but yeah, we did the snags there, yeah. Where have we got to?
AM: That was, so that was February 45.
GT: Yeah.
AM: Chemnitz.
GT: Chemnitz.
AM: Jet aircraft sighted.
GT: Oh that was the first jet aircraft we’d seen, yeah, ‘cause they got it before we did, and this thing attacked us but the thing was, that it was so fast that they couldn’t keep long enough to do any damage. ‘Cause that’s – pffffftt - you know.
AM: Yeah.
GT: It was panic stakes then, but that’s, there was nothing dangerous about it. Well they could have been if they had been able to control it.
AM: I’m just looking at this one just before it where, Politz near Stettin.
GT: Stettin.
AM: And it says collision.
GT: Ah.
AM: With cables.
GT: Ah, now, that’s the one.
AM: An aircraft severely damaged. Tell me about that one.
GT: Where did we go from there? Did I have a piece of paper on the back here?
AM: Oh, is it the one where your pilot was —
GT: Yes, yes the —
AM: I’ve seen.
GT: Which ones there. That’s the general one they sent out to all of us with the aircrew thing itself.
AM: What actually happened?
GT: Well. If I can find this one. [pause] Must be the other, is there?
AM: That’s your school one.
GT: Oh, I’ll put that —
AM: Looking at this one though, the one about your pilot.
GT: Yeah.
AM: So it was the 8th, the night of the 8th and 9th of February ’45.
GT: Yeah [pause] it’s here somewhere. Oh here it is. That’s where he [pause]
GR: I think it’s this one, it tells you it’s when you took off, this particular one, on taking off you became airborne and your aircraft got caught in the slipstream of another aircraft.
GT: That’s it. That’s it, yeah.
GR: Which made it temporarily uncontrollable.
GT: Is that the actual citation?
GR: Yeah, and then having the misfortune to strike high tension cables.
GT: Ah, I took over with my start, didn’t I?
AM: Can you remember what it, what it felt like when that happened?
GT: Yeah. Well that’s what we’re sort of getting around to, isn’t it?
GR: It is that. Book, it’s that. Yeah. And I think that’s detailing.
GT: Yes, yeah, the original one.
AM: It doesn’t matter because this tells us the story.
GT: Yeah.
AM: So you were caught in the slipstream of another aircraft.
GT: Yes.
AM: And became temporarily out of control.
GT: Yes.
AM: Having the misfortune to strike the high tension cable that broke but Flight Lieutenant Nicklin, so he’s flight lieutenant by this time.
GT: Yes.
AM: By superb handing of his aircraft regained control.
GT: That’s the usual bumph isn’t it, yeah.
AM: But your major navigational aid was completely unserviceable.
GT: Yeah, yeah.
AM: But you did still go to the target.
GT: Yes, now, what happened, it was raining and bad weather that night, been abortive three times and the third time, you know, you sit on the end of the runway, waiting to take off and there’s a chap in the caravan at the end gives you a green or a red, you know. A green is get out of it [laughs], so three times that was a red, go back to the station. to the dispersion, and the third time it was another blooming raining day. Well I was getting a bit fed up of sitting there a couple of hours each time, another raining day, and — green. Green. Eh? In this? So anyway we took off, I think there was about twelve aircraft took off on that, and in Lincolnshire, the orders were keep low, hedge hop. Because radar shines like that from Germany, and they knew exactly when you were taking off, you know [pause] the depot. So, anyway, if you keep low, they couldn’t get this radar on you. Well, we took off in a big stream, we were too low, so we hedge hopped to over the Lincolnshire coast and normally, you know, just a hedge hop trip. We got a bit too low and Lincolnshire is covered in blinking high tension cables, the big old pylons and big lines. Well, anyway, I’m going forward a bit now, but let’s come back, nicely going along, you know, bad weather, we sort of couldn’t really see anything using the navigation and what not, and all of a sudden, there’s a terrific crash and all the windows turned green. You couldn’t see through them. That was the electricity going through.
GR: Oh God. Yeah.
GT: The aircraft, and there was a hell of a bang, but, ‘What the hell’s that?’, ‘What was that, gunner?’ you know, the rear gunner, and he said, ‘Well there’s some high tension cables all flashing on the ground behind me’. Of course, that was, we’d gone right through. Luckily the middle of the pylons, the actual, the actual wires themselves. Had we have been either way a little bit, you know how the big old pylons are.
GR: You’d have hit the pylon and —
GT: We’d have hit the pylon and we were chips. Well why we weren’t chips, I don’t know but we sort of shook our heads and the windscreens all cleared up. And we were looking trying to see what, the gunner was the chap who told us, you know, what was behind. It was all on fire on the ground. So we pressed on and the old aircraft was doing a bit of shuddering and the engines running, we were still flying, we had a little check-up on it. The fuel was still there, we hadn’t lost any fuel, and so we decided to carry on to, where was it? Was it Stettin?
AM: Politz.
GT: Politz.
AM: Near Stettin.
GT: Yeah, that was near Stettin that.
AM: Yeah.
GT: That’s mining, mining job, and as we got over the coast and went on the job, did the mining, come back. When we got back on the ground and looked at it, there were all the propellers were sort of knocked back, they were all out of line in other words. Not to that degree but, and the engine coolers, which you put them up and down to cool the engines.
GR: Yeah.
GT: And they’re the lowest things on the aircraft, and all those were missing, and the radar. That was, what this was, the aircraft with the radar on the bottom, they used to have a turret at the bottom, then they did away with the turret and made that radar. So that was a piece at the bottom.
GR: Yeah.
GT: That was gone, missing all together. I think all the bits are in there.
AM: Yeah.
GT: But that didn’t look too good in other words, and had we have known or been able to get out and see, ‘No, we’re not going anywhere with that’. But we did, we got there and got back again and that was what all the hoo-hah was about.
GR: Yeah.
GT: So —
AM: So your pilot was recommended for an immediate DFC.
GT: Yeah, yeah, even though it was his fault we hit them [laughs]
AM: And that, and it was quite a long, it was a long flight. It was eight hours thirty.
GT: Oh yes, yeah.
AM: Yeah, and that was, and that, so by February ’45, then you did Dresden and Chemnitz.
GT: Yeah.
AM: And at that point you’d completed your first.
GT: First.
AM: Tour.
GT: Yeah.
AM: Your first thirty ops.
GT: Which, boys together, they send you home for six weeks, a rest, but when you come back, you join another crew, or get crewed up again and get another aircraft and like that. But we all sort of said, well, we’ve all stuck together, a nice little pile of us, you see, so we said we’d carry straight on which you’ll find —
AM: You did.
GT: Yeah.
AM: Because your thirtieth was on the 14th of February.
GT: That’s right.
AM: And then, by the 1st of March.
GT: Yeah.
AM: You were up again.
GT: Yeah, yeah. That’s right. So we did the second tour straight away instead of waiting, I think that was six weeks, when you broke up and then had another crew.
AM: And he’s got a DFC by his name, in your logbook now, look.
GT: Oh yes. Yes, yeah.
AM: So you went to Mannheim.
GT: Mannheim, yeah.
AM: Dessau.
GT: Dessau, yeah.
AM: And that —
GT: They were all Ruhr ones.
AM: Yeah, that’s where you saw the Junkers JU88 again.
GT: Yes, yeah.
AM: And your very last one was Dortmund.
GT: That’s right, yeah, Dortmund.
AM: Flak damage.
GT: Yeah.
AM: So that was the 12th of March.
GT: Yeah.
AM: Yeah. So, thirty six operations altogether.
GT: Yeah.
AM: So then when war finished then, you were telling me about, you were still at Kirmington, but no one knew you were there.
GT: Oh, when, when the war finished, yeah. All the aircraft had to go back, you know, it was storage and what not, and we’d finished operations then, so our aircraft was redundant anyway, so they took that off us. Then the pilot who went back to New Zealand, and we sort of broke up then but we was, there was three, was it three or four? Three, I think it was, engineers, somehow or other, we got forgotten about and we were living in the NAAFI, in sort of luxury [laughs] and anything they wanted to do on the aircraft, we got aircraft, we got lorries coming in. We want three loads of so and so from the so and so area, we organised that, put them on. Somehow, we got we were the only aircrew, or the only airmen there to control the whole aircraft, the whole airfield.
GT: Yeah. Where were we?
AM: So, you were at Kirmington, holed up in the NAAFI in luxury.
GT: Yeah, yeah. We were in charge of the whole, you know, in charge and we were there to break the whole, to close the whole thing down. Lorries used to come in, wWe used to say, ‘You want a thousand blankets in this lorry’, and want this and that. No, I shan’t tell you what we did with the other blankets [laughs] but we hadn’t got enough to fill a lorry so we cut them in half, ‘course the villages, they were having a whale of a time. They were taking blankets and electrical bits, and bits out of this and bits out of that. So, anyway, that’s, they decided, oh where did you come from, and that’s when we got diverted to, sent to Scampton, on this 617. Is it?
AM: Yeah, 617.
GT: Yeah, and that’s where we dropped the Dambusters two.
AM: So, I know you’ve told me a little about that before but tell me again. Where did you drop them?
GT: Out to the Irish Sea. The other side of Ireland, on the Irish Sea.
AM: And it was the remainder of the bombs from the Dams raid.
GT: That was the last two that was bleeding in the, in the bomb dump and they wanted to get rid of them.
AM: Right.
GT: Quickly.
AM: So these were the bouncing bombs.
GT: Yeah.
AM: Did they bounce when you dropped them then?
GT: Didn’t see that part [laughs], I know they went off.
AM: No, when you dropped the last two I mean.
GT: Yeah, that’s what I mean. We just dropped them dead, just to get rid of them and that’s when the whole sea, actually didn’t see them hit the sea but the whole sea was – zzzzzz - for miles around.
AM: Gosh, and you were telling me a little bit about when you met your wife.
GT: Well I met her in the RAF. Her father was the farmer there and he had a dairy farm, and, well there was the dog. That’s right.
AM: Oh the d —
GT: She loved dogs.
AM: Right.
GT: And I used to go up to breakfast every morning and she’d be delivering the milk, and that was all. She was always after the dog. So, you know, I know all about him and we got to stop and talking and the next thing, I was having boiled beef and carrots at the farm. And all through the do I was on, she lived, her bedroom, you could see right across the runway, all the dispersals and she used to, at night time, this was when things got serious, and at night time, she would watch all the aircraft come in and go to dispersal and those that didn’t come in, you know, they were the chops. And so she never used to go to bed at night time ‘til she’d seen our aircraft in the dispersal. In the —
AM: Come back.
GT: Yeah. So that’s, that was the thing but nothing serious until, until I finished operations and then we got married at Kirmington Church, which is the local church, which is —
AM: I can see your wedding picture there.
GT: That’s one, yeah, there’s one of the church there somewhere.
AM: So when did you, when were you finally demobbed. I’m just trying to find it here in your logbook.
GT: Now I wouldn’t have been demobbed. They tried their hardest to keep me in the RAF because I was doing quite a good job then at Scampton, not Scampton, Binbrook, and they wanted me to stop in the RAF. They promised me all sorts of things, I was going to get a PO and you know, pilot officer and that, and then you’d go this and train people to do that and what not. But the firm that I’d left to go there said, ‘We want you back and we’ve got, we made, there was six houses at Guardian Road for you to come back to’, because they knew I’d got married then, and our first child, after that was over and so, you know, ‘What are you going to do? We can’t keep this empty for a long while. And, when are you coming back? And are you coming back?’ The RAF were saying, ‘You’re a key man in Binbrook. Stop in here, you’ll be, you know, God almighty and go all over the world’. Well, married and one child on the way then, we decided that roaming around the world, I’d done enough of it, so packed up the RAF went back to my old job.
AM: Right.
GR: And that was round about July 1947.
AM: ‘47.
GT: ‘47 was it?
GR: Yeah.
GT: And that was on Guardian Road.
AM: So it was more than two years after the war finished though.
GT: Yeah. Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
AM: Any regrets? Are you glad you did that?
GT: Yes, very glad we did it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, alright it’s a glamourous job in the civilian RAF but that isn’t like making a life for yourself, is it? Just a glamourous thing to be, travel the world and not knowing where your head is going to rest next time. So there’s pros and cons for either way, but my main thought then, was family life, settle down, do my job that I know I do and carry on from there. So we accepted the house and that’s where I was for about twenty one years.
AM: And you were still only about twenty two then.
GT: Yes. I was.
AM: Twenty two then. Twenty two or twenty three.
GT: Yes. I suppose I was.
AM: It’s amazing isn’t it?
GT: Yeah. From there I had [pause], what was it? I started at Harry Pointers, they put me on to Pointer contractors, then I got on the Pointer Plant Hire, and then they sold out to Readymix and Readymix kept the plant hires for a while and then they come to, well, they got a little gang of us together in the plant hire and, ‘Look, we’re selling out. We don’t want plant hire’. They wanted gold out of the ground, gravel and stuff like that.
AM: Yeah.
GT: And they’d sell for business and what not, so they didn’t want plant hire at all, so they said, ‘We’ll set you up, and if five of you will get the, all the five various, you know, the plant hire’, well there’s several different sections of it, ‘and the five of you will be directors. We’ll give you the’, aircraft, the aircraft, the cranes, the big old cranes and, you know, ‘You can take the company from us’. Well, they give us a very good deal and because the house was mortgaged and everything else and fingers crossed, but luckily that came out all right. So that’s when we turned into Quinto. Crane and plant.
AM: That what I’m looking at.
GT: That was five of us.
AM: Quinto crane and plant limited. Gordon Topham, Engineering Director.
GT: That’s right. Yeah.
AM: And on that note, I’m going to switch my recorder off.
GT: Good.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Gordon Topham
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-18
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ATophamG151018
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:00:02 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Gordon Topham was born in Salisbury, but his family settled in Norwich, Norfolk and he joined the Royal Air Force at the age of 17, qualifying as a flight engineer in July 1944. Gordon’s father used to drive steam wagons and was involved with tarmacking roads - Gordon went into working with machinery, thus aspiring for a flight engineer role. Upon completion of his wireless operator training at RAF Bridlington, he was transferred to a heavy conversion unit then moved to RAF Lindholme - where he flew Halifaxes – and then to RAF Hemswell, for conversion to Lancasters. Gordon tells of his experience on his various operations, including Stuttgart, Essen, Emmerich and Freiburg, bombing oil plants, munitions factories, sustaining anti-aircraft fire damage and his encounter with a Junkers Ju 88 fighter. Whilst on an operation to Essen, he and Pilot Office Nicklin spotted a V-1 site and reported its position so it can be attacked. He also tells of landing in fog, either at his home or diverted to others including Crail in Scotland. Describes its runway out over the sea, as to simulate landing on an aircraft carrier. Gordon also talks of the time they had to fly at low altitude because of German radar - he and his pilot were ordered to hedge hop over the Lincolnshire coast when they hit high-voltage power lines. They had not lost fuel so they carried on to their target, Politz, near Stettin. He also tells of the damage to his aircraft on the return leg. After the war Gordon returned to his company after marrying. Later he became the engineering director at Quinto Crane and Plant Limited.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincolnshire
Scotland--Fife
Scotland--Crail
Germany
Germany--Essen
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Emmerich
Germany--Freiburg im Breisgau
Poland
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb dump
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bouncing bomb
flight engineer
Halifax
incendiary device
Ju 88
Lancaster
pilot
RAF Bridlington
RAF Hemswell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Scampton
RAF St Athan
training
V-1
V-weapon
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/576/8845/AGoughH150922.2.mp3
c57cda680fc05053c4ed864f4febb674
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Gough, Harry
H Gough
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gough, H
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Harry Gough (1925 - 2016, 1590911 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 10 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok so it’s Tuesday 22nd September 2015 and we are in Tingly near Wakefield and this is Annie Moody for the International Bomber Command Centre and I’m talking today to
HG: Harry Gough.
AM: Harry Gough. So if you would Harry would you just tell me a little bit about your childhood, and where you were born and what your parents did.
HG: I was born in Dewsbury, er Dewsbury Moor actually. My father at that time was er worked in the steel industry at Click Heaton up to me being probably six or seven and then he er decided to leave that and er go into the licensing trade being er, what is it, er steward at a working men’s club that would be when I was six or seven er.
AM: What was it like being a child working in a, er living near a working men’s club then, where you living there in it?
HG: No no we lived away from it
AM: Oh, Oh
HG: But er at that time, funnily enough we were only on about this a few days ago er the way families were brought up, I think it was when Victor was up er, I was the youngest of seven and the house we had a small terraced house (pause) you couldn’t say it was a one up and one down but that’s basically what it was one large bedroom and a small one at the top of the landing so that was the earliest I remember being there er.
AM: What about the bathroom and toilet, where were they?
HG: Oh no bathroom (laughs) there there were sink in the corner
AM: And a tin bath
HG: Tin bath yeah and a toilet way up the yard and er you prayed every day that it didn’t you didn’t have heavy rain (laughs) er but we moved into a council house at that time when I was seven and er there again seven of us and it was a three bedroomed council house you know people just wouldn’t have that today would they and er from there er went to the local school, broke my leg playing football er recovered from that and we moved into a public house then in Dewsbury the Great (unclear) Hotel in Dewsbury and we were there for two years transferred our interest to Leeds another pub, another two years, or less than two years, back to Morley (unclear) Morley and that another pub eventually er and that when my schooling finished that would be 1939
AM: So how old were you then?
HG: Fourteen
AM: Fourteen
HG: My eldest my second eldest brother he worked in the textiles and he had to work at Putsey and he had to go by bike from Morley to Putsey on the night shift his wage was twenty six bob a week so he’d had enough of that and he volunteered for the army me being the stupid lad, oh no I’m not stupid, er if he was having action I wanted it as well so I wanted to go in the boys army along with him er, my father agreed to it but er mother said no you’re not and that was the end of that up to er 41 and er I joined the air training corps local squadron at Morley and er in there until volunteering for the air force in 43 and er eventually accepted and I did the er air crew assessment at Doncaster and er they were full up with pilots and full up with navigators
AM: Everybody wanted to be a pilot
HG: (Laughs) that’s right (laughs) right well if you got to be a gunnery course that’s it well I wanted to fly anyway so it was August 43 when I eventually went and er signed on down at Lords cricket ground, lad at 18 years old and going to London you know, never been out of his home town I don’t think, occasional holiday but not many of those I kind of remember going on holiday with my parents more than once
AM: How did you get to London then did you go on the train?
HG: Train yeah yeah, I suppose you get on the train and follow the crowd (laughs) er when we were there our initial signing and initial whatever it is medicals and er up to er for a fortnight to three weeks and then back up into Yorkshire to Bridlington
AM: So in that three weeks what were you doing?
HG: er getting kitted out
AM: What sort of things?
HG: Medicals er several injections whatever they call them er but er my sister was stationed in London at the time she was in the WAFS and er we met up a few times at er I think it was just routine things er drills whatever marching to the London zoo for meals and er yeah and I met up with a gunner we met on the first day we were there
AM: What was he called?
HG: Bill Field from Chester we were about the same age and er we were together right the way through to finishing flying
AM: Really
HG: We did a gunnery course did our basic training in Bridlington over to Belfast or near Belfast for gunnery school
AM: What was the gunnery school like what sort of things were you doing there did you have to strip em and put em back together and all that sort of stuff
HG: No no you had to do theory work on the guns but er mainly it was er rifle shooting for the clay pigeon shooting er then up in the Avro Ansons for air to air gunnery
AM: So when you say air to air what were you shooting at
HG: A draw yeah there’d be another Emerson dragging a draw if you were lucky he ate it (laughs)
AM: Did you
HG: Well I got a percentage of it whether that’s true or not I don’t know I think they just put this percentage out to get you through and make sure you had a rear gunner or something.
AM: Mmm
HG: But er that was I finished there New Year’s Eve we left New Year’s Eve in 43 that was it so from August I’d done all the basic training air gunnery training and passed out as a Sergeant air gunner before I was nineteen
AM: Blimey
HG: When you think about that you know think about that lady how stupid can it be but er it wasn’t just me everybody was on it er and after a short period at home then oh we finished up in Scotland on New Year’s Eve at Stranraer bit frightening (laughs) as an eighteen year old a bit frightening
AM: Laughs
HG: But er nevertheless we caught the train early morning and er early morning made our way home. After a few days at home up to er Kinross forest in Kinross in Scotland
AM: Scotland again
HG: That was for er crewing up and er operational training
AM: So how did the crewing up go cos’ you’d already got your mate with you
HG: Yes we stuck together all the time did Bill and I and er I don’t remember er well
AM: Who chose who?
HG: (Pause) I think the pilot chose us (laughs) why he did I don’t know er
AM: Maybe he could see there were two mates together and he wanted…
HG: Yes I think that had a lot to do with it we’d been together as pals and Harry Harrison the pilot er then he’d already met the er navigator Johnny Hall from Bradford from there we all got together Scottish wireless operator Cockney lad for a flight engineer and er I don’t remember where he come from South Midlands somewhere… Leicester and er how long did that last probably January late February early March
AM: So that’s where you flew together as a crew then
HG: Crew yes flying Whitley’s doing all the basic things turning dinghy’s over in the bath (laughs) when you can’t swim it’s er a bit of a nightmare but we got through it er
AM: Why turning dinghy’s over in the bath, in case you got shot down
HG: Yeah in case you got shot down
AM: Or crash landed in the sea
HG: Yeah yeah and er flying Whitley’s er the flying coffin some of the cross countries that we did six hours in the rear turret of a Whitley not very nice but it was enjoyable because that’s what I wanted to do er from there we went to er Marston Moor er heavy conversion unit flying the Halifax Mk 2.
AM: Right
HG: Which you don’t get to know until later that was the worst period of your service flying in a Halifax Mk 2 you were safer flying in the Mk 3 and 4 going on operations
AM: Why was that?
HG: They were very unreliable er basically because of the engine I think er and the tail unit the tail unit of the Halifax changed a great deal and they put revised engines in then and they were a much sounder aircraft
AM: Right
HG: But er we didn’t get none (unclear) you were in a death trap really (laughs) but er we got through that and we floated about then in Yorkshire for some reason (unclear) and Maltby, Driffield just for nightly stays and things like until we got posted to a squadron which was Melbourne ten squadron
AM: And there was ten squadron
HG: Mmm from there well
AM: What was your first operation like then
HG: What was it like
AM: Well can you just, I can’t imagine how it must of felt
HG: (Pause)
AM: I bet you can’t remember (laughs)
HG: No I can’t remember, no I can’t remember (pause)
AM: Bacon and eggs
HG: (Laughs) oh aye coming back to bacon and eggs that’s what that’s what you looked forward to but never when they all went out on operations did I ever think that I wouldn’t get back never never entered my head that I would never get back
AM: Did you have any close shaves
HG: (Pause) I suppose there were one or two where er the fighters were about but er in the main there were I think the biggest (unclear) were the night operations which you know they were a bit backwards at coming forwards at coming up in the dark they’d wait till the Yanks went over in the day light and have a go at them
AM: Have a go at them
HG: But er anti-aircraft fire unnerving but even then never entered my head that er I wouldn’t get back
AM: And you were right
HG: Mmm
AM: What was it like ‘cos you were the rear gunner so as you’re coming away bombs have been dropped?
HG: That’s right
AM: And you can see
HG: Yeah
AM: What’s, what’s happened
HG: Oh the in most cases the place was ablaze down below and er I suppose you think at the time oh great we’ve done a good job
AM: Yeah
HG: It isn’t until later days you know was it all that good you know what damage did we do I mean innocent people were killed but this is years later you think about this
AM: I was gonna say that because at the time you were doing it
HG: We were doing what we would been trained to do and er got satisfaction out of doing it as well but er pub visits at the night when you weren’t on operation a little bit naughty at times but er
AM: I’m gonna have to ask you, in what way naughty
HG: Well I don’t know it er probably drink more than what you should really
AM: You’re still only twenty by this time nineteen
HG: Nineteen yes I finished flying before I was twenty so I were only well at that time you were what you called kids at eighteen you weren’t adults at all you were classed as kiddies really
AM: Did you fly with the same crew all the way through
HG: Yes yes stuck together all the way through thirty three operations
AM: Thirty three, blimey, I can see we’ve got your log book is there anything
HG: Laughs
GR: Well your first operation was a daylight
HG: Yeah it was
GR: According to this yeah Macer Owen
HG: Taverni was it
GR: Yeah Macer Owen…and your last op was Christmas Eve (Laughs)
HG: Yeah yeah fly from the 23rd (unclear) the 24th
AM: And you said to me before about the fact that it was Christmas Eve and that was your last one
HG: Yeah
AM: About your mum and dad
HG: Yeah at the time it never struck me at all that it was any different to any other operation or you know you feel a sense of relief that the operations are over but it was only oh much later that I thought about these things. I don’t know what my parents were really thought about me being in the Air Force and what I was doing what it meant to them but what a Christmas box it must have been if that’s the way they thought about that I wasn’t in danger of being shot down or losing my life or whatever er after that particular time I never mentioned it to them in fact it was after they’d both passed I think my dad thought about it but er
AM: Yeah so what did you do after you finished your operations
HG: Oh dear I got kicked about and er
AM: (Laughs) did you do any training or TU stuff
HG: No I went into air traffic control actually
AM: Ahh
HG: Er when they finally got me settled down at Shawbury which was the number one flying training school was it, that’s where the (unclear) flew from when we went over the North Pole wing commander Mcclurough I think it was er I did a few months there I was there up to er VE day which was in May wasn’t it
AM: Mmm
HG: 45 and on VE day I travelled to Valley on the Isle of Anglesey and I was there until after VJ Day, (pause) VJ day what a night
AM: (Laughs)
HG: There was a black and tan drink then wasn’t there Guinness and beer black and tan
GR: That’s right yeah
AM: Mmm
HG: Still only twenty and I’m drinking black and tans I didn’t eat anything for four days (laughs)
AM: Laughs
GR: Laughs
HG: That’s when I learnt how to drive er air traffic control there was a (unclear) out there are you alright, yes I’m alright, never driven a van in my life (laughs) and there was some…how do I start this thing, (laughs) and away I went, but er bit precarious but er
AM: On a road or
HG: No no on the air field on the air field
AM: Just as well
HG: Yeah (laughs) well from the mess to the er traffic control and whatever to the end of the runway and back and things like that but er and from there not long after VJ Day I went back to Shawbury again well just how long I was there I can’t remember can’t remember and by this time I’d er already got my Flight Sergeant that was late 44 I got my Officer late 45 when I was still at Shawbury and then went to various places then just two or three days stopping at one near Warrington I can’t remember I can’t remember what place it was
AM: I wonder why, why were they moving you about like that?
HG: To find getting a posting you just couldn’t get (unclear) to come out I did want to come out anyway because I had the chance to come out on was it class B release or something because I worked in the textiles before I went in and there was no way that I’m going back into textiles after being in the air force and the excitement that I’d had or the life that I’d had and they kick you about a bit until er they get you a posting and I finally got a posting to er Austria just outside Vienna (Schwechat) but in the meantime for some reason that I don’t know why and I always thought it was a bit unfair you had to re-muster and you lost your seniority rank you were taken down from Warrant Officer back down to sergeant in rank but not in pay you still got your Warrant officers pay and it always hit me that er you know you’ve done this, you’ve volunteered for this, you’ve done your flying you’ve done your duty and everything that’s been asked of you and you’ve been fortunate enough to get through and then they demote you which didn’t seem fair to me at all, er but as I say the money was still there you were a Sergeant with a Warrant Officer’s pay and er went to Vienna (pause) mid July 46 July 46 that’s right er (pause) yeah and I enjoyed that er in air traffic control again er the surrounding area you were in the Russian border so you had to be very careful what you were doing but you were allowed out of camp and there was woodlands and through the woodlands you got to the er river what is it in Vienna come on Clarice what river is it in Vienna
AM: I can’t think I should know and I can’t it’s not erm
HG: I’ll be dammed
AM: No it’s gone I can’t remember
GR: Could be the Rhine
HG: No
GR: The Rhone
HG: No
AM: I can’t remember either
HG: Crazy isn’t it, crazy
AM: I’ll find it after, the river in Vienna anyway
HG: Yeah er out of camp and through this woodland I actually walked on the river it was that cold it was frozen over it was really really cold but er the camp that’s about itas much as I can remember about it other than we often visited Vienna itself not nightly but certainly two or three nights a week and really enjoyable and er the diesel in the truck that took us down would often freeze up so you were stuck there in the middle of the night (laughs) trying to keep warm
AM: Laughs
HG: But er I suppose the most that I remember about that there were three of us myself a Geordie lad ex air crew and a Scotch lad ex air crew and we got to like our drinks a little bit I always remember one afternoon we were drinking in the bar and we drunk that bar absolutely dry
AM: There’s a there’s a thread running through this story isn’t there (laughs)
HG: (Laughs) we drank that bar absolutely dry we finished up drinking port of all things and we sat in this bar and an electric light, (pause) can’t be a fire can’t that and it was and er the electrics in upstairs room had caught fire and er everybody had to bail out of course and this Scots lad he went absolutely berserk and we were just across from the er guard room and er the three of us were taken into the guard room and this guy was given morphine to quieten him down he was really really bad so that was almost the end of my service in Vienna we got kitted out and put in with the airmen for the rest of our stay there but er came back to er Blackpool and we were de-mobbed
AM: You were de-mobbed so you did leave in the end
HG: Yes
AM: What did you do afterwards, not textiles?
HG: Oh dear er I did for a very short period my brother worked in the textiles then my elder brother er and I batted it out (unclear) while the money lasted you know (laughs) er eventually I had to get a job so I went there and er oh I think three or four week I’m not sticking this (laughs) and er what did I do from there oh cigarette people Ardath cigarette people they had er they were based in Leeds and I met Gladys then well we’d known each other years but we got together then and er I was there for quite a while months not years months and then we got married February 48 wasn’t it
GH: Mmm
HG: And er these people kind as they are you know oh yes you can have a week off it’s your summer holiday that’s fine as long as I can have a week off we got married had the week off and went down to Kent on our honeymoon and came back and gave my notice in (laughs) they can’t do that to Harry and er from there I went into engineering in Bradford not a very happy time because I was working with people who’d been er what do they call when they weren’t called up
AM: Erm not (unclear) to subject as if they’d been in a reserved occupation
HG: Like a reserved occupation and you’re working with these guys and (unclear) so that didn’t last very long either (laughs) er and from then I went to the Gas Board
AM: Right
HG: In 49 and er that’s been my life I suppose ever since
AM: You stayed there ever since
HG: The Gas Board er finished and had a period with the water authority and I had one spell in between the Gas Board and the water what was that er what do they call it fibre glass moulds making moulds out of fibre glass and it was the summer of 49 I don’t know if you remember it and it was absolutely scorching I think it was 49 48 48 49
GH: There weren’t many in 48
AM: Late forties must’ve been 48
HG: Yeah around 48 49 really scorching and a perspex roof and you could see all this fibre glass
AM: I was gonna say dust I would imagine it’s
HG: Floating about I though oooh Harry (laughs) get out
AM: You don’t want that on your lungs
HG: That was enough of that so from there I went to an outside job with the water authority and thankfully was able to stay there
AM: Stay there ever since
HG: Until I retired
AM: and you know you said just just going back to the bombing bit for a minute you said that at the time what everybody’s said to me we had to do it that’s what we were there for you did it
HG: That’s right
AM: But later on you did start to think about
HG: Yes you did yes you did
AM: The women and children and what have you
HG: And I think what brought that to my mind more than anything was er Munich ‘cos they really did we never went to Munich but er they really did flatten Munich and there must’ve been thousands of innocent people that died because of that and er (pause) were we doing the right thing that’s the way I thought of it later but er but at the time yes that’s what you joined up for that’s what you volunteered for they want you to do it get it done
AM: And that was to bring the war to an end
HG: That’s right yeah
AM: Excellent, I’m going to switch off now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Harry Gough
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-22
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AGoughH150922
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:30:08 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Gough was born in Dewsbury, he finished school in 1939 aged fourteen, joined the Air Training Corps in 1941 and volunteered for the Air Force in 1943. He recounts his training as an air gunner and flying over the North Pole. After flying operations he was posted to Austria as an air traffic controller. He was demobbed and after the war he worked for the Gas Board and Water Authority.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Carron Moss
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Austria
Great Britain
Austria--Vienna
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Anglesey
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1941
1943
1944
1945
1946
10 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
crewing up
guard room
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Initial Training Wing
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
promotion
RAF Bridlington
RAF Kinloss
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Melbourne
RAF Shawbury
RAF Valley
training
Whitley
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/159/2504/AParkinsHW150612.2.mp3
a7b074df4b419b69687ccb1c168e6939
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Title
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Parkins, Harry
H W Parkins
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. Two oral history interviews with Harry Parkins (891679 Royal Air Force), his logbook, identity card and one photograph. Harry Parkins was a flight engineer with 630 Squadron and 576 Squadron and flew 30 night time and 17 daylight operations from RAF Fiskerton and RAF East Kirkby.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Harry Parkins and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-05
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DE: Harry, you were going to tell me the story of being shot at.
HP: Yes it was on the 21st of the 6th ‘44, we were on operations to Wessling, and we had twelve thousand pounds worth on bombs, we succeeded in doing that but on the way back I spotted what I thought was a plane coming towards us, I shouted to the gunners ‘cause [sic] they hadn’t seen it, and as it got nearer it started firing tracer bullets which was very frightening, and the gunners spotted it and shot at it and luckily they downed it, so we were able to get back home safely but I went down to see where the tracer bullet had gone in the aircraft to see if there was any serious damage, I couldn’t see any but when we landed the ground crew actually cried because there was seventeen holes in the plane and it didn’t fly again, a shame that was, and that took us four hours twenty minutes that trip.
DE: Where were you standing when you saw this aircraft attacking you?
HP: I was just standing by the seat that’s next to the pilot, where there’s a little dome, and standing in that dome you can see all the way round, and I always liked to look all the way round when I wasn’t checking the engines because, it was your job really to spot anything, and some of the frightening aspects of it is if the Perspex wasn’t cleaned very well, in the night time, incidentally that was a night time flight, in the night time if you saw a little speck of dirt that hadn’t been cleaned it could be a fighter coming after you, so we always wanted the ground crew to make sure the Perspex was always as clean as possible.
DE: So what did an incoming eighty-eight look like then?
HP: [slight laugh] it’s hard to remember because with the tracer bullets coming at you, you practically didn’t see the plane, all you saw was these lights coming at you, which was very frightening, it’s bad enough being shot at but to see, actually see it coming at you, it was worse than ever.
DE: Did the pilot take any evasive action?
HP: Yes, he did a slight corkscrew but not too much because the gunners had got the plane, and it went down, so he really didn’t have to do a corkscrew, but that’s a frightening thing when you do a corkscrew, because at one time coming back from an operation, I forget where that was, we were caught in searchlights, and that again is another frightening thing, and it’s, it’s like being on a stage completely naked and everyone’s looking at you, and well the gunner shouted to do a corkscrew and it went really mad, it was a really violent corkscrew, you thought the wings were gonna [sic] come off, but we managed to get out of the searchlight and carry on home, again we were lucky.
DE: And when you landed, you say the ground crew were really upset, was it that obvious then that the plane had been hit?
HP: Yeah, you could see all the holes in the side, yeah, but we didn’t know until after briefing how many holes there was, seventeen all told [sic], which is quite a lot, [pause] that was our twentieth operation that one.
DE: So, you mentioned at certain points when the searchlights were on you or if you were being shot at you felt frightened, how did you feel before and during operations normally?
HP: I didn’t feel too bad because, I think half the time being a young age it was like excitement more than anything else, you didn’t really have a lot of fear at all, at least I didn’t, and I don’t think the rest of the crew did, except maybe the rear gunner because that time when we had a mid-air collision, I think that really frightened him.
DE: But he was OK?
HP: He carried on until the end yeah, and when we finished the tour of ops, they went back to their various countries, which was Australia and New Zealand.
DE: You had another story about some low flying?
HP: Oh yes, my skipper like to do low flying, and, we were low flying what we called air to sea firing where the gunners fired off their guns to make sure everything was OK and you checked various things in the plane and coming back, he decided to do a bit of low flying along Skegness and in actual fact when I looked out from my little blister, I could see the pier above us [laughs], and he still carried on and as we passed further along near to the pier there was two men in a boat, who must have thought we were coming into crash because they jumped out the boat [laughs] and we passed them and coming up to Butlins camp which at that time had been taken over by the navy, and the navy was having a parade on their parade ground and he went so low that the parade all scarpered and ducked down and we all laughed at that and carried on back to East Kirkby, but a couple of days later we were called to the group captains office and he said, ‘first of all you needn’t deny this because we’ve got people who witnessed your aircraft number from the naval station’ and he said the naval officer in charge contacted him because he knew it was from East Kirkby and said that ‘tell your crew that next time if they do that, it won’t be air to sea firing, it’ll be ground to air firing’ and he just said ‘dismissed’, I think he thought it was more of a joke as well [pause], anything else?
DE: Well anything else you can tell me?
HP: I don’t know if I told you about when Pilot Officer Jackson and I went, three, twice with him, did I tell you that?
DE: Yes you did.
HP: I’m just trying to think of the other thing.
DE: Yes you said that three was your lucky number.
HP: Yes, well I lived in 13, Churchill Walk in England, in London I should say and we had a bomb dropped on the next street and it shattered all the windows of our street, right the way along except number thirteen, never touched the windows at all, and with no explanation for that at all.
DE: Would you say you are quite a superstitious person then?
HP: In the way of three and thirteen, yes.
DE: What about any lucky charms did you have anything?
HP: No, never had lucky charms but quite a few air crew used to have lucky charms, and my opinion is that often the lucky charms cause them to do something wrong and end up being either shot down or crashed, because when you think about it, if a member of the crew had a lucky charm and he’d gone and left it before he was flying, instead of his mind being on what he should be doing, his mind was on, ‘what did I do with that lucky charm?’ and during that period something could happen, but that was only my opinion.
DE: So you think it’s more professional just to keep your mind focused on the job?
HP: Oh yes, definitely.
DE: Did you know if anybody in your crew had anything like that?
HP: No, none of them, none at all, the only thing we considered a lucky charm was our whistle and we all had a whistle it was always pinned to your coat.
DE: So the other thing I’ve read about is similar superstitions that if you associated with a certain woman she was unlucky or anything like that, do you have any stories about things like that?
HP: No, the only story I had was that one of the air crew, I don’t know who he was, I think he was a pilot, he’d got going with one of the girls in the village and after a while, whether he got fed up with her or not, she found out that he’d been seeing someone else when he said he was off flying and she happened to be in, the, it was a WAF and she happened to be in where they had the parachutes and as a revenge apparently she cut the strings of the parachute and of course nothing happened for a while but eventually they were shot up and the crew bailed out but his parachute didn’t open properly and that was the end of him, there was an enquiry about that but it was more or less hushed up because it would’ve scared other members of the crew. Whether that was a true story I don’t know but that’s the story that went round.
DE: And you heard that on, during your time on operations?
HP: Yes.
DE: Did you have any associations with any WAF’s?
HP: No, only when I was training I had a association with a land army girl who lived in Nottingham, and, I think it’s more or less after, no towards the end of the war, I was stationed at Stirgate and we got leave and I thought ‘oh I’d go into Nottingham and see if I could find this land army girl’ and as it happened, whilst I was in Nottingham I met up with some Americans and they got chatting to me and they said they had a club, would I like go into the club and having a few drinks, well a few drinks ended up to a lot of drinks and then I found out where this land army girl lived and I knocked on the door and she came out and give me a cuddle and said ‘oh lets go for a walk’, and at Nottingham there’s the Lincoln castle where you go up a sort of a hill, and we were walking up there and we got to the top, we were going to sit down and have a chat and I was dying for a leak [slight laugh] and I said ‘I’m ever so sorry, I’ve got to go and find a toilet’ and I actually run down all the hill to find somewhere, I found somewhere, when I went back up she’d gone, [slight laugh] that was the end of that ‘cause [sic] she didn’t like people drinking, and that’s about the only experience I had.
DE: Did you have a lot to do with Americans then?
HP: Not really, but we did have an American who swapped a pilots, with, he came to East Kirkby as a pilot on Lancaster’s and an English pilot went onto theirs, to go onto super fortresses , just an exchange and it appeared the American was a bit of an unruly type so that’s why they were keen to get rid of him go to the RAF, but if ever we went out together because we always get chatting together, he would go into Boston with us and instead of wearing either his American outfit or his British outfit he used to go with part aircrew American on top and part RAF at the bottom and he was always being picked up by MP’s, but being American he always got away with it, and there was one incident where, it was when a lot of prisoners made an escape and the Germans found out where they were coming up and I don’t know if you ever read about it but the Germans shot, I think it was about thirty or forty of the escapees, so at that time the group captain said that if anybody wanted to draw a gun, fifteen rounds of ammunition, he’s not saying you should do that but if you felt you wanted to you could do, so I think nearly half the air force drew guns and fifteen rounds of ammunition, and this American he’d got his gun and fifteen rounds of ammunition, and outside his nissen hut, there was a tree where a blackbird used to come every day twittering away and it upset him he didn’t like this blackbird so he went outside and fired at it but he never hit it at all until he run out of ammunition , and I can remember also, where you went for ablutions, it was in a place outside where your nissen hut was, and they used to issue you with a tin bowl, and I was walking across with this tin bowl and all of a sudden a bullet hit this tin bowl [laughing], I dropped the tin bowl and rushed into the ablution, never found out who fired it, but there was so much ridiculous firing going on round the airdrome at East Kirkby that the group captain got to know about this and he said ‘right, that is stupid of all these people’, so he wanted all the guns handed, handed in and all the ammunition handed in, well, all the guns were handed in OK but I think there was only ten rounds of ammunition, all the rest had been spent. Similar things like, in my crew a New Zealander, he didn’t like flies and we used to often play darts a lot and he saw this fly going across the dart board so out come the gun firing, [laughing] firing at the fly, so as I say there was all daft things like that going on, that’s why the group said, group captain said ‘right they’ve all got to come back in again’, he didn’t trust any of them.
DE: So, people in your crew took them, did you take one?
HP: Oh yeah, we all took one I think, as I say, I think everybody who was allowed to took one, I never fired mine, I don’t think my crew did except this New Zealander, he did at the dart board [laughs] a crazy lot.
DE: I’ve read in other people’s stories that the medical officers sometimes gave tablets to help you get through night operations, did that ever happen with you?
HP: Never heard of it, never, although once when I got a sty on my eye it was considered to be unlucky if you couldn’t go off on your routine operations one after the other all the way through, and I got such a bad sty on my eye, I thought ‘well they won’t let me fly’, so I said to the crew ‘I’m going down to sick quarters’ to see if they can do anything, and sick quarters was quite a way off the airdrome and it had a seat in there which was just concrete to sit on while you was waiting to be seen by the doctor, well when I got there there was nobody else there but the doctor wasn’t there, and while I was sat there, the dentist came out and he said ‘it must be freezing cold over there, son’ he said ‘come in, sit on the dentist chair and we’ll have a look at your teeth’ [laughs] so he had a look at me teeth and before I knew it he’d took one out and [laughs] I got blood all over me shirt and I said ‘oh I only came in for me eye’ he said ‘well it was much warmer in here wasn’t it?’, [laughs] and I said ‘yes’ and his WAF helper, she said ‘oh here’s the doctor now, so you can go in next door and see the doctor’, and he looked at me and said ‘good God, what’s all this blood all over you?’ ‘I said ‘well the dentist decided to keep me in the warm and took a tooth out’ and I’m sure, it was that one there, and I’m sure there was nothing wrong with it, and he looked at me eye and he said ‘I could lance it’ and he played around with the sty for several minutes and he said ‘if you go back and rest before you get your briefing’ he said, ‘I think you’ll be OK’ and that was it, I carried on on ops.
DE: I would’ve thought you’d need more time off for having a tooth out?
HP: Yeah [laughs]. We certainly had some funny things happening during our time in the RAF.
DE: You briefly mentioned the ablutions then, what were the living accommodations and the ablutions like there?
HP: Well it was only a nissen hut with so many beds all the way down which weren’t all that comfortable but you had plenty of blankets that you could put underneath or over the top of the mattress so it weren’t too bad and the ablutions was, well you had to take your own bowl, you didn’t get hot water, just turned the tap on and that was it, so it was very sparse, but you got on with it, you didn’t complain, if you complained nothing would happen about it [slight laugh], and another thing happened, they used to be card mad and if you weren’t on any day light trips or anything like that, you used to sit there playing pontoon or shoot, shoot pontoon, I don’t know if you knew that, it was where you had a dealer and he’d go round to everybody to see how much they’d put it the deal in the front, either to match his or over match it then as they dealt the cards round to each person you said ‘shoot’, either put a bit more money in or you left it as it was and you either lost or you won and you took something out or put something in and when it got to my turn, I had an ace and I thought its worth shooting the lot , so I shot the lot, I got a queen and the damn dealer got a king so his took preference over mine so I lost the lot and another fella next to me, weren’t member of my crew, he had an Indian motorbike and he’d done the similar thing and lost it all so he still wanted to go again so dealer said ‘what have you got?’ and he said ‘well, I’ve got no money left but I’ll put my motor bike in’ [laughs] and he put the motorbike in and he lost, so round it went and when it came to my turn again and I said ‘I’ve got no money neither but I’ll shoot the motorbike and I’ll have to pay if I lose, at a later date’, anyways I won so I won this motorbike and I had no clues what so ever how to drive a motorbike, and the fella who had originally lost it, he said ‘you lucky devil’ he said ‘I’ll show you what to do’ and we got outside the nissen hut ‘cause the card game had finished and he said ‘right, you do this, do that, and away you go’, so I did that and did that and I went straight through the ablution, straight through [laughs], straight through the covers that were on the outside and just stopped so I said ‘no I don’t want this anymore’ [laughing], I had a few bruises but the motorbike was OK, except where there was a big hole in the side of the ablution, so the next time we played I put the motorbike in purely to lose it, and I never went on a motorbike again.
DE: Probably quite right. So did you play cards with other crews?
HP: Yeah there was all sorts that used to mix in with playing cards yeah, yeah there was one time when we were due leave but the train wasn’t due till, I forget probably about half past ten or eleven and we were always up before seven, you go for your breakfast, come back and waiting to go in, get in to Boston station and you’d play cards, and I played cards and lost again, lost all me money, I went on leave purely with your leave application where you didn’t have to pay anything and when I got to London, I relied on my father to pay for the fayre to get back home, and I said what I had been doing, playing cards and he said ‘your best bet is to leave cards alone unless you’ve got a good memory for where cards turn up’, so I never played cards again [slight laugh].
DE: So just quickly going back to the nissen hut, who did you share with?
HP: Just your own crew, maybe, possibly another crew that were in a nissen hut nearby, so it weren’t too bad, bit cold in winter though, yeah [pause], but I had a cut throat razor, as where we used to live in London, we always used to go to the top of the road ‘cause there was a Jewish barber there and he was always asking about me, when I come home on leave I always used to go there to have a haircut and have a chat with him and he said, ‘you’ll soon be needing to shave, won’t you?’, I said ‘well I got a little bit of stubble coming’, he said ‘I’ve got something for you, I’ve saved this for you’ and it was a German crop razor one of the best there could be and he said, ‘there you are, that’s for you’ and eventually I had to use this, and people used to come and watch me shaving thinking that if I got the twitch from flying I’d cut myself [slight laugh] but I never did and then we went off somewhere and we came back and somehow the call up[?] seemed to go astray, went wrong and instead of landing at east Kirkby we landed at another field, airfield nearby, can’t remember what it was, it might have been Strubby or some name like that, and when we landed we had briefing and they said ‘oh you are not far from East Kirkby so you may as well stay the night, which we did, then next morning refuelled and fly back to East Kirkby, when I went into the nissen hut there was nothing of mine there, it had all gone, and I had a wallet where one of the young ladies I knew in London had given me a ten pound note and I’d always kept that in this wallet for emergencies and that had gone, ‘cause you weren’t allowed to take anything on ops with you, nothing to identify you, and what had happened, if any crews were shot down or didn’t come back, rather than send any of the stuff that the person had kept, they used to have what they called a committee of adjustments, and that was where the stuff was put in to be auctioned off and everything was auctioned and I lost all my stuff, and other members of the crew had lost their radio or maybe a bike, it was all gone, so I never ever got my razor back.
DE: Oh dear and this was because you were somewhere else for one night?
HP: Yeah, they thought we had been shot down.
DE: So for the sake of one phone call, you lost all your kit.
HP: Yeah. That was one of those things, but hardly anybody had ever heard of it, committee of adjustments, I’ve never heard of anybody who knew about it, none of the parents or lovers knew about it either, it just all sort of vanished.
DE: And over efficient as well it seems.
HP: Yeah, very efficient [laughs]
DE: You mentioned when you were talking about your razor, about the dangers of shaving if you got the twitch, could you explain a little bit about the twitch?
HP: Yeah, well that was where some air crew who had got so scared, that they were too scared to admit that they were frightened and they used to have a sort of twitch which gave them away, you know when they were walking along they would go like that somehow, do a funny little twitch with a hand or the head and we we [sic] had one fella who had got it so bad he was walking along as though he was carrying a ladder and if anybody was near him they’d shout at them ‘get out the way, can’t you see the ladder?’ and he’d got nothing, again [laughing] this is what we called the twitch.
DE: Did these people carry on flying then?
HP: Some of them did and some of them didn’t, they ended up in hospital you know having consultations and things like that, see if they could get them back to normal.
DE: Did you know anyone personally?
HP: No. I say on an airdrome or a base you’d mainly know your own crew really thoroughly but other crews you didn’t really mix a lot at all, so didn’t know many of them at all, ‘cause many a time I spoke or people have asked me about being in East Kirkby and they say, ‘do you know Jack Thompson?’, I said ‘never heard of him’, ‘oh well he was there, he was at East Kirkby’, as I say you just didn’t know these people, unless they were someone famous.
DE: So you wouldn’t talk to each other in briefing or anything like that then?
HP: Not really no, ‘cause your crew was your crew altogether and further down was their crew, all listening to what was going on.
DE: I see, what about the ground personnel and the ground crew that looked after your aircraft?
HP: They were smashing, really good blokes, yeah.
DE: Did you have more to do with them then?
HP: Not really, only when we took off and come back again, so you didn’t really mix with them in the mess because most of them were, I forgot what, LAC’s, they weren’t sergeants or anything like that, so they were in a different category.
DE: I just wondered if you chatted to them about anything out on the dispersals?
HP: You did occasionally but not very often, not unless like when we came back and we had seventeen holes and they were upset about it.
DE: Did you always fly the same aircraft then if you could?
HP: No you had several different aircrafts but in just looking at that, we flew an X, X X X X, the same Lancaster all the time there, then, after that X X, Q V, all different letters to the different Lancaster’s.
DE: I’ve read somewhere that the ground crew said that the aircraft belonged to them and the air crew only borrowed it.
HP: Yes [laughs] I think that’s true as well, because they really were good blokes, nothing wrong with them at all, they really looked after your aircraft, [pauses] in fact they should have got more praise than they ever did, ground crews.
DE: Did you have any views about what you were doing? I know it’s been a matter of debate since the war a lot.
HP: Not really, but I always thought we were doing the right thing as being a Londoner and being in the Blitz, seeing what had been happening in London and you felt you were doing the right thing to do the same thing back to them.
DE: Yes you mentioned last time we spoke how you were on your way to work and the factory wasn’t there anymore.
Hp: Yeah, so you know you had that feeling we were doing the proper thing.
DE: I can’t remember if I asked you much about your recruitment and your training?
HP: Well I think I mentioned that, two lads at the outer city trip (?-name of company) transport company where we were thinking we might get called up, we were having our lunch and we were debating should we volunteer and we decided we ought to so we got what we wanted and we went straight out after lunch, straight down to the recruiting office and both volunteered for the RAF and that was because I thought it was safer in the air than on the ground at the time.
DE: Yes you said that you didn’t want to join the navy because you couldn’t swim very well.
HP: No only across the canal because there was a big canal near us in London and we often used to go and swim across the canal, and we also used to get an old bike wheel, break all the spokes out and thread a sack round, put some string on and drop it down, pull it up and we’d got loads of sticklebacks and it reminded me of that, seeing I don’t know if you watch it, Countryfile, it was showing you about a stickleback there that was blowing its nest waiting for the little ones to come out and they called it the star of the show and it reminded me of that because we used to sell these sticklebacks then to other kids, because everybody used to like a fish in a jar, made a little bit of money doing that. [laughs]
DE: But you were expected into the RAF and then you went away?
HP: Yes we, we went first of all to the flats were film stars used to be, the RAF had accommodated those and I thought it was marvellous because the bathroom was cut glass all the way around with like fish swimming round and I thought ‘boy this is the life to be in the RAF’ but that was only temporary while we were doing the training, and also on the square we had a fella called Alva Liddel, he used to be an announcer for the news and he always used to say ‘this is the news and Alva Liddel speaking it’ and he happened to be in, I don’t know whether he volunteered or not or was called up, but he was on the square and in the papers it said ‘this is Alva Liddel on the square, bashing it’, so that was interesting and we were opposite London zoo and we had our food in the zoo, and people used to be wondering around looking at us having food in the zoo which seemed strange to them, and there used to be a place, I forget the name of the place but we used to march from the flats where the square was, down across the stop lights on Marylebone road to a swimming baths, where we used to have training for, if you came down how to turn the, not the airborne lifeboat, it was like a big circle, I can’t remember what they call that now, but often if you dropped it for you to go in to, it would turn up the wrong way so the bottom of it was on the top and there was like a suction, so you had to be able to go over the top of it, hold on just where the bottle was for blowing it up, grab hold of that and pull yourself up like that and go right the way under and re-put it right, [DE: turn the dingy the right way round] yeah dingy that was it I couldn’t remember what they were called them, yeah and I wasn’t pretty good at that even though I couldn’t swim very far, but they used to make you march in this place as well, because they put boards across and if it was raining you could go in there and do your marching up and down on these boards, when it was swimming they used to take all the boards up and you did the swimming exercise, and there was one where this sergeant he called out, I don’t know if I mentioned this before, he called out that all the crews that were there had to put on their flying suit and he said ‘I want all the swimmers this end and all the non-swimmers that end’, so I thought to myself ‘I don’t know what he’s going to do so I’m going to go to the non-swimmers’ so I was down the non-swimmers which was the least deep part of it and all the swimmers were up by the diving board, then he said ‘right I don’t want anybody to move but all the non-swimmers come up by the diving board’, all the swimmers went down to the non-deep side and the idea was you had to climb up to the top diving board and jump off with your flying suit on then swim to the side if you could, and I was that scared of having to go up that ladder I kept getting behind and behind and behind, and I was the last one and everybody was booing me and he came up to me and he said ‘I can understand you being scared but just go up to the top, I’ll come with you and just look over and you’ll be OK’, he said ‘then you can come back down’ so I believed him and I went up with him, got to the top, and he said ‘you can let go of the bars either side’, so I let go and he just pushed me and down I went and I went right down under, well I didn’t come up because where the zips on my flying suit didn’t work they just filled up with water, held me down, so there was panic on to fish me out, get me back and pump me chest to get me spilling all the water out and after a while I was OK, but I wouldn’t dive after that [slight laugh], and that was a frightening experience, and I always hoped that I would never have to jump out of an aircraft into the sea or even have to turn the dingy over, but luckily we never had to, but that was a frightening experience before I even got to flying.
DE: So what other things did they have you doing for your training to be an engineer?
HP: Oh before you was, became an engineer you had to do like army training, going through tunnels and climbing over things and that was done at Bridlington, I think I mentioned that, [DE: briefly yes], well that was where we were marching along and I looked over the side and I thought that looks like my Uncle Ernie, and I didn’t know he was in the army, he’d been called up, and I just went marching over to him, because the sergeant halted the crew, came over to me and shouted, shouted a few abusive words at me and I said ‘well that’s my Uncle Ernie’, he said ‘I don’t care if it’s the f’ing queen’ he said ‘you don’t walk out of my marching section’, so I got ten days working in the cook house cleaning dirty tins, yeah, and he got chatting to me uncle to see if it was true, he was my uncle and they got quite friendly and he used to arrange football matches between the RAF and the army, ‘cause the army didn’t get on very well with the RAF but that broke the ice down.
DE: Why didn’t the army and the RAF get on?
HP: Well we were called the ‘Brylcreem boys’ [laughs], supposed to be the aloof.
HP: Did I mention that on, when they were expecting the invasion from the Germans they put us on duty either end of Bridlington with our rifle, so many rounds of ammunition and you had to march up a little way and back just to see if there was any invaders coming and shoot them, and this particular time it was a moonlight night with the clouds suddenly going over, and I looked up at one of the hotels and I could see what I thought was somebody flashing to the enemy, so I thought ‘well I’ve got to go and investigate as I’ve seen it’, and I got my rifle ready, I went scrambling up the stairs, right to the top, and as I went along the top corridor I saw another fella coming at me with the rifle and it frightened the life out of me, I dropped my torch, dropped my rifle and ran like mad and when I got to the bottom I thought ‘that was odd, nobody shot at me and nobody come running after me’ and I couldn’t work it out so I thought I better go back, pick me gun up, rifle, and when I got up there I realised I’d saw myself in a mirror [laughs] at the end of the corridor and there was anybody there and the light that I thought was somebody signalling was as a cloud went over the moon it was flickering on the window and the window was sort of flashing, I never told anybody about that [slight laugh] so that was another funny story.
DE: Were you at Bridlington very long then?
HP: Not long, no.
DE: Where did you go after that?
HP: After Bridlington, it was to do with going down to Saint Athens where you learnt everything from the book and from me looking at the engines to find out how they all worked and that took a couple of months, so you really knew everything about the Stirling bomber, and then you eventually went flying with different people in a Stirling and that’s where I said you were dead scared seeing as you’ve never flown before and you were meeting your crew for the first time in the bar, and that’s when this Aussie, rear gunner come up to me and said ‘you sound a bit like us, mate’ I said ‘why where you from?’ because I didn’t know where he was from, he said ‘Australia, where are you from?’ I said ‘Hackney’ he said ‘where’s Hackney?’, I said ‘in London’ he said ‘that sounds good, Hackney Harry’, ‘cause I’d told him my name and that’s when he said come and meet the crew, and I think I went through that.
DE: Yeah you did, you mentioned you got put on a charge and had to work in a kitchen?
HP: Yeah that was through meeting me uncle.
DE: What did they have you doing in there?
HP: Well all the greasy tins when they fried anything or done anything, they couldn’t wash them straight away, so you had to scrub away with the brush to get all the grease off and you had to do that at breakfast time, dinner time and evening meal time, which weren’t very good [slight laugh].
DE: Was it a fitting punishment then do you think?
HP: Yeah, I didn’t think so at the time, but there in the hotel where we used to go into, there was a stairway like that coming up with a landing like that and the toilet was right in the middle, and there was no locks or anything on it, did I tell you about that? [DE: no] well there used to be a scotch fella, who always had a great big knife, always down the side of his belt and I was on the toilet and this scotch fella came out, bashed the door open and said ‘out’ [emphasis], like that and it so infuriated me, I head butted him, he’s much bigger than me, great big bloke, and he went over the banisters, landed on the floor, I, I honestly thought I’d killed him and the sergeant come over and he was still laid there, he’d been knocked out actually, ended up in sick quarters, and all the rest of the air crew that used to be training there they were really scared of this scotch men and I became his best friend because nobody had ever stood up to him and it really upset him and he looked after me from then on, [slight laugh] but it was a frightening experience.
DE: Did you keep in touch with him?
HP: No, no once we split up, went off to you know the squadron where you met your crew and started flying with them, and as I said before it was with Stirling’s to start with and then after a little while they decided Lancaster’s were coming in, so you ended up at East Kirkby on Lancaster’s and I think I told you what happened when I said that I needed more training, they put me on ops.
DE: Yeah. That’s smashing, I think we’ll call that a day unless you can think of any other amusing anecdotes? I’ve ticked all the questions I had for you.
HP: Yeah, well when I was at the end of my first tour training with, I think I said that the pilot trained a pilot and the engineer trained an engineer, and I was with a, a pilot and we’d be on a cross country or something and it was dark when we were coming back so they used to let you go round the circuit before you came in, and this particular time someone fired up a red flare which meant there was danger you couldn’t land, and the pilot carried on landing and I said to him ‘we can’t land, there’s something wrong’, I think somebody had crashed before us, so he said ‘oh, we better go round again’, so we went round again, he was a squadron leader and he’d been on a lot of ops, and as we come round again, another red flare went up and he said ‘oh good we’re ok now’, I said ‘no it’s a red flare, what’s up with you, are you blind or something?’ [laughs] and round we went again and we were called up on the intercom to keep flying round until a green flare was fired, so we did this until I spotted a green flare coming up and I said ‘it’s ok now, there’s a green flare’, so he said ‘ok, we’ll go into land’ and when we’d landed and taxied round I said to him ‘I know you are a higher rank than me but I’m wondering if you’re bloody colour blind’ and he said ‘sssh, I am’ [whispers] and he said ‘I’ve never admitted it to anyone’, he says ‘so please, please don’t report me’, I didn’t know what to do really, because he was training he wasn’t on ops anymore so I just forgot about it, and I thought well if he’d been on ops, he’s done his share so let the poor bloke carry on, but that was frightening as well ‘cause if I hadn’t had said something he would have gone in and probably have crashed into the other plane crash.
DE: Which operation training unit was this you were at then?
HP: Can’t remember where that was. It might have been at Stirgate, fifty squadron ,Stirgate, it was there and that’s where we went on to picking up the passengers in Italy.
DE: Yes, you told me about that.
HP: Oh and another time we had to go to Brussels, this was after the war, to pick up twenty four ex-prisoners of war and the first time went there, everything went through OK, we had a couple of days off and then we had to go again and as we were coming into land, my pilot was looking either side because there’d been a lot of aircraft that had crashed there, and they were just bulldozed over the side and he was looking at, ‘oh look at that, that’s an American so and so, oh look at that’, and there was a great big gulley where somebody had crashed there and they’d moved the plane out the way and we went into that and burst a tire and an American bulldozer come out, up to us, I’d got, well we’d all got out the plane and he said ‘ok, everybody out the plane, I’m bulldozing you over to the side ‘cause other planes have got to come in’, I said ‘no you daren’t, you’re not gonna [sic] bulldoze my plane’, I said ‘we’ll wait until we get a new tyre’ he said ‘no I’m gonna bull doze it’, so all the crew stood in front of him so he couldn’t do it so in the end he gave up and somebody else came out and towed us over to the side where we had to wait for somebody to bring out another wheel for us, and that was at Brussels and we ended up at Melbrook, wherever that was and then we got the tyre all sorted out and then went on to our base, that was a daylight operation.
DE: Did you bring many prisoners of war back then?
HP: Yeah there was twenty four there, another twenty four the second time and then when we went to Italy there was six where we brought twenty back at a time so [adds up out loud] so that’d be about hundred and eighty blokes coming back.
DE: How does that make you feel that you did that?
HP: It made us feel good because they couldn’t get back other than by sea and going by plane it was a couple of hours so they were really grateful to us but really scared of flying, so we went without our parachutes to prove to them that it was safe to fly [slight laugh]
DE: What state were the POW’s in?
HP: Very poor state, very poor, some of, some of them were being sick but they couldn’t help it because they’d never ever flown before and some had bandages on them where they had broken their limbs, but it felt really good fetching them back.
DE: The other thing I’ve read about, about flights at the end of the war, where you had a sort of tour of Germany and had a look at the bombing, did you do any of those?
HP: No, no I didn’t hear about it though.
DE: I think people called them cook’s tours?
HP: No never heard of it, [pauses] the only time I heard of anybody going around, looking round again is Guy Gibson, I think I told you about that didn’t I? I had a mate, air crew flight engineer, used to on the same sort of ops as we did but I had done a lot more than him, we got very friendly and if we managed to get back we’d go into the pub and exchange stories, and this particular time he was right down in the mouth, he wouldn’t have a drink and I couldn’t get him to talk and I thought he’d got lack of moral fibre and was likely to disappear, so I kept talking to him and in the end he said ‘I’ve been sworn not to say anything ‘, so I said ‘well that’s a bit daft’ I said ‘because we could be not here, on our next op so what does it matter about telling me what you’re on about?’ so he said ‘alright then’ he said ‘you know we’re the last ones to get in the plane after our inspection?’ I said ‘yeah’ he said ‘I was just going up the ladder and this bloke come up to me, pushed me out the way and before I knew it was on the plane’, he said ‘I didn’t know what to do so I pulled the ladder up and went up to my position’, he said ‘and when I got there was this bloke sat in my seat and he just said ‘bugger off down the back’ and I was just about to shout at him when the pilot said’ ‘ssh, it’s Guy Gibson’ he was a squadron leader then, so I shut up and listened to rest went on and he said ‘all the way over when we went on the op he was criticising everybody, the gunners, the navigator wasn’t doing it right, the pilot wasn’t watching this and watching that’ and he said when they got to the target, they went round, dropped the bombs and the idea was you got away quick but Guy Gibson said ‘hang on, go round I want to have a look’ and he made the pilot go round about three times before they flew off back and all on the way back he still criticised them all and he said just as we were coming into land he said ‘I wanna [sic] speak to every member of the crew, I want you to swear an oath that you never saw me in this plane’ and he said ‘it frightened the lives out of all of us’ and that was why he was like he was but anyways he got over that and carried on flying, and I never liked Guy Gibson and when I once went to, I forget where it was, somewhere near Coningsby, which was the end of the runway where they’d got a museum there of what happened with bomber command and one of the fellas there happened to mention something about Guy Gibson and I said ‘I hated him, from what he did to one of my mates’ so he said ‘you’re not the first one to say that’ I said ‘why?’, he said ‘well there was a young pilot who was just about going to take off, walking up to his plane and Guy Gibson happened to be just at the side and he called this pilot over and he said ‘don’t you ever salute your superiors and the pilot said ‘I didn’t know you did that when you’re going off flying’ and he said ‘right, when you come back, you’ll be reduced in rank’, reduced him down to sergeant from a pilot officer, he said and that’s why he didn’t like Guy Gibson, but strange nobody liked him not on the squadron he was at and there was once when we come back from ops, we went into the pub and all of a sudden there was a shout and everybody saying ‘wahey’ and I said ‘is that the end of the war, have we finished?’ and somebody said ‘no, Guy Gibson’s caught the bucket’, in other words he’d gone down and that was where he’d gone off with some, I think it was mosquitos he was flying and on the way back instead of keeping with them, he spotted a train and he decided to go down and shoot this train up, and the story we heard was that one of the guards on the train had a rifle and he fired at Guy Gibson’s plane and a million to one chance he hit the fuel tank and it blew up and he went in, but that was all hushed up, they gave another story about why he was shot down.
De: What was the other story?
HP: I forget what it was but he was coming back and he was with the two other mosquitos and he was unlucky that got a shot that hit his plane and down he went, but we believed the first story, no he was never liked at all.
DE: Why was that do you think, was that just his attitude?
HP: His attitude to everybody, he was the king and he was the one who knew everything.
DE: Was there a lot of discipline or difference between people with officers and sergeants?
HP: There was some, I wouldn’t say a lot, but often when people were sergeants and they were made up to officers, that’s when you got a bit of flack, ‘cause I always remember after the war there was something happening and all crews were going to this place, I forget where it was, and I’d been issued with medals and I’d got the air crew Europe and star, because I had actually flown before my crew had so I come under that particular section and my pilot who’d got the DFC on behalf of crew co-operation, we never got anything so we were a bit bitter about that but I happened to spot my pilot and I went up to him to shake hands and say ‘how you doing?’ and the first thing he said to me, ‘how is it you got that?’ I said ‘what?’ he said ‘the air crew Europe and star? I’ve only got the air crew Europe’, I said ‘that’s because I flew before you’ and he weren’t very pleased and just walked off, never even spoke to me, so that sort of thing did happen.
DE: Was there a difference between people who were flying before the war and people who were volunteer reserve?
HP: Not really no, they were all doing the same thing.
DE: So how long did you stay in the RAF for?
HP: I think it was about seven or eight years, all told [sic]
DE: So what did you fly after the war?
HP: It was Lancaster’s and Lincoln’s, that was at Waddington, and did I tell you about the story of taking a photo of a, a Lincoln bomber? well when the Lincoln’s come onto the squadron, I was thinking about this and I thought to myself ‘it’d be marvellous , a Lincoln bomber flying over Lincoln Cathedral’, sounded good and I said this to my pilot and he said ‘yeah that sounds good’, he said ‘if you could get it organised ‘cause I’d had more experience than this new pilot, so I said to the photographer who used to unofficially do our photographs for us, I told him about this, he said ‘that would be marvellous, if you get me on the plane’, so I spoke to another pilot and we all agreed that we’d do this, we’d be in a plane with the photographer and another plane in the Lincoln would fly over Lincoln Cathedral but he happened to be late on take-off, the Lincoln pilot, and he came in a bit late, but because he was late he went flying too low and he went below the cathedral so anyways we got the photo of this, got back on the ground and I said ‘I’m going up to the photographer’s to see how he’s getting on’, so when I got there, he said ‘oh come in’ he said ‘a fabulous picture, Lincoln bomber flying below Lincoln Cathedral’ he said ‘it’s absolutely marvellous’ and he’d put the either negatives or something on a drum which used to go round to dry these photographs and just as he was doing this the group captain came in, inspected and he said ‘what are you two up to?’, ‘nothing, sir’ saluted him and out came this picture and he looked at it, he said ‘good God are you trying to get me demoted?’ he said ‘that’s illegal [emphasis], where is the negative?’ so the photographer was dead scared gave him the negative, he ripped it up and he ripped the photograph up and he said ‘you deserve to be on a charge, you two’ and he stormed off , and just as he stormed off the second picture came out and I grabbed hold of it and put it in my battle dress and the photographer said ‘you can’t do that!’, I said ‘I’ve done it, cheers’ and I kept this right the way till the end of the war and when I came out and I got friendly with a photographer, can’t remember his name now, of the Echo and he got to hear where I was working at Thorne electrical wholesalers and he phoned me up and said could he come in and see me so I said ‘what for?’, he said ‘I’d like to have a chat with you’ and in my office ‘cause I was a manager, I had a big picture up of the Lancaster and anybody who used to come in to see me said ‘that’s a super picture, why have you got that in an electrical wholesalers?’, because I said ‘I was in them’ and I used to get in with these people who used to come flogging you things for the electrical side, so he came in and he saw this picture, he said ‘that’s marvellous’, I said ‘I got a better one than that’ and he asked me questions like you have about me war record and he said ‘can you fetch that picture in to me?’ and I said ‘yeah I can fetch it in but I don’t want to let go’ so he said ‘OK’ he said ‘I’ll have a word with the editor and see if we can publish it’, so a couple of days later he rang me up at work and said I’ve got some sad news, he said the editor said it’s on RAF paper, it’s illegal photograph and he said it couldn’t be published until say twenty five years until that time had expired so he said ‘but I’m keeping it on file’, so I said ‘Ok then’ he said ‘I’ve got a copy of it and I’ll let you have that back’ and I got a copy in the bedroom I’ll let you have a look, and I suppose about twenty years afterwards he rang me up at work and he said ‘do you get the Lincoln Echo?’, I said ‘now and again’, he said ‘well buy it today’ so I did, front page was this picture, that marvellous picture and no end of people wanted to know how I took this and I told them and as I say I can show you the actual photograph, but this group captain, did I tell you about him who lived across the way? When I got a puncture outside his house? [DE: yes you told me but it’s not on the tape] Oh I was going one Sunday to get the Sunday paper and just as I got near this group captains house, I didn’t know he was a group captain, something went wrong with the car and I got out and I found I got a puncture and I jacked the car up, tried to get the wheel off but do you think I can undo those nuts, just couldn’t do it, and this young fella come strolling over and he said ‘I can help you there, I’m a younger fella than you’ so I said ‘oh thank you’ and he did everything, put the old one in the boot and put the new one in pumped it up, I said ‘oh thanks very much’ so he said ‘I hear you was in the war, in the RAF, is that right?’ I said ‘yes, I was flight engineer’, he said ‘did you do any ops? I said ‘yeah, I did thirty nine all told [sic] and had a mid-air collision at East Kirkby’ he said ‘good God and you’re still here’ [laughs] I said ‘yeah’, then he put out his hand and said ‘well done, I’m a squadron leader’ no he was a wing commander then, ‘I’m a wing commander’ so I said ‘well fancy that, that’s a new one ain’t [sic] it?, a wing commander changing the wheel of a warrant officer [slight laugh], it’s never been known’ and he laughed and he said ‘can I come across and see you?, where do you live?’ I said ‘just across from you’ so a few days later he came over and like you he sat there and he said ‘have you still got your log book?’, because you’re not supposed to have had it really but most people did and I said ‘yeah’, he said ‘can I have a look at it’ and he went through it and he said ‘I can’t believe you’re still here’ [laughs] and he said ‘there’s going to be a do at Petwood hotel’, I forget what it’s called but I can show you what it’s called up here [pause – background noise, moves to collect something] it’s called the memorial dinner, 3rd of July 2009 and there would be all top ranking officers there and these officers either had the girlfriends or their wives there and it was a fabulous dinner because lots of companies had donated money, they didn’t have Petwood hotel chefs they had the, what do they call those top chefs?, I’ve forgotten what they call them at the moment but they did the dinner, wish I could remember the names, you see them on television sometimes, very top chefs, somebody had arranged to have all the drinks so everything was free there and it was marvellous, and half way through, a fella got up and he was a famous painter, don’t know if you’ve ever seen a big elephant, I forget the name, what it was called but he was there and he said ‘gentlemen and ladies’ he said ‘I’ve asked the squadron leader if he would auction those three paintings that I’ve donated to the RAF because my heart is felt with the RAF for what they did during the war’, so the squadron leader got up and the first two paintings went for fifteen hundred pounds each, the last one went for two and a half thousand pounds, so it was smashing all donated to the RAF, and I thought I’ll have to go up and get his signature this fella and I went up and there was a couple of people in front of me and it was funny because one of the group captains wives was there with all her gold and chains on her, and she turned round to me and she said ‘oh’, she saw me medals and she said ‘you were in the RAF were you during the war?’ I said ’yes, that’s what these are for’ she said ‘what did you do?’ I said ‘I was a flight engineer on Lancaster’s and I did thirty nine ops’ she said ‘good God can I kiss you?’ [laughs] I said ‘if you wish’ [laughs], she kissed me and she said ‘thank you very much’ she said ‘if it wasn’t for people like you we wouldn’t be here having this do’ so I said ‘oh thank you’ and they gave us one of those, [DE: the mug] also a book of Lancaster’s and spitfires in it, it’s fabulous and then I suppose a couple of months after that, he rang up here and he said ‘would you like to come over?’, so I said ‘yes’ went to his door, he said ‘come in, I want to show you this’ and he showed me his hat and his lapels on his suit and he said ‘I’ve been promoted to group captain’ so I shook his hand and said ‘well done’ and he said ‘we’re having a do at’, he said ‘I’m at bomber command headquarters at the moment now’ he said ‘but I’ve come home for the weekend to show the wife me promotion’ he said ‘so when I go back I want to take you with me to bomber command headquarters and have a big dinner there’, did I tell you about that? So he said ‘have you still got your uniform?’ I said ‘you’re joking its seventy years ago now’, he said ‘well you need to have a dress suit’ so I said ‘well I haven’t even got that’ never even thought about it, so he said ‘well I’ll leave you to it, see if you can get one quick’ and he said by such and such a date, he said ‘I’ll be taking you down with me’, so at that moment my wife wanted to go to Matalans and my son said ‘I’ll come along with you I might see something I want’ ‘cause it’s a bit cheaper buying stuff there so we walked round and my wife brought a few skirts and things, and my son said to me ‘you wanted a dress suit didn’t you?’ he said ‘come and have a look at this’, and they had some dress suits that they were selling off cheaper so I worked out my size, tried a jacket on and it fitted so I said ‘I’ll buy this’ and instead of paying a couple of hundred pound I got one for about forty five quid so I thought that was really good and, I rang him up then, I said ‘I’ve got a dress suit now’ and I said ‘do I need to have me medals put on?’ he said ‘yes’ he said ‘if you bring it across, my wife will stitch them on for you’ so that was good, so did all that, she made some sandwiches and we went all the way down to High Wycombe, when I got there I’ve never seen so many high ranking officers, because I was only a warrant officer, I didn’t really know where to put myself so he said ‘I’m going to take you round’, he said ‘cause I got to do some work’ he said ‘but I’ll come back for you at seven o’clock, be dressed up with your medals on and we’re go and have a drink first with some of the officers, then we’ll go in for the dinner’ so I thought ‘lovely’, so picked me up at seven o’clock, I was put in an officer quarters so that was nice, went down to where they had the bar, had a few drinks and a lot of these top officers had never been on ops at all and they started asking me questions so that was good, and then he said ‘it’s time now to go in to our table’, and all along the top table, group captain was there, I was sat at the side of him and a nice WAF squadron leader at the side of me and we started off with this dinner and then he said ‘we’ve got to drink to the Queen’ and what is coming round is port and there was a great big jug like that of port so I went to grab hold of this big glass to pour mine out and he ‘aaah no you mustn’t touch it, it’s only touched by the squadron leader coming round, its part of the system that we have’ so they poured these glasses out and went all the way round and it was all silver service, you never see anything like it and then, a little while through, air vice marshal got up and he said ‘Gentlemen’, [clap clap] he said ‘I’d like to tell you there’s an interesting person with us tonight and I’d like to speak about him’ and I looked round and I thought maybe the Duke of Edinburgh were there but by the time I turned back he said ‘his name’s ex warrant officer Harry Parkins’ and he said ‘he did one of the longest bombing trips in the war from East Kirkby where they had to top up at the take off point, they went all the way down to Italy to fool the Germans, came all the way back up again to bomb Munich and on the way back his gunner a New Zealander’, no an Australian said ‘Harry we’re going to lose a day of our leave or maybe more if we land down south where we’d been told to go because we might not have enough fuel to get anywhere else’ so he said ‘can you work out the fuel, Harry?’, I said ‘yes’, there was no computers in those days, and I worked it out and I said ‘if there was a sunny morning we’d just about make it’ he said ‘so all the crew said ‘go for it, Harry’ so we did and we landed at East Kirkby on a nice sunny morning and all the engines chopped at the end of the runway’ and he said ‘gentlemen that took ten hours twenty five minutes, the longest that had ever been done in a Lancaster bomber and a hundred and sixty officers got up and gave me a two minute ovation, I didn’t know where to put myself or what to say but I got up and said ‘it wasn’t me gentlemen, it was the crew’, so we carried on with the dinner, and that was really was smashing and then he brought me all the way back home, stayed there about three nights, and one lunchtime, he said ‘I’ll tell you when to come in’, went in at a particular time and there was two other pilots sat with him, we were having your dinner and you could pick almost anything you wanted and it was a Friday so I said I’ll have fish and chips and they all had the same, they all did the same [laughs] and one of these pilots said to me ‘as a flight engineer did you ever do any flying yourself?’ I said ‘oh yes, we had training in a link trainer’ and up to a point I’d never flown a Lancaster but my pilot was a sergeant and then he was promoted to a pilot officer and he went out celebrating that night, and next night we were on flying, on ops and he was still under the weather so went through the briefing, never said much but felt a bit hazy like, he said ‘I’m going to take off Harry’ and I’m sat at the side of him and he said ‘you can do the rest’ I said ‘what do you mean?’, he said ‘ well you’ve had training on the link trainer’ he said I’m going back and having a sleep and you can carry on’, so I flew I think it was about two and a half hours to the bombing target and the bit that amused me most was when they were saying ‘left a bit, left a bit, right’ ‘till we got over the target, bombs away, turn round and on the way back and on the way back, I didn’t feel like doing the landing myself ‘cause I’d never done anything like that so I went back and woke him up and he came up and did the landing, so that was my time of having, flying the Lancaster myself, I didn’t do anymore that was the only time, but I felt quite proud about it and luckily we got back OK.
DE: Well that’s amazing, you mentioned the story of your ten hours twenty five minutes, is there any significance about it being a sunny day?
HP: Yeah because if it had been dark, you might have had to go round the circuit, to get your bearings for coming in, being a sunny day you could just go straight in, no need to go round the circuit, no other plane were likely to be flying there. I told you about the group captain coming in, yeah? So that was another good story.
DE: Smashing, I’m going to press stop there, that’s another hour and a half that, thank you very much.
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Interview with Harry Parkins. Two
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AParkinsHW150612
Date
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2015-06-12
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Dan Ellin
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Emma Bonson
Sally Coulter
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:29:35 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Description
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Harry shares several memories of his time as a flight engineer in the Royal Air Force. He describes their initial accommodation in luxury London flats, and dinghy training at the local swimming pool. He recounts how in June 1944 they received 17 bullets in their aircraft on an operation to Wesseling but managed to return safely, also discussing lucky charms and superstition.
Anecdotes include a low flying incident near Skegness for which they were in trouble with the group captain, and the issue of guns and ammunition when some German prisoners escaped. They lost their possessions to the Committee of Adjustment when they were diverted to another airfield.
Harry received army-type training at RAF Bridlington and continued his flight engineering training on Stirlings at RAF St Athan. He was sent to RAF East Kirkby on Lancasters.
Harry collected prisoners of war from Italy and Brussels. He describes people’s recollections of Guy Gibson.
He stayed for seven or so years in the RAF, flying Lancasters and Lincolns at RAF Waddington. Harry relates the delayed publication of a photograph, with a Lincoln and Lincoln cathedral.
Harry outlines his encounter with a group captain who helped him to change his wheel, subsequently inviting him to dinners at the Petwood Hotel and Bomber Command headquarters. Harry received a two minute standing ovation for one of the longest bombing trips of the war.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany
Germany--Wesseling
England--Woodhall Spa
England--Lincoln
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-06
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
fear
flight engineer
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lincoln
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operation Exodus (1945)
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF East Kirkby
RAF St Athan
RAF Waddington
searchlight
Stirling
superstition
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/621/8890/PParryHP1609.2.jpg
b7df933b79f45737f7c38a9f7b59ea8c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/621/8890/AParryHP161011.1.mp3
2d504a390d6a64c19871b79350c9f428
Dublin Core
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Title
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Parry, Hugh
Hugh Pryce Parry
H P Parry
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Parry, HP
Description
An account of the resource
20 items. Two oral history interviews with Hugh Parry (b. 1925, 2220054 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs and newspaper cuttings. Hugh Parry flew operations as an air gunner with 75 Squadron and then as a photographer and air gunner with 90 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Hugh Parry and catalogued by Stuart Bennett.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HP: And then, you want me then to carry on through my life story?
CB: Yeah.
HP: But I can’t, wouldn’t be able to give you the end.
CB: That’s all right.
Other: Haven’t got there yet.
JB: I think we’re quite pleased about that Hugh.
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today we’re with Hugh Parry in Abingdon and the date is the 11th of October 2016 and Hugh’s going to talk about his life and times with the RAF. But what are your earliest recollections of life, Hugh?
HP: Well, I was born in Oswestry on the 22nd May 1925 to Sam and Nora. Sam was the manager of the local furniture shop. A branch of Astins. He had the, a travel gene and he had spent some time in Canada and America. His father before him had spent some time in Australia. And that gene persists in the family to date. I had a sister who was older than me. At the age of five — no — four, I went to Bellan House Preparatory School. Left there at nine, ten and went to Oswestry School which was then Oswestry Grammar School which is the second oldest school in the country founded in 1407. Got my, I was a bit precociously young. Did my school certificate at the age of fifteen and by the contact with my mother’s brother who was the manager of the local Midland Bank got a job with a firm of accountants there. And at the age of sixteen was articled to a chartered accountant. Joined the Air Training Corps and the National Fire Service was part time. In the Air Training Corps I was the youngest of a group of friends who were all going to volunteer and be on a squadron as soon as they possibly could. When they all went and volunteered they all went for PNB. Consequently they all got long deferred service. They were still taking air gunners. Well, being the youngest I went and, initially to Shrewsbury which was a joint recruiting centre for the three services. Moved from there to Birmingham which was for the aircrew medical and volunteered for air gunner. There was a height limit of six feet for air gunners. I made sure, knowing this I made sure I wore baggy trousers because I was slightly over six feet. And I joined the RAF on the twenty fifth anniversary of its formation on the 1st of April 1943 and for call-up at the age of eighteen and a half which duly came in December 1943. And I had to report to the ACRC at St John’s Wood. Well, the usual thing of queuing up for injections and blood tests and the usual introduction to that which baffles brains, and in January got posted to ITW at Bridlington where my principal memory is of PT on the sands without getting the sands wet because the rain came across the North Sea horizontally. But it was not the most comfortable of places. From there moved on to ITW at Bridgnorth in Shropshire and all just totally routine. From there to, [pause] No. We’d been to Bridlington. From there to Bridgnorth. Yes. Bridgnorth we’re at. Elementary Air Gunnery School. And from there to Pembrey on the South Wales coast. Not too far from Llanelli. Then passed out from there on the 1st of July 1944 which was unfortunate because automatic promotions came annually and if I had been told of passing out on the 30th of June I would have got an extra promotion. Sods law. Can’t say. Moved then to Woolfox Lodge. No. I tell a lie. To Westcott. In Buckinghamshire. Not too, not too far from Aylesbury where we were crewed up. There for approximately three months and it was Paddy Goode and his crew. We were an all NCO crew. And on the 7th of October we were posted to aircrew school at Stradishall which was just to keep us out of, out of people’s way until the 28th of October. From there go to 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit at Woolfox Lodge. On the 11th of February 1945 got posted to 75 Squadron at Mepal in Cambridgeshire. 3 Group. Not 5 Group. Repeat. Not 5 Group. On the first operation it was normal for the pilot, skipper, to go as a second dickie with an experienced crew on the first trip. Our CO’s crew were on holiday so he took us on our first trip. His name was Wing Commander Baigent. He was an old man of twenty three at the time. I think he got his DSO when he was with us and he died in 1953. I think that’s what my memory said. It was —
[Loud bells from chiming clock!]
HP: 75 New Zealand Squadron which doesn’t appear on a lot of Bomber Command memorials because it was New Zealand Air Force. We were posted there because there was a shortage of replacement crews coming forward and there was several, not too many, UK crews there. They were a wonderful, friendly people. They had comforts sent to them from New Zealand which were, was not in such an austere state as this country and they shared. Shared them always with us. Leave, of course, was compulsory on a squadron every six weeks. Things got easier. We had five leaves in four months which didn’t do us any harm. When you went on leave you get, got an extra five shillings from the Nuffield Fund which, added to the eight shillings which you got there, was a welcome addition. Looking back forty pence a day to be an air gunner does not seem an overpayment. Anyway, we stayed there until the 16th of June ‘45 and did half a tour there. The last one being the first air drop under the Operation Manna which was very different to the others because we had to go over there on a specified route at three hundred feet which was, we were told, it had been agreed with the Red Cross. We were not told it had been agreed with the Germans because on that date it hadn’t and we were followed by flak guns who were lining this route. That part of Holland was, at that stage, still occupied by the, by the Germans. The reason for Operation Manna was that twenty thousand Dutch people had died from starvation. So the affect, you can well imagine, was very great on all the rest. Despite their German occupation they were out in the streets. Out on the rooftops waving their flags and generally cheering and waving us and that was quite remarkable. Because we were on the first one we didn’t have packs to put the sacks of food on. They were just loaded on the bomb bay doors and they were dried egg, dried milk, flour. Really basic things. And you did it at three hundred feet. You just opened the bomb doors and there they went. And of course coming back it was so wonderful to have been giving life instead of taking life. An earlier but totally different memory results from the publication in the newspapers of the Belsen camp being liberated. With piles of corpses and piles, and people walking. Well walking or sitting. Skeletons. Slowly starving. We seldom but very occasionally would wonder where our bombs had dropped because there was an inevitable meeting between the bombs and hospitals and children and so forth and so on. And this was at the back of your mind wondering where they had been because I mean you couldn’t possibly see where they’d been. But once we saw the pictures of Belsen it had two effects on us. One was horror. And the other one was it removed any feeling of guilt. So on the 17th of June we were posted to 90 Squadron because 75 Squadron was going to be repatriated or go out to the Pacific or somewhere. And that was at Tuddenham and we were there on operational review which was photographic survey of the whole of Europe. We were, we believed that we were going out with Tiger Force to Okinawa in September ‘45. We were never officially told that but when the bombs dropped in August ’85 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a tremendous cheer went up because we knew that we were not going to be done again. There were one or two crews who hadn’t been on any ops who were a bit disappointed perhaps.
[Recording paused]
CB: Right. We’re restarting now.
HP: We left 90 Squadron and the crew was dispersed on the 30th October 1945 and we were sent to Catterick. Some of us. So I think the pilot and the navigator were posted to Transport Command and the rest of us were spare. And there was a holding unit at Catterick where, it was there until it was decided what we’d do with us and we were there for a month until the 28th of November ’45 when we were posted to Silloth for work at a, at a Maintenance Unit. And I found myself in the guard room in charge of a guard dog and walking around. And since I was of an equal or higher rank than all the rest of the policemen that was quite a pleasant occupation. Just walking around the camp. And I made sure I had the dog with me. On the 3rd of January, possibly because of my background in accountancy, I was sent to the School Of Accountancy Training at Kirkham which is not too far from Blackpool and finished there on the 31st of January. Moving from there to an Equipment Disposal Depot, 276 Maintenance Unit at Burton Wood. From there on the 27th of February at my last posting to 268 MU which was an Equipment Disposal Depot at Marston Moor in Yorkshire. People have heard of Marston Moor. And if I had obeyed orders I would still be there now because I was told to report to the demob centre on the 31st of April 1947. So I didn’t. I went there on the 1st of May and therefore left the RAF. Now, from a family point of view in March, no, May, 1945 I met the girl who was going to become my wife and we got married in October 1946 and managed to get a flat together on our demob. And in May 1948 the first child was born who was described by the local Scottish GP as, ‘A wee demob present.’ I returned to the firm where I was articled because it was a five year article. I had just done two. About two years before going in the RAF. Concessions due to people who’d been in the forces. The five years was reduced to three so I had a year to do then and I had the exams to do. You got exemption from the intermediate or consideration on two subjects in the final. I decided to opt for the consideration of the two. This was done by correspondence course. There was no tuition other than the occasional Saturday morning lecture in Liverpool. Took the final exams in November ‘48 and got the results in January ‘49. It was easy to find out what your result was. We were on the second floor of this block of flats and you knew what time the post came and it came down and just went through on to the floor down there. You had a careful look and if it was a thin envelope you had failed. If it was a thick envelope it had the application for membership and you knew you’d got through. So from there having moved from a very small practice in Oswestry. You know, which was local firms, farms and nothing. Small. Needed to go for some experience on bigger stuff so we moved to London. Lived in Raynes Park and I got a job with Price Waterhouse. No. I beg your pardon. [Pitt Mark and Mitchell?] which was audits on a big scale including, I can say, Fairey Aviation at Hayes, which was interesting. Having done that for a year I decided I would rather make my own mistakes than find other people’s so got a job with United Dominions Trust which, at that time was the main hire purchase business and their premises were in Thames Street. They were just by London Bridge in London. I stayed there for two years and it was, it was a boring job and then the travel gene came out so I got a job with the India General Navigation and Railway Company Limited founded in 1847 which provided river steamers up and down the Ganges and the Brahmaputra with a head office in Calcutta. So went there. Obviously in the accounts department. The scale of it was rather surprising. There isn’t a bridge on the Brahmaputra for the first seven hundred miles because there isn’t enough stable bank. One of the principal activities was bringing tea down from Assam. There were a lot of general cargo but that was a bulk one. And in the month of October which was the busy month we would bring down from Assam to Calcutta for loading up from the port six hundred thousand eighty pound chests of tea which is a lot of cups full. The passenger vessels were licensed to carry more passengers than the Queen Mary. Two and a half thousand. Perhaps not quite in the same standard of comfort but it was an important link in the travel of East and West Bengal which were now separated. East Bengal at that stage was East Pakistan. Later changed its name to Bangladesh when it separated from what was then West Pakistan. In the December of that that year we moved from Calcutta to Dakar where an office was being set up because of the split of all the various companies following the devolution in 1947 and had to set up, from scratch, an accounts department there. Fortunately, twelve Hindu clerks were content to come with me even though they were moving to a Mohammedan country which had been a lot of unpleasantness in the recent past and I was very appreciative of that. They stayed for about four or five months whilst I got the furniture for the office and recruited seventy local people with a minimum qualification of a B-Comm and generally speaking an M-Comm. That meant that they were able to express a third as a percentage or the other way around. There, until the [pause] sorry. In Calcutta we were in partnership with the River Steam Navigation Company which was the same company that ran the British India Steamship Company and they were, ran joint services but they had separate marine engineering accounts and all the other departments and it was decided it would be better to set up the joint ones. At that time I was posted to Chittagong and there to sit in an office for six months drawing up the procedure and the layout of the books and all the things for the joint accounts department in Calcutta. Having done which, posted back to Calcutta to make the bloody thing work and stayed doing that until 1957 when, by that stage having had another child out there and where the expat community was tending to diminish. It was, when I went there in 1952 there were ten thousand British expats in Calcutta. All with, all in management jobs. Decided it was better to come back to the UK. Decided then not to work north of a line from the Mersey to the Wash. Not London. And the Black Country. Got a job just outside Abingdon which was in Berkshire with Ameys which was a building material company using sand and gravel quarried stone, concrete, concrete products. I stayed there from 1958 until retirement in 1985 at the age of sixty.
[Recording paused]
CB: Just doing a recap on a number of things now, Hugh. In your earliest stages you talked about your friends volunteering for PNB — Pilot, Navigator, Bomb aimer. What happened to them?
HP: They were called up, sort of, eighteen and a half, nineteen. Sometimes just a bit over nineteen because they initially were put on deferred service but when they were called up they were given ground jobs as aircraft and general duties. And none of them completed any flying training or ever got to a squadron. So my decision to go for air gunner although it was thought a much lower and lower class occupation than the rest of the aircrew I was fortunate enough to get all the way through and became their envy. I got paid slightly more which was a bit expensive when they were on leave and I was at the same time.
CB: To what extent did you keep up with them during the war?
HP: Very little.
CB: You didn’t know where they were I presume.
HP: If you were on leave at the same time you did but I mean your life was very full.
CB: Yes. Ok.
HP: And you, you were meeting new people all the time.
CB: Yeah.
HP: And you didn’t make too many intimate friends as such because you were aware that their, of their life expectancy and that there was this distance. Certainly between crews and to an extent within a crew.
CB: Ok so —
HP: You were very close together. If one chap had any money you all had money. But as far as mixing with families goes — no. The bare minimum.
CB: Now you mentioned crews. So this is moving ahead a little but you crewed up at number 11 OTU at Westcott and what happened there? You arrived at Westcott. Then what happened?
HP: The day after arrival all the various un-crewed up members were assembled in a hangar. The pilots then sort of cruised around accumulating a crew. And there didn’t — there was no logic about it. There was no question of people being placed with one or another. It just happened. In the American Air Force I think they were posted together by order of their superiors but with us we just accumulated and that started off as a period of trust.
CB: And what was your pilot like?
HP: Paddy Goody was basically of Irish descent. He was, I think he was a flight sergeant there. He got a commission in the end of March I think it was. ‘45. We were all from very much the same background. You know. Sort of Grammar School or equivalent.
CB: Ok. And was he a good leader? [pause] Or you just followed what he —
HP: Well we worked together as a crew. There wasn’t conscious leadership as such. We moved as a unit. Not as six people commanded by the pilot
CB: Right. And then what about the other members of the crew? Should we? What about the bomb aimer?
HP: The bomb aimer. Taffy Williams. We knew him as grandad because he had his twenty third birthday when he was with us and he came from not too far from Rhosllanerchrugog. Try and spell that.
CB: That’s an easy one. Yes. [laughs]
HP: The navigator, Roy Wootton came from Nottingham. The Gilly, the other air gunner, he was a Londoner. The flight engineer, he joined us when we were at Heavy Conversion Unit and he was a Geordie. The wireless operator, Gilly — no. Harper. Gilly was the other gunner. Harper. Harper he was. He came from Grantham. Now he was a bit of an oddity. After an operation he would sit on his own in the mess not talking to anyone and he ended up by more or less excluding himself from a crew. So he left us and we were joined by another wireless operator who was a spare on the squadron. I can’t remember his name. We weren’t together all that time. Otherwise, as a crew if one had a pound you all had. You all had a drink, you know. And it was very much a crew spirit.
CB: So the crew spirit at the OTU.
HP: That’s where it generated.
CB: Was pretty good was it? It’s just that when you got to the HCU that you had this difficulty with Harper.
HP: No. That was on the squadron.
CB: On the squadron. Right.
HP: Yes.
CB: Ok.
HP: Because after an operation he would sit separately.
CB: Ok.
HP: Not after a flight.
CB: So why did he move? Was he — did somebody say, ‘Right. That’s it.’ and say, ‘We’ll have somebody else,’ or, how did that happen?
HP: Well as because he was part of the crew the rest of us said, agreed with the pilot, that he would go and see the chap in charge of the wireless operators, you know. Which was a sort of separate wireless operators section. There was a gunnery section, a bomb aimers section and say, ‘Look we think it is better from his point of view as much as from ours if he doesn’t stay with us.’ Now, he was eventually posted but we made sure that he didn’t carry with him the horrible initials of LMF with which I’m sure you’re familiar.
CB: I was going to ask you about that. Keep going. Yes.
HP: Yeah. Yeah. We made sure that he was just posted and not, not labelled.
CB: Ok. So what we’ve talked about is going back a little now. You joined at Shrewsbury. Was that a recruiting office?
HP: Yeah. Shrewsbury was the combined recruiting office for all three services.
CB: Right. And what did they do there? You knew you wanted to be RAF but —
HP: Oh yes. Yeah. So you went, you went to the RAF section. You said what you wanted to do. You had the normal medical which everyone went through and you had an interview and if you were considered reasonable at that level you then went to Birmingham for the aircrew medical and aptitude tests and recruitment and where you got your shilling.
CB: Now. The shilling’s important. We’ll come back to that. But you said aircrew tests. You’d already indicated you wanted to be an air gunner.
HP: Yeah.
CB: Were you on that stream?
HP: Yes.
CB: And what were the —
HP: No. No. You were on an aircrew stream.
CB: Aircrew stream.
HP: At that stage.
CB: Right. Ok. So what tests did they give you there?
HP: Oh. Extra medicals. Extra sight tests. Hand and eye coordination with which you’re familiar. The test.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Ok.
HP: And aircraft recognition. All sorts.
CB: Then when you went to ACRC, the Aircrew Reception Centre in —
HP: St John’s.
CB: St Johns Wood was there any repetition of what you’d done or was it a different? What did you do there?
HP: You went there to be kitted out and punctured.
CB: Yeah. Inoculations.
HP: Yes. And if you were in one particular requisitioned block of flats you actually went to eat in Regents Park Zoo.
CB: But not eating the animals. The —
HP: Not. You didn’t know.
CB: [laughs] So then you went to ITW at Bridlington. That was an ITW was it? Bridlington.
HP: It was.
CB: Pardon?
HP: Yes.
CB: It was. Right. So that was when you were on the beach and you’ve got the driving rain.
HP: Yes.
CB: What was the main activity there?
HP: Aircraft recognition. The guns with which you had to be familiar. Both from the point of view of their components and their stripping and very limited amount of firing. Law, discipline and just general background to assimilate you in to the air force with a view to moving on to air gunner training.
CB: So what were the guns you were using? Were they ones that were used on the ground like Bren guns and rifles? Or —
HP: Yes. They tended to be. But that was a minor point. I mean using live ammunition was not that very serious.
CB: Ok. Then you went to Bridgnorth. Now this is the, [pause] a gunnery school is it?
HP: Number 1, Elementary Air Gunnery School. Number 1 EAGS.
CB: Ok.
HP: No flying there at all but just taking this, taking the ITW disciplines a stage further.
CB: So how were they teaching you air gunnery there? For instance to what extent did they use clay pigeon shooting?
HP: I don’t think we had clay pigeon shooting there. We might have done but it was just more intense of stripping and reassembling and, say, aircraft recognition and you did a limited amount of astronomy so that, you know, you could do that and a limited amount of what might happen on an escape and evasion. I don’t remember much more.
CB: Ok. And the guns there. Were they the type that would be in the aircraft? In other words Brownings. 303.
HP: I think it was there we were first introduced to the Browning 303.
CB: In a turret? Or in an open deck?
HP: I think we had possibly a very limited amount of turret manipulation but very limited. And yeah and following a dot which was put around a darkened chamber through the gun sight.
CB: Right.
HP: To get the turret manipulation.
CB: So your next move was Pembrey on the, on the [Caernarvon?] Coast.
HP: South Wales Coast.
CB: Cardigan Coast is it? Anyway. The edge of Cardigan Bay.
HP: Yeah.
CB: So that’s —
HP: No. No. No. South Wales.
CB: South Wales. Right. So where —
HP: Yeah. Overlooking the Bristol Channel.
CB: Oh. Over the Bristol Channel. Right.
HP: Yes. Yeah.
CB: So what was the activity there? What did they teach you there?
HP: Well again just a development but at that stage you would have four trainee air gunners going off in an Anson firing live ammunition at a drogue towed by a Miles Magister or a Master. I can’t remember. I can’t remember which. And when the tow was over the drogue would be dropped on the runway and it would be picked up by the four trainee air gunners from the Anson. Having landed before they got, they got to it and that would be taken into a hut with a long bench and you would then identify the bullet holes which you had made. Not that anybody else had made. Now the, I think the firing was two hundred and fifty rounds for each. It was made up in a belt of four lots of two fifty. Three had their gun, their round tips dipped in a colour and the fourth one didn’t have any colour at all. So you had traces of the colour in the drogue and you counted the number of holes and divided them by two. One for the bullet to go in. The other one for the bullet to go out. And that gave you a score. You also had fighter liaison with the camera gun where you were practising deflection and bullet trail and all the other various parts. And with the target aircraft diving, moving, doing mock attacks. And those, the film from those camera guns was then assessed as to your ability to be able to fire directly.
[Recording paused]
CB: We’ve talked about your training there in the Anson and you mentioned deflection shooting. Could you just describe what that means?
HP: The only point blank shooting which was shooting direct at an aircraft would be one which was immediately behind you and travelling at the same speed and not changing direction. From there you could aim straight at it. If it were in any position other than that you had to put the bullet where the aircraft would be when the bullet got there and this would involve both speed and direction. It might be climbing — losing speed. It might be diving and gaining speed. So you had to rapidly assess which you thought it would be and in your gun sight there was a point and a circle. Within the circle you would draw a line in your mind from the point to the edge of the circle that the plane would be coming in to and you then had to assess how many of those radiuses you needed to move according to the speed of the aircraft relative to the speed of the one you were in. Apart from that there was one other complication that your own aircraft could well be manoeuvring violently as well.
CB: Yes. So in practical terms then the amount of deflection, the amount you aim ahead would depend, to some extent, on the relative position of the other plane.
HP: Yes. And what it was doing and what your own plane was doing.
CB: Right. So what might your own plane be doing?
HP: Might be diving, climbing, turning.
CB: What about corkscrew?
HP: Well if if you went into a corkscrew it was most unlikely that the attacking aircraft would follow you because it wouldn’t be able to. That was the point of the corkscrew. If he could follow you through into a corkscrew well there was no point in corkscrewing.
CB: Right. So could you just describe how you’d get into the corkscrew and what was the corkscrew?
HP: The cork.
CB: Who would call the corkscrew?
HP: The gunners would usually call the corkscrew because they would be the ones seeing the attacking aircraft who were aft. And you could corkscrew to the port or to starboard. A corkscrew to port would be when the pilot would dive port and having done that for a matter of some seconds. Ten, fifteen perhaps. He would then turn the aircraft and dive starboard. He would then climb starboard and then climb port and then he would dive port. And that would repeat a circular movement which can adequately be described by going along and describing a pass, a corkscrew in the air.
CB: And the fighter would normally be closing at a higher speed or the same speed?
HP: He would, if you were corkscrewing the fighter would probably stand off because his chance of being able to hit you when you were corkscrewing were the same as your chance of hitting him when you were corkscrewing.
CB: Right.
HP: That was the point of doing a corkscrew.
CB: Right. So we are at Pembrey and you’ve been getting all this training. What happened then? How long was that? Relatively short period?
[Recording paused]
HP: The Air Gunnery School was from the 25th of March 1944 to the 30th of June so that was three months which was the longest period there.
CB: Ok. And from there you went to the OTU.
HP: Yes.
CB: We talked about crewing up. What did — because there were all the disciplines except flight engineer at the OTU what were the tasks you did as a crew?
HP: Well we were flying in Wellingtons so we had to become familiar with the Wellington. When walking down the gang plank from forward to aft or aft to forward you had to make sure you didn’t, you didn’t let your foot slip on either side because it would go through the fabric of the fuselage and that would cost you five shillings to the ground crew to mend when you got back. And since your pay was four shillings a day you were very careful walking. It was familiarity with cross country flying with the wireless operator then. It was everybody becoming more familiar with their trade and doing, for the first time, practice bombing runs with practice bombs on bombing ranges which might be on the ground or they might be just just on the coach.
CB: And were you — as far as the gunners were concerned that wasn’t a task you were directly involved in but were you doing fighter affiliation?
HP: Oh yes.
CB: As well?
HP: Yes.
CB: And how would that normally take place?
HP: Generally more. Generally with, not with drogues but with cameras. And not — and with fighter aircraft because it was part of their training. So you were helping a fighter, our own air force fighter aircraft to do the same thing so they would have their camera guns on you.
CB: Now the number of airfields was very high so what area would you be doing fighter affiliation work? It was?
HP: Well you could fly out over the sea or you could, or you could go west because if you went west say from [pause] oh a line drawn up north south through Birmingham there was plenty of air space there and there was, or went beyond Yorkshire there was plenty.
CB: Right.
HP: Or over the sea.
CB: So you were at Westcott for three months and at the Number 11 OTU. And then you go to the HCU. At Westcott did you know where you were going to be posted or did that only emerge —
HP: No.
CB: At the last minute?
HP: Well it only, in fact it only, when you got your orders through the post because you were probably on leave. You just reported.
CB: Right. So you’d finish your OTU training and go on leave and then find out. In this case that you were going to Woolfox.
HP: Yeah.
CB: So what happened there? What was the aircraft?
HP: From there to the Lancaster which was of course a lot bigger aircraft. You had your flight engineer.
CB: He joined you then.
HP: He joined you there and it was just more cross country. More. Just more of the same but I think we went on one diversion raid to Calais. We would. You did that to sort of draw off the German Air Force from the intended target. They would have a force going there and we got, I think we got shot at over Calais which was a bit unfair we thought because we were only training.
CB: Yeah. Not fair at all. [laughs] So those sorties. Would they, what sort of flight time would you have there? Would they be fairly short because you went to Calais and back? Or would you then go on somewhere different to make up the time?
HP: Excuse me while I look up.
CB: That’s fine.
HP: Woolfox Lodge. We did a lot of circuits and landings, rated climbs, fighter affiliation, a run on H2S, cross country’s or practice bombing and general fighter affiliation. Yeah.
CB: Ok. We’ll stop there just for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok. So you finished at Woolfox Lodge and you were then posted to Mepal in Cambridgeshire. What, what were you impressions when you arrived there? The squadron and the station.
HP: Well we were made very very welcome.
CB: This is a New Zealand squadron.
HP: Yes. And we were still at that stage an all NCO crew. We didn’t have any problem. You had the traditional two crews to a Nissen hut and everybody had a bike so that they could get to the mess and they could eat. Everything was relatively informal but the discipline all through the training became more and more your own discipline and the crew discipline. You weren’t ordered to do many, to do things in detail. You knew you had to report at a certain time every day to the gunnery section or what, if you weren’t doing anything else and you just did it. As you would any job in Civvy Street. There was a high degree of discipline but it was self-imposed of necessity.
CB: And tell us about the crew. So they had a motto and the squadron was supposedly New Zealand but what was the composition?
HP: I don’t follow the —
CB: Right. So what was the motto of the New Zealand Squadron? 75.
HP: That was, that was the motto of the New Zealand squadron Ake Ake Kia Kaha.
CB: Right. Which meant?
HP: “For ever and ever be strong.”
CB: Right. So why were there, why were there British crews as well?
HP: Because there weren’t enough New Zealand crews coming forward to replace the casualties.
CB: Right. And what about the ground crew?
HP: All British.
CB: And what association did your crew have with the ground crew?
HP: Well, we had the same aircraft all the time and it was friendly without being really familiar. They wouldn’t want to become over familiar with the crew because they didn’t want to lose their crews. But they tended to, if you were on an op, they would wait to see if you came back before they went off on leave.
CB: And what was the chief, the chief of the ground crew, the chief — the crew chief. Who did he liaise with in terms of the aircraft?
HP: Well he would liaise according to the trade which was involved. I mean you had air frame, you had wireless, you had gunnery. You know. Engines. They had, the ground crew were a team of specialists who tended to reflect the trades of the aircrew. On return from a flight of any sort whether it be training or operational a report would be made to the ground crew of any problems or anticipated problem.
CB: And who would do that in your crew?
HP: Depends on the speciality. There’s no point in anyone trying to inform the problems of another one’s trade because he wouldn’t know.
CB: Right. So in the crew there are people at the front, people at the back and people in the middle. As the mid-upper gunner who had the best perspective?
HP: When you say perspective you mean the greatest all-around view?
CB: When you’re flying.
HP: Oh yes. No doubt about it. The mid upper gunner because you could turn through three hundred and sixty degrees and you could look upwards and downwards.
CB: And in your position how many guns did you have?
HP: Two.
CB: And how often did you fire them on operations?
HP: Seldom.
CB: Was there a reason for that?
HP: Yes. Nothing to fire at as we were mainly on daylights to synthetic oil plants.
CB: Ah.
HP: Bombing on GH which you are aware of.
CB: Yeah. On —
HP: And we had close escort of Mustangs and high escorts of Spitfires. So we didn’t have a lot of trouble with fighters. We had the odd rocket one would come through. Go up and, you know, firing as it went up and firing again as it came down.
CB: ME262 er 163.
HP: 163.
CB: 163. Yes.
HP: Yes. The 262 was the first —
CB: Jet.
HP: Jet. And the target areas were heavily supported by flak. The reason we were going there was to — obviously so that there was no oil available. No fuel available. And it became apparent from the shortage of fuel for tanks and aircraft that we were achieving what we set out to do.
[Recording paused]
HP: That is shortly going to go twelve.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ask the question.
JB: I was just wondering how it was that you met your wife and what she was doing.
HP: I was, I was on leave and I was friendly with a family called the Morgans. Morgan family. And we used to tend to go to the same places. This was the Queen’s Hotel. She was friendly with a female member of that family. I was familiar with one of the boys. I went in there. Met for the first time in April ‘45 and it just moved on very naturally from there.
JB: Oh right. And so was she working?
HP: Yes. She was working in a chemist’s.
JB: In the hotel?
HP: In a chemist’s shop.
JB: Oh right.
HP: She wasn’t a qualified pharmacist.
JB: No.
HP: But she did a lot of dispensing from the prescriptions.
JB: Right. Right. Did she develop that after the war? Did she carry on? Did she?
HP: No. We were. No. We were married. She was the mother of the children.
JB: Yes. That was a time when you did. You did. Your job was to be mother of the children wasn’t it?
HP: Yes.
JB: So that’s something that I don’t think people these days quite cotton on to. Apparently.
CB: We’re going to stop because we’re coming to the 12th hour.
HP: Yes.
[Recording paused]
CB: We’ve restarted now just to pick up on an item which was to do with the wireless operator and we didn’t really go in to it but LMF, lack of moral fibre was a particular stigma. So how did you see it and how did it affect your crew?
HP: You were aware that this was a sanction. You couldn’t be put on a charge for refusing to fly because you were all volunteers. There had to be a sanction for those who deliberately avoided it or demonstrated any signs of cowardice. It would, a lot depended on the squadron commander and the medical officer as to the sanction which would be applied and to the history of the individual and what he actually did to possibly justify an assessment. If somebody was — appeared to refuse to fly out of sheer cowardice he could be classified as LMF. That was put on a rubber stamp on all his documents. He would be posted to an aircrew disciplinary school at Sheffield and the same thing could apply to a total crew if a total crew went, as a unit, LMF and those initials would follow them as a matter of disgrace all the way through. So because you couldn’t be disciplined for refusing to fly you had this as the alternative which was shame. And it was shame that would accompany you for the rest of your time. So to what extent this stopped people taking actions which would possibly declare them LMF of course can never be known.
CB: And in the case of your crew — what happened there?
HP: Nothing.
CB: But you had a man, a wireless operator —
HP: We had a man who we could no longer get on with and he was isolating himself. He carried out, he carried out his job reasonably well but became incompatible with us and for that reason we made sure that although we made arrangements with him to be replaced that there was no stigma attached to him.
CB: Yeah. He was posted elsewhere was he?
HP: Yes. I think so. But no —
CB: But nobody. Nobody knew.
HP: Yes. He left but we don’t know where he went or what or how.
CB: And the new man? How did he react to joining the crew in these circumstances?
HP: He was glad to be back in with a crew. He was no longer a spare man.
CB: And why would people be spares?
HP: Well he was on either his second or his third tour.
CB: Oh.
HP: And I think the rest of the crew had finished, finished a tour and he had a few more ops to do to become tour expired. So spares.
CB: Yeah. Now in your case 75 gave way to 90. What were the circumstances of that?
HP: Well 75 Squadron, as far as we understood it, was going to be returning to New Zealand.
CB: So the war has ended in Europe.
HP: Yes.
CB: 8th of May.
HP: Yes.
CB: 1945. How soon after that did they —
HP: Well beginning of June we were posted to 90. I don’t know when 75 actually moved back to New Zealand.
CB: And there was the Maori motto but were there Maori members of the crew?
HP: There were.
CB: And what did they do in the aircraft as a task? Do you know?
HP: Well, any. Any job.
CB: So they were pilots.
HP: Yes.
CB: Yeah. The whole span.
HP: Probably fewer pilots because of the length of training but there was.
CB: Yeah.
HP: Yeah. And they were a wonderful friendly people.
CB: And they had a boost to their rations. How did that work?
HP: Who said they had a boost to their rations?
CB: Well because they, they received parcels from New Zealand.
HP: Oh all. The whole of the New Zealand squadron.
CB: That’s what I meant.
HP: Got home comforts.
CB: Yes.
HP: Yeah.
CB: What did they get mainly?
HP: Oh you got cigarettes fully packed in tissue paper, silver paper and cellophane covered cardboard boxes and I think there were chocolate and so forth. Nothing very major but sufficient to make the non-New Zealand crews feel that they were welcome. That they, it wasn’t that a whole group of people got something that you didn’t get and that there was a gap between you.
CB: Yeah.
HP: There was every attempt to keep it as a unit.
CB: Yes. So they were supplied by New Zealand but everybody, regardless of origin on the squadron —
HP: Yeah.
CB: Took. Was able to benefit.
HP: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Your final operation before the war ended was Operation Manna which was supplying food to people in Holland.
HP: Yes.
CB: You talked about your, the first op. What other operations did you do there? Was that the only one or did you do several other Manna drops?
HP: No. We did the first one on, it was a Sunday. The 29th of April and then it got other squadrons. It was a privilege to actually be able to do it and other squadrons and other crews were involved. There was a limited number to start with.
CB: What was the significance of flying at three hundred feet rather than a different level?
HP: If you’re dropping stuff in sacks you want to drop it from not too high otherwise the sacks would burst.
CB: No. I meant, I meant rather than two hundred or one hundred because the impact is so high.
HP: I wouldn’t know.
CB: No.
HP: You might have had pylons going up to two hundred and fifty. Who knows? But I mean that — somebody had to fix that.
CB: Yeah.
HP: You couldn’t do it, fly at ground level even though Holland is pretty flat.
CB: Because you never knew which windmill was coming up next.
HP: Yes.
CB: Right. So how many sorties did you do? Operations did you do on Manna?
HP: As far as I know, oh only one on Manna. And I think we did fourteen bombing operations I think it was.
CB: Yeah.
HP: And then one on Manna.
CB: Ok. And —
HP: And we only did one night operation. That was to Kiel.
CB: Ok.
HP: That was the night the Scharnhorst sunk. We of course sank it.
CB: Yeah. Of course you did. Yeah. Everybody did.
HP: The other nine hundred aircraft on the operation missed.
CB: Everybody did. Yeah. That’s it. So 90 Squadron now. So you’re in 90 Squadron what’s the brief there?
HP: Well. Carry on with operation review which was the —
CB: This is the mapping. The film mapping.
HP: This is the mapping of Europe. Yeah. Generally long distance flying. Anything up to eight hours.
CB: And at what height would you be flying there?
HP: I think the, it was because of the cameras I think we were at twenty thousand feet above ground level.
CB: Oh.
HP: So the height varied.
CB: And it’s a big place. Continent of Europe. So what was the focus that you had geographically?
HP: Well, not a particular focus. You just went. Went where you were told the following day.
CB: Yeah. But did it tend to be any consistency like —
HP: No.
CB: Going over —
HP: No.
CB: France or whatever.
HP: No. I mean over France. We went once to Norway and there you were supposed to get there at first light before the clouds formed. Norway at first light. The fjords, the fjords, the bottom of the fjords were in darkness so we had to wait until that was light. As soon as that was light the cloud started up and down so we went and had a look up the fjords and we were flying up one and turned around to the left and stopped. S we just managed stopped so we just manage to scrape over the top.
CB: Crikey. Yeah.
JB: Nasty moment.
[Recording paused]
HP: That was on the 5th of September.
CB: So your mapping work took some time. How long did that continue until?
HP: Well I’ve no idea how long other people carried on.
CB: No.
HP: We did our last mapping trip on the 5th. On the 5th of September.
CB: Right. And then after that did you stand down?
HP: We were made redundant.
CB: Pardon?
HP: We were made redundant.
CB: Oh you were. Right. Ok. So that’s when you went to the —
HP: Yeah.
CB: Other places. Catterick.
HP: You had, you had a lot of newly trained crews you see. Moving forward.
CB: Right. And they wanted to use them.
HP: Well they were just replaced those who became redundant.
CB: Yeah. Right. Ok. Good.
HP: And of course squadrons were disbanded.
CB: Yes. [pause] But 90 carried on.
[Recording paused]
HP: On Bomber —
CB: Just going on to equipment. We touched briefly — you mentioned H2S the scanning radar. So what was it, how did it work and how did you use it?
HP: We didn’t use H2S. We were bombing on GH.
CB: Oh. On GH. Right.
HP: And
CB: Why didn’t you use H2S?
HP: Because it wasn’t as accurate as GH. We were daylight bombing on synthetic oil plants which were not vast areas and the, you had special training to familiarise yourself with, with this and specially equipped aircraft and on, on a squadron going one in three aircraft would be equipped with —
CB: GH.
HP: With GH only. And two aircraft would formate on that. So you went out like that because I think the question of the strength of signals. I don’t know much about GH but we went on a course where the navigator/bomb aimer were familiarised with this method of accurate bombing through cloud or through anything else like that and you had to maintain a steady course to go over this which was helpful for the flak.
CB: Absolutely, because this is running on a lattice system and, right — so talking about flak to what extent did you get damage from flak?
HP: You usually came back with holes of some sort. We came back once with two engines gone on one side which was not particularly healthy. Another occasion I knew I was dead. I was doing a search there. I’m fairly tall. If I was looking up the back of my head would be pressed against the Perspex of the turret at the back and there was a loud bang where my head was touching this. I turned around and there was a hole about the, about the size of a penny. So I felt the back of my head. Nothing. Looked around at the hole. It was definitely there and if I wasn’t bleeding and didn’t feel any pain therefore I was dead. Now, this lasted for perhaps a half a minute, a minute before you realised that it was a large piece of, large piece of flak had ricocheted off. But bearing in mind you’ve been on oxygen and heated, you’re cold, you’ve got temperatures of minus thirty, minus forty and there was stress. So for that short period of time I knew I was dead. But you came back with holes almost practically anywhere.
CB: And in your turret which way would you normally be facing? Was it —were you rotating it?
HP: Aft.
CB: All the time? Or mainly aft.
HP: Yeah. Yeah. The normal position of a turret was facing aft because you didn’t have to rotate the turret to see.
CB: Yeah. So when those engines went out you would be looking backwards so you wouldn’t see them being hit.
HP: Well you wouldn’t necessarily see them being hit because they would be from underneath and since the engines were underneath the wing.
CB: No. I’m just wondering whether you happened to see as both went out. Whether you happened to experience that.
HP: I can’t remember. I can’t remember.
CB: Right.
HP: You soon knew it had happened.
CB: Yes.
HP: There was a change in sound immediately.
CB: We talked about GH is was the navigation system also used for bombing but from earlier in the war the H2S with the bulge underneath was introduced. My question there was why wouldn’t you use it?
HP: Because the fighters could, 1 — because the fighters could home in on it. 2 — it wasn’t as accurate for the targets which we were detailed to bomb and there weren’t too many squadrons on daylight bombing.
CB: Right.
HP: In Bomber Command.
CB: Right.
HP: We were.
CB: Good. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Hugh Parry. One
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-11
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Sound
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AParryHP161011
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Hugh Parry was born in Oswestry and joined the Air Force in April 1943 and volunteered to be an air gunner. Knowing that there was a height restriction on air gunners of six feet he hid his height by wearing baggy trousers. After training, he was posted to 75 NZ Squadron and then to 90 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham where his crew carried out photographic reconnaissance over Europe. Among his operations Hugh’s crew were also one of the first to take part in Operation Manna. After the war Hugh returned to accountancy. For a while he lived and worked in Bangladesh before returning to the UK.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
India
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Rutland
England--Suffolk
India--Kolkata
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Format
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01:09:30 audio recording
11 OTU
1651 HCU
3 Group
75 Squadron
90 Squadron
aerial photograph
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
animal
Anson
bombing
crewing up
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
guard room
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
Me 163
military ethos
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
P-51
perception of bombing war
physical training
RAF Bridlington
RAF Mepal
RAF Pembrey
RAF Silloth
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Westcott
RAF Woolfox Lodge
reconnaissance photograph
Spitfire
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/572/8840/AFroudJ160509.1.mp3
652f8a9f36625bbc3294d28ca088a96e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Froud, James
J Froud
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Froud, J
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with James Froud (1922 - 2019, 1801660 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 44 and 83 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-09
2016-05-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DP: This interview is being conducted for the Bomber Command centre, the interviewer is Dave Pilsworth, the interviewee is James Froud
[Other] Froud
DP: Froud, the interview is taking place at Mr Froud’s home, in, Runnymead Green, Bury St Edmunds on the ninth November, two thousand and fourteen, time [pause] is eleven twenty-five
[inaudible]
JF: I was in Kent, erm, I was, about twenty, I suppose, nineteen or twenty. I hadn’t been called up because I was in a reserved occupation, anyway, I went to, the erm, the RAF was very busy with, German invaders, fighters and bombers, and er, I thought I would go in and become a pilot, [background noise] a spitfire pilot of course, [background noise] and er, [pause] that was all very well, anyway I went [pause] to, London, for an interview, and I can’t remember quite where it was, but it’s a well-known centre, for the RAF, I had an interview, had a medical and then was put on the reserve list, and, I was reserved for a year, one thing that annoys me about it is, is that I, was issued with a little silver badge, which goes in your lapel, and, I very quickly lost that [laughs] which was unfortunate, so everybody thought I was skiving, anyway, not everybody, perhaps. I finished up going into the service, and I was called up to, Lords cricket ground for [unclear] and then we were put in some, billets which were fairly new flats, opposite Regents Park, [pause] one thing I had to have done when I was in very quickly, because I wasn’t very well, but I had to have a tooth out, having that out, must have upset me because I was then very quickly put into, a, sick bay which, was a house within, Regents Park, whether that house is still there I don’t know, and that of course, I missed the squadron that I was with, anyway, I was put in another squadron eventually, erm, [pause]
[inaudible]
DP: Interview paused
JF: Torquay, and er, eventually, failed the navigation exams, so I then went to Paignton, and repeated them, and failed them again, so I was then sent to Eastchurch, and er, remustered to [unclear] course, from there to Bridlington, Bridgenorth, and finally Stormy Down, which was a, flying airfield just perched on the coast, in the south of Wales, erm, from there, I think we met up, a number of members of air crew, bombers, bomb aimers, gunners, wireless ops, navigators and pilots and gunners, I said gunners, and we just made a crew up, you weren’t allocated a crew, you just sorted yourselves out, we then [unclear] we went to Market Harborough, were we flew in, [unclear] what did we fly in, Wellingtons [emphasis] [laughs] and from there, [background noise] we apparently went to Husbands Bosworth, which again was one of the operational, er, no, what where they called, the place, yes, it’s O.T.U, operational training unit, and from there, we went to Swinderby, and flew in Stirlings, which we didn’t like a lot, well I didn’t [laughs], and the next move was Syerston, for, changeover to, Lancasters, I stayed there about two months roughly, this was in May, nineteen forty four, from Syerston, can’t remember the antics we got up to there, but I do remember going to Nottingham, to a dance, just before we started flying, and er, came back, it must have been early afternoon, since it’s May, June, area, and er, we were on top of a bus, saw a Lancaster circle round and then it suddenly, nosed dived straight into the deck, not funny, what a first experience, we must have been absolutely stupid, because we didn’t take any notice, we carried on, and [pause] were then, er, finished some training there, which was mainly for pilots and I did a little bit, er, we went to Warboys, ah, no we didn’t, sorry, we went to Dunholme Lodge, from Syerston, and we were there apparently two months, er, let’s have a quick look through the book, switch it off for a minute
DP: Interview paused
JF: And this, [pause] in forty-four, so I was twenty-two wasn’t I, we finished on Stirlings, on the fifth of the fifth forty-four, and my next reference is, for Lancasters, and that must have been at [pause] Syerston, and that was on the, tenth of the fifth forty-four, my, record keeping may not be all that good actually
DP: Interview paused
JF: Circuit and landing, erm, Mitchell, was our pilots name, and the instructor was Flight Lieutenant Singer, and then, having done dual circuits and landings, we did solo, circuit and landings, and we did that at twelve thirty five so, ten fifteen we were doing the first circuit and landings, at twelve thirty five, we were doing solos, that’s the part of pilot, of course to fly, and I just sat there in the turret and looked out for enemy aircraft, over England, not a lot, I mean, so, most of [background noise] there was circuits and landings, circuits and landings, circuits and landings, all pilot practise, oh, there’s something I did, but erm, fighter affiliation, gyro, corkscrew, that was for my benefit [unclear] half an hour, no sorry, fifty minutes, that’s not half an hour, fifty minutes, and then [pause] [background noise] it’s obviously moved, [background noise] to Dunholme Lodge, [pause] it doesn’t tell you were it is [background noise]
DP: Interview paused
JF: And there’s a town in France, Aunay-sur-Odon, I remember the Wing Co saying ‘down the bloody drain’, you don’t have to put that in, [laughs] the next one was [unclear] [background noise] and the third one wasn’t so funny, they were two fairly easy ones, the third one was Wessling, Germany, where we were hit by flak, we got seventy holes in the aircraft, erm, [pause] we’d got back, we’d lost an engine, this is from memory, and er, the skip, control, the skipper did three over shoots, on the good three engines, it’s not quite so easy to fly an aircraft, is it, and erm, control called up and said ‘you are number twenty on the circuit, you’ve got the circuit to yourselves, take your time ’ more or less, erm, [pause] we actually lost twelve aircraft, from the airfield, [coughs], now, I’ve forgotten the number of the other squadron, both squadrons had lost six, now that’s a heck of a lot of people to be missing, but, we didn’t really know any of those people, we’d only been on this squadron, a short while, we’d done three trips and, we were billeted in Nissan huts, although we’d got a mess, to go to, we didn’t really know any, or very few of the other crews, we’d got another crew in the hut with us, two crews to a hut, they had survived that episode, and er, we can’t continue flying with 44 Squadron, which incidentally, was a Rhodesian Squadron, er, flying Lancs one and er, and Lancs threes, so, [background noise] we continued [pause] I don’t know whether I read [background noise] [unclear]
AP: Interview paused
JF: I can now, France and Germany, we went through Wessling so once we went through, I ducked down, so they didn’t spot me [laughs] they didn’t know we’d dropped the bombs on them [background noise] [unclear] forty-four, Creil, where ever that is, France apparently, oh, then we had a little go at Stuttgart, eh, the second one to Stuttgart, DNCO, that was duty not carried out, starboard outer US, return to base, oh this wasn’t nice, by the look of that, erm, where did we go then, Gavourres, France, Lyon, Lyon, is that correct, which is right the other end of France, erm, and I’ve got port engine, badly damaged, petrol tank holed, and, as far as I remember, that was a Lancaster below us, had, made a hole in the aircraft, erm, I remember, it actually hit, the tramways, that my ammunition went up, you know they went a bunch of mates to the rear turret, filled up from the bottom and stopped those working, it upset the navigator, the wireless op, the way through, that, fortunately nobody was hit [emphasis], er, but er, I’ve got, port engine badly damaged, petrol tank holed, Gavourres, Lyon, [unclear] [background noise] [unclear] where’s that, I don’t know, Gavourres, Lyon, now, we then, the powers that be had obviously wired up what, the bomb aimer, who acted as a second instrument operator, erm, I can’t think of the name of the set, [unclear] there was H2S and there was another one, and they, were good at operating them, so, they sent us to Warboys, there’s an NTU, I can’t recall what a NTU meant, it’s a training unit, and we just did er, five hours, thirty five with them, and that was a swap over to Pathfinder Force, erm, now my first operation, first two operations with them, were to Danzig and Stuttgart with Warrant Officer Price, so, I was obviously a spare gunner, I remember the chap whose place I took, mind you, he was killed later on or lost, [background noise] but, that’s life, here we go
AP: Interview paused
JF: [unclear], like that, like that, like that, then came up like that, so, so, you changed, er, if a fighter was coming in from here, you went like that, he missed you, and all the object of that corkscrew was, so that he couldn’t get a bead on you, he couldn’t, another set they operated was a LORAN, L-O-R-I-N [spelled out] and it’s still being used that type of radar now, in today’s aircraft, LORAN.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with James Froud. One
Creator
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Dave Pilsworth
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-05-09
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AFroudJ160509
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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00:20:37 audio recording
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Great Britain
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
Wales--Bridgend
England--Yorkshire
Germany
France
France--Aunay-sur-Odon
Description
An account of the resource
James Froud wanted to be a pilot. He was interviewed in London and called up to Lord’s Cricket Ground. Having twice failed navigation examinations, he was re-mustered and sent to RAF Eastchurch for a gunnery course. From there, he went to RAF Bridlington, RAF Bridgnorth and RAF Stormy Down, where he crewed up. Jimmy went on to RAF Market Harborough where he flew in Wellingtons and RAF Husbands Bosworth, which was an Operational Training Unit. He flew in Stirlings at RAF Swinderby and Lancasters at RAF Syerston before joining 44 Squadron at RAF Dunholme Lodge.
Jimmy refers to some of his operations in France and Germany.
He was sent to RAF Warboys, a Navigation Training Unit, and swapped over to the Pathfinder Force. Jimmy refers to the corkscrew manoeuvre and LORAN navigation system.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
44 Squadron
air gunner
bombing
crewing up
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Swinderby
RAF Warboys
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/753/10751/ACotterJDP180828.2.mp3
e9a1567a26e03578b2f197371ed79bd9
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Cotter, John David Pennington
J D P Cotter
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. The collection concerns Wing Commander John Cotter DFC (b. 1923, Royal Canadian Air Force) and contains an oral history interview, his log book and a memoir. He flew operations as a pilot with 158 and 640 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Cotter and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-08-28
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Cotter, JDP
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JC: Yes, here we are.
PS: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Patricia Selby and the interview is John Cotter and the interview is taking place at his home. Can you give me your address [tone] and the time is 2.25. Where, when were you born John?
JC: They came over to England.
PS: No, when were you born?
PS: Yes, when we came over to England. Apparently I was, my mother was pregnant with me on the voyage over and when we got here they put me in to St Mary’s Hospital Paddington, where I was born.
PS: So Paddington. So how did your childhood go on from there?
JC: They bought a house in Hendon, just by Hendon Central tube station, a brand new house, on a mortgage and they were surviving on my mother’s money really. My father decided he’d leave the sea, big mistake of his, and he had a little tobacconist by the station and things went downhill from there. And eventually the Halifax Building Society foreclosed on the mortgage in about 1928, by which time I was five, and they repossessed the house and so they moved to a, the family to a flat in Finchley Road, near Swiss Cottage, and I remember that clearly because we were there about a year and things hadn’t got any better and my father had had to take commercial jobs going round selling things and in 1930 we had to, my parents were Christian Scientists and they got help from the Christian Science Church. When they were completely broke, had no money at all, all my mother’s money had gone, we had to go down to a place called Roe Green in, near Colindale and people, Christian Scientists, in council houses for example, were putting us up and the family was split up a couple of times with my brother and my mother in one house and my father and myself in another house. Eventually my father must have got a loan and he purchased a car in 1932, a little Swift, 1923 Swift, and he paid five pounds for it, I remember that. And he started selling eggs from this car. He’d go round the villages, selling eggs. And from that he progressed to a dirty garage, in Baker Street, where he was fitting tyres. We had the car at home and he would be spending his days fitting tyres on car wheels, motor cars, and eventually he got his own business and he bought it at Neasden, in Blackbird Cross at Neasden, he had a shop called the Boat House Tyre Service I think. And he had about three employees there, including one of my uncles, who’d also fallen on hard times, and things were going very well and so we moved into a very large flat in Edgware, with four huge bedrooms and three living rooms and it was up on the third floor of a block and we were over a block of shops, and we were over a shop called Gilbert Reeves in Edgware, Station Road, Edgware and we were now living very well. I passed my scholarship to a grammar school and in 1935 I went to the Kingsbury County School, grammar school. I’d done very well at ordinary school, elementary school, I’d always been top of the class. I now, for some reason, became almost the bottom of the class in the grammar school. I found that the competition was very heavy and I wasn’t doing very well. However, I hung on and I started in, there in August ’35 and August ’39 came along and war was declared in September the 3rd, by which time I’d decided I was going to join the Junior League of Oswald Mosley’s Fascist movement. Outside Edgware Station, which was a big station, the end of the Northern Line, so a big station, and one side of the station would be the Communist Party, workers selling the Daily Worker, and the other side would be the Fascists, Oswald Mosley’s man and I always liked him better, Oswald Mosley’s men, always looked better, smarter. And civil war in Spain had been going on for some time and we, my parents had a great friend called Mr Auty, who was a Spaniard and an olive oil importer and he said that the Fascist Party were the only hope for Spain and so I supported General Franco and led to numerous fights with me at school as nobody else seemed to support General Franco, except me. By the time the war broke out I was coming up to sixteen and that year I was supposed to take my School Certificate and I knew I’d do badly at it, so the war was a sort of relief for me. But I decided I’d better not join the Fascist Party as they’d now declared war on Hitler and my parents might be upset about that, me joining Oswald Mosely. Anyway the schools were closed, no sign of opening, so I said to my mother I’m not doing very well at school, I’d better get a job, and she said yes you should get a job and then you support the household by giving some rent. So I didn’t get a job, cause I didn’t know how to get a job, so she got a job for me. Mummy got me my job in a paper firm in Upper Thames Street, just off Blackfriars in London, at twelve and six a week and I went up there and worked there. And then mummy was always saying to me, John, you must get a job with a pension, you must have a pension. So she decided that the job in Upper Thames Street wasn’t paying, going to pay a pension so she’d get me a job in the Civil Service, which she did! She produced this job for me in the Clothing Office, in Whitehall and she said you start there in I think it was June 1940, which I did. And it was quite nice job, with a pension [chuckle] and I had my own responsibilities there, I was doing something all day. I was dealing with, the war was on, so I was dealing with requests from all the colonies when we had a big Empire then, for permission to export goods to certain countries were banned from receiving any goods, anything from Germany, so they had to apply to London. They come down through me, a little sixteen year old in the clothing office, and I was then circulating them to the correct department. I was quite happy doing that and the bombing started. I used to walk down Whitehall in the evenings, six o’clock in the evening, when we finished work, and the bombing had started, mainly in the East End, but some in the centre of London, and I’d get on the tube at The Strand, to go home, and I’d come out at the end of the tunnel which was at Golders Green, and you’d immediately be into the bombing again, because you’d been safe while you were in the underground but now the bombing had started. You’d see the searchlights and it was all going on, and I got fed up of this and then they started rationing as well. Whereas rationing hadn’t been very severe and I’d had plenty of chocolate and things like that to carry on with, you could get them in all the shops, now things started disappearing and you couldn’t get them any longer. I used to attend parties where a lot of, this is in Edgware, where a lot of the people, the youngsters, were joining the services. I saw these advertisements which said: ‘You too can bomb Berlin” and advertising for pilots and I got interested in this and I noticed that the qualification to be a pilot, to be in training as a pilot, if you were selected, you had to have an education up to School Certificate standard. Didn’t say you had to have the School Certificate, you had to be educated to the standard. So, mind [indecipherable], look around and thought jolly good, I could join the Air Force and I decided I would join and take the invitation to go and bomb Berlin. ”You too can bomb Berlin” and it showed you a man in pilot’s uniform, officer’s uniform, standing and leaning on a post in a nice building in Berlin and the building was crumbling from the bombing, and so I said to my younger brother who was about eighteen months younger than me, I said to Paul I’m going off to bomb Berlin, join the Air Force and he said right, I’ll come as well. I said you can’t, because you’re too young, you’re fifteen and the minimum age is seventeen, which I was, and he said I know, but what about if I put on my age to seventeen and you put, I said I’d have to put my age up and he said yes. So eventually we decided yes, he could join with me and I said you haven’t got to school certificate standard and you won’t have it. He said doesn’t matter I’ll join as well, I’ll try and join. So in February 1941, the two of us went down to the Air Force Recruiting Office in Deansbrook Road, Edgware. And we went in and I went in first and the recruiting sergeant asked me what I wanted to be and I said I wanted to be a pilot, and he said where were you educated, and I said Kingsbury County School, just about to take the school certificate and of course the schools were closed and so I left. He said that’s good enough, he said yes, we’ll send you up to Uxbridge and you’ll be interviewed there and if you’re satisfactory, you’ll be a pilot, you’ll be training for a pilot, I was nineteen according to my reckoning, and out I went and my brother went in after me. He was accepted as well, but not as a pilot, they said he could be a rear gunner, or a gunner, or a wireless operator. So he said he’d be a wireless operator do they said you’re going to Uxbridge as well. Funnily enough, a friend of his who was the correct age completely, went in after him, was sent back to his mother to get his birth certificate. They hadn’t looked for my birth certificate, or Paul’s. So we both went to Uxbridge the following day and there we were assessed and I was accepted for training as a pilot and Paul was accepted for training as a wireless operator and we were told to go home, carry on with our jobs and they’d call us up when they had room for us. That was in February, and I waited, carried on at the Clothes Office and I waited and waited and couple of chaps at the Clothing Office had, friends of mine, who’d also joined the Air Force, they were called up and I was still waiting. Anyway, the time came: July 7th 1941. I was told to report to Lords Cricket Ground, St Johns Wood, and I did, and there I was taken into the Air Force and I’d been a great cricket fan. Am I going on too long?
PS: No, it’s fine. It’s really good.
JC: Great cricket fan and I’d been to Lords many times and in those days only the poshest amateurs, proper amateurs were allowed to use the main pavilion at Lords. The professionals, the really top class cricketers, the p[professionals, had to use the side gate and this pavilion at Lords was a place that only MCC members were allowed in and I met some cricketers. And we were all marched in on the second day there at Lords, into this temple, where only amateur players were allowed in. Told to drop our trousers round to our ankles and lift our shirts up to our necks while a Medical Officer walked down the line inspecting us. [Chuckle] Then we were passed fit, obviously, and we used to go down to, you got, billeted in flats, blocks of flats that had obviously been commandeered and the tenant told to leave, and we were billeted in these flats and we used to march down to the zoo for our meals and march back again. So you’d march down for breakfast, and back to wherever you were working, march down for lunch and dinner. And then we were sent on an Initial Training Wing course and I went across to a proper RAF station at Brize Norton, which is still going, for my initial training course and when I came back from that, I was sent down to Brighton here, into the Hotel Metropole to await further instructions And obviously the further instructions were going to be to train, start flying training. We were obviously going overseas for that because most of the flying training was in Canada or South Africa. And I was down here for about four weeks in the Metropole Hotel and then I was shipped off to Manchester for a while, and from Manchester I was taken up to the docks at Glasgow, and put on a little old ship that had been carrying cargo obviously and we now had about twelve hundred chaps on board, and we were setting sail for North America and we were in a convoy, and it took us twelve days to get across the Atlantic. And the first four days I was so sick, I used to lie upstairs on the deck, near the lifeboats, and hope that the submarines would come and torpedo us, so put me out of my misery. After four days I perked up and I’ve never been sick since. We were billeted down in the holds with a lot of rough men who swore most of the time. I’d never heard much swearing in my life, certainly not at school, and swearing and cursing, these rough chaps were. They weren’t aircrew, they were going out to do other jobs, whatever they were. Some in the Navy and a lot in the Air Force obviously to man RAF stations in Canada or North America and I finished up in Saskatchewan, Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, for my initial flying course on Tiger Moths. You had to be capable of going solo on the aircraft after six hours training and the maximum you could do was twelve hours, and if you hadn’t gone solo after twelve hours, you’d, you weren’t considered good enough to be pilot and you’d be sent off for training as a navigator possibly, or something else, and after twelve hours I hadn’t gone solo. All the other people, all my friends had failed, as pilots, and I had no friends left there, they had all failed and gone off, sent off somewhere, and so it was only me and the people who’d gone solo, going flying away on little Tiger Moths and me, not allowed to go solo cause I wasn’t good enough. My instructor must have had faith in me because he asked the CO if I could have another two hours and the CO said yes, but after two hours, if I hadn’t gone solo I would be off, off the course, and after fourteen hours I still hadn’t gone solo so he asked to CO again for a further extension, he must have had great faith in me, and the CO said I’ve got to go to Calgary, get a message through to Calgary ask permission from the C in C, and got that permission and I had one last flight and he sent me solo. And I went solo and on my third landing I landed on top of my friend, who was in another plane and smashed the planes up. But they’d had such a time getting me through so far, they let me carry on. None of us, neither of us were injured, but we’d done considerable damage to the planes. I landed on top of him, I hadn’t seen him, on the runway, he was beneath me and I was landing my Tiger Moth, I thought I was clear on the runway, there was a big crunch and I hit his plane. However they had spent so much time getting me there to this stage they thought I’d carry on, so I carried on and finished the course and passed out, quite well, and I was sent up to another base at Saskatoon and, North Battleford actually, and did an Oxford course where I had no trouble whatsoever. I went solo in about four hours and finished the course quite well and at the end of the course, because they needed pilots in Canada and North America because there was training in, over in the States as well though the war hadn’t started in, America wasn’t in the war yet, most of the pilots who passed out were, thought they were going to stay in Canada or North America as instructors or staff pilots, except for the bottom sixteen of us, who were to go home, and I was sixteenth from the bottom of course, so I was one of the ones that came home. And this time instead of going across the Atlantic on an old steamer, we were sent down to New York by train and we arrived in New York one evening at about six o’clock and we were marched from Pennsylvania Station to the other station in New York, erm, not to the other station, to the docks, and we marched down to the docks and on board, and marched on board the Queen Mary, which was empty except for us, which was about sixty of us and nobody on board. And twelve of us were sent to this cabin, one large cabin, and said we were in this cabin and we said well the place is empty why can’t we have some, a cabin each? They said no you’re twelve of you in here. There are only six bunks and so the arrangement is you will have a bunk every other night and the rest of the time you sleep on the floor. And this is the Air Force so you had to be, do as you were told. And then on the first night we were there, just started to sleep and we heard this marching and boots coming on, and the Queen Mary was filling up with American troops: war had broken out and they were one of the first detachments to come to England. They filled up the plane, the ship completely, so much so that we realised why we were all in this one cabin, cause everywhere else were American troops. The Queen Mary set sail, in four days and we were across the Atlantic. Didn’t come in a convoy, just set sail by itself, and it went so fast that it crossed the Atlantic in four days and discharged all its troops and then came whistling back. Did this all throughout the rest of the war and neither the Queen Mary nor the Queen Elizabeth were sunk. So they got all the troops across. So we were back in England now and after many tribulations I got up to [pause] Wymeswold to start my training and that’s where I start that, in February 1943.
PS: So you did more training again, when you got back to England.
JC: Oh yes. Yes. You’d only done enough training on small aircraft. So now they were deciding where you were going and it was pretty obvious that most of us would be going into Bomber Command because it was a big command now. They’d had the Battle of Britain. The fighter boys had defeated the Germans in the Battle of Britain, by air, and now Bomber Command was getting all the impetus, raids started on Germany and German cities. And I never had any trouble at all, after all that trouble with my first solo, I never had any trouble at all from then on, in training, and I eventually found myself on a squadron, after. I’d come back in August 1942 and I arrived on the squadron a year later, nearly a year later. So I’d done a lot of training, obviously.
PS: That was 158 Squadron.
JC: 158 Squadron, yes. And I joined a crew, and, a very good crew, there’s a photograph of them out there in the hall, very good crew. Seven of us and certainly myself, I never [emphasis] worried about not coming back from an operation or anything like that. There were people who were worried but I never had any trouble with, at all with my crew, they were all marvellous chaps. We used to go out on our operations and come back, and, as you’ll see in there, we were, we got ourselves, because the accommodation at Lissett was tin sheds, huts, we got ourselves accepted in to an Army Sergeant’s Mess in Bridlington where we lived in a nice house with proper fires and a brick built building on the sea front, at Bridlington which was an Army Sergeant’s Mess and we were adopted, our crew were adopted there and the Army provided, it was a Company Sergeant Major who arranged it, the Army Company Sergeant Major who arranged it, and he said anything you want, and if you’re called back to base, you’ve got to go back to base quickly, we’ll give you the transport back. So they fed us and beered us, gave us beer and we had a marvellous time, our crew. There were, I remember once, we used to go out, say seven thirty in the evening, and we’d all be taking off for a target and there’d be a queue waiting for take off on the runway, and once, just in front of us, something happened. We couldn’t get past this aircraft, it wasn’t moving. It was a great friend of mine, Doug Robinson who I knew was the captain of it, and eventually the Flight Commander came out from Operations and spoke to them on board and then a closed van came out as well, followed I think, and this closed van was there about five minutes and then off it went and the plane then turned round, oh, the plane then turned round and taxied off the tarmac, on to the grass, to allow us to pass. We just passed it and he was sitting there on the grass. And the reason that it had happened, one of his crew came up and said he couldn’t carry on, described he was too much.
PS: Too frightened.
JC: Too much, too frightening, yeah. I learned that the closed van that had come up, he was put in the van and whisked off and taken off basically, and that was what happened in the war, if you, it was known as Lack of Moral Fibre. Wouldn’t happen now of course, but, wouldn’t call it Lack of Moral Fibre, but in those days, LMF we called it. They were taken off the base immediately because they didn’t’ want him mixing with anybody else. Fortunately nobody in my crew were like that and you see there, we went through the war with no problems whatsoever. Whereas most of our friends were having trouble, you know, getting very damaged aircraft, [pause] horrific experiences and we had nothing like that.
JS: How did that make you feel?
JC: Hm?
JS: How did you feel about that?
JC: We were very callous, in the war. When you came back from a trip and you found that three or four aircraft were, hadn’t come back, and it’s friend of yours on one, friends on another aircraft and you would say they’d gone for a Burton, which meant they’d been shot down and killed possibly. Very callous, you’d say: “Well you shouldn’t have joined if you can’t stand a joke.” When shot down, things like that. Horrible really.
JS: I was going to say, how did you, now, looking back how did you?
JC: Horrible.
PS: It was your way of coping, presumably.
JC: Yeah. But you see, you see there every six weeks we got leave; a weeks’ leave. We lived like kings really. We got petrol, there was no petrol for other people, we had petrol, we had cars, or motorbikes. You had a petrol allowance. So you’d have enough petrol from Bridlington to go down to London for the weekend. I never did because none of my crew had cars, but other crews had somebody had a motor car and they’d do that, so. We had meals which were eggs and bacon and sausages and goodness knows what, but you couldn’t get in civilian life, you were rationed to all that. And after every trip we had this before we left and when we came back.
JS: But you were out for a long time, you must have been hungry when you got back.
JC: Oh, we were hungry, yes.
PS: You said every six weeks you had a break, in the weeks that you, those six weeks, how many raids would you do? Roughly.
JC: I depended, it depends I suppose. I would say when you, you’d go back and you’d do about five raids and then six weeks had gone by, or maybe, or sometimes, we started off our time at the squadron on the Battle of Hamburg. Hamburg, the main port, we did four raids on the city, in about four weeks. Gave them a very heavy raid every week and we reckoned we’d demolished the major part of the city by the end of that time and then we, Bomber Command switched, possibly I think Berlin, or Frankfurt, mainly Berlin after Hamburg, in my time. You’ll see there that I did raids on a lot of German cities, Kassel, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, all over the place. And you did, I did my way, it was all very exciting, all very exciting. And at the end of my tour I was, I remember the last trip I did was to Dusseldorf, and I got back from Dusseldorf and at the briefing, debriefing, you walk into this hut and the Station Commander, whose name was Group Captain Waterhouse, would be standing at the entrance to greet you as you came in, and that last trip he said to me, well young Cotter, that’s you finished. I said I’d like to carry on, sir. He said we’ll see about that. I hadn’t asked my crew, I was so exuberant, hadn’t asked my crew. I think my crew would have followed me on, I hadn’t asked them, I just assumed they would. Anyway we didn’t get it, I didn’t get my request, because within four days I was shipped up, sent on leave for a week then shopped up to the north of Scotland to a place called Lossiemouth, which I had never heard of before. I’d never been to Scotland apart from when I’d gone to Glasgow to board the ship. I was sent up to this place Lossiemouth, to train the, where they were training the French Air Force who, to be in Bomber Command. These were Frenchmen who were from Algeria, French officers and men from Algeria, which hadn’t been conquered of course by the Germans, and they’d had the Free French Air Force there, and now they wanted to operate in Bomber Command and that was my job to help train them, which I liked. Couldn’t speak a word of French cause I’d been a duffer at school where I learned French, but I got on well with them. And I was there till the end of the war. I kept saying to the Wing Commander Flying, I’d like to get back on operations and they used to tell me to get out of the office and not waste their time. And the last one was a nice Wing Commander O’Dwyer and he obviously thought well of me because he commanded a station later and when I wanted to stay in the Air Force when the war ended, he arranged that I got a good job, and I stayed in the Air Force. I’d been married, to my first wife, in July 1945 I got married, and I went for an interview with BOAC and I was accepted by BOAC, and I met my wife who was working in King’s Road, Chelsea. We met in a pub at, in Chelsea, and said, in her lunchtime, and I said I’ve got this job with BOAC and Margaret said how much are they paying you? And I said well initially they’re paying me, I think it was, three hundred and eighty pounds a year as a trainee. She said you’re getting more than that in the Air Force and I said well I am, yes and she said well it’s no contest is it, you stay in the Air Force. I took her advice, because she was older than me, and sensible I thought, so I stayed in the Air Force, and for another twenty years and did quite well there and finished as a Squadron leader and twenty years later, I got a chance to go into civil flying, to retire from the Air Force with a small pension and go into civil flying and that’s what I did. So I went to a firm called Dan Air and I was there for the, till I was sixty, when I, you had to retire as captain of aircraft in those days so that.
PS: So you really enjoyed your flying.
JC: I did enjoy my flying.
PS: You were awarded the DFC. Would you like to tell me how that came about?
JC: Yes. In 640 Squadron, oh, 158 Squadron at Lissett, we were C Flight. There were three, two, three flights in the squadron: A, B and C, and we were C Flight and in December 1943 they decided that we would convert onto a more efficient mark of Halifax with new engines, better engines, and C Flight would go across to Leconfield, permanent station, near Beverley, about twenty miles or so from the city, and form a new squadron. And we formed the new squadron called 640, the number 640 and the Squadron Commander was a chap called Ruby Ayres who was very nice, a very good fellow and he’d been sent to Australia in the war, at the beginning of the war, to get the training scheme over there sorted out. So he’d now come back and taken command of 640 Squadron. Brand new squadron and after about six months or so, no about four months, he decided that they’d been through all these operations and nobody had been, got a decoration. So unbeknown to me, I was suddenly called up into the Wing Commander’s office, Wing Commander Ayres, Squadron Commander, and he said now Cotter, you had a difficult time the other night, a difficult time this night, is that right, I said yes, but nothing serious sir, he said no, but it’s very difficult, you carried on, all of this. I didn’t know what he was talking about but anyway, what he was doing was deciding that I would have the DFC, first one in the squadron. And about three weeks later, or four weeks later, I was asleep in the mess after lunch which I normally did, cause they had chairs like this and used to go to sleep, and I was woken by Alan Smart one of the other, my colleagues, who’d had a terrible time in the war, he’d been shot up to pieces and managed to get back each time, and he came in and shook my shoulder and said you’ve got the DFC, John. I said what, he said you’ve got the DFC. I said oh, thanks and went back to sleep as far as I remember. [Laugh] And then, and then I was eventually called to Holyrood House. This is when I was at Lossiemouth, I’d gone to Lossiemouth and I was called to Holyrood House in Edinburgh and I was given the DFC by King George Sixth, think it was the sixth.
[Other]: What had you done to get it? What have they said that you’d done?
JC: Where’s the book, which I got out, big one there, you see, that one
PS: Because I don’t think they just give them out for, sweeties. I’ll, ‘John Cotter. This officer has proved himself to be a most capable and resolute captain of aircraft. He has participated on a large number of attacks on well defended targets, including several against Berlin and Hamburg. One night in February 1944, Pilot Officer Cotter took part in an attack on Schweinfurt?
JC: Schweinfurt.
PS: On the outward flight, engine trouble developed, but despite this Pilot Officer Cotter continued to target and bomb it and afterwards flew the aircraft back to this country where he made a safe landing at an airfield near the coast. His determination to complete this mission successfully was highly commendable.’ So you did it on three engines. Out and back. That must have made you very tired.
JC: Well it was, yes. I remember that, one you were talking about there. I landed at Tangmere, along the coast here. Used to be an airfield there.
PS: So what did, after the war when you stayed in the Air Force, what sort of things did you do then?
JC: [Laugh] Now, the, they’d just decided, after the war, to have exchange postings with the Americans. Some Americans would come over here and serve with us and some of us would go over there and the first stage postings took place in February 1940, [pause] 7, 1947, and I was on it. They selected me, to go out there and on to an American base. I was a married man of course by this time. The first year they said you can’t take your wife, cause you’re only going to go for a year, you don’t know where you’ll be in America, and they sent us down to, there were four Flight Lieutenants and five Wing Commanders going. Wing commander being about three steps higher than a Flight Lieutenant. Four junior offices and five senior officers. And I remember the four junior officers got together and went down to Air Ministry for a briefing. We got to this briefing at Air Ministry in Kingsway, London and it consisted of this Group Captain coming in and saying now, the best paper for football, English football results, is the New York Times so get that while you’re over there and you’ll get all the results, and that was about it: that was the briefing. So the next thing we knew we were on this liner about to go, going to America. We landed in New York, we landed in Halifax actually, Halifax, Nova Scotia and we were trained down to New York. We got there and they put us up in hotels there, called the Lexington. Lexington Hotel, on Lexington Avenue, known as the Sexy Lexy in the Air Force, the Air Force always used it, and we were there, and of course back home things were, as the war had finished things were even worse than they were during the war. The rationing was more severe and we were really, those post, immediate post war years were a bit thin for food and things and we’re now going to America, the land of plenty, and so we enjoyed ourselves in New York. We were there about four days and then we were bussed down then, down to Washington, Washington DC, and to the Pentagon Building, which is the big military, American Military Headquarters where we had an RAF delegation there. And the things we noticed, I noticed, straight away, was all WAAFs, the Women’s Air Force, were very, very smart, and chic. Where the WAAFs at home had woollen stockings because of rationing of course they couldn’t get silk stockings, all the WAAFs in Washington had silk stockings, or nylon stockings I suppose they were, certainly much smarter and looked a lot cleaner and more with it than our malnourished crowd back home. And so I was sent in to see this Air Marshal, and the first thing he said to me, he said when you come in to see me you are dressed correctly, you don’t have the hat on the back of your head. Go out and dress correctly and come, wait for [indecipherable] to back again. So out I went with my tail between my legs and looked at this very smart WAAF that I’d been admiring, I no longer admired her, cause I thought she should have warned me about that and I did have, my hat on the back of my head, as I had in there.
PS: Yeah.
JC: Yeah. And it’s not smart, that’s wartime stuff, and I was still on wartime stuff and I quite deserved what I got. Anyway, he decided I wasn’t, I wasn’t suitable material for Washington, for the American Air Force so I was sent home, in disgrace, basically, tail between my legs. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one, there was one of the Wing Commanders as well sent back, some reason. [laughter] So I came back, quite miserable feeling, on the same boat, almost. But again, we were, like the Queen Mary during the war, we had to share cabins, everybody was cooped up. I mean in the cabin on the return journey I remember there was a chap from Preston and his wife. Preston in Lancashire they came from. They’d been in America twenty two years and he was coming home, he and his wife, they’d had enough, you know, of America, after twenty two years. They’d gone out there just after the First World War and he’d been working as a painter and decorator and now he was coming home, he and his wife. Don’t know what they did when they got home, but anyway. We got home and it was the making of me.
PS: Pardon?
JC: It was the making of me, because I got to Air Ministry and I said [pouring of tea] I’d like to have a good postings, overseas. And they said not a chance! I said why not, and they said, I haven’t been overseas yet on a posting and they said we need people like you. I said why, said you’re a good instructor and we need, and it was just when we were building up the Air Force again, thank you darling.
[Other]: Let me give you that.
JC: After the war Stalin, er, Churchill had said there’s an Iron Curtain coming down over Europe. Churchill had been out in Washington and he announced it quite, quite strongly there: there’s an Iron Curtain coming down, and so we had started to rearm against the Russian Menace. They needed instructors because they were recruiting people who had just been discharged from the Air Force, and had been working and hadn’t liked it and were coming back in the Air Force and so I obviously was thought of as a good instructor, which I think I was, because I never lost my temper with anybody; I explained things calmly. So I was given this instruction job up in, flying, flying, up in Yorkshire, back in Yorkshire again, in a place near Ripon, Yorkshire, and I progressed from there and I did very well in the Air Force. And when I asked for a permanent commission, a General List Commission as a permanent officer, I got what I wanted and I had no reason to want to leave the Air Force except that I’d been sent to Birmingham, University, to take charge of the University Air Squadron and I was flying light aircraft there, Chipmunks, and I realised that that was, I wouldn’t progress any further getting back on to heavy aircraft again in the Air Force. And so the chance came up for a, after 1962, when I could retire on a small pension and so I arranged with Dan Air to join them. I had friends in Dan Air and so I left the Air Force and retired and became a civil pilot and did that for the rest of, stayed with Dan Air.
PS: Do you think staying on in the Air Force made it easier to sort of drift back into normal life after the war?
JC: Yes, yeah. I had a very good, very good career. Never out of work, so, never at the Employment Exchange. [Laughter]
[Other]: But you lost your brother, didn’t you, sadly, in the war.
JC: Hmm?
[Other]: You lost your brother, sadly.
JC: I lost my brother.
PS: So wasn’t without, was some sadness. Was that at the beginning or had he done?
JC: No, he’d been sent out to Canada. He’d been, hadn’t been taken into the Air Force. We’d joined together if you remember, but I’d been called up July ’41, he wasn’t called up till ’42, early ’42 and he was a wireless operator, wireless operator/air gunner and he was sent to Canada to join a squadron there, nearing the end of the war and they realised that when Germany collapsed they’d still have Japan to fight. So they’d build up the squadrons in the facing, in the areas facing Japan Vancouver and places like that and my brother was at Vancouver. And one night the aircraft they were in taxied back in again cause it had a fault, and my brother and another chap got out, to have a fag, you weren’t allowed to smoke in RAF aircraft then, in those days, and as happened many times actually, it happened up at Lossiemouth this type of thing as well, the aircraft taxied into them, accidentally [gasp] and they were cut to pieces by the propeller, unfortunately.
PS: That must be even harder to cope with.
[Other]: He was very young. Where were you dad when this happened, dad? Were you in Scotland, at Lossie?
JC: I was in Scotland. I was flying actually, was about two in the morning and I was flying with a French crew and I was called into Control Tower, so I brought the aircraft in, shut it down and I got out, went into the Control Tower and it was my sister on the phone to me from London, saying they knew that Paul had been killed, in Canada, and would I come home, if possible, to support my mother? And I said I will do what I can and I went and saw the CO and he said, “I can’t let you go for very long,” he said, “you can go for the weekend.” So I had to come down for, just to London for the weekend from Scotland, so it was a case of coming down one day and going back the next day basically. But I came down and supported my mother because my father was in the Navy so, in the war, so.
PS: She needed someone.
JC: Yeah. And my sister was only about seven, no, she was about twelve, twelve.
PS: A lot for her to cope with.
[Other]: You also told us, do you remember, stories before you joined up when everyone was going down the air raid shelters, when London was being bombed, and you didn’t, did you, your family, you’d drive out to the countryside.
JC: No. Oh yes. My father insisted that when the air raids started, in earnest, September 1940, we must [emphasis] go out to St Albans, somewhere clear of London completely. And he used to drive the car out to St Albans and park in a field there and my mother and sister would go and I refused to go and my brother refused to go, and my mother had a Great Aunt, a sister, known as my Great Aunt Nellie, who was mentally deficient, and my mother had brought her back from Australia with her and she looked after all the, I suppose it was a condition of the, her parents’ will that she look after Nellie. So Nellie used to be there with us. She was a nurse maid for us as kids and she was still with us at Edgware and I remember nanny, when the bombs used to start Nellie used to go out on the veranda, look up at the sky and shout: “Bugger you Mr Hitler!” [Laughter] Then she’d come back in again. Well my father and mother used to go to the field at St Albans, and we were admittedly on the fourth and fifth floor of the buildings and nothing happened to us, and there used to be a saying in the war: the bomb won’t hit you unless your name’s put on it or your number’s on it. And I didn’t go into air raid shelters cause it was very smelly.
[Other]: What happened to the field where your dad used to drive?
JC: Oh. Bomb dropped in the next field!
PS: Oh no!
JC: Yes! Yes!
[Other]: So they all stopped going as well!
JC: So they stopped going, yes. [Laughter] So they all came back to the flat.
PS: So you’ve enjoyed your life, on the whole.
JC: Oh yes. Yes, had no employment problems. I was, I spent half my life in the Air Force. You see the Air Force was the making of me; it educated me really. I was sent on numerous courses in the Air Force: on how to write properly and how to do this, that and the other. I enjoyed my time in the Air Force and again I enjoyed my time in civil flying, flying all over the world.
PS: You have been such a pleasure to interview. I’ve really enjoyed interviewing, well I haven’t interviewed you, I have let you talk, [Laughter] it’s been really informative. Thank you very much indeed. Is there anything else you want to talk about, or need a break?
JC: Not really, you’ll see in there -
[Other]: Would you like to show Pat your medals?
PS: Yes.
JC: Oh. In there. Fijians, who were in the Army, and taking them up to Malaya to fight in the jungle with us. Because we were fighting communists, Chinese communists in the jungle.
PS: Was that after the war?
JC: This was after the war, this was 1950 ish. So when you would have been about five, this was going on.
PS: Yes. Do you mind if I do this? Now, I’ve got you and your medals. That’s lovely, thank you very much. It doesn’t hurt for me to have them as well.
[Other]: Exactly.
PS: They are lovely. Did they give you this think to put them?
JC: No, no.
[Other]: They were hanging off dad.
JC: Yeah. I often used to go to my reunions and they medals would be hanging half way down.
[Other]: With a nappy pin. [Laughter]
JC: This allows you to put, this goes in your pocket.
PS: Oh I see!
[Other]: Had it redone recently, haven’t you dad.
JC: This is a chap over in East Sussex somewhere, just past Eastbourne.
[Other]: Eastbourne.
PS: He’s very clever.
JC: Yes. He’s ex-Army.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with John David Pennington Cotter
Creator
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Patricia Selby
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-08-28
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACotterJDP180828
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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01:16:47 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Free French Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
John was born in London, Hendon. His family fell on hard times in his early years. John and his brother, Paul, joined the RAF in 1941 as a pilot and wireless operator respectively. After initial training at RAF Brize Norton, John was trained in Canada, returning to Britain on the Queen Mary with the first detachments of American troops. In 1943 he did more training at RAF Wymeswold, then joined 158 Squadron at RAF Lissett. They carried out several operations to German cities. As part of a new 640 Squadron, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. John then trained the Free French Air Force at RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland. He stayed in the RAF for 20 years, finishing as squadron leader. He later became a civil pilot at Dan Air. John’s brother was killed in a propeller incident in Vancouver.
Temporal Coverage
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1941-02
1941-07-07
1942-08
1943-02
1943-12
1944-02
1945-07
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
United States
Atlantic Ocean
England--London
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Hamburg
Saskatchewan--Saskatoon
Scotland--Moray
Saskatchewan
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
Sally Coulter
158 Squadron
640 Squadron
aircrew
Distinguished Flying Cross
ground personnel
lack of moral fibre
Oxford
pilot
RAF Bridlington
RAF Lissett
RAF Lossiemouth
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/751/10750/PCookJH1701.1.jpg
81323cdafc31bb66e836e5b0ba2201ff
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/751/10750/ACookJH170118.2.mp3
85280a29406287aa006ef455c66449b1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Cook, Joseph Henry
J H Cook
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer (1925 - 2018, 1894875 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a n air gunner with 630 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Joseph Cook and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-18
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Cook, JH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CJ: We’re on. Ok. This is Chris Johnson and I’m interviewing Joe Cook today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at Joe’s home in Kent and it’s Wednesday 18th of January 2017. Thank you, Joe for agreeing to talk to me today. Also present at the interview are Vi Jarmin, Joe’s partner. Joe’s daughter Beverley Maltby and her husband Michael. So Joe, thanks very much for talking to us today. Perhaps you could start by telling us about your early life and where and when you were born and your family background.
JC: Very, very simple. I was born in Sidcup in Kent on the 2nd of June 1925. I’m, I’m living with my grandparents for a little while and my mother and father and then we moved. And we moved to Brockley and more or less orientated around Brockley. My early life. I went to school at Blackfen. And then of course I went to the, what do they call it? Basic school. Elementary school. And, and then I got a scholarship for going to Brockley Central School. Brockley Central School was a marvellous school because we took the Oxford General School Certificate and we took the London Chamber of Commerce Certificate of which I’m proud to say I got the Oxford Certificate and I got the forces of it with the London Chamber of Commerce with a Book Keeping Distinction. That was my basic education. Because of the background I was able to go straight into a job. And I went to, oh [pause] I went in to a solicitors I think it was. Something like that. I was only there a couple of days and it fizzled out. Something went wrong. I then ended up in Twentieth Century Fox Films. I found my own job because it paid twice the money that the others did. So, at Twentieth Century Fox Films I was working in the assistant, whatever, I forget what they call it now. Anyway, it was logging films and how much they would produce and etcetera. I was there until I went in the services. I met my first wife, my wife there and we were married obviously in 1945. I wouldn’t marry her until I finished flying because I said, ‘You can’t get married to a cinder.’ Because all aircrew got terribly burned. So therefore I married in 1945. 20th of October. And I produced eventually [laughs] a long time my daughter who is over there. And that is all I’ve produced because my wife had trouble with TB etcetera. So I wouldn’t let her have another child. My fault. I wouldn’t let her have another child. And I was married for forty six years. My partner over there God bless her heart. I’ve been with her for twenty five years. I’m sorry. And I’m still with her.
[recording paused]
CJ: So, Joe. You were working at Twentieth Century Fox after leaving school. So how did you come to join the RAF and when was that?
JC: Well, after leaving school I was conned into the war because I was a fire watcher etcetera. And every night I had to sit up all night fire watching. And then, and what did I do then? How did I, you said how did I come to get in the Air Force? Well, it’s quite simple really. I didn’t want to go in the Army. Quite simple. But I always fancied flying. I wanted to fly. But I, at that time there was no vehicle to take me flying so I joined the RAF. Now, I had to volunteer for aircrew. As you know they were all volunteers. I volunteered and they accepted me straightaway because of my education. And I had no problem with that. My three days medical at Euston House went through ok. Fine. No problem. So there I am. I am sent to St John’s Wood, in the recently completed flats as, as a base. And I did my three weeks square bashing and knocking me into making me. They knocked you down so that you [pause] sort of thing was you’d clean your shoes. By the way aircrew always wore shoes. You’d clean your shoes and they were, oh you know you’d bone them and all the rest of it. And then the corporal would come in in the morning and inspect. ‘They’re bloody filthy your shoes. Get them cleaned.’ They, it was there to break you. Right. Then you want me to carry on now? From St John’s Wood I went up to Bridgnorth. Initial training. Which was square bashing and all sorts of funny things. From Bridgnorth I went to Bridlington where I did such things as Morse Code. I had to send and receive Morse Code at ten words a minute. Then Bridlington was a learning base for the, as I said Morse Code and other attributes for the Air Force. I then went from Bridlington. Remember that? Where did I go from Bridlington? Oh, I know. Bridgnorth. Not Bridgnorth. I can’t quite get it.
CJ: Was it Evanton?
JC: Huh?
CJ: Evanton in Scotland. Was that it?
JC: No. No. I went to Scotland for my AGS. I’m just trying to think where I went.
[recording paused]
CJ: So you did your basic training in Bridgnorth, Joe.
JC: Yeah.
CJ: And then Bridlington.
JC: Yes.
CJ: So, how did the training go from there and how were you picked for a particular role?
JC: Well, I wasn’t, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But what I wanted to do was kick Jerry up the rear. And the only way to do it was get in the Air Force and get flying. Well, as I say I went to 8 AGS near Evanton. I was trained as an AG. I was flying in Ansons and then, I always remember flying in the Anson. The first flight I ever made they lined us up. Sprogs. Right. There’s a few of us. Eight of us, I think. We were going to fly that morning. ‘Right. You. You. You and you,’ and then it came, ‘You.’ Me. They gave me a handle. And I looked at it and I said, ‘What’s it?’ He said, ‘Up on the wing.’ I had to get up on the wing. Put this handle in the socket and turn it around to start the engine [laughs] Oh dear. And of course once you got one going on an Anson you can get the other one going. But I was sliding about on the wing because it was frosty that morning. You know what Scotland’s like early morning.
CJ: So how did you come to be selected as an air gunner rather than any other role?
JC: Ah. That was at Euston House.
CJ: Ok.
JC: You were in front of a load of gold braid and he, he said to me, ‘Right. We’ve assessed you. You’ve got everything. We have decided that you will be pilot, navigator or bomb aimer.’ And I said to him, ‘I don’t want it.’ He looked at me. He said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I don’t want it. I want to kick Jerry up the rear,’ as I said. So, he said, ‘Well, we’re losing so many AGs.’ I said, ‘I’ll have it.’ So that’s how I became an air gunner. I had all the qualifications to be a pilot but I didn’t want it. And I said, ‘It will take at least nearly a year to train me as a pilot. It’s too late. The war will be over.’ That was the reason. And he looked at me, the groupie and he said, ‘You silly little sod,’ because at that rate they were losing them, losing them so rapid. Anyway, I decided that I would do that.
CJ: So you were training on Ansons in Scotland. And how long was the training for?
JC: Oh. I got up there in [pause] oh around about Christmas time. And then I was trained at D-Day. Now, I’ve got a little story I can tell you about that. I got my AG brevet. Very proud of it. Parade. Get your brevet. And then we were posted to Operational Training Unit, Silverstone. We got on the train but we didn’t go to Silverstone. The bloody thing kept, sorry it kept going and going and we ended up at Tarrant Rushton in Devon. When we got there they said, ‘You are not allowed to go outside the camp. You are confined to camp. You cannot write any letters. You cannot use the telephone. You cannot do anything.’ Everything hush hush. Of course, we didn’t know. We didn’t realise what was going on. They didn’t tell you, did they? They didn’t tell you anything. Why I was sitting on the train suddenly, oh stay on the train because you’re carrying on. And so therefore what we didn’t know was this, that it was about oh a few days, quite a few days before D-Day. Why were we sent to Tarrant Rushton? It was quite simple. This. They gathered together all the people who had just been, got their wings. Pilots and all the rest of it and they’d sent us to Tarrant Rushton and they sent us to fly clapped out bloody Stirlings. And they were clapped. And when we got there we said, ‘What’s all this? Why are we doing this?’ They said, ‘You’ll find out.’ Wouldn’t say a thing. They found, we found out alright because we had to load these Stirlings up with leaflets. Fly over to Calais. Drop them on Calais and Boulogne etcetera and we were chucking these bales of leaflets out and one bloke said to me, ‘What’s all this about? What are these leaflets saying?’ He said, ‘It’s in French.’ I said, ‘That’s alright. I’ll read it to you.’ And what it was saying, “Get out of Calais. Get out of Boulogne because we are invading and we are going to bomb like hell.” So please, Froggies get out. ‘Get out of Calais,’ etcetera. That’s what it was all about because you know as well as I do it was a spoof. Well, we were chucking these leaflets out and it counted as an op because we were going over, over enemy territory really. That was the first four. And chucking these leaflets out and on the way back of course this bloody old Stirling packed up. One engine packed up. And then we thought well blow this. Nursed it back over the peninsula. The Devon Peninsula. And then another one went. And on a Stirling no chance. Got to get out of it. Got to jump. Which I had to do. So I jumped out of it and come down on a tree. With a Land Girl with a pitch fork at the base of the tree to ram it in me. Wouldn’t believe that I was English. Got the, they sent, a lorry came around and there was the rest of the bods in it. And they took us to the farmhouse and obviously then to the station. But that, that was my initiation. That’s what D-Day was to me. Dropping leaflets for four days on Calais, Boulogne, Liege etcetera. So I had only just been trained. And it was so daft that when D-Day had been going for about a week or two we were posted and we were posted to the Operational Training Unit to be trained [laughs] You know. And went there and went on to Wellingtons. The old Wimpy. God bless her. And I did my training on that. We did cross countries. We did ten hour trips. Not ten hour trips. Eight hour trips etcetera. And I finished my OTU and how did we get crewed up? Easy. Big hangar. Type 2 hangar. Right. A hundred engineers. A hundred AGs, a hundred pilots all in this hangar and then the group captain gets up, gives a little speech and then says, ‘Right. Form yourselves into crews.’ He said, ‘Mingle amongst each other, walk around, pick who you think would be a good one.’ So I, I had a friend with me and I said to him, ‘It seems to me that the tall ones, the pilots, are bloody good. They seem to survive.’ So we looked for a tall pilot. And it happened to be a Canadian. And Mac, so we looked up at him and said, ‘Oi. You got two gunners?’ So he said, ‘No.’ ‘Do you want two?’ He said, ‘How good are you?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I got eighty four percent on my passing out.’ He said, ‘Oh. I’ll have you.’ So, that’s how it was done. In this big hangar. Then you walked out of there and you were a crew and you were brothers together and just went through it all. You were so close. I can’t explain it. Closer than brothers. The sort of thing was we were booked for ops and then all of a sudden our engineer went sick and he went, turned around to the flight commander and said, ‘I’m not flying.’ He said, ‘No?’ ‘No. Mitch has gone sick. Won’t fly without him.’ ‘Oh. Alright,’ He said, ‘We’ll put a spare crew on.’ That’s how it was.
[recording paused]
CJ: So Joe, you tell me how you were all in a hangar together and sorted yourselves out as a six man crew. So where did you go from there?
JC: Well, this was done at Silverstone. Silverstone in [pause] where was it? I’ve forgotten the name of the county. Anyway, it was at Silverstone. The race track then as it was. And we were flying Wellingtons. As I said a six man crew because it didn’t have a mid-upper turret so you just, you carried the other bloke but you were the one in the turret. Then we, we did all the usual things. Training. Long trips. High level bombing. Gunnery. Etcetera etcetera. And finally you were posted to a squadron and — no. Sorry. Missed a bit. From Silverstone you went to Wigsley. Wigsley was a Conversion Unit. You went from two engines to four. To Wigsley, flying Stirlings. I hate the things. And then from Wigsley you went to a Lancaster Finishing School. And then and at that point we knew we were going on Lancasters. We dreaded the thought of going on Stirlings or Halifax. Halifaxes. So we went to Number 5 Lancaster Finishing School at Syerston. All around Lincolnshire. And then from there we were posted to the squadron. And that’s when I went to East Kirkby. I did all my operations, well twenty six of them. I think, I don’t know. I think it was twenty six from East Kirkby. But I’d already done four from Tarrant Rushton so I’d done my thirty. We were now a fully-fledged crew on a squadron. And on my first trip we’re getting on to this are we? My first trip was the Dortmund Ems Canal. The dear old Dortmund Ems Canal. We used to come up time and time. As fast as they built it up we knocked it down. That was my first trip. You’ll find it in my diary that I wrote. Every time I came back from a trip I sat with pen and ink. Where is it? I sat with pen and ink and wrote down how I felt and all the rest of it. I can’t see it. Oh.
[pause]
JC: There it is. One diary. Now, there’s I’ve lost the other book so there’s only twenty trips in here. I don’t know where it went to. It’s the last one. Last twenty. As I said, Dortmund Ems Canal was five and a half hours. “I felt nervous but got on ok. Saw a Lanc go down and burst into flames in the ground. We did not get coned by tracer or searchlights. I felt pretty fatigued when we got back.” Now, I won’t go right through this because there is too much of it. Now, people say to me, ‘What were the fascinating ones that I did?’ Well, there weren’t really. There was only one target that I personally thought I’d got my lot and that was Politz. Now, Politz is an oil manufacturing conversion place near the Russian border. I went to Politz twice. The second time, and it was a long trip. Ten hours. The second time on the run up to bomb we were running up, steady, steady and all the rest of it and all of a sudden out, a bloody ME Messerschmitt 262 jet came for us and he was putting shells through the top of my turret. He didn’t, he missed us because I had already given Mac evasive action. And as you probably know once you’re attacked the tail gunner takes control of the aircraft and he has to do what he was told. And I gave him a corkscrew and we were lucky there. He went over the top. I’m watching this bloke and it was fifty nine degrees below zero that night. So I’m watching him and let him come in and then I went to open fire and all my four guns were frozen. The oil on the breech blocks, very thin bit of oil had frozen and not one breech block went forward so the guns didn’t fire. And I yelled out to Mac, I said, ‘I can’t fire. I can’t fire. The gun’s useless.’ And he said, ‘Oh. Oh. What’s he doing?’ I said, ‘He’s wheeling around. Wheeling around. He’s coming in for the kill now because he knows that we’re defenceless. My turret has no defensive fire.’ So, I said, ‘That’s it.’ And Mac said, ‘Right. Prepare to abandon aircraft.’ I can remember his words today. So I went to open my turret doors and they’d jammed. I thought. That’s it. This is it. I’m stuck in here. I’ve got an ME262 wheeling around, coming in for the kill. It’s my lot. This is death. This is what death is all about. And then all of a sudden there was a bloody great explosion. We were splattered with bits. What had happened the rear gunner and I didn’t even know the Lanc was there. He got him in his fuel tanks and up he went. And we were splattered with debris. And I yelled out to Mac, ‘Enemy aircraft destroyed. Enemy aircraft destroyed.’ These are my actual words because I can remember them as if it was yesterday. And he said. ‘Right. Resume stations.’ Thank Christ for that otherwise I’d still be up there. And that’s my worst trip. Politz. I had others. Now, in, in here you will see that Heimbach Dam. Even, we went to a dam to blow it up which we were a success at blowing up. In my diary I say, “ME109 sighted just before target. Focke Wulf 190 passed underneath at two hundred feet. Attacked another aircraft to starboard.” Then as we, once again we used bombs on this. Not the bouncing bomb. Heimbach Dam. We ran up to the dam and there was a bloke, well a kite further down. We were on the run up. And they’d got two blooming great guns on the ramparts and they were pointing at a set point of our, where would go in for a run up. So that bloke I said was ahead of us. They got him. Blew him to bits. I thought ooh. But they couldn’t reload the guns quick enough because they were a heavy gun. We went over the top. We dropped our bombs and I saw the dam go. I saw it break and go. We, we got a direct hit fortunately and it was well worth it to see that dam go. But then people would say, ‘Oh, you were a Dambuster.’ No. I was not. I was not a Dambuster. Yes, I went and blew a dam up yeah but that doesn’t make me a Dambuster. When you think of a Dambuster you think of 617 squadron and nothing else.
CJ: So what was it like on the station for — perhaps you can take us through when you knew when you were going on ops. What was the atmosphere like? And what sort of preparation did you do before you went out on a trip?
JC: Before you went out on a trip if you were billed for ops that night then you went to the crew room and your flight commander of each section like gunnery, like engineering, like w/ops etcetera. You were all [pause] what’s the word? You were, you were given all the, all the gen and all the griff and the big map on the wall and that was the first time that you knew where you were going. There’s a sequel to that because we never knew where we were going. Blooming ground staff did. Because we used to go up to the ground staff and say, ‘Oi. What’s the petrol load?’ And he’d turn around and he’d say, ‘Sixteen eighty.’ Oh, got a short trip tonight. Oh, lovely. But if he turned around and he said, ‘Twenty one fifty four.’ That’s two thousand one hundred and fifty four gallons of fuel. That is a long trip. You’re going to be up there just over ten hours. And in the cold, I mean I below zero all the time virtually. Thirty below zero. But you wore an electrically heated suit. The trouble was typical of a lot of equipment your right hand would burn, your left hand would freeze. Your right foot would be [laughs] the same conditions sort of thing. And in the end you used to switch if off. But you had another suit under it. And under that you had silk underwear etcetera. And a naval white sweater. So it was just about tolerable. I never got frostbite fortunately but I had five pairs of gloves on. You’d wonder how I pulled the triggers but I did. It was the cold that used to get you. Now, when you look at the turret the one I used to fly in anyway, you will see that all the Perspex has been taken out. There’s nothing there. It’s to open air. Completely. Now, why did we do that? Simple. If you got a tiny mark on that Perspex, just a little mark or whatever you’d be there. So took all the Perspex out for clear vision and you were to open air.
CJ: And this was the mid-upper turret you were in.
JC: No. The rear gunner.
CJ: The rear. I beg your pardon.
JC: I had four Browning machine guns. Just to sequel that I had four Browning machine guns. I had five thousand rounds per gun. I had twenty thousand rounds of ammunition and I could only fire a few seconds. Otherwise they get red hot.
CJ: So you were saying about the briefings and when the curtain was pulled back —
JC: Yeah.
CJ: You knew where you were going.
JC: Yeah.
CJ: Do I assume that some places were considered easier targets than others?
JC: Oh yes. Yeah. Because you sort of think the tape, the red tape would be going across the map and it would end at Chemnitz. And you’d hear the blokes go ahh. Or Berlin again. Because this friend of mine, Johnny Chatterton, he went to Berlin so many times that they gave him a season ticket. Oh dear.
CJ: So that, are there any other notable raids that you remember? Any notable trips?
JC: Any notable trips?
CJ: Trips that you went on that stood out there.
JC: Yes. There’s another one in here. I went to Rositz. Synthetic oil. I went to Politz. I went to a lot of them. Now, at Politz where I nearly copped my lot and I really did. Now, I’m saying there if I may just briefly read this, “Target Politz oil installation. Flak fairly heavy. Red cannon fire continuous over Sweden. Searchlights. Some in target area and over Denmark. Fighters. Two JU88s seen over target. JU88 shot down and destroyed by us.” What really happened was that the JU88, he came up and I said to the skipper, ‘Whatever he does, you do.’ And if he, in other words if he dives you dive with him and keep him in the sights all the time. So mid-upper gunner and myself I raked the canopy. Killed the crew instantly. And that was it. Down she went.
CJ: Ok.
JC: That was a JU88, and that was at Politz.
CJ: So then you, you said you finished your thirtieth op with that squadron because you’d already done four before.
JC: Yeah.
CJ: So, how did it feel when you’d all done your thirtieth?
JC: Well, I can’t explain it because you see we were so used to expecting to die. You didn’t expect to come back. You didn’t expect to do thirty. You were elated. Yeah. Obviously you went in the mess and got a few sherbets down [laughs] Oh, what was I going to say? [pause] There’s little incidents that happened all the time. Such as crew bus. Two crews in the bus. The old crew bus. And it just started going around the perimeter track and one crew their bomb aimer more or less, I don’t know what he was doing. Ah. So he ran after the bus and tried to jump on it. He didn’t. He missed. Cracked his skull. That was it. And of course you’d the sequel of the egg. You know about the egg. Of course you do. When you came back from an op you got an egg. You didn’t get bacon. You got an egg. And it was looked forward to. ‘Cor, crikey I’ve got an egg tonight [laughs] you know, when you got back. But the jokey, jokey thing is that this actually happened. The bloke next to you and he says, ‘Eh mate,’ he said, ‘If you don’t get back tonight can I have your egg?’ And then another thing that happened which aircrew were very boisterous. One bloke went round the back of the servery and he pulled the string of the WAAF’s overall. Well, it was so hot in the mess the overall opened, didn’t it? And she’s leaning forward putting an egg with a slice. You can imagine can’t you. Plop. Now, the other thing concerning WAAFs was we were always playing tricks. One bloke had the brilliant idea he got a bit of wood square and in every hut there was an iron, oh what do you call it? Fire.
CJ: Stove.
JC: Stove. Yeah. So what does he do? He climbs up on to the roof. It was a flat roof for the WAAF quarters. He climbs up on the roof. He gets this bit of wood and puts it on the chimney and holds it down. Then he [laughs] after a few minutes the doors fly open and all the WAAFs come charging out in their underwear. And it was, it was funny you know because they’d got their civvy underwear on.
CJ: How did you feel Joe when you had, when you came back and there were empty tables?
JC: Well —
BM: He didn’t think about it.
JC: I didn’t think about it. I’ll give you an instance of it. Two crews to a hut virtually. Then two crews to a hut. You come back after an op. You’re dead tired. You’d had your egg. You’d gone up the road to the hut, get in the hut, get in the pit as we used to call bed and put your head down and you’d sleep. And then all of a sudden there’s a noise. Clank bang bang bong. You put your head up and there’s a whole bunch of SPs. You could always tell because of the arm bands. You’d look up and you’d say, ‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ ‘Oh, won’t be long. Won’t be long, chiefy.’ That’s what a flight sergeant was called. ‘Won’t be long chiefy. Just taking the other crew’s gear out.’ This is 3 o’clock in the morning. ‘Well, what’s happened?’ ‘Oh. Well, they got the chop last night.’ Put your head down and go to sleep again.
CJ: So, you finished your thirty ops. And what did you do after that? After you’d over your sherbets.
JC: Well, I wanted a job obviously. I applied to Cossor to Lissen, all, all the old radio manufacturers because of, that’s another thing you didn’t know. I was a radio amateur as well and I had a radio amateur’s licence. So I applied and I thought I’d be in there. Didn’t want to know. ‘Sorry. Can’t give you the job.’ Well, what’s wrong?’ You know, ‘I’ve got City and Guilds in radio.’ ‘What’s — ’ ‘Sorry can’t give you. The reason being. You’re ex-aircrew.’ That was the reason. You were a bloody pariah. You’d been killing people sort of thing. Of course, they’d been over here killing us. I mean I used to say to them, ‘Exeter, Plymouth, Hull,’ etcetera. Shall I go on?’ But of course that [pause] funny us English.
CJ: So after your thirty ops you were demobbed then, were you?
JC: Yeah. Yeah.
CJ: Ok. And then you were looking for a job.
JC: Yeah. And I couldn’t get one. So there was, friends of mine had come out of the Army. A couple of them. They were in to radio and whatnot and we discovered that radiograms as we used to call them or if you could get a radiogram so we said there’s a market here. We’re in. What we did we got hold of all the old turntables. Plenty of them about. And then we built the radio part and the amplifier and we had, knew a bloke who made cabinets. So wooden cabinets to house the radiogram and we were making a damned good business out of it. And then what happened then? Oh yeah. [pause] Because of the radio business a firm down in Barking, Essex they’d heard of me because a, once again a friend of a friend and they said, ‘Well, would you come and set up our radio equipment?’ Which I did. Then I thought to myself well I don’t know. I can do better than this really. Because I’d got the, what do you call it the [pause] the knowledge as well as being able to make the radios and all the rest of it. I got all that so we, I decided I could do better. And I just put a word around and before I knew it Vidor at Vidor at Erith came after me and said, we want you sort of thing. And I went to Erith, Vidor as a buyer. Because of my knowledge and because of my mechanical aptitude I became a technical buyer at Vidor when they were making the little portables. And then while I was there I was head hunted by Decca. And Decca came after me and said, ‘We’ve heard all about you. We know what you do and you know, makes you tick,’ and I became the, in the Decca radio and television side I became the chief buyer for the bits and pieces. And then to finish the story I, I was there, oh quite got a long time. And then once again a friend of mine I worked with at Vidor he wanted to come and see me. He did and he stayed until about midnight and I wondered what the hell was going on. And then I said, ‘Hey Jim, what are you up to?’ So he said, ‘I’m offering you a job ain’t I?’ And I said, ‘But you can’t match what Decca’s giving me at the moment.’ He said, ‘Try me.’ And I did. And he said, ‘Right. I want you. I want you to set up a company with departments and all the rest of it because we have a device which we — ’ A device which they’d patented. How to measure or weigh by means of air pressure. Not electric but air pressure. Now, this was a good thing. I saw the potential because all the big manufacturers of, that were using, making things which were explosive. That was the answer. So we got going into a very good business and it, it really went well until, until twenty years later. The electronic boys found out how to do it. Make it spark. Spark positive. Whatever you’d like to call it. In other words if there was a spark there wouldn’t be an explosion. So they were beating us then at our own game and unfortunately we went down this pan. Or the company did. By that time I was a director of that company. I was also a director of five others. So I took their little engraving, well part it we owned was an engraving company. So I took that and I went up to Leicester. That’s where it was based. There was only two people. I made the third. And I worked away and I got contracts for BBC. People like that. Big contracts. And once again I was doing all right. So I worked away there and sort of set myself up for a pension by an annuity which I’ve still got today. And then of course time to retire. There you have it.
CJ: There you go. And I think you said earlier that you, you didn’t marry until the war was over. Was that right?
JC: That’s right. I said to my late wife, ‘I will not marry you. Not until I finish flying because I don’t want you to be left with a cinder.’ Because aircrew used to get horribly burned and I wasn’t going to have that. That’s why I didn’t. So October ’45 we were married. And that’s the bit. Married. The vicar was available. Just got hold of him. It was the big church in Brixton. Acre Lane where the big church was and we were married in that church. Now, we managed to get the vicar but we didn’t have a choir, we didn’t have anything like that. We didn’t, we didn’t even have a car to take us. We had a car but halfway there because of the war and bald tyres it got a puncture and we had to walk the rest of the way to the church. And we got married the 20th of October 1945. And I was married for forty six years. Forty seven years. Then you know this. I’ve told you the story about Vi and I and the motorbikes.
CJ: So I think you said you had a common love of motorbikes.
JC: Yeah.
CJ: And Vi lost her husband as well.
JC: Yeah. What I did, when we said oh well we’ll get together we did. But to get married was such a mishmash I can’t, I don’t, I won’t explain it now but it caused a lot of problems or would have done. So we became partners. And I said to Vi, ‘We’re going to have a look at the world.’ And she’d not, so she’d been to Israel. Where else did you go love? You went to Israel. Where else?
VJ: Everywhere that we could.
JC: Eh?
VJ: Everywhere that we possibly could get.
JC: Well, yeah that’s when I said to her, ‘Right. Well, we’re going to see as much of the world as we can,’ and we did. And we went, that’s why we’ve been to Canada, the states. You name it.
CJ: And did you carry on biking on after the war?
JC: Oh yeah, yeah. Carried on biking. After the war. You see because my friend Stanley was Vi’s husband.
CJ: So what was your favourite bike?
JC: Hmmn?
CJ: What was your favourite bike?
JC: Well, my favourite bike was a Vinny. A Vincent. But my wife wouldn’t let me. They had them. They had one. They had a Vincent. Look. There’s one on the wall up there. They had them. But my wife said, ‘No. No. It’s too fast. No. No,’ she said, ‘I’ll leave you if you get one of those.’ No. I didn’t have one. I had a Triumph. A Triumph 650. Which wasn’t bad. I used to get a fair old speed out of it.
CJ: And coming back to the RAF did you keep in touch with the rest of the crew after the war?
JC: Oh yeah. Yes. I did. But gradually, unfortunately the engineer died of [pause] Oh dear. Cancer. It was cancer, wasn’t it?
VJ: Yeah.
JC: He died. And then I lost touch because well a lot of them disappeared. I’ve since discovered that I’m the only one alive. The rest have gone.
MM: When did Mac die?
JC: Eh?
MM: When did Mac die?
JC: I can’t remember.
VJ: About three or four years.
JC: When was it?
VJ: About four years ago.
JC: Eh?
VJ: Four. Four years.
CJ: Four years ago.
JC: Four years ago. Yeah.
CJ: So I gather you went up to East Kirkby for Mac. Is that correct?
CJ: Yes.
CJ: What was that all about?
JC: Well, his daughter was scattering his ashes in the little field of Remembrance up there. That’s why I went up there. We all went up there. There was a gang of us. Of course, scattered his ashes. I simply broke down.
CJ: And were you in a Squadron Association?
JC: Oh yes. It’s in this. Plenty of them. I’m in the Squadron Association and I still get a newsletter every year. I used to go up to the dinner and dance and whatnot. I used to. Now, I couldn’t. So —
MM: You tell him about Johnny Chatterton and Mike Chatterton.
JC: Well, Johnny Chatterton was the test pilot 630 Squadron. He’d just finished his second tour. He was looking for a crew. We’d finished ours and he said, ‘I’m going to take you over pro tem.’ And he did. He took us over for [pause] oh, I don’t know. About a year. Something like that. And finished our time at 630. Disbanded in July. July ’45. So when we disbanded that was it. Johnny tried to get the rest of the crew to go with him but they wouldn’t have it. They wouldn’t have it.
MM: But his son flew the Memorial Flight, didn’t he?
JC: Oh yeah. Mike Chatterton was, was also in the flying game if you like and he, he used to fly the Lanc. Not fly it. Well, he did but —
CJ: This was the BBMF Lancaster.
JC: Yeah. He flew that but the one at East Kirkby when they first got it running, the four engines and he did the first taxi run. When he finished the taxi run he said, ‘I had a bloody hard job to hold it down,’ he said, ‘It wanted to get in the air. Wanted to take off. I had to hold it down.’ Now, Mike Chatterton, he became a wing commander I think. He’s retired now, of course. The Chattertons own the farm which is near East Kirkby actually. Now, that’s a funny thing you see because Johnny Chatterton was born in a little house which is in, was in the middle of East Kirkby.
CJ: What a coincidence.
JC: Yeah.
CJ: Now, have you anything else you’d like to tell us, Joe?
JC: I’m just having a think. What I’m me and my, my beloved partner are carrying on. We’re still together and we don’t know how long because she’s eighty seven. Aren’t you?
VJ: Six.
JC: Eighty six.
MM: She’ll kill you if you don’t know.
JC: And of course I’m ninety one. You had to be that age to do what we’d done because it was at the end of the war. I can add, people say, ‘Well, were you frightened?’ Etcetera. No. Not a bit.
MM: Would you do it again, Joe?
JC: Oh, of course not. I’ve got more sense.
CJ: Well, thanks very much for talking to us today, Joe. That was brilliant. Thank you very much indeed.
JC: Yeah. Right.
[recording paused]
CJ: So, tell me Joe did you ever get wounded when you were flying on ops?
JC: Very slightly. I wouldn’t say I really got wounded. What happened was that the flak that came up, came through the turret and caught my right outer gun. In doing so it knocked the back plate off which has the return spring etcetera. And it’s the buffer plate for the [pause] oh dear. I’ve forgotten the name of the —
CJ: The breech.
JC: Eh?
CJ: The breech.
JC: No. It goes backwards and forwards.
CJ: The bolt.
JC: At a fast rate.
CJ: Ok. The firing pin.
JC: Eh?
CJ: The firing pin.
JC: No. No. No. It’s the breech block.
CJ: Ok.
JC: And the breach block came back and came straight out and landed in my lap actually after it had hit the side of my head. Taken my helmet. It took, you know the helmet round bit. The telephones, if you like. Took that off and creased the side of my head and when we went to get debriefed chappy there said, ‘Oh, come on,’ he said, ‘Debrief quick,’ he said, ‘You’ve got to, better go up sick quarters because you’re bleeding.’ I went up sick quarters and the, I don’t know who it was in charge. I can’t remember. But they cleaned up the, where the wound if you like. Cleaned it up and then looked at it and he put an adhesive plaster or a tape on it. Took one step back and said, ‘Yeah. Yeah. Fit for flying tomorrow.’
CJ: Well, thank you for that Joe.
[recording paused]
CJ: So, Joe would you like to tell us about any incident when you actually shot an aircraft down?
JC: Yes. I can because I have my diary which I wrote in. Every time I came back I wrote what it was like. So I can tell you that on the 8th and 9th of February ’45 the target was Politz which was an oil installation north of Stettin. And I go on to say, “The flak was fairly heavy. Red cannon fire continuous over Sweden. Searchlights, some in target area and over Denmark. Two Junkers 88s seen over target. Then Junkers 88 shot down and destroyed by the mid-upper gunner and myself and the bomb aimer two minutes before bombs gone. This was a very tiring trip being airborne for nine hours forty five minutes. Flown over for, eighteen hundred miles. Crossing Sweden and Denmark and the Baltic. The Swedish AA fire was very accurate and a lot of ‘dive ports’ had to be given to avoid it. That was two minutes from the run up to the bombing run. Then the mid-upper sighted a Junkers 88 on port beam level. The mid-upper and bomb aimer opened fire. The 88 tried to drop behind. I yelled out to the skipper, ‘Throttle back. Whatever he does you do. Don’t let don’t let him go up or down or sideways or anything.’ And then at approximately range is seventy five yards I fired in to the canopy and killed the crew. Both the gunners, the other two other than myself kept firing and strikes observed on both engines and it eventually broke away and the bomb aimer saw it crash in the target area. And it was reported also by other crews. Numerous explosions and thick black smoke with flames intermingled came up from the target. Visibility was very good. No cloud. And marking was bang on. No doubt Politz was well and truly pranged this time. It seemed ages in the air. Especially on the return across the North Sea. There was not much AA fire over Denmark but Swedish gunners were very active. No fighters were, were observed after the 88. This provided enjoyment of aerial warfare.”
Well, thanks very much Joe.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Joseph Henry Cook
Creator
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Chris Johnson
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-18
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACookJH170118, PCookJH1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:04:02 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Completing school and moving on to work at 20th Century Fox Films, he worked as a fire watcher at the beginning of the war before joining the Royal Air Force. He states that he did that because he always wanted to fly and didn’t want to join the Army. He was sent to St. John’s Woods, for square bashing, which he thought was to ‘break’ the aircrews, before completing his initial training at RAF Bridgnorth and then onto RAF Bridlington to learn Morse code. He turned down being a bomb aimer in Anson and trained as an air gunner instead, after being told that they had the highest loss rate. He eventually travelled to RAF Tarrant Rushton just before the D-Day landings, being sent to drop leaflets over France in old Stirlings. Upon completing one of his first four operations, he baled out and landed in a tree. Joe was transferred to Wellingtons, flying training eight-hour trips. Joe also recounts several experiences on operations, including two near misses and flying at low temperatures. He didn’t think about losses, purely as they were so tired. Decommissioned in July 1945, Joe struggled to find work following the war, with people not hiring him as they believed he had killed people. He remained in touch with his crew and he also joined the squadron association. He states that he was never frightened throughout the war, but that he wouldn’t do it again, as he has more sense now.
Contributor
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Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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France
Great Britain
Germany
Poland
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Urft Dam
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Temporal Coverage
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1945-07
630 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bale out
bombing
crewing up
fear
Fw 190
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Me 109
Me 262
military ethos
military service conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
propaganda
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Silverstone
RAF Syerston
RAF Tarrant Rushton
RAF Wigsley
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/699/9283/PBeardKC1701.2.jpg
be6bb63d3066c3ea13f44f9b05b78439
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/699/9283/ABeardKC170807.2.mp3
3c95bc1067de7aac5b387ae0f0692996
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
Beard, Ken
Ken C Beard
K C Beard
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history with Ken Beard (b. 1921, 1061851 Royal Air Force), his air gunners log book, and photographs of him, his wedding and his crew. He flew 31 operations as an air gunner on Halifax with 10 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ken Beard and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Beard, KC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
KB: He’s very qualified.
SP: Yeah.
[recording paused]
SP: So, this is Susanne Pescott and I’m interviewing Ken Beard today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We’re at Ken’s home and it’s the 7th of August 2017. Thank you first of all agreeing to talk to me today, Ken. So, just like to chat through first of all what you did before the war.
KB: Yeah. I went to, I was one of the few who went to Grammar School.
SP: Right.
KB: When we was, got then to Retford Grammar School there were very few of us because you went in by it was a fair, a fair fee but we didn’t pay because I got a scholarship.
SP: Right.
KB: There were only a tiny few of us from Worksop.
SP: Right.
KB: Ever got there at all. And so that’s, I made a good start in life. Yeah. So that that did make a difference starting with a Grammar School beginning. You know the beginning. Very well. Yeah. So, that I was very privileged about that. I had to work hard though and whatever.
SP: So, after Grammar School. What did you do after Grammar School?
KB: Well, one of the things about what’s it now, you don’t get it now we were, we were the last course to do Latin. Yeah. We were. Yeah. I got interested with it because we, they had sort of things about what in, all the terms of people, soldiers and what not from that period and whatever like Rome and everything about so that was, that was always interesting. Yeah. I enjoyed that like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SP: Did you go into a job after school or —
KB: Yeah. I, first of all, I was a privileged really because I’d passed all my examinations. I could have chosen pretty well lots of things but I I did advertise for a bit and I finished up which turned up very good, apprentice to a chemist shop. I started mixing medicine and everything else eventually. So that, that was quite a unique sort of thing to do. I enjoyed that. It was only because partly of my Grammar School background you know. Because, yeah it was obviously very, I learned a lot of things really. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoyed it there. Whatever. That was at Timothy, Timothy Taylor or, White and Taylor in Worksop. Yeah. A shop there. But then before when, when I went in to the war I lashed out a bit because I got a bit fed up and this was another unique job because I went to Shire. My dad was down the pit at Shireoaks Colliery and I got a job in the office. But I moved about a bit rather than the office. Whatever. I had a great freedom. I could wander anywhere in the pit yard. I got to know all the men. All the trades. Three times I went down the pit you know so they could, so I could have a look down. Down there. And so that’s I benefited very much by that really. It opened my eyes because I wanted, mind you when your dad had been a miner all his life I knew everything. I knew everything about the pit when I went down and yet when I got down to the bottom there it was all lit up and everything. Before you got further in to the place it was all quite big like that and that they used to send me down and bring me back up and so things like, all illegal I’m sure. I got to see people down the pit. They took me to the coal face where the hacking coal out. You probably don’t realise what it was like because coal grew up like that and then you broke through in to it. The men were broke you know to get it out and so that’s one of the things that I used to do. Very heavy going. Very heavy going really. What is more, little things about it in pits like it or not they got rats. They did. And often when, often I went down three times to see my dad. Not when I went down. I went down but dad wasn’t there then. I went down because I went down with the management and I always remember these right through odd ones were still running about here and there and when you talk about rats you’re not talking about little rats you’re talking about big rats. Yeah. And you got, you got to live like this. ‘Oh, I’ve seen the rat’s down there.’ ‘Oh, big deal. You’ll get on with the work but you see big rats.’ They were. They were frightening and my dad worked amongst them you see. And of course, for working on the, on the coal face the man was, my dad was getting the coal out and they virtually stripped off altogether it was so hot. Desperately hot I used to find it and sometimes I would. I immediately got a job in the pit yard and I got a bit of promotion because I got on to special duties. Recording all sorts of things about and having to move about through they all knew me on the pit top because I moved to pick up records and things. Yeah. It was a marvellous sight really. And then of course one of the real things was that I got, every month I got a ton of coal delivered to my house. Yeah. And that was great because we had three pits altogether and when I got started to get coal free I could, I could choose which pit I wanted to get the stuff from. And there was one particular one at Whitwell they had, they called it a hazel because it was shone It really shone. And that’s how I had that sort delivered. Delivered to home. Mind you the only trouble in those days they tipped it on the yard outside and off they went and I got a neighbour to do it. To put in to my door. I had a proper coal house. Yeah. I had to watch him though. I noted, he started, he only lived across the road, I caught him out once taking. I was intending giving him some but when he’d finished but I didn’t because he was, I found him taking this one. He only lived across the road but I caught him that day and I thought it’s bad isn’t it? You know, you trust people and you, sometimes I lose trust in people. I shouldn’t do as a Christian but I do because they exist don’t they? And I find them, I find them threatening.
[recording paused]
KB: Quite unique.
SP: So, Ken, what made you decide to join the RAF?
KB: Ah, I always wanted to join the RAF. Yeah. Always wanted to join the RAF so made no more about it. In fact, to do it my mum, my mum weren’t very pleased really because I went out one day. I went out to Sheffield and by a coincidence I used, in the Army we’re talking about. The Lord and I couldn’t believe about the [unclear] and the fact is that oh, I remember it well. I went to Sheffield. I don’t know why. I went to Sheffield and that’s I was, I was walking through the Sheffield and I saw the Recruiting Office so I went in and joined up. When I got back I was in trouble at home, I’ll tell you. I was. I just went up like that. ‘Where have you been?’ ‘I’ve been to —’ ‘What have you been to Sheffield for?’ ‘Well, I happened to going by the recruiting office. I went in.’ And it was as simple as that really. Well, it was to me. So, I made a start right at the bottom. Yeah. But because of my, rather strange but perhaps not slightly because I were one of the few who had been to Grammar School so I could get jobs. And I [unclear] I went to, have I already said I went in to a chemist shop as an apprentice. Yeah. And I was really getting up, working up because I started mixing. You know, when people brought what’s in I used to mix it and I had a, I had a supervisor though, whatever, obviously. But that’s how they made me work up there and eventually I would have gone through in that trade but then of course that’s, I’m trying to get towards the sort of when I joined up. It’s as simple as that. I was at Sheffield and no intent. Why I was at Sheffield. I never went to Sheffield. But I must have been there for something and that’s, that’s went at home, I just went. What, in Sheffield. Found the Recruiting Office. Somebody told me where to go and I signed up and went home. I didn’t dare tell my mam for two or three [laughs] two or three days and that’s, I started right at the bottom.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. So that, that the thing did get tedious after a while as I started. I say I did menial jobs in the RAF first of all and I quickly, very quickly I got my commission. Virtually straight because of my background at school. Retford. I got, I got my commission straight away and I commend and because of my background I never, in the Salvation Army we don’t, we don’t drink. Well, we can have water and tea but nothing else and that that’s never been a problem to me. Well, it was nice for me in the war. In fact, at times, I never had any trouble because usually now when I went to aerodromes there was always a Salvation Army Centre. Always for the men and that’s there. I used to go immediately. I was back in the Army again and that’s kept me going through life. But I never, I always remember, oh, I know. One, one nice thing about it was that often before take-off we’d all line, they were all waiting to take off. All kitted up ready to climb aboard and at the very first start I always remember right at the, when we first started we had an Irish pilot and they were talking awful filthy language and he was right on the ball. He was ignorant with them. He was. He really did fiercely with them. ‘Don’t,’ you know, he said, ‘If there’s ever cursing that there’s going to be some problem. You know Ken’s background and what he does and what he doesn’t do.’ And it worked out really so I didn’t have any more bother. You had to be like that sometimes, I think. If you wanted it you stuck your neck out and that’s what they did. There was never any scene about it but I never met it again. Yeah. That was nice.
SP: So what about your crew then? You’re talking about your crew there. What can, how did you crew up?
KB: Yeah. What happened, went first of all, you went to a Receiving Centre and strangely, now this was marvellous I thought like somebody had that sort of idea. You joined up Sheffield and went and then when we were called up to there sort of thing is that for the first day they just unleashed us. From everywhere they came. We all piled into this whatever. Little school I think it was for what and that’s all, that was how we met. And it was as simple as that because mind it’s surprising within a day how you can, you can work people out. I would never fly with him, you know. Language sometimes really. Yeah. So that you really chose. You went around and what it got rather amusing in a way because suddenly a pilot in front of you and, ‘Have you a rear gunner yet?’ And so it went on and I thought how lovely it was and very thoughtful I thought in a way because they could have done it in all sorts of ways couldn’t they? But that’s how we knew. And what it did occasionally somebody made a bad move or what. He was replaced. So, there were no bad feeling about it at all. So, you didn’t know what they had done or what they did and what they and gradually we got to be a family because we were going to be killed the next morning, you know. It was as simple as that. And that was a real family. To me I’ve always been ever so keen about looking through words and things to see what they mean and that he got a new, I set off at the bottom of this family thing and I built up a family. In my mind mostly but it worked there and so we were a family. You died, well in our case we could truthfully say we would die for each other and we did. I mean sometimes you use that loosely don’t you? I’m going to die. Big deal. But no. That was it. And it made a difference. You were fighting for each other as well as whatever. I enjoyed every minute and of course because of my, I know what I never applied to become an officer but one day I got a, a word in my billet. I’d got to go and see the top man and there he was. He was offering me a commission. It was so nice really and he knew about my background. Whatever. And that’s as quickly I became an officer that way. Yeah. So, you got very well-spoken people. You were doing the job. What’s that? But it did influence me that. The fact that. Mind you my Grammar School background. There weren’t many of us you know at that time went to Grammar School and that all came through. All my records and whatever. Yeah. So that’s how I got my commission and quickly worked up.
SP: What difference did it make getting your commission with the crew because [pause] did it make a difference?
KB: Well, with the crew.
SP: Yeah.
KB: There weren’t many of us with a commission, you know. They flew. They were all the tradesman what and that we flew as a gun and never was there any discrepancy or fighting because we’d got this, that and the other. You fought together. You did. And when people you can’t tell people whatever especially bad raids you know and we went seven times to Berlin and we that really got a hammering there because they soon found you coming in. Whatever. You were flying about twenty thousand feet. At no time at all the first searchlights. I’m in Germany by now. The first searchlight comes on and then the big ones. Oh, we were at thirty thousand feet and they suddenly shot out of the sky. This vast vast vast light and it was it. One of those. They really got you. You know, you couldn’t and in fact often to get out of it the pilot we were carrying bombs sometimes. We’d a full bomb load and just, the pilot just stuck the nose down and went down you know, and things like that. So we survived all these things. Yeah. Yeah. I never I never bothered. Most of us did. We were a good crew. No doubt about it. Yeah. And we bombed Berlin seven times. That was some record. It really was because it was hectic there. Oh dear. Long before you reached the target you could see anti-aircraft or the searchlights came and then these heavy guns could fire up to thirty thousand feet from the ground and you can imagine what shells were like and that. And you flew through it sometimes and you were just lucky. We did once get one hit our tailplane but it didn’t make much of a hole so that we got away with it but, but that’s how it was. I enjoyed every second. I shouldn’t say that but I did really.
SP: So obviously you talked about there was quite a lot of trips to Berlin but you also were involved in D-Day you said. So can you remember —
KB: Oh yes, that —
SP: Can you remember that from start to finish?
KB: I can. I can remember.
SP: From the first day.
KB: Every minute of it.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Every minute of it because we knew it was coming up anytime.
SP: Yeah.
KB: And how we came we were on an ordinary flight over the Channel and suddenly we realised, we’d read about it coming but we didn’t hear much more than anybody else and we, we flew over and you couldn’t see any water for ships. I’m not going to talk about ships I’m talking about us going to them to fight with well you know vast ships. Vast warships and whatever else about them scattered. You could hardly see any water in between. So we flew over them and we knew obviously that was the day. Yeah. Aye it was a marvellous experience really. I relive it at times. Never worries me really. No, it didn’t really. Good skipper. Good pilot. Makes a difference. Whatever yeah.
SP: So, can you remember what your trip was day on that day? On D-Day morning?
KB: Yeah, because we took off at I think half past, no. Half past two in the morning when we took off and that’s of course we saw, couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw the armada going out from this country. You know. Couldn’t believe it. We hadn’t been told it was. It was rather strange that because we’d been to a special whatever before we went and they never mentioned it. I think it was a device really to keep us away from whatever. Getting worked up beforehand. But so then I saw this. Oh, couldn’t see any, one harbour we were going by. Couldn’t see any water because it were full of warships. Ours. Yeah. Marvellous sight. Marvellous sight really to see and what and you knew about the third day of that there’d be millions of men dead. Dead. You know it were, you had to turn. In fact, there was one of the main things we used as a, sort of thing in Bomber Command it helps if you’re thick. I mean it didn’t sound comical but it wasn’t comical at all and, because it was true. You had, you had to be. You couldn’t worry. I mean, I climbed in my little turret and aside from being attacked no time at all and German fighters made to remove me if they could in the first place. Yeah. Mind you that it didn’t happen very often like that but of course we ran into German fighters all over the place. But a good luck amongst it I’m sure but a good pilot that made the difference yeah. Because he never hesitated. With a bomb, with us full of bombs just stick the nose down and I disappeared up in the air there still with all the bombs inside. Whatever. Yeah. You learned to live with it. I used to say it was like learning to live with marriage isn’t it, really. You soon recover sometimes. Oh, dear me. I’ve lived. I love life. The lord sent me a life and he’s kept me alive this long and whatever and so I liked it. I don’t like being here. I can’t say that but at the same time I live by the rules and I get on well with everybody here and whatever so that that’s it. And my dad not only was the band master of the Salvation Army band and I played under him. Mind you I were treated like everybody else because he was my dad and he wrote Salvation Army music. Yeah. So we played his music and my dad, I played in the band and my dad was bandmaster. I treated, he treated me like everybody else, you know. So there was no, there was no about that. Yeah. In fact, when I look back I’ve had a marvellous life really when I come to think about it. A lot of it I’ve made myself because my mother couldn’t [laughs] that day I always remember going to Sheffield for the day for no reason and passed that Recruiting Office. I thought I’ll pop in. Pop in there which I popped in. I I daren’t tell her for about two or three days. I didn’t know how to say it. But anyway she, she was a good support then. Yeah. Oh, dear me. Oh dear. ‘Where have you been today?’ ‘I’ve been joining up.’ Oh, big deal. But I’ve loved life always. Whatever. What a state. I always met, during the war with Bomber Command I met quite a nice lot of young ladies. WAAFs. Looked after me and we went out together. Nothing else to it at that. We got to know a bit about each other. Yeah. And so that was it. Made life a lot better. Especially when they, when they on the cookhouse they mostly they did all the cooking and everything and we got to know the oh pull their legs and all the time whatever. Everybody was happy I think. Never think about going later, later in the day and get shot down. I didn’t. I think some people did you know. I think they were terrified from the start but no. in fact, I went, once went and the Germans fighters were about, a lot of them that night. They did. And they wandered sometimes to pick you up. But I never, never saw one on top of me. You know. We never saw them so close as that. Whatever. Otherwise, we should have. We had a mid-upper gunner you know as well as me in the back. So that was my experience of the war.
SP: So, you went twice on D-Day you said. So, your first trip in the morning.
KB: Half past two in the morning.
SP: At half two in the morning. And then you, do do you know where you were? Obviously, you saw the armada of ships then. Do you know the final destination was on that day?
KB: No. First of all it was difficult but from where they first went. When I first went they were like a fog over them by and large. And then we saw them in their glory they were leaving you know working towards light and we actually saw them leaving. These great convoys. Yeah. Big ships and I used to, I used to get worried about I know a lot of them were going to be killed. Thousands and thousands and thousands. I thought about their mothers and their children whatever. It got to me some times but I still flew. The Salvation Army, we’re sensitive. It’s part of our religion really. Yeah. Yeah. But having said that and it was nice when I went for my final award for that. That’s the top one there. That’s quite, not a lot of us got that.
SP: So you’re talking about the Legion d’Honneur which is the special medal that you’re showing me there. Yeah.
KB: Yeah. Yeah. That’s what it is. Yeah.
SP: Yeah. So where did you get awarded that?
KB: Well, it was quite unique. Well, not unique but enough because to get, to get that I forget where it was. The French president. The French president presented me with that. So, it was in Britain or whatever. I can’t, I couldn’t if I thought enough I’d know where I went. I can’t quite remember where I went.
SP: So you’ve got Retford Town Hall.
KB: Aye.
SP: You got awarded it.
KB: That’s right yeah. Aye that’s it.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. I remember. Fancy I didn’t remember that. Yeah. That was quite, quite a ceremony really because it went, it went very well. Why? The president, French president he was very unique to what was happening and whatever because there was a lot of people there. And I always remember how well he handled it somehow because he came and had a little chat with you. In French of course. No. He was friendly but that’s he just did it so nicely. Not, because there was a lot there and so they, he did it so well. I I went, we had to go up and we had to bow before him. He bowed to us back and then that’s it. He presented me with that. ‘I’ll pin it on for you.’ Yeah.
SP: And it's fantastic.
KB: Yeah. Yeah.
SP: Awarded a medal. Yeah. So that was obviously for your services to support France during the war. And you were saying the D-Day raid and then on the second night was St Lȏ.
KB: Yeah. That’s right.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. That’s right. That’s where I was. Yeah. So, yeah, I never feared. I’m a God-fearing man and never, no. I didn’t. And with the, so nicely the WAAFs were very kind to us really because once I do remember this we took it, we were due to take off and we usually, you went early before you climbed in to your aircraft. You used to lie on the grass and what not and that’s, on that this particular night out of the blue we should be taking off at a certain time and suddenly we had to go early and so the girls they were amazing. We were actually taxiing out and suddenly racing from inside from the cookhouse was the girls. They’d made some, slapped some together and threw them firstly in to the turret. It was lovely of them really when you think about it. So, you were chewing your sandwiches as you were taking off. They were lovely people. Lovely girls. Yeah.
SP: That was at Melbourne Airfield. So, what can you remember about your airbase at Melbourne?
KB: I [pause] it was pretty orthodox. You, you lived to fly and that’s what your job was. Often of course you could get home and whatever a lot in between so that I can’t think any more than we did anything like. Oh, I always got to the nearest Salvation Army if it was on a Sunday. Always. And so that kept me in touch with what, what was happening. And then its rather strange but I’ve told you already that it was my crew, how sensitive they became. Because at first they were cursing and swearing most of the time. Not most of the time but they were bad. And I only had a word with the skipper and it were like magic. They were, mind you they were a new crew. Yeah. Yeah. The way they treated me and looked after me. Yeah. Dear me. I never regret. I shouldn’t say I loved it but I did really. To be a hero. Whatever. So that’s how it went through and of course to do all those. How many? Thirty one times. The, I got something ridiculous and survived. Yeah. And often of course we didn’t see any fighters. We just went to drop bombs and that was it. And of course, the thing about, well you don’t know about bombing but the fact is how it worked they put, the navigator was to get you, get completely get you there, you’ve got to be. And so the pilot had to fly straight and level and everything else to drop his bombs. And so that’s how it got you. You had to be very careful there because the Germans knew that that we were steady and they sometimes [unclear] really but that’s, that’s the pilot. That’s how we dropped our bombs. Yeah. Came away. A lot of men died. Thousands of men died I’m afraid but that’s warfare isn’t it? I never regret. People say, used to say to me about we’re peace loving in the Salvation Army. All over the world the Army is now. And the fact is that but we I felt we had a job to do. Why should I let other people you know, losing their lives or what for the same, for the same thing? And I got very settled about that. Yeah. And we got to be a very good crew. Well, we were a senior crew eventually because we had a squadron leader as pilot. Yeah. He was.
SP: Can you remember the names of your crew? Who was your, who was your pilot?
KB: Yes. Kennedy. Dick Kennedy was the pilot. Yeah. He came from Ireland by the way. Irish free state, I think. Whatever. And so that was, Dick. Dick Kennedy. Yeah. And we had a navigator. He was even more unique because he’d come into this country. I don’t know I don’t know how he came in to and he was a marvellous navigator. Unbelievable. To get you an, to get you within an inch of somewhere and that. He’d got a German background. Somewhere in the family it was a Germans bit. Whatever. I never found out much about it but we knew that. He’d say. He told me at times about it. Yeah. Yeah. So he had a sympathy with the Germans really I suppose in a way. Yeah. But that’s it. It was quite unique I think really. Yeah. A very fine navigator.
SP: Do you remember what he was called?
KB: That was Dick Rath. Dick Rath. Yeah. And the pilot was Kennedy. Yeah. He was a good navigator. In fact, he used to cut corners off sometimes because you got one set up for the journey from the office or whatever they did. And that’s they largely followed but he did quite a few times alter it a little bit really. He knew what he was doing. He was taking you, we knew for some areas that there were vast amounts of German anti-aircraft fire and he didn’t want to fly through it which we didn’t. He got round it. Hardly lost any time. So that was a bit of a, I think that was a bit of a benefit we had really to have Dick look after us. Never portrayed his partly German [unclear] We didn’t want to hear about it.
SP: Yeah. And your mid-upper gunner. Who was, where was he from?
KB: I were rear gunner.
SP: Your mid-upper gunner.
KB: I was rear gunner.
SP: You were rear gunner but your mid-upper gunner. Who was he?
KB: In the middle.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. That’s right.
SP: Do you know where he was from? Can you remember?
KB: Let me see now. Dick. It’s difficult really. I got them mixed up a bit. No.
SP: No. No worries.
KB: I can’t really. Oh, the one, I always remember this because he came from Manchester and he was always, he swore a lot and blah blah. And after the war, straight away after I’m going, I’m going to Manchester about something and I’ll pop in. But oh, I regret going. He was dirty and ugh. Lord above. I thought, fancy him flying with us. It was that bad really. And in a way I was sorry. Fortunately, there was nobody in. So when I saw it I knew what it must have been like. It must have been such a sight. The house and whatnot so that’s it. Still, he did his job. He did his job and that was it. In fact, when when I come to think about it being a Salvation Army officer and moving about everywhere that I was, my eye was open to how some of them lived. You know what I mean. I came from Salvation Army. Immaculate. Everybody came out the Army and we don’t, we abhor bad language of any sort. That sort of thing we live by and so sometimes I couldn’t believe what I saw. I’d never been in the slums before. I mean, they were in Manchester. I’m not being unkind but it was that bad at times really. Well, you know about places like Manchester and I felt sorry for them. Some of them. I did. I come back from, in the first place I didn’t have much. My dad was a miner but I got to Grammar School. The first one in my family. I traded on it. I did well in examinations. Yeah. So overall I think I’ve had a very rewarding life. I can’t ask for more that and in the Army, we talked in the Army we had a, in the Army we had this expression. Getting people saved. Now, rogues and vagabonds, anything that came in to the Army’s sphere eventually ever so many became top salvationists they were nothing and we made something of them. In fact, we we had a sort of system. It was a confession thing really and some of them were oh so down and filthy and I used to go and pray with them and as I say in no time at all we got them in to the Army some times. Got them washed and bought them new clothes. In fact, I got them into uniform and some of them learned to play and got them in the band. My dad was bandmaster for thirty years and I took over immediately when he retired. I was bandmaster for seventeen years. Had a good band at that time. Enjoyed. Took the band out a lot and that so I got that reward a little bit. Yeah. Couldn’t have done better. I’ve had a life that’s been marvellous really. I make what it is now, I think. I think I how I was saying I’m blessed about I’m blessed in here. But where could else could I have I have gone like this? You know it’s true. I’ve been such [unclear] really over the years being a probation officer I loved that but for the first time ever when I must be fair about he retired. I took over from him when he retired. And he’d got old and whatever and when I came and took over I couldn’t believe my ears, my eyes or anything how badly he’d, how badly he’d been. They’d got away with murder.
SP: So, this was your job after the war.
KB: Yeah.
SP: You went to be a probation officer.
KB: Yeah.
SP: Yeah.
KB: And they, yes I did a bit of training and I trained some of these people. They were getting away with murder. It were awful really in a way. They reckoned to be in charge or whatever. They didn’t last long when I took over. But I really, I got people, parents from Manton a lot of them I got them into court straightaway because I wasn’t prepared to mess about with them and they soon fell into line and I, because of my Salvation Army background I always felt I did well in Manton for all sort of reasons. They were all working people and they say what they mean [laughs] and I had to get used to a sort of collection of languages. I soon absorbed them. They had. I’ve got a million. I wish I could sit all day. I went to one house and I had a chap before me who was retired and he didn’t do anything they got away with murder. Hardly any of them went to school at Manton. And then I took it on I went for about a week. I thought there’s only one way here. Get them to court. Get their parents to court which I did. For a long time courts were opening for me. For my clients to go in and that, that worked really because I never stopped going to their homes, you know and I always dressed well when I went. And when [laughs] some, some of the houses I went to were not just filthy and I used to plonk down in a mucky settee with the springs coming through. I never bothered a scrap because I’d got a Salvation Army background and people are people aren’t they? Whatever. And so I loved, loved doing that job but they knew very well not to mess about with me. The parents. They knew better and that worked out. Yeah. Of course, it worked, I did it on a bike and then we got cars after then and made it easier for me. And there was, one [laughs] I’m not quoting names in Manton but they were notorious and I had one family. They were rough and ready and I got to liking them. They just needed a bit of help. Whatever. I could arrange for food to go and clothing for the kids. I was a big man for that immediately. Poor little things because I see the parents had no money. Except when I learned that they boozed as well so they didn’t get any more money. But that’s how I dealt with them and I got respected in Manton when some people weren’t because they knew what sort of person I was really. And one house that I did used to like to go because where as soon as I got to the gate usually the man, he was a miner and I seemed to click for that shift he was on that week and he were virtually naked when he came. Big man. Big man. He real, he were real tough. And that’s strange about that man. I thought, now how am I going to deal with them best. The best way for them? And so, what I did I suddenly thought I can manoeuvre this man because he used to come shouting and bawling at me. And when he came to the gate I think I know. I know can sort him out and oh I know he came [unclear] up and I pretended to faint on the, on the gate. And he said, oh it were amazing. ‘What’s, what’s wrong with him?’ He said, ‘Owt, owt wrong with thee mister?’ I says ‘Well, to tell you [laughs] to tell you the truth I’m not, I’m, I’m really not so very bright this morning. And it worked like that. Took they took me. I got going to that house afterwards and it were nasty. I got them money. I could get money for anybody from the education. They were marvellous the education command, whatever, you know. I could get money for any, for them. All of them. In fact, there is, in Worksop in the centre of the town the whatevers they were what was the firm? A firm called [unclear] or something like that. Now, they were very cooperative because what I would do I went to them. Told them I was going to the boss man and went in and take the mother of these lads and measured. Measured. She’d tarted herself up a bit and the like and went and she got quite a [unclear] she got, she broke out of her bad background and into a new one really because she saw me. I got to know [unclear] and I just went in. He said, ‘Are you alright Ken?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, who are you sending in?’ I said, ‘I’m sending this family in and I want them equipping.’ And that they were, just did that. I went and joined them when got. They were delighted really. The women couldn’t believe their eyes and with these kids. Mind you I’m afraid to say that often they didn’t last long these lads. No. No. they were [laughs] Yeah. I love life. I love life. I really do. And I, I’ve done so many things really. I’ve got relatives in Australia. I went twice to Australia. Flew there. I loved that. I got talking to the pilot one day while we were actually airborne and I sneaked behind him and had a little chat with him. He didn’t turn a hair. He was flying along to Australia and that was his job. And I did, I got, I met, I went for people they’d got something I want you know and they makes a difference. I’m not a paragon of virtue or anything like that but I’m a Salvation Army man and I had that background always where ever I went. Well, of course during the war I went to a lot of places and I would get, first thing I found where the Salvation Army was and I was fortunate because I was, went to some cities and the Army was big. Big band. Everything about them and I played I usually would be able to play with them for a while and that’s, that’s how I got through the war.
SP: Where was the one near to Melbourne where you were based? Where was that one? The Salvation Army.
KB: At Melbourne? I can’t quite remember.
SP: York was your big —
KB: York.
SP: Town that was near you.
KB: York. Yeah, things like. I did go to York, yeah. Seems like I did go to York. Somewhere else around that part of the war. It’s beyond me.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Mostly it was with the band and things like that and I enjoyed it.
SP: I was just wondering how you got there? How did you? You know, if you were on based on Melbourne and went to the Salvation Army on a Sunday. Did you have transport? Did you —
KB: Well, often from most aerodromes they had a Liberty body. Not a Liberty body. Oh dear. That’s given the [laughs] No. I don’t know about Liberty bodices [laughs] It’s just a phrase I use. Oh dear. Give over, Ken. You ought to be shot. They used to say. ‘Time he were shot really.’ I made a lot of good friends and my crew would have been far worse if immediately, immediately the skipper picked it up. He never allowed bad language yet he used plenty himself and he was Irish but he didn’t and it worked and they got to be much more sober. Whatever. Some of them drank heavily when they were not flying of course. When they were not flying. Yeah. But very little drunkenness I found began.
SP: So, they had a Liberty bus was it that went into York?
KB: Sorry?
SP: They had a little bus that went into York.
KB: Yes. Liberty. A Liberty bus. Yeah.
SP: So, you went on the bus into York sometimes did you? What was —
KB: There was one available every day from the aerodrome.
SP: Yeah. So, did you ever go in?
KB: Nearly all the time because I could get to the city and I could get to the Army and I could get, I even went to the pictures and things like that. Filled our lives really without any problem. So that, that, that’s worked out well really when I come to think but most places my first thought when I got to a new ‘drome was to get to find the Salvation Army, which I did and they were lovely people. They used to take me home quite often. They took me to sleep at home. Yeah. it was, the Army’s like that really and that’s how it worked out that during the war very much really for me the Army was a sanctuary really. Yeah. At Brid. At Brid, yeah.
SP: So, Brid was Bridlington where you did your air gunnery training. Yeah.
KB: Yeah. Parts of it.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah, because the thing that whatever, you know a turret? Well, for the training ground I was, am I taking up your time love? The training ground was all laid out and thinking of my turret what it consisted of was a mock one that worked on lines what’s at side and that’s so he did so long in there. Now, the beauty of that place was that there was an RAF man. He was proper scruffy. Never, never put you on the spot because he was, he ran the place, a cookery thing so he had this big fire outside where he made fires for us and what. And he charged though. He charged and, and we paid gladly. But he never had uniform on and he had a big furnace thing he had to look after. He said it was like hell. That’s how he envisaged hell and that he was, he were a good lad though because he produced beautiful food. He really did. It was so nice. And we paid and in fairness he did use RAF stuff but he didn’t charge us and he, he spent it again within the set up because he never had uniform on. Proper scruffy and we loved him. We loved him. Yeah. When he, when he came the first time I went to his first meal. By gum. It didn’t cost him much. I mean, we could have done RAF food but he didn’t do that. He did it for us privately really. So that was nice. So, whatever. Dear me. Oh, the things I’ve seen. Nobody’s been better blessed than me. If I died tomorrow but the doctor says I’m not doing. No. I’ve got full health. It’s amazing isn’t it really? Immaculate blood pressure.
SP: Yeah. And how old are you now?
KB: Eight hundred thousand [laughs] Have a guess.
SP: Ninety.
KB: Ninety five.
SP: Ninety five. Wow.
KB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But age is a comparative thing. It’s what you make it. And of course, I broke away in some ways. In the Salvation Army we don’t drink. We don’t go to public houses but at the same time I, one or two people met me from one pub and said, ‘Why don’t you bring us —’ They knew something about Army, Salvation Army papers you know. He said, ‘Why don’t you come in the pub, Ken.’ I saw the boss man. Now, he said, ‘No, you come in Ken.’ And it got to be a big one. About five hundred people in and they waited for me to come to take my papers and they, and they paid. They paid generously and I never deplored it. I thought this is what, let me think there are so many things of these I could tell about the pubs actually. My brother. No, my son worked for a big firm and he could dispose at his own leisure, whatever he could dispose of. They only had a car for a year and they could, he disposed of them in any sort of way and I always remember him saying, ‘Hey ‘up dad,’ he said, ‘You’ll have to pop in.’ I said, ‘What for?’ He said, ‘Do you know that we’ve got that new —’ Oh what car was it? Oh, it was superb. I forget what it was. It’ll come later. And he said about these. What’s the name? He could dispose of them however he wants. He said, ‘Would you like one?’ And I said, ‘Well, if it’s —’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘It’s all above board,’ he said, ‘I could sell them to anybody.’ And it was a Princess. A Princess. Did you ever see the Princess cars? Oh, they were marvellous. Immaculate. Beautiful. And he got it. He could charge what he wanted really in some ways but I paid properly and everything and it was a Princess. You’ve probably seen pictures of them many a time and they were superb. Absolutely superb. I used to lie back in it and oh you could do ninety mile an hour before you moved and in that way I liked, because I liked speeding and that’s how I used to go in this Princess because my, my son worked for the place and he disposed of them whichever way they wanted to. And he always made sure I got this. He had, I’ve got, ‘Hey Ken —’ Oh, Ken, I’m dad, I’m Ken though. ‘I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve got some cars coming ready. You pop around if you like.’ And I did and that’s how I saw I saw it for the first time. This Princess. You’ve probably seen them. They were superb really. And so I got my Princess. He charged a reasonable price. He could charge what he liked but I paid like everybody else. And to drive them they were heaven. Oh, dear me. You could stop, oh you had, I don’t know what that side of the street was. I don’t know what you did by that. Perhaps I never got around to that but they were so beautiful to drive. Yes, they were. When I see. Am I rattling on? I went to this pub. I got, because I was a Salvationist I always had full uniform. Never drank or whatever. No trouble for me and the other men got to know it well. Straight away they knew me. My background. And when I got that Princess I wish you could have seen it. It were beautiful. To drive it oh it was luxury. And so when I went to, do you know I used to, Salvation Army officers we used to visit pubs to take Salvation Army papers. And the men liked something to, because some of them were comics that the kids, that they could take home for the kids and so, I went to that. And so this particular, when I got this new Princess I went to this pub and I knew about this pub because this bloke would shoot his mouth off. So, I’ll show him. So I parked it some way away from the pub. And oh, I know. Another man picked up on that from inside the pub and he said, I could tell you his very words. Educated British man said, ‘Hey up, skipper.’ He called me skipper. ‘Hey up skipper.’ That’s, that was the introduction. Stood up in the middle of the, eight hundred people in those pubs and he stood up in the mid of this, ‘I’ll tell thee something,’ these were his words, ‘I’ll tell thee something skip.’ ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘I’ve seen thee.’ And this was this was in front of everyone. Eight hundred people in that pub. ‘I’ll tell, tell thee something skipper,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen thee. I’ve seen thee.’ He said, he said what, what did he say like this? That I’d parked it away. ‘I’ve seen thee.’ He said, ‘I’ve seen thee taking that blinking great —’ oh he called it a blinking great car or something like, abusive, abusive sometimes [laughs] ‘I’ve seen thee with the what sort of [unclear] car.’ He said, ‘Parking at the back there,’ he said. And he used a bit of swear words to complement. And they never worried me about swear words. You know, I’ve never sworn in my life but having said that I got used to it. I got on well with everybody in pubs. As an Army officer I went fully kitted with my Army uniform and I was, I went to, I went to one, it was in a village outside and it was a top class place that place was. And I was so busy that I had to get there at 11 o’clock and I thought they, because I’d been to others that it would be odd. No, it was very refined. All of it exactly refined. Beautiful people I talked to and that. They get so game and I didn’t, wasn’t prepared for it but I’m coming up towards Christmas and whatever. They were always good to me and I couldn’t believe that the last one before Christmas they’d set me up something very special for me. And I went in and it was marvellous really. They’d laid it all out. Oh, I knew what they’d done mine you I’d a job to get it home. I never knew this but they had this penny thing. You know if you got a copper they hadn’t had, it was mobile and great big what’s the name so they had to carry it out to my car and then I had to set off. When I got home later that week, it was nearly all coppers my hands were red, you know. Oh dear. But I loved them in that pub. They were very caring. In fact, my last visit to them the landlord had prepared a meal for me in his own home. Yeah. I did. It shows you if you did things right people responded don’t they? And they love the Army. Most people. Yeah. So that’s how it is.
SP: Just looking as well, you were showing me photos you met your wife during that.
KB: Oh, I met my wife.
SP: You met her during the war, didn’t you?
KB: I don’t know whether I’ll reveal all but I will reveal all. I normally don’t. Bit too louder mostly. No. Now, this is, now talk about this I mean I’d love you to record this because it’s superb really. What [pause] I know when I first got there at, I think Saturday night when we used to go somewhere but I’m thinking of the first time. Oh, I know how I met her that she took me too her house, whatever. Oh, by the way she worked in a big factory and she were not very big and when to move on I used to meet her. I used to take her every morning to work and mostly pick her up at night. She was so, she had a [laughs] she had a pair of overalls about ten sizes too big. I said, ‘Don’t you dare come any more.’ I used to meet her out. Yeah. I used to meet her out from work and take her home. But I said, ‘If ever you come, if I come to pick —’ Oh she had a bike so I had to push her. I went to her home straight. They accepted me in to the family. Marvellous. Straight away in to the family. So when I saw her with this bike and these overalls and I said, ‘If ever you come again like that I’ll forget. I shan’t be coming anymore.’ But she were lovely, lovely, lovely person. Well, you’ve seen my photograph. She was like that really, and beauty queen thing one year. Yeah. You can imagine what sort of person and what she was chased by a lot of airmen but I always stood my ground. What happened then? Oh, I know. She went to help in the [unclear] or something at that time and she, voluntarily and so she went there and I used to pick her up afterwards to take her home. Yeah. And, but you know I went Salvation Army and that sent, I went to homes everywhere in the country. Always. And if I was staying overnight in the church accommodation they just took it that, these didn’t even ask me if I was staying. Marvellous that you know because it means you’ve got unique, it’s unique absolutely in that way. Yeah. And with being, Brid a seaside and so one thing I did when I got to Brid I always remember, oh I know, she went to chapel and I’d seen her come out of chapel and so when I went to the Army I thought one night, one night I’m going to catch her when she comes out. And one day it was all over. It was. Just like that. Actually, just like that. She were a lovely person really. Very lovely. Well, you’ve seen her picture.
SP: So, you met her in Bridlington.
KB: At Brid. Yeah.
SP: Right. Where you did your training. Yeah.
KB: Yeah. Yeah, that’s the —
SP: And when did you get married? Was that during the war did you say?
KB: Well, did you want to hear my story about getting married? What happened was that I got to know the family. I went to everybody’s family. They always took me to bed. Or they’ve always got a bedroom spare. Can’t people believe it? It’s telling a story again. My family says so. No, I’m not. Honest. And so that was Brid. I loved Brid partly because I should have, I went for training. Part of it was to train but first of all when I got there the course hadn’t started so I had the first six weeks before it opened virtually living at their house and I used to go and meet her. She worked in this factory and I went to meet her each time. Mind you I had to walk her home because she had a bike and I hadn’t got a bike. I did later on and so I walked, she walked with me home or whatever and she always had [laughs] she always had overalls twenty sizes too big. She had. I says, ‘You’re [unclear].’ That’s me going off you so. She was lovely. She, I used to say how pretty she was. Always winning what’s the name or whatever but, and her parents were very gracious in those days you know. Somebody comes like me, goes to somebody’s house and they ask questions and they find you a bedroom. You know, it was, that’s wartime. One lovely thing about wartime I found it had got a lot going for it. Mind you, millions were being killed I know that and whatever but that was typical one. Mind you it was a big difference because she was chapel. And so I was Salvation Army and so initially that our times were different but I picked her up or whatever or when she’d been to chapel. Then gradually she fell in love with the Army and then eventually got into uniform and you know made the pattern nice for me. She got she loved the Army. As a lot of people do with the band and this choir and things that are going on and all sorts of things going, going on in the Army. Still do. So that was how, how we, I think [pause] I know we, but we had a lot of lovely walks. Lovely from the start. There was no question of anything about it or whatever and that’s, and her parents. In fact a lovely thing with am I holding you up because I went to her house all the time then and stayed and because do you know what, do you know what I stayed and not in a bed, I had a half bed because they in their big front room had a perfect one you could get during the war you know, steel things in the house. Yeah. And so I had my little bed in this steel because of air raids.
SP: Yeah.
KB: And so that I was, I was like that. So that’s how I added in to the family. People were like that in those days and that’s how I get used to that but I loved that girl. And well, she brought up a lovely family, you know.
SP: So how many children do you have?
KB: Five hundred [laughs] Do you mean around a morning or the ones that are real. You mean the ones that I met in a war? There used to be a line of them that.
SP: Your own family. Yeah. You and your wife. I know you had a huge family, didn’t you with all your friends.
KB: Well, you think yeah but think in a way she were lovely, knew how to handle children. The family. My lads, they really did and I had no problem about that. She was so thoughtful about anything and that’s how it came into the family and then well I’ve nearly got, don’t get worried about time. Is that yes I know what I want to tell you. That oh this came out. I was posted to the south of England out of the blue and I’d got to move within three days and we both cried ourselves to death. And then do, well do something sensible so she got my lifestyle right now. So do you know how we went? It was down south somewhere. We both jumped on the train. Both. And went. And do you know it was a little village we went to and when we, when we got there we were knocking on people’s doors. Too beautiful and no trouble at all. I could have had half of those houses to say, they loved it because it was a village setting. They were beauty. I could have had as many as we wanted and we had a lovely home. Yeah. Oh, and it was on a farm. That was beautiful because they I had a little dog at that time and my Jack Russell we took around with me and he loved that farm because the farmer was ever so good because he was a bit temperamental whatever. So, the farmer says, ‘Leave him with me, Ken. As long as you’re here leave him with me.’ So, he could go around the farm and he got real nifty. A little Jack Russell terrier yeah. I saw when the farmer he’d got him under his arm. ‘Leave him with me, Ken. He’ll be alright.’ So, I met these. So many people I met really in that. I mean for that I was on the farm and so he loved the farm because he let him run anywhere.
SP: Do you know where that was? What town or village. Where were you going down to, was that —
KB: Going down south aye. I’m going south again so I won’t be worried I went to some.
SP: Do know which RAF base you were going to? Is that where you were going down? Yeah.
KB: Yeah. Yeah.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Initially yeah. Yeah. That was it yeah that I went. Yeah. But when he got Jack under his arm at first and then he let him loose and off he went chasing the sheep and whatnot. Nearly getting shot. And a lovely dog. Lovely. I can’t tell you the story because I [pause] He died in my arms eventually. My family say I’m too soft but I’m not. Poor little thing I’d got it in my arms. I like to think that there’s a lot of God in me to know what to do in those sort of things and then of course only occasionally I’d got somebody in prison waiting to appear in court and I used to visit them. I went to prison. To Lincoln I went to twice to see two men that were coming up. I didn’t need to do that but I felt I got to know them a little bit and they were in the cell. I stayed in the cell with them nattering and what not. In fact, usually because of my influence as a probation officer I got the staff to bring him a cup of tea along with mine. Oh lord, I love life you know, love. And doctors, I’m going to live forever and that would be unique wouldn’t it? Life’s what you make it. I’ve got a marvellous family. Look how well they’ve all done really. I mean aye because I forgot to tell you, you perhaps know anyway that Jim went to Grammar School. The first one in my family. Then, then I went after that to Grammar School at Retford. So, we were a bit unique at that time. And it was, it was largely fee paying you know but I got the County paid everything for me.
SP: Yeah.
KB: So that made it handy. Yeah. I did. I had to get used to, you know cap and gown and everything and all the rest of it so I was a bit scruffy but the lads never bother do they? Lads don’t bother what you are. Yeah. I made some good friends. Quite rich some of them.
SP: So, lots of friends at school. Did you keep friends with your crew after the war at all?
KB: For a while.
SP: Yeah.
KB: For a while. Yeah. And then it became monotonous in a way because you’ve nothing else to talk about. You were going your own way and whatever so by and large not a lot I agree because you could say it wasn’t working out. You were going out to do your best for a while but it fizzled out peaceably. Quite peaceably. Yeah. And I tell you the navigator was part German. It was interesting really with the war on in this country. Marvellous. Marvellous navigator. Unbelievable. And sometimes coming back he’d take shortcuts to make it less for us. We had to do that but he’d say, ‘We’ll nip around the back —’ of such and such a city. I’d say, ‘All right, Dick. Carry on. You’re in charge.’ Did, how we broke the rules. Well, I don’t suppose it were rules really.
SP: Just looking at your logbook you were talking about you did a trip to Paris as well. So, I know you did Berlin seven times didn’t you but you actually you went to Paris on one of the trips as well.
KB: Yeah. I did.
SP: So yeah.
KB: I did go to Paris.
SP: Yeah.
KB: And I always because I did actually go to the presidential place. I got some lead for somebody who was in the palace and to get some conversation or what. So that, that made a difference really.
SP: Yeah. One of your flights here you’ve got a night operations at Paris.
KB: Yeah.
SP: And then you’ve got night operation at Essen.
KB: Yeah.
SP: As well there.
KB: We got shot at, you know. Shot at.
SP: So, were you ever under fire? I know you were under flak and that but were you ever shot at by fighters?
KB: Well, yeah but, yeah. No. Very rarely ever, you ever met a German fighter. But long range once. Never even saw him. Didn’t approach us anyway. When he saw what we were he didn’t approach. So, yeah that were no problem there. Yeah.
SP: Yeah. Because Essen, was quite, quite a main area wasn’t it? I think you were there —
KB: Yeah. Yeah.
SP: A couple of times.
KB: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t bother. Just climb in my turret. Well, we went for a briefing. Whatever.
SP: What happened at the briefing? What sort of thing happened when you went to the briefings?
KB: That was the important thing. First of all it was kept secret until the very last moment and when it suddenly appeared in the mess where it was. And that’s when we, when we started to go for briefings and things. Of course, the navigator, it was a big job for the navigator because he’s, he’s going to take us and bring us back and so that was quite demanding for him really. But for everything else we went, as gunners we went to this, our own little thing or whatever because sometimes we had new guns or all that sort of thing. Yeah. And I had a, I was very lucky a ground staff who lived for looking after my aeroplane and polishing windows all the time. All sorts of thing. I think it kept him from doing anything else perhaps he didn’t like. It was the ground staff. Yeah. And then of course they had DI inspection before take-off. Oh, I know, and we had carers who looked after us all the time. You know, every bit. What they came around and so I often go and used to join them while they were doing things what they did. Whatever they did. Except that once we got a new aircraft and they got me because I was little. You could get in to the belly of it but it’s only a little hole to get in. About that. Yeah. And they conned me of course obviously. I didn’t fly like that but that was when we was on the ground. Yeah. Some great fun really especially they knew we’d be shot down that night. In fact, once we landed away out of necessity. We were running out of fuel and some aerodrome, I don’t know where it was and we just we just landed and to get some petrol of all things. And that’s how we, we just flew out again afterwards or whatever so it’s not recorded anywhere. But that’s how we got fuel to get back. We wouldn’t have got back because we were quite running out of fuel eventually you know it’s a long way. A long way to Germany. Four engines especially. We had one, once we had an, one engine wasn’t very good and occasionally it misbehaved itself. When you’ve got four though you have to alter the trim when you’ve got only so many working. Yeah.
SP: What was the impact of that when there was one engine not working properly?
KB: Well, usually they could. They, we were inside, of course. We had a mechanic. Whatever. But he couldn’t do for anything outside but he often did things from inside sort of things connected with the aeroplane. Oh yeah, because they, we had, what was it now? I forget. But he, he had a monitor. The, the petrol tanks. Of course, they were spread about the aeroplane and his job was keeping a careful eye on because he had to redirect it from one that was going empty because he had to be careful because it altered the trim of the aircraft. Whatever. But yes, they got, they were fitters. They were very good.
SP: You got some photographs of you with your ground crew. Did you, did you get to know your ground crew quite well?
KB: Oh, very well. You were living with them.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. I mean you didn’t all go. The ones on the ground. Oh yes. They, they got very very attached to us.
SP: Can you remember any of them? Any of the names of any —
KB: Not really.
SP: Yeah.
KB: I expect they were with us a long time I know that.
SP: Yeah.
KB: But I can’t remember as much as that.
SP: Do you remember where your dispersal unit was at Melbourne?
KB: Sorry?
SP: Do you remember where your dispersal unit was at Melbourne where you had to go to to your plane? On the —
KB: Yeah. Yeah. For operations we trained a lot beforehand.
SP: Yeah.
KB: From different aerodromes.
SP: Yeah.
KB: Yeah. Quite a few different aerodromes when I did my flying business.
SP: And did you have to travel quite a long way to your plane before operations or were you quite close to the briefing area?
KB: Well, we were basically, basically on top of it.
SP: Right.
KB: Yeah. Because you were living there.
SP: Yeah. Some people say their dispersal unit where the plane was kept was quite a long way away and they had to cycle to it.
KB: A long way away.
SP: Or get on a little truck.
KB: A long way away.
SP: Yeah.
KB: I had to go around, right the way around the aerodrome.
SP: Right.
KB: And everywhere to get to it but we were lucky at that we were parked very near to the runway.
[recording paused]
SP: So, Ken I just want to thank you on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre for your time today and your stories. So, 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
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Interview with Ken Beard
Creator
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Susanne Pescott
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-08-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABeardKC170807, PBeardKC1701
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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01:20:10 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Ken Beard served as a rear gunner during the Second World War. He has been a member of The Salvation Army all his life and his faith played a huge role in helping him through the horrors of war. Awarded a scholarship at Retford Grammar School, he left it with the benefit of a first class education. He had several jobs before enrolling in the Royal Air Force. He was visiting Sheffield and upon seeing the recruitment office, walked in and enlisted. It took him several days to pluck up the courage to inform his mother what he had done. After enrolling, he was soon selected for a commission. Air gunnery training at RAF Bridlington followed, before being posted to RAF Melbourne where he served the majority of his Air Force career as a rear gunner on Halifax aircraft. He flew 31 operations, including seven to Berlin. He describes approaching Berlin at 30,000ft and being lit up by searchlights. He recalls only once being hit with anti-aircraft fire, when they received slight damage. At no time was his aircraft attacked directly by Luftwaffe fighters. On D-Day, Ken and his crew set off on an operation at 02:30 and were surprised to see the English Channel covered in a vast armada of vessels of all sizes. Nothing had been mentioned to them at the briefing before take-off. On his return to civilian life, Ken became a probation officer in the Worksop area. In November 2015, Ken attended a ceremony at Retford Town Hall where he was one of three recipients of Legion D’ Honneur.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Sheffield
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1944-06
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
10 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
faith
Halifax
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Bridlington
RAF Melbourne
recruitment
searchlight
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/944/11387/PMakensL1701.2.jpg
05b7ba41508ba4dde289a303dae307f7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/944/11387/AMakensL170117.1.mp3
f837a144815b5928751ae6cb9c78ae50
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Makens, Louis
L Makens
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Sergeant Louis Makens (1921 - 2018, 1442236 Royal Air Force). He flew six operations as an air gunner with 196 Squadron before being transferred to 76 Squadron. He joined a new crew as a mid under gunner and their Halifax was shot down 18/19 March 1944 on his first operation with them. He became a prisoner of war and took part in the long march.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Makens, L
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: Right. So this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Louis Maken.
LM: No. No. No.
Other: Louis.
DK: Louis. Sorry. Sorry. Louis Makens.
LM: My grandson. He don’t like it.
DK: Misinformed. I was misinformed [laughs] 17th of January 2017. If I put that there.
LM: Yeah.
DK: If I keep looking down I’m not being rude I’m just making sure it’s still working. I’ve only been caught out by the technology once. It was a bit embarrassing.
LM: It wouldn’t take a lot to catch me out.
Other: No. It wouldn’t.
DK: Right. Ok. What I’m going to ask you first of all was going back now what were you doing immediately before the war?
LM: I worked on a farm.
DK: Ok.
LM: Market gardening and ordinary agriculture on a farm.
DK: Ok. So and then war started. What made you then want to join the RAF?
LM: We had, we were called up weren’t we? We had to register and I went for an interview and they gave me the choice of what you’d like to do and not being very smart I volunteered for air crew.
DK: Right.
LM: And went back to work and I suppose it must have been about a few months. Something like. I was about nineteen I got my call up papers saying to report to Uxbridge.
DK: Right.
LM: That was where they had done all the interviewing.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And they asked you silly, well not silly little questions I suppose but half multiplied by half. That was one of the questions on, at the interview. And another one was if the Suez Canal got blocked how would the transport, how would they get cargo around to England?
DK: Oh right.
LM: And which was a long way around.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: The Cape of Good Hope, wasn’t it? And from then on I just had my papers come in. Called up. Report to Uxbridge and then from Uxbridge I went to a place called Padgate. We were kitted out at Padgate and I actually volunteered wireless operator air gunner.
DK: Right.
LM: And I’d done Blackpool in 1942 and there were some old hangars there where we used to do Morse Code [coughs] Morse Code in and I had a spell there and they asked for straight air gunners which was a lot quicker course.
DK: Right.
LM: Why? I don’t know why I volunteered for that. I don’t know to this day. Anyway, I volunteered and I was taken off the course there and from then on I had a life of leisure.
DK: Right.
LM: I went to a place called Sutton Bridge. That was a fighter OT Unit.
DK: Yeah.
LM: General duties. From Sutton Bridge the whole squadron moved up to Dundee and under the Sidlaw Hills. And there was a Russian aircraft landed at the airfield at Dundee.
DK: Oh right.
LM: And the camouflage was really marvellous.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And that was where I was on general duties up there as well. What we were doing going around with little bits and pieces. Anything. Anything there was to do which you’d gather what general duties mean.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Everything. And then I was called to, I got my call up from —
DK: Just stepping back a bit you never found out what the Russian aircraft was doing there then.
LM: Yes. Molotov.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
LM: Molotov came over.
DK: Oh.
LM: I’m sorry about that I should have —
DK: Did you actually see him?
LM: Yeah. No I never. No. No.
DK: No. Oh right.
LM: Only saw the plane at a distance.
DK: Oh right.
LM: Oh yeah.
DK: Wow.
LM: And it was quite funny really because I wouldn’t have believed it. There was a Scottish lad worked with me and he said to me, ‘Louis,’ he said, ‘How would you like to my parents and just meet my parents and just have a cup of tea with them.’ They lived in Dundee.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I had to get him to interpret what they said. I [pause] Dundee was really broad and I felt a really Charlie because you had to say, ‘Sorry. What did you say?’ and I had, I had to say things like that. But from there on I got called back to a place called Sealand.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: And that’s where I met up with two lads who had already been the same thing as me further afield but they’d been on a wireless so they had decided to remuster as well. Quicker course. We’ll get in to action. Silly weren’t we?’ Anyway, Stan Gardiner was one of them and Harold Lambourn and how, I think Stan Gardener was a welterweight boxer. I didn’t realise that at the time.
DK: Oh right. Yeah.
LM: But I often wonder. We parted because they remustered as pilots.
DK: Right.
LM: And I remustered to straight air gunner. Well, while we were at Sealand we used to go with a Polish squadron and fly with a Polish squadron in Lysanders. Dive bombing for the ack ack training. And we used to fly up the Dee and almost looked up at the houses because you approached and then they’d quick climb and then dive on their guns.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But then I was posted to, from there I left them and I was posted to [home] house in London. That’s where we done the Lord’s Cricket Ground. Was it Lords or the Oval? One of those. And that’s where we’d done gas training and things like that and from there I was posted on to Bridlington and that’s where I done my gunnery, ITW for the second time.
DK: Right.
LM: And from there I was posted on to Stormy Downs.
DK: What did, what did the training involve then at ITW?
LM: At the ITW?
DK: Yeah.
LM: It was back to square one. You know what I mean by square one? Square bashing.
DK: Oh right.
LM: But we did go in to, Bridlington had on the front there was a shooting range. A twelve bore shooting range. Clay pigeons.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I won the competition and won twelve shillings and sixpence. And there was —
DK: You obviously went into the right duties then as an air gunner.
LM: I came away the best shot of the lot. I suppose I must have been. But no. But cutting it short there at Bridlington and then Stormy Down. From Stormy Down we went to Stradishall.
DK: Yeah.
LM: First we were on Wellingtons and then Stradishall was conversion on to Stirlings.
DK: Right.
LM: Now, I think —
DK: Just stepping back can you remember what it was you were flying at Stradishall? Just —
LM: Stirlings at Stradishall. I’m trying to think where I’d done my OTU. I’m not so sure where the Wellington, when I’d done the OTU on. I went to so many places. I’m not sure if I could swear blind.
DK: No.
LM: Where the Wellingtons were stationed. Where we, they had so many of them.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But I finished up at Stradishall and that’s where we were crewed up and already crewed up and I happened to be the seventh member of the crew.
DK: Right.
LM: Which I was a top gunner. A mid-upper.
DK: How did the crewing up work?
LM: Just, I was just introduced to them.
DK: Right.
LM: They were already crewed up.
DK: Right.
LM: But as they —
DK: They needed a gunner.
LM: As a yeah. They had to have a top gunner.
DK: Yeah.
LM: For the start of the four engines. Then finished Stradishall. And that’s where I’d done the odd circuits and bumps and that sort of thing. And one particular night I was laying in bed and I heard this machine gun fire and it was a Focke Wulf had come back that night. I got up the next morning. A Focke Wulf had come back and shot one of our planes down doing circuits and bumps and the only one hurt or I think I’m sure the news was that he got killed and he was Canadian. And he was a screened pilot. What we called a screened pilot.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Was one who, you know —
DK: Already done a tour.
LM: Already done his tour and I think he was teaching us to land.
DK: And he was killed in a, back in the UK while training others.
LM: Yeah. A fighter come back with the bombers to wherever they were going to or from and must have picked up Stradishall and that was how. So the next night we had to go. I was on the next night on circuits and bumps and of course the warning was if there’s a bandit in the area all the ‘drome lights would go out.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And of course, what happened? All the lights went out didn’t they? And we were still stooging around, stooging around, stooging around, waiting for well we didn’t know what was going to happen. Everybody was on edge and all of a sudden the lights come on. It was a dummy run. So we were a bit relieved about that but then after my OTU there and the, and the conversion at Stradishall I was posted to 196 Squadron Witchford.
DK: Right. Ok.
LM: As the mid, mid-upper gunner.
DK: Still on Stirlings.
LM: Still on Stirlings.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Yeah.
DK: So what were your thoughts about the Stirling then when you first saw it and flew in it?
LM: Well, as we went to Stradishall they stood behind almost on the edge of the road where we went.
DK: Right.
LM: And they were massive and if you can imagine what a Wellington was like. Quite low down.
DK: Yeah.
LM: You could almost touch the nose. These Stirlings. They’re twenty two foot to the nose in the air. I have to be careful what I say if this is going down on there. But —
DK: We can edit the bits out later.
LM: Well, yeah. You’ll better cut this piece out because I think what happened our pilot who he’d been out in Rhodesia, flying out in Rhodesia and I think when he saw them he got a fright.
DK: Really?
LM: We had [laughs] we had some near misses. Or near tragedies. When you come in to land you’ve got your three lights. Red too low.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Green. Lovely. Amber too high. We would come in on no lights at all.
DK: Right.
LM: Nose down. And I just used to sit there like that. ‘Christ, what’s he doing?’ And I could have landed the plane quite easily because when you sit in that top turret a beautiful view and I used to sit on the beam like that and check, check, check and I could get that to a tee. I’m not boasting about how. I couldn’t fly a plane anyway. But the bomb aimer, the wireless operator he had his parachute like that every time we landed and we came in —
DK: Not giving the pilot confidence is it? Or having confidence in your pilot if he’s doing that.
LM: No. None whatsoever.
DK: No.
LM: We’d been to Skagerrak mine laying and we came in this night and I got caught sharp a bit. Get down a bit. Down a bit. A bit high. Came in. Bang. We hit the ground, smashed the undercarriage up.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Soared up unto the air and of course came down again and the undercarriage had gone because we went down on to one wing and slid, as luck would have it we went off the runway onto the grass. We never did land on the runway or take off on it. There was either run off at the end or whatever. Oh, you have got to watch what you put on there haven’t you? [laughs] He might be alive. I don’t know what happened. Later on I was, we didn’t, we went on, went from Witchford to Leicester East. Irby.
DK: Right. Just going back to Witchford can you remember how many operations you did from there?
LM: Altogether there was six.
DK: Right.
LM: That was the seventh one. Number seven on the night we got shot down.
DK: Right.
LM: And that was the first time on the first raid we’d done with, first I’d done with Halifaxes.
DK: Right. So when did you convert to the Halifax then?
LM: Well, I didn’t convert. I was just, we were made surplus.
DK: Right.
ILM: We went towing gliders and that sort of thing and eventually that was what they called we were transferred to what they called the AEAF. That’s the Allied Expeditionary Air Force so therefore they decided they didn’t want a top turret. Extra drag. Which you would get wouldn’t you?
DK: Yeah.
LM: With the top turret on so we were made redundant in a way.
DK: Right.
LM: And there were six of us were taken off 196 Squadron and we were posted to Marston Moor and from Marston Moor we were then sent up to Holme on Spalding Moor. They had then fitted a gun emplacement, a beam if you’d like to call it that underneath the plane.
DK: And that’s on the Halifaxes.
LM: That was on the Halifaxes.
DK: It was like a belly gun in effect.
LM: A mid-under they called it.
DK: Yeah. Right.
LM: It wasn’t a turret as such it was just a, it was a piece of metal stuck on the bottom as near as near as I can explain it.
DK: Right.
LM: You had a .5 between your legs.
DK: Was that something the squadron itself had done or was it an official —
LM: It was what they were trying to get.
DK: Yeah.
LM: We were getting so many attacks from below.
DK: Right.
LM: Because as you know you can’t see below your own height can you?
DK: Yeah.
LM: It’s very difficult to see. You can see upwards but you can’t see below your own horizon.
DK: And were you aware at the time that a lot of the attacks by the Germans were from underneath?
LM: It was known.
DK: It was known.
LM: It was well known.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Oh yes. Yeah. That was well known. That was the idea of fetching this gun underneath.
DK: Right.
LM: And the Germans knew very well that we were [pause] well no protection underneath at all coming up from —
DK: So, you’re now with 76 Squadron at this point.
LM: That was 76 Squadron.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Yeah.
DK: So, you’re now in the, in the belly.
LM: That’s it.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Well, I had never met my crew that I flew on that night with.
DK: Right.
LM: We went to briefing. We went, we’d done a little bit of training on it. There weren’t all that much more training to do. It was only sort of getting used to a .5 and that sort of thing and a fair old go on that.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And the first time I actually met my crew was when I was a prisoner of war.
DK: Oh right.
LM: Well, after I’d been shot down I should say.
DK: Right. So you only did the one operation [unclear]
LM: That was the very first one.
DK: And you were shot down.
LM: We were shot down the very first night. There was six of us went and I think there were three of us allocated to go that night.
DK: Right.
LM: March the 18th 1944. I should have been at a wedding.
DK: Can you recall where the operation was to?
LM: Yes. Oh yeah. Frankfurt.
DK: Frankfurt. Ok.
LM: Yeah. Frankfurt. And we were about twenty, twenty minutes from the target.
DK: Right.
LM: And everything was quiet. Not a very good thing in a way and we hadn’t crossed any borders as such for anti-aircraft or anything like that and every now and again the pilot would just call up and say, ‘Are you alright?’ And so forth, ‘Gunner.’ So forth. And the next thing I knew there was a blaze of bullets, well incendiaries, you couldn’t see the bullets. Incendiaries. And I sat in the turret like that you see facing the rear and the bullets came through, went between my legs. Almost. I was stood. They went between my legs. Well, there was the pilot looking out the front. There was the navigator [pause] could have been I suppose. The bomb aimer should have been in the, in the astrodome looking out. Top gunner in the top turret. The only two of us who saw the bullets were myself and the rear gunner.
DK: And this was from a German aircraft presumably.
HLM: That was [laughs] that’s hard to say.
DK: Oh right.
LM: I don’t know. We never saw the plane. It was head on.
DK: Right [unclear]
LM: So was it one of ours?
DK: Ah.
LM: Well, I’ll never know.
DK: No.
LM: I don’t think so.
DK: No.
LM: But they were fairly heavy. It weren’t small machine gun fire so it could well have been a night fighter. And when you think that no one up front saw the tracers at all.
DK: Were they an experienced crew do you know? Or —
LM: Were they —?
DK: Were they an experienced crew that you —
LM: They’d done, they’d done seven nights. They’d already done seven operations.
DK: Right. Ok [unclear]
LM: Yeah. And four that night.
DK: Right.
LM: Yeah. Yeah. They weren’t over experienced. Like I was I suppose. But, but they hadn’t, they, I sometimes think how ever I got away with being missed in that dustbin when you think of the midair of that aircraft wing as mid —
DK: Yeah.
LM: Fuselage.
DK: It’s, you’re in there then.
LM: That’s right. That little bit underneath.
DK: Yeah. Do you know what other damage was done to the aircraft then? Or —
LM: Well, we caught on fire.
DK: Right.
LM: Yeah. They hit the inboard. The inboard starboard engine and I thought well that’s all right. With the old extinguishers put the flames out. Anyway, we went on a little while and there was quite a, it was getting quite light then because we were on fire and the pilot, David Josephs was my pilot. Never knew him at the time.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But I found out later on and he said, ‘Prepare to bale out.’ Which is the first thing, isn’t it? So I opened my hatch up and just stood there. Kept on the intercom. Kept on oxygen and the top gunner he’d already got out of his turret and he came down and opened the back hatch.
DK: Right.
LM: And he must have thought because it was quite light because of the flames and so forth and he thought, I think he thought I’d been hit because I was still in the turret and standing up. He came back and he went to get a hold of me like that and I went, ‘Ok. I’m alright. I’m alright. I’m ok.’ Well, the pilot hadn’t told us to bale out then. But he did eventually say, ‘Right. Well, better get out. Bale out.’ So that was myself and the top gunner. We went to the back hatch and when you go out you have to roll out otherwise you’re likely to hit the tailplane or the fin.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Which is easily done. So it was quite comical in a way. It must have been a comedy act. We stood near the hatch or laid near the hatch arguing who was going out first. I’d, I’d seen it happen. People who baled out and they’d extinguished the flames, the [unclear] switch or something like that.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And put the flames out and they’d flown back.
DK: Right.
LM: I thought I’m not going to be, I’m not going to be here on my own so we, Spider went out first and I toddled out behind him. But I went out with my arms folded like that because when I put my parachute on you don’t wear it all, you sort of have it beside you.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: So I quick put on my hooks.
DK: So you [unclear] then
LM: Clipped them on the hooks.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: And I think what happened you’re supposed to leave, lose speed count up to seven because you’re travelling at a hundred and something, a hundred and eighty mile an hour. The first thing I knew, bang. The parachute had, whether the slipstream caught my hands and my parachute, must have pulled the parachute, the rip cord.
DK: Yeah.
LM: The next thing I knew that was bang. Oh, the pain, the jerk on your neck. People don’t realise it’s a —
DK: As the parachute opened.
LM: Oh yeah.
DK: Yeah.
LM: It almost feels like you break, you know.
DK: So is it is it a chest ‘chute you’ve got then?
LM: Yeah. Chest.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Chest it was. No seated ones then. We always carried them and just stuck them in the little hole at the side of the, of your turret.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And anyway, I don’t know how long it was coming down but when I looked down I thought, oh shite. Water. I thought I can’t be over water. That’s one thing I always dreaded. Coming down in the, in the sea. And what it was the plane was on fire and that had gone down and there was snow on the ground and little hillocks that looked like waves.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: And [unclear] It just looked like a patchwork of little waves. Anyway, the lower I got they disappeared. Anyway, I hit, the next thing I knew I was laying on my back groaning. I can remember now as if it was yesterday I laid there and thought oh, oh. I sort of shook myself up and of course up I got and I tried to pull the parachute in and got caught on a tree.
DK: Right.
LM: Right on the edge of a wood. As I went to pull the parachute in I thought, oh Christ there’s someone there. One of my old crew. So I sort of called out. No answer. It was just somebody falling in.
DK: Yeah.
LM: It wasn’t a crew at all. It was a piece of grass that was just doing that with the back light, the back sight of the flaming plane where it had gone down on the horizon.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Was casting this little piece of grass going along. I could imagine someone pulling a parachute in.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Anyway, I couldn’t get the parachute off the tree. I tried to get it down and I had to leave. What I’d done I just curled up under a hedge and I don’t know where the hell [pause] escape kit. Lost it. I had it, you had it park it on the side of your leg and it must have come out as I was upside down or —
DK: What would have been in the escape kit you’d got [unclear] ?
LM: Oh, you’d got a map.
DK: Right.
LM: Chocolate. One or two. Quite little bits of ration material.
DK: Right.
LM: A compass, etcetera but I lost them and so I curled up under a hedge and I had to sleep until it was daybreak. And I got up the next morning and when I woke up and I thought now sun is coming up in the east. If I go towards the sun I might make my way to France. But I wasn’t anywhere near France, was I? [laughs] Not really. I wouldn’t have met, I don’t think I would have, I don’t know. But anyway, I knew I wanted to go east because of the sun coming up and Germany here, France going in that direction sort of business and I thought if I make my way that way I might be able to come up against somebody but I went and I travelled for a day and never saw anybody. The next day I was walking what do you do? I covered my, took my boots and covered them up. I was lucky in a way digressing a little bit normally you know the old flying boot we used to have?
DK: Yeah.
LM: The old fleecy lined things.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Huge things. Well, I hadn’t. My equipment hadn’t arrived at 76 Squadron so I borrowed the squadron leader’s equipment. His flying boots. And we had, I had an electrically heated suit.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Because it was cold. We are talking about twenty two frost and I had an electrically heated suit. That’s your socks and just a jacket and I had his size elevens flying boots. Normally your flying boots fly off which they will do quite easily. That just shows the force of the parachute opening doesn’t it?
DK: Yeah.
LM: And how I kept them on I can only imagine I had electrically heated socks inside them. That’s how I think, the only way I can think I kept those shoes or flying boots three times the size of mine.
DK: So they were wedged in there with the sock.
LM: They must have been fairly —
DK: Yeah.
LM: No end of people. That’s the, my pilot lost his.
DK: Yeah.
LM: He was walking about with a, when I saw him last, the first time I met him he had got pieces of rag wrapped around his feet and that was one of the problems. Getting frostbite.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I think I got a little bit of frostbite on that ear and it’s still there. But lucky I didn’t get any more and no one else did. Anyway, I eventually I got, I did walk into two, I’d compare them with our Home Guard.
DK: Right.
LM: Two old boys walking over a bridge and where the village was, God knows, I have no idea and these two old lads walked towards me and all of a sudden they walked towards, crossed the road towards me like that and he pulled out a big revolver and I, that’s it. So I put my hands up. ‘Flieger. Flieger.’ And they took me back to their headquarters all dolled out with Hitlerites and all that sort of thing on the wall and they weren’t very, they didn’t seem too bad. They were the oldest of people and they took me to their little headquarters and then they had to get the Army to come and pick me up and they took me to another, somewhere else. Got above, it was only a walk from somewhere else to there. Well then, they sent in ex-RAF. The Luftwaffe.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Two of them came and picked me up and I was a little bit lucky in a way because we were walking along. They didn’t bother too much about whether you’d got hit or not. The Germans didn’t care. If somebody hit you with a hammer even. We was walking along and it was a Hitler Youth I think. Something in that region. He came up, he said, a lot of them spoke good English. He said, ‘Did you raid Cologne? Were you on a raid on Cologne?’ I said, ‘No. No. No. No.’ I said, ‘This was my first raid. First time.’ Well, it was a lie because I’d already got the 1939 43 Star on my tunic.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And he didn’t think nothing. He couldn’t have been, he couldn’t have fathomed that one out because well he probably didn’t know what they, what it was anyway.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And he just went away because Cologne was awful one wasn’t it? That was an awful thing.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And eventually they took me to their barracks and they were good. They gave me, the Germans, they gave me a lovely piece of black bread and jam. I’d had one taste of it and I threw it across the bloody cell. I thought, oh Christ and I couldn’t eat it. I just could not eat it. Which I learned different later on. Well, I went and laid on this old bunk of a bed sort of thing and the next thing I knew there was a boot in my back and they, then they brought the pilot. They’d got the pilot.
DK: Right.
LM: And one, I think that was the rear gunner. They’d picked them up as well. And that’s the first time I had met my pilot.
DK: Bizarre.
LM: And we were on our own until we got on with the crew itself.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But for some reason David Josephs, name spelled Joseph, J O S E P and do you remember Keith Josephs?
DK: The politician?
LM: Yes.
DK: Oh yes. Yes.
LM: He was the dead spit.
DK: Oh Right. Oh.
LM: Exact. Exact. Well he palled, why I don’t know.
DK: Yeah.
LM: He palled up with me.
DK: Right.
LM: Not his crew.
DK: Did you think he was related then or —
LM: Well, I would have swore blind he was. He never said. We never spoke about private life. We never told each other what we’d done, or what we did or what we hadn’t done or anything like that. It was just you met them and that was it.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Like when we left we never left any, I often wish I had have done. Kept in touch perhaps with two of the lads I escaped with. I would have loved to have known what happened to them.
DK: No.
LM: But you don’t. You’re so keen to just carry on. Carry on. Carry on regardless of what goes on around you really. It’s —
DK: So were you then sent to a proper prisoner of war camp at that point?
LM: I was taken back. Now this is the bit that really peeved me at one time because I often think of it. They took me back to Frankfurt.
DK: Right.
LM: And I saw Frankfurt’s Railway Station what they were doing to Germany that we were doing or we were getting over in London and I thought the very same thing. There was people on the station with a, one particular person there was a woman with a little child and they’d got a basket, a linen basket like that between them.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And I suppose they were trying to get out. Mind you that was two days after they’d been bombed quite a bit then day and night you see. We were full incendiary. That was all we carried that night was incendiaries.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But that, then I’d done solitary confinement. They put you in solitary there and there was a raid on that night and that [pause] we had all sort of a, there was solitary confinement and there was a blind you could almost it was like a slab of blind and the light, you could even see the lights flashing through this sort of one of these old plated blinds sort of things.
DK: But flashes of the explosions.
LM: Yeah. Of the, of the raid.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Yeah. And I was there three days and they asked you all sorts of questions and a corporal he must, think he was a corporal he looked like it to me. Got a couple of stripes of some sort and he came down and he interviewed so forth to this. He’d got a big list where I’d come from. You only say what you know. Or you’re supposed to say name, rank and [pause] name, rank and whatever.
DK: I was going to ask that. If I could just take you back a bit did you have training as to what to do if you were caught as a —
LM: None whatsoever. We were —
DK: Ok [laughs]
LM: We were just told the general thing. Name, rank and number.
LM: It was a general thing. Name, rank and that’s all.
DK: So you had no other training if you ever were captured.
LM: No. No. that’s all we, never even had trained parachute jumping. Never had. Never had a [pause] The art is the falling over and rolling over you see.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Well, I hit the ground straight legged.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And I think that’s why I knocked myself out. I think that’s the reason. I must have hit the ground straight legged.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Instead of doubling up and falling over.
DK: Yeah. And rolling. Yeah.
LM: Which is the correct way.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I knew the way but you can’t tell how far off the ground you are you see.
DK: At night. Yeah.
LM: And the last fifteen feet or the last little bit was like jumping off the wreck and like jumping off a fifteen foot wall when you hit the ground quite hard.
DK: Yeah.
LM: So that was part and parcel. They’d never done, I don’t know if it was the pilot’s fault or not. I don’t know ‘til this day if he should have made his crew take part in —
DK: Training. Yeah.
LM: Escaping or whatever or what to say what not to say. No one else did. We never had any training of that at all.
DK: And, and dinghy practice. Did you ever have any of that?
LM: No. we were, I did learn to swim.
DK: Right.
LM: At Blackpool and if we could swim a width.
DK: Right.
LM: That’s all you had to do.
DK: So you had no training on what to do if you crashed on water, baling out or — [unclear]
LM: No, we had none.
DK: No.
LM: I think some did.
DK: Yeah.
LM: We had no training whatsoever.
DK: Wow.
LM: Never had. They just, all they told us was when you go out to roll over the hatch.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Rather than the other way.
DK: Avoiding the —
LM: I had seen a lad. He had knocked his teeth out. He’d hit the tailplane. But apart from that we didn’t. It was —
DK: Yeah.
LM: The discipline I suppose we were treated very leniently.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Because when I I thought I was going to get out of a church parade so when I joined up they say religion. I said none. I thought I’ll get out of church parade doing this and they put atheist on my dog tags.
DK: Oh right.
LM: So they were on until the day I lost them.
DK: Oh right. Can I just take you back then to Frankfurt? You were interrogated there after three days.
LM: Yes.
DK: Solitary confinement, so you’ve only given name, rank and serial number and that. What happened after? Next after that?
LM: They don’t [pause] they will keep you there and keep asking you questions and they showed me a list. I thought good God. They could have shown, they could have told me much more than I knew. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. If I’d have wanted I couldn’t have told them anything.
DK: So their intelligence then on the aircraft, the squadron —
LM: They knew every airfield. They knew every airfield and what there was. They got this map of every, almost every airfield in this country.
DK: Wow. Did they know who was based there on these airfields?
LM: They knew the squadrons as well. They’d got the squadrons down. My old squadron 196.
DK: Yeah.
LM: That was down there. I may have shown that because I thought 196 I just and the realised then that —
DK: Yeah.
LM: You don’t think that they’re using you know on the spur of the moment. I thought 196 and Witchford.
DK: So they had all that intelligence. Did they have names at all as to who the commanding officers were?
LM: No idea.
DK: No. No.
LM: No. I don’t. What on the German side you mean?
DK: On the other side. Yeah.
LM: No. I wouldn’t. No. No. There was the treatment we got in the prison camp we can’t grumble.
DK: Right.
LM: I mean we went over there.
DK: Can you remember which prison camp it was?
LM: Yeah. After leaving, after leaving Frankfurt.
DK: Yeah.
LM: On the old cattle trucks and we were going along and I thought oh whatever is that smell? Christ. And there was a lot of us in this cattle truck. I didn’t realise at the time it was an American and he had been, he must have been loose a little bit for a while before he got caught because he’d got frost bite and his foot had got gangrene and I’d never smelled anything like it. He sat with his shoe off and he was like that and I realised then what he’d got. And his foot was absolutely. I don’t know what it was like inside the sock but he’d obviously got frost bite and it had turned to gangrene.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And we called at a place called Sagan. That’s Stalag Luft 3.
DK: So it’s Stalag Luft 3.
LM: That’s the officers.
DK: Yeah.
LM: That’s the officer’s camp.
DK: Right.
LM: Stopped at the officers off or whatever there was to get off there and from there on we travelled through Poland by train and I can’t tell to this day how long so I weren’t one of those who made notes of where we were, what we’d done, it was just one of those things. You accepted what had happened and eventually arrived at a place called [pause] up in Lithuania [pause] Sally, what was the name of it?
Other: I weren’t there grandad.
LM: Anyrate, it was not, not all that far away from, now when you get to my age that happens you know. You lose your train of thought a little bit don’t you?
DK: I do now [laughs]
Other: Yes. So do I [laughs]
LM: But no, I —
DK: So it was a camp in Lithuania.
LM: Stalag Luft, no, Stalag Luft 6.
DK: Stalag Luft 6. Right.
LM: Up in Lithuania.
DK: Right.
LM: That’s right.
DK: Ok. Ok.
LM: Anyway, with the name Twy, I think it was [Twycross] or something like that. We were the furthest north of any camp.
DK: I was going to say that’s someway east isn’t it you were?
LM: Yeah. We were right up near the Russians.
DK: Russians. Yeah.
LM: Because it was a bit [pause] Dixey Dean. A great footballer wasn’t he?
DK: Yeah.
LM: He was our camp leader.
DK: Oh right.
LM: Yeah. Dixie Dean.
DK: Did you get to know him well?
LM: No. No.
DK: No.
LM: Oh no. Didn’t. Well, I knew him.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But he didn’t converse with very [pause] He could speak fluent German.
DK: Right.
LM: Been a prisoner of war for a long while and he used to go to Sagan the officer’s camp and converse with the Germans there on the conditions of camp and all that.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Because he knew the Geneva Convention backwards.
DK: Oh right.
LM: And when we could, 19th June 1944 when, the Second Front —
DK: Yeah.
LM: Now, they knew that in the camp but no one said.
DK: So, it was a decoy then.
LM: They wouldn’t let us know.
DK: No. Right.
LM: They knew that Dean and his escape, whatever they were radio, they’d got a radio because they used to come around and give us the news each night. Someone would come around and just and sometimes a German would do that.
DK: Yeah.
LM: The old goon would.
DK: So how big was the camp there? How many prisoners were there roughly.
LM: I don’t know but I’d hazard a guess. In our camp compound alone there would be one, two, three, four, five, six, sixteen, six, eight. Oh, three or four hundred if not more.
DK: Right.
LM: Yes. They were all officers. All NCOs.
DK: NCOs. Yeah.
LM: And then —
DK: And what were you in? Were you in sort of cabins or Nissen huts or —
LM: One long, one long hut.
DK: One long hut.
LM: There were bunks.
DK: Right.
LM: And if the weather was nice and we were going on parade and roll call then some of the lads would play up and they would nip up or make a count wrong. We reckoned they could only, they could only count in fives the Germans. So we said they could only count in their fives and the lads would play up a bit. But if it was raining.
DK: Yeah.
LM: We used to put a head out the end of the pit and they would come along and count you and we behaved ourselves then.
DK: Right.
LM: But there was a case where we came, we could, later on it must have been getting towards August we could hear the Russians from where we were.
DK: Right.
LM: The tales we heard about what happened to the Russian guards and the German guards when they got taken by the opposite side.
DK: Yeah.
LM: They didn’t take prisoners.
DK: No.
LM: They didn’t take either side. They didn’t touch the prisoners but the guards they shot them. So there was no love lost between them.
DK: No. So —
LM: Well eventually, yeah —
DK: As I say could you briefly describe what the camp looked like? Presumably you’d got barbed wire as a —
LM: Yeah.
DK: Watch towers and —
LM: Yeah. You had the old, I’ve got a couple of paintings upstairs that a fella had done in the prison camp.
DK: Right. Right. So it’s a compound thing.
LM: It was a big, what it amounted to was, was a big area.
DK: Right.
LM: And your huts one, two, three, four. Long huts. About must have been more than twenty yards I suppose all tiered both sides. You had an odd table in the middle and around the outside of that was your walking area.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Always had that. Then you had a warning wire. They called it a warning wire. That was just a little board that ran along. You mustn’t put your foot over that otherwise they would shoot you.
DK: Yeah.
LM: If you put your foot over the warning wire. Then you had your barbed wire.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And then the goons were up in their —
LM: In towers.
LM: Towers.
DK: And you were just watched the whole time.
LM: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: So, what, what did you do to pass the time because days must have —
LM: Walk around the, we weren’t allowed to go out. Now, early on they were allowed to go out as working parties but there were so many RAF tried to escape.
DK: Right.
LM: Escape. And they stopped it. We weren’t allowed outside the camp. Once you were in there you didn’t come out until they wanted to move you which they did us. From the Russians you see.
DK: Right.
LM: And no, we weren’t allowed outside the camp.
DK: And —
LM: It was —
DK: And with the restraints there would have been were you treated well then? Or treated [unclear]
LM: In the camp there was no hard [pause] no. But I don’t think I would say I was treated badly. We went over there to kill them but to me we were treated fairly. Geneva Convention. They abided by that.
DK: And what was the food you got then?
LM: Well, that, now that’s sauerkraut.
DK: Right.
LM: And there was an American parcel and an English parcel. Now, the English parcels, well obviously England was struggling to even feed their own people, weren’t they? So they weren’t the serviceability of the package wasn’t very good because we would get in the British parcel or English parcel we would get condensed milk.
DK: Right.
LM: Well, that weren’t, that wouldn’t keep. But the American parcels were in a nice cardboard box and we’d get oh quite a little bit of chocolate etcetera etcetera and you know different things in there.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And used to tide us over. You’d only get a parcel between perhaps four or five or six or seven of you.
DK: And are these parcels that have gone through the Red Cross then?
LM: Yeah.
DK: So they were done, made up in Britain or America by the International Red Cross.
LM: They were already sent. Yeah.
DK: Somehow —
LM: They were the Red Cross. Yeah.
DK: Right.
LM: But they used to puncture them before they came. They couldn’t empty them but they could puncture the tins before they came in.
DK: Right.
LM: And this went on until when we, we knew the Russians weren’t far away. We could hear gunfire in the distance and we were told this and that, this and that. And then eventually they said we would have, they were going to move us out of the camp to another camp. So we deserved what we got in a way because there used to be what they called in the American parcel it was called klim. It was a lovely powdered milk. It was milk spelled backwards.
DK: Oh right. Yes.
LM: See. That was called klim. Milk spelled backwards.
DK: Yeah.
LM: We had, when you said did they treat us alright we weren’t badly treated as such at all but the food weren’t, it was a bit sparce. I mean we got a loaf of bread and that was black bread between seven.
DK: Right.
LM: And no argument as one would cut it up in seven pieces and you just had a slither of a loaf. No argument at all about how big yours was and how small it was or whatever.
DK: I suppose you had to get on with your fellow prisoners then.
LM: Oh yes. Yes. Because you could soon lose your old temper. I’ve seen that happen but not not very often. Not very often because when well I suppose in a way we were very, everybody was an individual in their way because we weren’t like the Army as such. We didn’t mix like the Army did because you were a crew on a crew.
DK: Yeah.
LM: You just kept your crew. You had somebody look after you when you went in for your meals and so forth in the sergeant’s mess and that sort of thing. But then we had, they told us we were going to evacuate to a port. We had to walk to a port called Memel. That was in the Baltic.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Well, we could hear the Russians firing and so forth and whatever was happening and we decided we couldn’t take all this stuff with us because we’d got quite, as we came out of the camp they were crafty in a way because before we came out of the camp we thought well we’ll not, we won’t leave anything. What people can eat or do so we had Oleo margarine and they were tins about that big. Quite a lot we had of that. And we stood them up and we were throwing these tins at each other. Had the bloody tins stood up. And there was also this klim milk. Now that was really you mixed that up and it would make, you could make a real nice cream of it.
DK: Right.
LM: So we thought we’re not leaving that. So what we’d done I don’t know whether you’d call it carbolic soap. What they used to call Sunlight? You know the old, what they used to wash.
DK: Yeah.
LM: The old ladies used to wash with. We grated that up. We put that in with the milk and we left it there and I reckon the Germans must have, they must have tried that and instead of them getting a nice cream there was this powdered milk. This powdered milk all mixed in with the little grated —
DK: Just soap.
LM: We even powdered up.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Just like the milk so they really couldn’t say look at it and think I ain’t very keen on this. So I, we did pay for it later on. And anyway they marched us to this port called, it was Memel and had to go down in a coal ship. We had to go down this hatch and you left all your, whatever equipment you’d got you had to leave that on the deck.
DK: Yeah.
LM: So we said, ‘We’re not going down there. Not going down a bloody hole in a ship and go through the Baltic.’ They said, ‘If you don’t go down we’ll put the hoses on you.’ And they threatened to hose us with the, they’d got these hoses on deck and so forth so we did actually go down in to the hold of the ship. But there weren’t room to sit. Not to lay down especially. You could just squat.
DK: Yeah.
LM: The trouble was that some of the lads all they had to escape was a ladder, a vertical ladder to this little sort of porthole and some of the lads got a bit of diarrhoea as well because it wasn’t long before the food sort of affected people.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And if they wanted to go to the toilet which a lot did. They couldn’t stomach, some people couldn’t stomach this sauerkraut and things like that so they did have to go to the toilet pretty regular. I was one of the opposite. Absolutely. And anyway, we went to go down in to the ship and away we go and they had what they called the old [unclear] and that was for the mines.
DK: Right.
LM: To ships against mines. We’d already mined that with, with these acoustic they were quite a huge mine. About, they’d be about fifteen foot long.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Twelve, thirteen, fifteen long what we used to drop and that was a bit of a risk because you had to —
DK: So you would actually drop mines in to the Baltic.
LM: Yes. Yeah.
DK: And were now —
LM: I hadn’t dropped them in to the Baltic but I had elsewhere.
DK: Yeah.
LM: The RAF had.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: And they would [pause] they would, that was a bit of a hazardous old job because you had to come down almost to zero feet. You cut your, you dropped your flaps just to sort of give you a bit of buoyancy and you cut your speed down as low as possible. Just above stalling speed. You’d be down to perhaps a hundred and twenty mile an hour and only about two or three hundred feet high.
DK: Yeah.
LM: So if you were lucky you didn’t go over a flak ship but if you did then they could just blow you to smithereens. So that was, people used to say that used to count as a half an op.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But it alright maybe it weren’t because you used to go there, come back and never see a thing.
DK: But you were still on an operation.
LM: You were lucky, you were lucky if you to just get by and —
DK: Yeah.
LM: And never even have anybody fire at you but no, we I suppose the prison camp weren’t too bad and we’d done three seventy odd hours on that boat and you were allowed up on deck one at a time so you could just imagine how long, I don’t know how many I wouldn’t like to say hazard a guess how many were down in the hold of that ship. Hundreds of us. Sitting there. And we came to a place called Swinemünde.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: You’ve heard of Swinemünde have you?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Have you? Nuremburg was laying there. One of their battle cruisers?
DK: Right.
LM: They took us off the ship and we went, had to get in these cattle trucks and the barbed wire was across the centre of the carriage. You had a half a door, half a door where the prisoners could get in. The other half was for the guards to get in.
DK: Right.
LM: And we had to take our shoes off but what have we got and put them through the barbed wire into the side where the guards were. And then the Germans used to pee in them at night if they didn’t want to get out, couldn’t get out. They used to use them as a toilet.
DK: Wonderful.
LM: And while we were there there was a raid on or supposedly. It weren’t really a raid I don’t think because I learned afterwards that was only one plane and they put a smokescreen over the whole docks and the Nuremberg opened fire on that. It was an American plane, broad daylight and the cattle trucks you could see daylight appear between the wood. Those guns exploding, the vibration we weren’t all that far away from Nuremberg itself.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And so anyway that’s when they took us out from there. They took us across down to a place called [pause] it was quite a way we went. I don’t know the name of the place really. I couldn’t say because they were the same as us. They did block, there were no names on villages or anything like that.
DK: Yeah.
LM: We eventually arrived at our destination and I never heard this. I can honestly say I never heard it. Some of the lads who wrote, if you read the book called, “The Last Escape” they said the Germans, they could tell. They could hear them sharpening their swords, their bayonets. But I didn’t hear it. To be truthful I never heard any. Maybe if I’d heard it I wouldn’t have paid much attention to it anyway. So they unloaded us from the trucks and then made us line up in fives and I’d got this kit bag. As luck would have it I’d got my kit bag. When I got off the boat I’d got this kit bag with my name on and I grabbed that and so I carried that with me and whatever stuff you could carry on your own.
DK: Yeah.
LM: You, or somebody sorted out later on and they loaned us, took off, we come, they lined us in fives. The same old thing again and these, all the guards at that particular time that started off were young Naval lads.
DK: Right.
LM: And we reckoned they came off that they were coming from a Naval dockyard just to see. To escort us to this camp Stalag Luft 4B.
DK: Right.
LM: Not far from Stettin. Well, everybody had got their kit and I stood like that and with the kit bag down the front and this German lad came along and I’ve still got a wound, a star there I think. One of them, he stuck a bayonet in you see. He said, ‘Pick it up. Pick it up.’ So I looked at him and that’s where he stuck the bayonet. As luck would have it it went in to my finger and it came up against my belt. An old hessian sort of RAF belt. Oh. And they had to pick it up and hold it there while we were just waiting. Then they they all —
DK: Your hand’s bleeding presumably at this point.
LM: Very little.
DK: Oh right.
LM: Hardly any blood.
DK: Right.
LM: I reckon it just went right to the bone.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Quite painful. I’ve got a little scar there now which, which you can see some left me a little bit of a scar there. They’re still there today. And they started, we had to march off and it weren’t a march at all. We had to run. Well just imagine they started on the lads up the front and while they carried their kit they kept —
DK: Yeah.
LM: Jabbing. Jabbing. Jabbing, and one lad had over seventy bayonet wounds we counted on him when we got the other end and until they’d dropped their kit they kept sticking the bayonet in and so of course we being quite tail enders we were, it was like steeple chase. And then of course then they got on to us and we, when we started off we’d some little bits and odds and pieces what we’d accumulated.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Picked up here and there. When we got to the camp we’d got absolutely nothing. I’d got a shirt on, trousers, shoes and that was my lot.
DK: And everything else had been lost up the road.
LM: Everything we had to drop.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And they had machine guns all lined up beside this sort of, more or less an old cart track we had to run up and some bright erb at the back was firing a rifle or a, I believe it was the officer with a, with a revolver and we never stopped. Nobody stopped to find out who it was. We just had to run and we actually thought not combined but individually I think ninety nine percent of us thought we would run into a hole. A pit. We did. I did. I thought we was going to be shot because they’d already done that. That had already happened to prisoners. They’d took them and shot them and we again we thought this is what was happening. No one said that to each other. Never said it to each other but afterwards when we got to camp people said, ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘Well, I began to think that’s what was happening.’
DK: Yeah.
LM: And people did but they never spread it because no way would there have been any escape because they’d got machine guns lined up each side of this old dirt track and when we got to the other end I mean that was just, we were just covered in dust. It was in August so it was the middle of the summer.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And there was a fella who used to sleep right next door to me. His name was [Mcilwain]. I’ll never forget him. Well, in, while we were in the camp there was a little Pole and he was watching the Americans at the game of baseball when it was, we played it with a softball. And he was stood around here like that and one of the lads had a whack at the ball and it threw out and it hit him in the teeth and knocked his teeth out. He was a little Pole. Quite a small lad. And when we got the other end of the camp I was with [McIlwain] and [McIlwain] got hit with a rifle butt. And when we got, when we eventually got to the camp this little Pole said, ‘Cor,’ he said, ‘I was knackered.’ The language you used to pick up there. ‘I was knackered,’ he said. ‘But when I saw [McIlwain] get hit with a rifle butt,’ he said, ‘He just went like that and carried on he said, ‘I could have run on for miles.’ So, I mean there was a lot of, there was a lot of —
DK: Humour.
LM: Fun.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I mean, it was a place where you could see the funny side of it but not when, it wasn’t all that funny but later on when you look back.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And anyway, we were at that camp and then we stopped there until February 1945 and then —
DK: How were you treated in the second camp once you got there?
LM: Not badly. Not badly. All our huts were off the ground there. They were better huts.
DK: Right.
LM: And you went up a corridor in the middle and your rooms were off each side. Two, four. Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen. Sixteen in a hut.
DK: Right.
LM: Two there. Two here on each side of the door and they had a tortoise stove and David [Dewlis?] was on the bunk above me and I slept in the bottom one and the lad on the next bunk to me was a New Zealander.
DK: Yeah.
LM: A lovely lad. Long Tom we called him. He was Long Tom. He was about six foot three and he used to sing the Maori’s farewell and a little tear would run down his cheek. Oh yeah. He decided that, he didn’t make a habit of singing it but every now he would sing that little old song. I know the words to that right off. Oh yeah.
DK: I’m quite conscious we’ve been talking for an hour. Do you want to take a break or something.?
LM: I don’t mind. Yes. Yeah. Lovely.
DK: Yeah. Shall we just stop there for a moment?
Other: Yeah. That’s fine.
DK: It’s just I’m rather conscious.
[recording paused]
LM: Fine. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely.
DK: Ok. So I’ll put that back there again. So just to be — talking about the cold weather and the movements.
Other: Yeah.
DK: And prisoners. So just to recap then it’s, it’s February 1945 and you’re in the second —
LM: ’45. Yeah.
DK: And you’re in the second camp and they’re not treating you too badly. What’s happened then?
LM: January. February. They said that due to unforeseen circumstances, they didn’t say why, or why or not, or not we’d got to go. We’d got to move out of the camp and they were going to march us out of the camp. I think we were then what was there, there was somebody else interfering or something was happening and we had to move camp. That was up near Stettin we were and we could see vapour trails. While we were there vapour trails used to go up and we thought they were taking the weather. Apparently, what we were watching was the V-1s and V-2s take off.
DK: Right.
LM: Didn’t know that at the time but going back a little bit I remember a JU88 was fitted with jet engines before ours.
DK: Right.
LM: They had a jet engine fitted to a JU88. No. Yeah 88 not the 87. That was a Stuka.
DK: Right. Yeah.
LM: But the, the eighty eight, yeah. And we weren’t —
DK: You saw one of those fly by then did you?
LM: You could hear them.
DK: Hear them. Right. Yeah.
LM: And see.
DK: Yeah.
LM: You could see them when they came over and you would think that sounds unusual for an aircraft engine and —
DK: Yeah.
LM: And they must have developed that before we did because that was the Germans who brought on the atomic bomb wasn’t it? For the Americans.
DK: Yes.
LM: Their scientists.
DK: Yeah. And the rockets to the moon.
LM: Yeah.
DK: Yes. Von Braun.
LM: Yes. Yeah. And no we were told that we had got to move and we said the treatment we’d had we were not going to go out of the camp. Silly thing to say but there we are. We are not going to move. We are going to stay where we are because we got treated so badly to go to that camp we said we wouldn’t go out of this one and the major, he was an old Prussian. When you say Prussian they were the old Germans weren’t they?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: And I reckon he was quite an oldish fella. Upright. Real slim, upright. Lovely he was. And he said he would come with us so there would be no ill treatment at all. And we didn’t get ill treated at all. We said we’d come out but the number of people within one or two days had to fall out. Blisters on their feet, had diarrhoea or something like that and my pilot David Josephs, that’s what made me think he was a bit of a politician’s son, he was, David was taken off after a second, I think it was two days he walked with us. After then they had to take him off in the little bandwagon. Whether he went to hospital I don’t know. I never knew. Even when we came home I never knew what had happened to him.
DK: No.
LM: And I kept in touch with him. Oh yeah. We kept in touch. And but at, he was, walked for an hour and we’d have a rest but when you get up again your feet began to tell on you. But that didn’t make no difference to me I’d been so used to talking over rough ground and so forth that didn’t come hard.
DK: Right.
LM: But people used to say, ‘How did you get on with monotonous walking?’ I said, ‘Yeah. What you do, all you do was just look at the persons feet in front.’ And that was just, it was just a tag along behind each other.
DK: Did you know roughly how many people were in this column as you remember?
LM: Oh, I haven’t a [pause] The whole camp.
DK: So —
LM: And there was not just us.
DK: Right.
LM: There were lots of others as well.
DK: So it could be thousands or —
LM: Oh yes. Walking through Germany what they said one morning we got was if you get attacked which there was. I didn’t see any of it to be truthful but some of them were attacked by Typhoons flown by New Zealanders and the idea was half of you would dash. We used to walk through tracks usually. Never, if you went through a village that was occasionally and the funny thing when we went through a village we used to stand up, pull ourselves up and sing and march. And the Germans didn’t like that and the guards didn’t like it either. And then after you got through the village it was like this, sort of striding along but when you walked through a village you put your parts on and started singing. But there was some got shot up.
DK: Did the villagers react to that at all?
LM: They left, the would leave water out but we weren’t allowed to touch it.
DK: Right.
LM: Because there was so much change of water. I don’t think it would have affected me at all.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Because I’d even later on I even drank out of a blasted river and so I don’t but other people it upset very quickly.
DK: Yeah.
LM: People were suffering with diarrhoea and that sort of thing and anyway we started off and a lot fell out. A lot fell out with diarrhoea, bad feet and that sort of thing. And we would have what they called after eight days you’d have a rest.
DK: What happened to those who did fall out and couldn’t —
LM: Took them back to somewhere. Hospital or something like that to give them a bit of treatment I think.
DK: Right.
LM: I couldn’t say. I don’t know what happened to them.
DK: Ok.
LM: I think, well they got back because David he got back.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And we used to write to each other just at Christmas time.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And —
DK: So how long were you on this march for? How many days roughly?
LM: February [pause] And I actually wrote a letter home. Air mail home to my mother on April the 29th. So we were walking from more or less I think somewhere in the middle of February.
DK: To the end of the war basically.
LM: Yeah. February. March.
DK: April.
LM: April. The end of April. But I had, we at the end of the march we had to during the march we could barter sometimes with the farmer. And I had a lovely Van Heusen shirt which had been sent to me by somebody so I swapped this shirt for a kilo of fat pork. Well, we had been walking across Germany with [unclear] and a biscuit perhaps a day. So you can tell what our stomachs were like. They weren’t very lined at all.
DK: Yeah.
LM: They weren’t lined at all.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And I swapped that. I said to Tom and, two of us. Long Tom and Leftie and we’ll fry it down. We’ll cut it into like chips and we’ll fry it down because to eat it as raw meat you couldn’t do that so that’s what we thought we would do. We stuck it in an old klim tin.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Lit a little fire and that night we were in this barn and the old rats would run over you and we got lousy as well. Oh, crikey yeah. And they were, they were big lice as well and we went and curled up and went to sleep. Made a sleeping bag and I used to tuck that right under your head so that no rats or anything could get in with you. And they used to run over you but you used to sort of knock them off.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And squeak and go off ahead and that night we went and [laughs] in the barn and I heard Tom, Long Tom up he got, out he went. The next thing Leftie the other side of me he was gone. And do you know I feel sick. Sick as a [pause] I feel. I’m not being sick I’m not going to. I didn’t buy that stuff to be sick. No way. And I wouldn’t go out. I laid there and I would not be sick. And I thought I’ll imagine I’m drinking a cup of cocoa and I was drinking this cup of cocoa and in the bottom of it was these chips. So it was, it was so awful that had [pause] we had lost all the lining off our stomachs. You passed blood. You would actually pass blood.
DK: So over these weeks then did you have the same German guards or were they changed?
LM: The Germans. Oh, you never knew who was with you.
DK: Right.
LM: Yeah. Some, they didn’t walk all the way with us —
DK: I was going to say —
LM: We would have different guards.
DK: You wouldn’t have different guards all the time then.
LM: Oh yes.
DK: Yeah.
LM: They were all old. Usually the old ones.
DK: Right.
LM: The old Luftwaffe as well.
DK: Right.
LM: And we walked. There was, I think there was something like, yeah, something about four hundred miles we’d done or something similar to that and then they were going to take us back towards the Russians. We’d just come over the River Elbe and I said to my two mates, Long Tom and Leftie, I said, ‘I’m not going back over that blasted river.’ They said, ‘Well, you know, I don’t fancy going back to the bloody Russians the other side.’ So we had said if we see a chance we’ll make a run for it. Well, we were going through this. We always walked through woods, lots of woods off the main track and so forth so we got a gap. ‘Ok, Tom.’ Off we, we ran off. Off we went. Mind you the guards I don’t think they were shooting at us. Never hit us anyway. They was a few shots going off but we carried on running and we came to a river. A little river. It was about as wide as this room and mind you this was time, that was in March time so a bit cold. So we thought if we cross the river, we were playing games I suppose, if we cross the river the dogs won’t be able to pick us up.
DK: Yeah.
LM: But the river was running quite, quite fast and there was little saplings been cut down beside the river so I picked one of these up and I gave it to Leftie and Leftie went across and held this stick you see and chucked one in the water, walked across sideway. So I went across and I held this stick for Tom to hold on to a branch and then come across this what we’d laid in the river. And there was a shot rang out and Tom lost his balance and he went backwards in the river. Got all his clothes on so he got out obviously and we made our way as we thought we had heard of [Saltau?] and that was where the Americans were.
DK: Right.
LM: We thought if we get to the Americans we’d be alright. Well, we got to the edge of a, it was a sort of a spinney we went through and then we came to the finish of the woods was that were open fields. So we stopped there and we decided we’d sort of camouflage ourselves. We’d put a bit of stick in. I had a, I had a German type Africa Corps hat which was a mistake I found out later but [pause] So we put this hat on and I’d got that and somebody knitted it somewhere along the line and we waited until it had got slightly dusk and then we decided we would come out of this little old wood and make our way as we thought towards Saltau. We just came out and we could hardly believe it. We turned left. I can see it even now. Turned, came out of this little wood. We turned left and walked along and we went, ‘Bloody hell.’ There was three blokes laid in the ditch. A little ditch. It wasn’t a ditch as such it was just a dry ditch. Say it that way.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Three Americans err three Australians. Three Australians laid in that ditch just been shot down and they had got escape equipment and everything. But they were also full of beans. Eggs and bacon. So just imagine us three weighing about seven stone and they had just, we’d just walked across Germany. Four or five hundred miles across there and they had just been shot down full of beans. And we walked at night and potato fields, it didn’t matter what was in the way we just walked according to the compass. And I remember particularly we came to a fence of barbed wire. A bit silly. We climbed over the fence of barbed wire. We had to walk across and all of a sudden we started to go in and in and in. Our feet began to get rather mud wet. They come up and I said to the others, I said, ‘Run. For Christ’s sake, run.’ And we ran and we ran through a bloody bog. We didn’t realise how silly we were and we came to another barbed wire, another fence and climbed over that. That was to take the animals out.
DK: Oh. Ok.
LM: That’s what we reckoned.
DK: Yeah.
LM: To keep the animals out of this.
DK: Bog. Yeah.
LM: This bog. We got the other end we took our shoes and socks off and wrang our socks out and they were full of this sort of mud. And anyway we carried on and we used to stop for about have a sort of an hour and then sat down and you would sweat, sweat, sweat when you were walking. Then you stop for five minutes. Ten minutes you’d freeze. Really we were so weak I suppose that, of course the Australians weren’t weak they weren’t weak were they?
DK: I was going to say they were —
LM: They were, oh they were fit as fiddles.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Oh yeah and anyway we, we dodged here, dodged there and carried on and eventually we came up and we heard people in the foreground as we were going in front of us. They were German troops. Walked right into them. So I reckon he was a middle of the range officer and of course they caught us and we had to go over and he looked at us and I reckon he thought what a shower and he gave us some little tablets or sweet or whatever you’d like to call them. They were about an inch long and about a half inch wide and like the old throat lozenge.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Remember the throat one?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: Well, these were white. I reckon they were vitamin tablets. He handed them out to us and he got the corporal to walk back with us to a little village called Bispingen. And we came back to this little village and that’s where he left us. In a hotel.
DK: Right.
LM: We were put up in this hotel and that night we went out. All six of us went out. We was talking to the German people which was no man’s land then you see.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And we were saying to the woman there, one woman Tom was talking to, he could speak fairly good German and about Saltau, she said, ‘oh,’ this is the honest truth this is, ‘Don’t go. Don’t go to Saltau. The Americans are there,’ she said, ‘They shoot anything that moves.’
DK: Yeah. They still do.
LM: That was a yarn but she said that’s what the Germans said.
DK: Yeah.
LM: She said, ‘Don’t. I wouldn’t go to Saltau.’ So we, we stayed there. Lovely hotel. We weren’t allowed to go upstairs.
DK: So —
LM: We had to sleep downstairs.
DK: So you were put up in a hotel by the Germans.
LM: Yeah. Yeah. They left us there. They didn’t want us. We were, we were a menace.
DK: Do you think the Germans at this point knew the war was lost and it just wasn’t worth —
LM: Yes. Yes, because another time they might have shot us mightn’t they?
DK: Yeah.
LM: And anyway, we were in no man’s land so they were retreating quite badly. And anyway, one particular day the sun was shining lovely. We set outside this hotel enjoying ourselves and there was a German lorry came around from the little village to where the centre of the village was. Another hotel further up the road. Came around the corner. All of a sudden it stopped and out they got and made a dive for it. Couldn’t make much out of it you see. And then I heard this plane and then looked up. There was one Spitfire. One Spitfire just going along. Of course, we, we were from, they knew us.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I mean they weren’t going to shoot us were they? They knew. There was us sitting on the front of this blasted hotel, ‘Oh yay.’ I thought you, daft sods weren’t we? A Spitfire up there never knew who we, I said to Tom, I said, ‘He could have turned around and shot us, Tom. Couldn’t they?’ But no. They were our friends weren’t they? You could see the funny side of it. Ignorant weren’t we? Plain ignorant.
Other: Yeah.
LM: Didn’t care. Anyway, we sat [laughs] they gave us a bowl of soup each day. They made a bowl of soup and there was pork cut into little old squares but they weren’t, they weren’t really all that nourishing. Weren’t all that good. Anyway, we were very pleased with it. And then a young lad came down to us. He said, ‘A Panzer. Panzer. A British Panzer.’ So lovely. Away we go. We ran up and around the corner and thought double double. There was a bloke on a half track or one of these little Bren carriers it was.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: We had to double up to them. Didn’t know who we were you see because I’d got this blasted African Corps hat on and so, anyway we had to run up to them and he stood there and when he realised who we were and then of course they gave us cigarettes and so forth. But they then put us in the hotel right at the top of the street where we ran to when they was coming in to the village. So the next morning I wrote a letter. One of the Army lads gave me an air mail to write home and that was how I remember the 29th of April when I first wrote home to my mother to say that I was ok. And the next morning they said, ‘Right. The truck will, you get in the truck it will stop twice. The second time it stops you get out and you will go back to the [echelon].’ That’s the depot isn’t it.’
DK: Yeah.
LM: So Long Tom, Leftie and myself. We got in one truck and the three Aussies got in another. So we’re, off we go. Off we go. Funny. Eventually we stopped. The Army lads said, ‘What are you doing here?’ Well, we said, ‘You’ve got to stop twice and we’re going back to the [echelon].’ He said, ‘We weren’t stopping,’ he said, ‘You should have been in the other truck.’ So there’s us three.
DK: Oh no.
LM: We’re on patrol with the blasted Army. They gave me a rifle and put me on a half-track and I thought they said the war was over for us. It doesn’t look much like it. We’re going along the road and they’re firing at bloody copse over the other side. A little old copse there.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I suppose Germans are in. They was firing. These people was firing at something. The lads up the front. So here we carried on. We went, we had a stop at this little village and we weren’t very nice. The Army weren’t very nice.
DK: Do you want me to stop?
LM: Can you turn —? Yeah.
[recording paused]
LM: Yes.
Other: Yeah.
LM: Yes.
DK: Right. So I’ve got it switched back on again. So there we go. We’ll move that there. So you’re now with the British Army.
LM: Yeah.
DK: What’s happened next then?
LM: Well, while we were with them on their, on patrol we got an old vehicle. A little old sort of a Austin 7.
DK: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
LM: In one of these villages and Tom said he could drive you see and we got this thing started. It started up and we were driving around the village in this little motor and we called and went in the shop. It was a baker’s shop. They sold everything I suppose not just bread, they had cakes and everything in there and they couldn’t wait to give us stuff. We weren’t in uniform as such. I mean not really. We were, we were looked like bedraggled bloody gypsies really. I mean just imagine what we were like. Thin as rakes.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And we went in a shop and the German women said, ‘Your bread.’ And the bread we had, the old black bread that weren’t nice at all. That had got a thick layer of Greece on the bottom. But when we, they gave us a loaf of brown bread that was like cake. It was just like cake to eat. Their brown bread. Ordinary brown bread after eating black bread and but anyway we, eventually we got back. They dropped us off and two days we were there on patrol and then they took us back. We got back to the [echelon] and had to go through a de-louser.
DK: Yeah.
LM: DDT. Take all your clothes off. Shave because that’s where the lice grow on and when I came for a medical well first of all they were spraying DDT out of a hose from a container with no masks on. I mean that stuff now. That hangs in people’s bodies. You can’t get rid of it can you?
DK: Yeah. It’s banned, isn’t it?
LM: DDT.
DK: Yeah. It’s banned.
LM: And they were just spraying this all over you, under your arms, everywhere. And I wonder how many people got affected with that. The Army lads were doing it.
DK: It’s carcinogenic. It can cause cancers.
LM: They did all the spraying. Awful stuff.
DK: So its banned now.
LM: But anyway, we had to shave yourself and and the doctor said to me, he said, ‘Ahh,’ he said, ‘Impetigo.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so sir.’ He said, ‘Yes, that’s what I —’ I said, ‘ I don’t think so.’ I said, ‘It’s lice.’ I said, ‘That’s where I’ve scratched myself.’ ‘No. No. No. No.’ So he gave me one of those blue bottles. Years ago you used to get these bottles of blue weren’t they?
DK: Yeah.
LM: From your medical —
DK: Yeah.
LM: Perhaps you don’t remember. You’re not old enough to know that. They were poisonous stuff sort of business. And you’d get them an old blue bottle about that tall. I never used it. I come home and just washed myself. It went. It wasn’t impetigo at all. It looked like it I suppose because —
DK: Scratching.
LM: And you could, the lice was nearly as big as my little nail. They were huge. Just think of them crawling over yourself.
Other: Oh, I feel sick now.
LM: We never had any in the camp though. It weren’t ‘til we came out on the march until we got lousy. There was no lice in the camp whatsoever.
DK: So how did you get back to the UK then?
LM: I came back. We were taken to [Machelen] Airfield.
DK: Right.
LM: Picked up by, they kitted us out with Army clothes then.
DK: Right.
LM: Took all our old, took our old rubbish away and gave us a new Army uniform sort of business and I was picked up on a, I can’t tell you where, I’ve no idea where we actually got to. The airfield we flew from in a Dakota.
DK: Right.
LM: And I sat in this Dakota and there was a lad came up in the, on the aircraft. He said, ‘Have you flown before?’ I looked. I said, ‘Yes. Yeah. Yeah.’ He said, ‘Oh that’s alright,’ he said, ‘We just wondered if you had never flown before.’ I never said nothing. I thought no. He don’t know any different does he like.
DK: No. I suppose some of the Army POWs may not have flown because they would have been shipped out of there.
LM: That’s right.
DK: Captured. And that was the first time they flew.
Other: Yeah.
LM: Of course, there were lots of them. I mean we had lads we called them the Wizards of Oz. There was three of them. I don’t know how they came in our hut but I reckon they swapped over with some RAF lads.
DK: Right.
LM: That’s how we always reckoned they were, they kept themselves to themselves but we reckoned, we used to call them the Wizards of Oz. there was three of them. They never give any, never said nothing you know didn’t talk much. They were Army boys really and they swapped I reckon.
Other: Oh.
LM: With three RAF lads.
DK: So did, do you think you were flown back from somewhere in Germany?
LM: Yes. Yeah.
DK: So you were in Germany.
LM: Yes
DK: So can you remember where you arrived back in the UK?
LM: Yes. Brize. Not Brize Norton. Cosford.
DK: Cosford. Right. Ok.
LM: Cosford. Yeah. Came back to Cosford. I think it was Cosford we came back. If it weren’t Cosford we landed at that’s where we got rekitted.
DK: Right.
LM: At Cosford. What was the other one where they brought all the, repatriated all these prisoners a little while ago?
DK: Oh Lyneham.
LM: No. No. No. Down that same place.
DK: There’s Brize Norton.
LM: Brize Norton.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Not Brize Norton. Was it Brize Norton?
DK: Yeah. There’s Lyneham and then Brize Norton and —
LM: Lyneham was another one.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: I think it was Cosford I came back to.
DK: Right. Ok.
LM: And they sent us on leave for six weeks. All they gave me was four for some reason. They only gave me a pass for four weeks. I didn’t mind. I didn’t, I weren’t bothered all that much.
DK: Was there any sort of debriefing about your time as a POW? Did they ask you any questions?
LM: Yes. When we came home they, we had to go and stand in front of a board.
DK: Right.
LM: And they did, just weren’t all that interested I don’t think. I don’t think they didn’t seem to worry much. I mean, we, I don’t think they were enquiring about names or anything like that. They just, well, to be honest I don’t think they didn’t give a shite about us.
DK: No.
LM: They couldn’t wait to get us home and get us on leave it seemed to me and of course I don’t think they wanted us in the RAF all that long or whether they did or not I don’t know. We were probably getting paid too much and anyway when we came home you had the chance to remuster. I volunteered. Like a bit of a silly bugger I volunteered to go out to Japan.
LM: Right.
That’s why. I said I’d fly, I said I’d love to go and fly out to Japan now and fight out there. I thought what a bloody a dickhead wasn’t I?
Other: You didn’t know did you?
LM: What. No, he said, ‘No. We wouldn’t let you to do that again.’ They said no. Wouldn’t be allowed to do that. And anyway, I took a course on, back to Morse Code.
DK: Right.
LM: I was going to do that sort of thing and I thought oh no. This isn’t for me and actually I couldn’t concentrate at all. I couldn’t concentrate. My concentration was just gone so I remustered then to a teleprinting course and we used to send, write letters home. How quickly you can pick up a typewriter.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And you had an old metronome on the desk in front of you.
DK: Yeah.
LM: You had your big blackboard. You know I expect. And no numbers or letters on the keyboard. You had to feel them. Always work from the middle bar. And, ‘Oh, shit I’ll never do this.’ But how quickly —
Other: Where is your typewriter?
LM: Huh?
Other: What happened to your typewriter, grandad?
LM: Don’t mention about my typewriter what I bought and my [pause] they gave my typewriter away.
DK: Shall we turn this off again? [laughs]
LM: They couldn’t wait. I paid forty five pounds. No. sorry. Not quite that. I thought I’ll go upstairs the other night. I thought I’ll go up. I’ll do a bit of, I’ll get my old typewriter out of the spare room because my right hand isn’t very good now. I had a bit of a stroke but I had that. That was like what they called deprivisation.
DK: Right.
LM: And I get a little pension for that. But I was ages before I got it. Nobody came. I went in A1 obviously. I came out a down B2. Never said nothing about giving me a pension though. Not a thing. Couldn’t give a damn.
DK: Well presumably, well you clearly weren’t in the best of health when you came back.
LM: No. No.
DK: But was there any medical care that you received or —
LM: No. No. I went. No. No one bothered.
DK: No.
LM: No. No. No. If you went sick you went sick. If you didn’t you didn’t. Simple as that and I just —
Other: [unclear] ever since.
LM: I took the, then I thought this seemed good to me I said what I’ll do because they didn’t mind you remustering. They knew what state we were in I suppose.
DK: Yeah.
LM: For we weren’t in the best of mental state I don’t think then. We’d got so lax and not having to do anything. Sort of just walk around a bloody compound and I mean I weren’t too bad I was only thirteen months but some of them four or five years and I took a driver’s test and I came out the, out in Blackpool and the School of Motoring. The initials —
DK: Oh, the British School of Motoring [[ yeah.
LM: Up near Blackpool. Weeton.
DK: Right.
LM: In Blackpool. And the corporal said, another lad in the back, they were Austin 7, 10s like, he said. Went out the back around these you could see the hills in front of you in the distance, sort of the wasteland at the back of Blackpool. We got away to the front, still a bit of waste ground. He said, ‘Now, I want you to get to the top of that hill in top gear.’ And there was a gateway down there. I put my foot right down and went up that hill like a bomb. Yeah. No trouble. We got pulled up and loaded on and the boy in the back he said, ‘You scared the life out of me.’ I said, ‘Why?’ he said, ‘Well you nearly hit that gate post.’ I said ‘[unclear] Through there. I said, ‘He said, the corporal said to me he wanted me to get to the top of the hill in top gear.’ He wanted me to stall it you see, didn’t he?
DK: Yeah.
LM: Wanted me to start off on a hill but I didn’t. I foot rode up this blasted hill.
DK: So, what year did you actually leave the RAF then?
LM: I had two ranks.
DK: Right.
LM: Warrant officer air gunner and an AC2 driver.
DK: So you left as an AC2.
LM: Yes [laughs] Yes, I don’t, but I passed. I could drive anything when I came out.
DK: And what year was that that you came out then?
LM: 1946.
DK: Right.
LM: Came out in ’46 and started work in, my leave was up on the 6th of September 1946 and I started work on the 6th. On a Tuesday.
DK: Doing what? What was your career after that then? What did you do?
LM: Well, I thought I really loved to work on the land.
DK: Machelen Right.
LM: I loved the horses.
DK: So did you?
LM: Especially.
DK: Did you go back to —
LM: No. There wasn’t no money in it then was there?
DK: Right.
LM: So, Vic Bale, how I knew, I went to school with him he ran foremen men at Fiddlers Garages at Stowmarket.
DK: Right.
LM: He said to me, he said, ‘Lou,’ he said, ‘Are you —.’ Oh before then I, yeah that’s right. Yes. Yes. He said, ‘Lou, are you looking for a job?’ I said, ‘No. Not really, Vic.’ I said, ‘Not for a while. Just see my leave out and I’ll have a look around,’ I said, ‘There’s plenty of place in Stowmarket.’ He said, ‘Well, my dad you see has just gone as a foreman down at the old chemical works.’ He said, ‘There’s a firm, a Swedish firm going to make boards, building boards from straw.’ So I thought well I knew old Harry, his dad. I knew him well. So I went down. ‘Yes, boy.’ He said, ‘Yes, boy. You can start tomorrow if you like.’ I said, ‘Lovely Harry. I’ll start. Make it Tuesday.’ I said, ‘That’s the end of my leave.’ So I went and that’s where I started and I was the first one to start there. Then there was another lad. He was a Dunkirk lad.
DK: Right.
LM: Frank [Wasp]. He joined the next day. And then another lad he was in the Army he was a PT instructor. He joined on the Friday. So that we three started off at [unclear]
DK: [unclear]
LM: And the bloke who came to show us how to run [unclear] hadn’t a bloody clue. He hadn’t a clue. Not any idea.
DK: So just stepping back a bit have you stayed in touch with any of the, either your crew at the time or those that you escaped with?
LM: Well. No. Never. I’d have loved to. This was what I was saying earlier on. We never kept, the only one, now I had a letter come from some while ago now from the flight engineer.
DK: Right.
LM: When we were shot down. Did I know, he’d got my address from David Joseph’s wife —
DK: Right.
LM: Because David used to write to me. Well, when I say write it was a postcard at Christmas and all we wrote on it, “How are you? Ok? Having a nice time? Cheerio.” And that’s all that was said.
DK: So you stayed in touch with your pilot for a few years.
LM: Only on a —
DK: On a card.
LM: His mother used to write to my mother.
DK: Right.
LM: During the war. During that war and David he, what made me think he was a Joseph, the old Keith Josephs offspring they lived in Shakespeare Country.
DK: Right. Yeah. They must be related.
LM: Then I got —
DK: Yeah.
LM: Then I got a card come from him. “We’ve changed our address. I’ve now bought a farm at Bourton on the Water.” So we were on, me and the wife were on holiday. We called at Bourton on the Water. There’s a river runs through the street there isn’t there?
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
LM: A lovely place.
Other: Bourton on the Water.
LM: And I went into a Post Office. I said to the lady I said, Mock Hill, Pockhill Farm it was called. I went into the Post Office. I said, ‘Hello dear.’ I said, ‘You wouldn’t know the whereabouts of a David Josephs who live in Pockhill Farm would you?’ She said, ‘Yeah. They’re just up the road there on the right hand side.’ But he had died then. He’d had a brain haemorrhage.
DK: So you never met him again.
LM: I never met him. No.
DK: I’m rather conscious of time. I’ve just got one final question.
LM: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: And it’s really about how after all these years you feel about and you look back on your time in the RAF and a POW. How do you feel about that now? Is it something —
LM: I sometimes wish I’d have taken, what I ought to have, I sometimes think why didn’t I get a reserved job on the land? I could have been I don’t know. I wouldn’t have been I don’t know. I wouldn’t have been in a position I finished up with now at anyrate.
DK: Yeah.
LM: I had a good number when I, when I retired. A production manager at [unclear] when I retired so I wouldn’t, I was well looked after. The old governor I think sometimes that was a good thing that I went through that because otherwise I think I would have been on the farm until the day I died.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Or the time I retired. But I didn’t and —
DK: So in a strange way it was —
LM: It altered my life altogether because, yes.
DK: Some good came out of it.
LM: Because I suppose in a way I wouldn’t have gone, well a little example. When I was at school we had one day out in a year. Sunday school.
DK: Yeah.
LM: Had to go to Sunday school every Sunday. Stowupland and Creeting St Peter. I used to live at Creeting St Peter and that we used, they’d come from Stowup and pick us up at Creeting St Peter. Now, I’ve never been out of the village because we used to get to Jacks Green, that’s just nearly into Needham and somebody would ask, ‘Can you see the sea yet?’ That’s how naïve we were. Hadn’t been out of the village. When I went to London that was the first time I’d ever been in London in my life.
DK: Yeah.
LM: And I got on the Underground and it didn’t bother me at all.
DK: Yeah.
LM: No, I just asked a porter. I wasn’t afraid to ask and mostly the black ones were ever so helpful. Oh yeah.
DK: Better turn this off quick.
LM: Well, they were and in those days —
DK: Yeah. Yeah. No.
LM: I’m sorry Sally but —
Other: No, that’s fine, grandad.
LM: I didn’t say that.
DK: It was actually because we had full employment then that there weren’t enough people to work on the Underground so recruitment was actually done in the West Indies to get people.
LM: Oh right.
DK: To come over and work on the Underground and London Transport. Ok. Well, at that point we’d better stop. Well thanks very much for that.
LM: Yes.
DK: I’m turning this off now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Louis Makens
Creator
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David Kavanagh
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-17
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMakensL170117, PMakensL1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Description
An account of the resource
Louis Makens worked as a farm worker before the war but volunteered for aircrew. He discusses his training on Wellingtons and operations flying Stirlings with 196 Squadron including a crash landing, and glider towing. His Halifax was shot down 18/19 March 1944 on the way to Frankfurt. It was his seventh operation, but his first as a mid under gunner with 76 Squadron from RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor. He became a prisoner of war and discusses that as an extra gunner with a new crew, he only got to know his pilot David Joseph during captivity. He describes his capture and treatment and the conditions at Stalag Luft 6, the contents of Red Cross parcels, and the prisoners' attitude to the guards. He describes the conditions on the long march through Germany away from the advancing Russians. Eventually he found the advancing Allied army. After the war, he was remustered as a driver and was demobbed in 1946. He found employment with Stramit manufacturing strawboard building material.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Lithuania
Poland
England--Yorkshire
England--Suffolk
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Lithuania--Šilutė
Poland--Świnoujście
Poland--Tychowo
Lithuania--Klaipėda
Temporal Coverage
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1944-03-18
1945-02
1945-06-19
1946-09-06
Format
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01:42:22 audio recording
Contributor
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Julie Williams
196 Squadron
76 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
evading
Fw 190
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
Lysander
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Sealand
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Stradishall
RAF Witchford
shot down
Stalag Luft 4
Stalag Luft 6
Stirling
strafing
the long march
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/177/2340/ABattyPH161014.1.mp3
5c4ac0fc187b4591d3ca4948980d7baf
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Batty, Philip
Phil Batty
P Batty
Description
An account of the resource
19 Items. The collection consists of one oral history interview with Philip Batty (b. 1925). He discusses the death of his older brother Dennis early in the Second World War, his wartime service with 50 Squadron at RAF Sturgate as a wireless operator/ air gunner, and his long post war career. The collection also includes a number of group photographs of airmen after training, photographs of aircraft in southern Africa, his log book and propaganda material.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-14
Identifier
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Batty, P
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CH: Right, this interview is taking place at Phil Batty’s home in Wellingore, Lincolnshire on the 14th of October 2016, it’s being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. The interviewer is Cathie Hewitt, also present are Guilia Sanzone, Ann Batty and Chris Aram. Okay Phil, if you’d like to give me this information of your date and place of birth and your early childhood.
PB: Right, well, I was born on the 7th of March 1925, at a small village in Yorkshire. Er, my parents, my father was, actually in the Flying Corps in World War One, and he, he stayed in after the war and married my mother in 1918, but mother didn’t care for the Air Force, they were stationed at Castle Bromwich, and father decided that they would leave and he got himself a job as a draughtsman at Rolls Royce in Derby, but unfortunately came the depression and he was laid off, the only job that he could find was in the mines up in Yorkshire, which is where we went, but mother hated that even more, she was determined that we were not going to stay there [laughs] and er, we emigrated back to the West Midlands where father got a job with Walsall Town Council as a roads foreman, and, that’s where I was brought up and educated, at Elmore Green Central School. Mother didn’t care for that either [laughs] I went to sit the entrance examination for I think it was the King Edward Grammar School in Birmingham, I passed it but unfortunately Walsall refused to pay the fees. So, I was stuck in Walsall and went to Elmore Green for my secondary education. I was quite happy there, and, I stayed there until of course war broke out in 1939 when I was fourteen, I was just about to leave school anyway, I’d got a job at the town council myself in the transport department as a clerk, and, there I sat, waiting for things to happen. My brother Dennis, of course was a fully qualified wireless operator air gunner [indistinct], he was with 226 Squadron and once the army got themselves organised they all deployed over to France as the advanced air striking force with the British Expeditionary Force. They were equipped with Fairey Battles, a single engine light bomber, utterly unequipped to face the Luftwaffe, but there they are, and there we sat and waited. Dug a big hole in the back garden, built ourselves an Anderson shelter [laughs] and that sort of thing and waited for the real war to start, which eventually, it did, with a bang, crash, wallop, and, er, Dennis came home when the army retreated, they suffered horrendous losses. He kept a little diary while he was in France of his — of his friends who didn’t come back, because the Messerschmitts knocked them out of the sky like fly swatting really, er, but he came home eventually with his kit bag full of champagne and [laughs] and stayed with us for about a week and then went back, and his squadron reformed with Blenheims and were based at Wattisham, and there they started to bomb the Channel ports where the Germans were then assembling an invasion fleet. It was on bombing, there was bombing raids they went in, inland to bomb an airfield, and they were attacked by some Messerschmitts, the pilot was hit, in the neck, but Dennis shot one Messerschmitt down and that put them off, they left them alone and they got back to base safely and that's where all three of them were awarded the DFM. And, Dennis came home to celebrate. Unfortunately he was posted up to Scotland, I think he was going on the gunnery leaders’ course, but this is a week later and he was killed in a flying accident [pause]. This was my first [pause] real [pause] [cries].
CH: Would you like to take a break?
[interview paused]
CH: Okay?
PB: And er, of course, that’s the last thing my mother wanted [laughs] she said, ‘No, no way, you’ll never pass the medical’, ‘cause I’d had an ear operation, she said, ‘You won’t pass’, [interference] anyway, she said, ‘You’re not going until you’re called up’, and of course eventually I was [laughs]. Passed the medical, went for aircrew, went to Birmingham to the attestation centre, er, which was where they gave you a little exam to make sure you could read and write a little essay and that sort of thing, and, then they did [indistinct] a little test with a little machine keeping a dot in the centre, and they said, ‘Oh, what do you want to be?’, and I said, 'Well I want to be a wireless operator air gunner’, they said, ‘Oh you, no we’re, what about pilot, navigator, you know?'. I said er, ‘Well, how long’s that take?’. He said, ‘Well, you’ll be put on a list and we’ll call you when we want you’, but I said, ‘Will I be quicker being a WOP AG’, he said ‘Yeah a bit’, I said, ‘I’ll have it’ [laughs] and er, that was it then, er, course mother was dead against it, but I said, ‘I’ll be alright’, [emphasis] you know it’s, I hadn’t the faintest idea of course that the losses were mounting for bomber crews at the time but, anyway eventually I got this paper asking me to report to Lords cricket ground, I thought, whatever, funny place for the Air Force, but off I go and they were playing at the time, I think it was the West Indies, I’m not sure, but that’s where you got issued with uniform, numbers, 2220759, ha, ha [laughs] you never forget it [laughs] and er, all the stuff you needed, and put your civilian clothes in a suitcase and send ‘em home, and, we were accommodated in London, in flats at the time being, for a little while, and then put on a train to Bridlington. Bridlington by the sea, yes, and there we were taught to march, yes, and I thought oh God, if this is aircrew, you know, I thought we were going to fly [emphasis] but no, we were marching up and down the promenade and [laughs] and er, learning the Morse code and that sort of thing, signalling by lamp and all the rest of it, and er, we were there for about , I suppose about four to six weeks and then I was posted down to the radio school at Madley to be taught the real skills of being a wireless operator air gunner and, there started the real training really. Er, I was there, I suppose about eight months, passed out, but that was the real jump [indistinct] because when you got your brevet, you got immediate promotion to sergeant, and now this is a big lump, a big jump really, er, and I was posted at the same time over to a place called Staverton, just outside Gloucester. They had a sergeants’ mess, we had sheets [emphasis] on the bed [emphasis] [laughs] fantastic, and we had knives and forks set out in the mess, we thought, you know, we’ve started to live, yeh. Er, the other funny thing was that we were briefed secrecy, you will see an aeroplane here, which you’ve never seen in all your life because it hadn’t got a propeller, it just whistles, and of course it was the jet, the very first, and it did seem very odd I must admit. Er, and we were there for six weeks flying an Anson and that’s where I first met up with my navigator, John, and we flew together for some time, and I think it was when we finished at, there, we went off up north to Dumfries and by God it was cold, [emphasis] we were living in Nissen huts and they were freezing [emphasis] oh, one stove in the middle that everyone tried to huddle round and how it is, but, once again it was just about six weeks, and then we went to, down to the OTU, that was just outside Leicester, where we upgraded to Wellingtons and that’s where we got that leaflet, the operational crews were diverted in one night, and I must admit they all looked clapped out [laughs] very tired, but er, I think that, we went, OTU was where we first started to fly as a crew, we picked up a pilot, a co-pilot, er, I still flew with John Tidmarsh, we’d been flying together then for six, seven months or so, so we de-, decided we’d stick together and the rest of the crew could join us [laughs] which is what we did, as you do, a little band of men. And, we did, I think it was a couple of months on Wellingtons, flying round the countryside practising navigation, bombing, and waiting to march onwards which we did eventually. We were posted to a Lancaster conversion unit, and I think I went to the one just outside Newark, er, it’s in my log book somewhere, and that was the, yes [pause]. Chris’ll find it in there [pause].
CA: Winthorpe.
CH: Winthorpe.
PB: After I, after we’d finished at the, I remember looking at the, where we were, 'cause it had big chimneys at the end of the runway, and I said to the pilot, he's a bloke called Ford, Henry, I said, ‘I hope you can manage to get a Lancaster over the top of those chimneys’, Henry [laughs] ‘they look pretty ominous to me’, he said, ‘Don’t you worry Phil’ [laughs]. Anyway, we passed and eventually 'cause we are coming to right to the end of the war now, and I didn’t, didn’t think we were going to make it before VE Day, we just about did it, we would have done, but not quite. We were posted to a squadron, posted to 50 Squadron at Sturgate and, off we went, and we’d just done the, squadron commander flew with us and pronounced us fit to join his squadron and, but I think it was a week later that we had VE Day, that was it, the war was over. So, we came into the briefing room one morning and saw [unclear] the squadron commander and said ‘Well fellas, well done’, he said, ‘It’s over’, he said, ‘We are now part of the Northern Striking Force', he said, 'Who we’re going to strike I don’t know but that's who we are’, he said, ‘5 Group are going out with Tiger Force to the Far East to fight the Japanese, but we’re staying here, but I’ve got some good news for you’, he said, ‘You can draw some khaki drill’, he said, ‘'Cause we are off to Italy on Monday’, [laughs] he said, ‘What we’re going to do’, he said, he said, ‘We’re going to pick up some prisoners of war up and bring 'em home’, he said, ‘Everyone, yes’, he said, ‘Our [emphasis] prisoners of war [laughs] not theirs’, he says 'We’ll paint twenty circles on the floor’, he said, ‘You put twenty passengers each and off you go’. 'And it’s like an operation, there’ll be sixty or so aeroplanes and some are going to Pomigliano and some to Bari, but we’re going to [unclear]’, he says, ‘Now there’s three things, one, do not try and change your money on the black market, none of that, don’t go down to Naples and get drunk on the local vino, right, and make sure you look after the soldiers [laughs] 'cause they won’t have flown’ [laughs]. But of course they hadn’t, but they were very pleased to jump on board the Lanc, er of course it took a long time, I think it was seven or eight hours trip each way but they didn’t care. Is that what you’re looking at Chris? Yes, they called it Operation Dodge, yes and we did one or two of those and, that was how the — the war virtually ended for me.
CH: Did you bring many prisoners back with you?
PB: Yeah.
CA: I don't think he heard you.
CH: Did you bring many prisoners back on the trips in the Lancasters?
PB: Pardon?
CH: Did you bring many prisoners back from Italy?
PB: Yes, yes, yes, and we landed in the UK at, Polebrook, yes, I don’t know how many times oh, er, eight was it, I don't know. Chris, I think is looking now [unclear]?
CA: Yes, at least eighty.
PB: I did several trips, anyway, yes, I remember that we went to see the ruins of Pompeii, John Tid — Tidmarsh and I, yes. While we were there we thought we might as well, yeah, yes, but, very interesting actually, yes, we did behave ourselves and we did realise that the best things to take out were cigarettes and coffee for trading, and er, we could hand those in and bring back jewellery and that sort of stuff, yes, from the Italians, yes, er, quite enjoyable. Chris is looking now in my logbook, which will be scanned presumably? Yes. The length of the time that the trips took, yeah, quite long, yeah, okay.
CH: What happened after you finished doing these trips bringing the prisoners back?
PB: That was it for the time being, erm, I was posted then to, out to Transport Command for a little while, and then the air force [background noises] in their wisdom thought [?], in their wisdom, sent me out to Southern Rhodesia for two and a half years, er, onto [?] the navigation training school, flying Ansons, where I had a marvellous time [laughs] I really did, I thoroughly enjoyed it, you know, there were no tourists, the game was wonderful, it really was, marvellous place. We went to Victoria Falls and that sort of thing, er, saw the whole of the country at low level 'cause we were flying Ansons, and the navigators for their passing out trip, we took 'em down to Cape Town and back again, and after two and a half years I came home, and I decided to stay in the Air Force and rejoin Bomber Command, and, they’d got Lincolns then, so I was back on the old Lincolns and posted to Wyton and I was waiting there when of course the atom bomb came in, and the old Lincoln, I’m afraid, wasn’t big enough. So we borrowed some B29s from the Americans, the air force called them the Washington, and er, we converted from the Lincoln to the Washington, and that’s where we ended up at, Coningsby er, on the B29 or the Lincoln, and that’s where I was for quite a while until I think that I moved around a bit, on coastal, I think that, I spent a —a little time converting, then I was posted out to Malta and did a tour out there, with my good lady [laughs]. The Cyprus problem blew up — [interruption]
CH: That's —
AB: And, we were doing trips from Malta to Cyprus, once round the island and back, sixteen hours [laughs] rather tiring, so they decided to send us out to Cyprus and, camp on the edge of the airfield instead, so we could do shorter trips. So, we ended up camping on Cyprus for a bit until it was [laughs], time for us to come home, which we did in nineteen, ooh, was that sixty we came home?
AB: I think so.
PB: Yes, something like that, and I was [pause] posted back up to, Coningsby I think.
AB: Topcliffe.
PB: Yeah, oh, Topcliffe one or the other, yes, and er, after that they sent me back to, Bomber, where I converted on to the Vulcan eventually, that’s where we stayed did we not? Yes, I think so. Yes, they, the Cypriots had taken the [background noises] the explosives in a sandwich — in a sandwich tin, just in it, just in between two pieces of bread and they put 'em on the hinges of the aeroplane and blew the wing off, yes, the pilots didn’t like it, no, weren’t too keen on that. So, they put closer guards on the aeroplanes, that’s the only thing they could do [background noises].
CH: What year was this?
PB: Yes.
CH: What year?
PB: Erm, gosh, what year was Cyprus Chris? It’s in there, when we're doing the Cypriot runs. Five, yeah, it’ll be listed there. [pause] 'Cause they were gun running as well, that’s what we were doing there [?] just trying to pick up the gun runners at night [background noises].
[inaudible]
CH: I'll pause that. What were you saying about the Cypriots?
PB: They were very clever in the way they smuggled their weapons and stuff in, that’s why we were doing these orbits around Cyprus at night to try and catch the boats, the little boats they used to get weapons over, and explosives and that sort of stuff, yeah.
CH: Was this the time of EOKA?
PB: Yes, exactly, yes, yes. [pause] I think it was eighty something, yes.
CH: That would have been in the fifties, nineteen fifties.
PB: Yes, that’s it [indistinct]. But I moved over onto the Vulcan, 'cause we went off to Finningley for our conversion and I’d only flown on piston aircraft, piston air, and I sat in this, monster and he said, er, ‘opening the throttles, full throttle’, whump, and I found myself up over my seat and I thought, good grief, [laughs], and I, I got the instruments in front of me 'cause we’d got an altimeter and an airspeed indicator, and he shot down the runway and I watched the altimeter go like that [laughs], winding upwards [laughs]. I’m not in a fighter but a fantastic performance, it really was, but I did get used to it of course, in the end, but, one or two of the blokes I flew with like Dave Thomas and, and Andy, could really handle a Vulcan well. Dave Thomas, when we’d, we'd done a display, we were coming home one Sunday and he said, ‘Do you mind if I try and roll it?’ and I said, ‘Well, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t Dave’, and he did a roll and my desk lid lifted about half an inch and went down again, that’s all I knew, but somebody on the ground saw him, reported it to 1 Group Headquarters, and we were all summoned to see the AOC [laughs] 'cause we were both squadron leaders and he gave us both a right rollicking, and he said, ‘Don’t ever do that again’, [emphasis] well he said, ‘If you do don’t let anybody see you’, [laughs] ‘And would you like to stay for lunch’, [laughter] so he wasn’t really annoyed [laughs], but. Ah, ha, but, we did have some fun in the Vulcan one way and another [pause]. Ah. When we were training we were given a weekend off and, mother was always very pleased because we got a special, ration for aircrew and it added to her points, I think it doubled them just about and of course we got a free railway warrant, so I used to always, um, ask for a one to Birmingham and I used to exit at New Street station which was open and then catch the bus home, and that way I ended up with a few free tickets, you see, that I, I could use later on, which I did and during the war, yes it was very handy, but , yes every six weeks we were sent, to, to clear off and have a rest, eh, because we never knew but the sky over Britain was, must have been full of aeroplanes at night, that we didn’t know about, there was no radar cover, nothing like that, you just flew and fingers crossed, hope for the best that you saw everybody else, eh, fortunately we survived, no problems [laughs].
CH: Did you keep in contact with any of your crew that you flew with in the war?
PB: Yes, yes, eh, I haven’t contacted Henry, I did John Tidmarsh for a little while, I’ve lost contact with him.
AB: Johnny, Johnny King.
PB: Yes, but , Johnny King that, flew with since the war, yes, still in contact with him, he's in Canada but, we're in regular contact, yes, we flew together on, on Lincolns, yes, in fact he was a flight engineer and then, changed to pilot, trained to be a pilot, yeah.
AB: Lorenzo, Lorenzo.
PB: Yes, eh, anything else I’ve forgotten?
AB: Lorenzo.
PB: Oh yes, I kept in contact with Keith but he’s dead now of course, passed away.
AB: The Canadian ones, we’ve been over to Canada and stayed with them.
PB: But, [interrupted].
CH: Were there Canadians in your crew?
PB: Er, no, no there was, one Irish and the other one was a Londoner, the two gunners, yeah, one London, one Irish and one London. Paddy Mack [?], he was the rear gunner and there’s a little London fella, I can’t remember his name is the mid upper gunner, and I was the reserve gunner if necessary [laughs] but, I was never used [pause]. I think that’s about all I can remember, apart from the fact that flying was always cold, very, very cold [emphasis]. The only warm place in the Lancaster was in my position in fact, er, that wasn’t too bad, but the rest of them the Anson and the Wellington were perishing [laughs]. You used to wear as much clothing as we could to keep warm and you could hear the gunner in the back cracking the ice in his oxygen mask [laughs], crunching away [laughs], [coughs] but eh, you learn to live with these things [pause]. On Vulcans, Andy Milne and er, the rest of them [interrupted]
AB: Dave Thomas.
PB: Yes, but I think Andy Milne [interrupted]
AB: Jerry Strange.
PB: Was the best, 'cause we, we went on the bombing competition twice so we must have been pretty good [interrupted]
AB: And won, each time.
PB: But eh, yes, we beat the Americans at one stage but er, out in Barksdale, they didn’t like that very much [laughs], poor old, but they’ve been very good to us the Yanks I must admit, yes, um, but yes that was, that was a very good crew I must admit and we, we're still in touch, all of us. Yes, Andy's down in Devon with his own small holding, and, but our co-pilot settled in the Far East, built himself a house [unclear]
[inaudible]
PB: And er, my navigator’s still around, he comes, still comes to the meetings occasionally [pause] but, trying to think that’s, that’s about the limit of -. 'Course, there was our, my crash in the Vulcan, that was quite interesting [laughs]. Well we got to — went out to fly one day, Flight Lieutenant Galway was the captain at the time and, I was the AEO, Stan Grierson was the co-pilot, and we had, Alan Bowman and, was the radar. Anyway we got, this, almost brand-new Vulcan, it had got about ten hours on the air frame. Anyway, climbed on board, and set off and we were flying about an hour, when Ivor said, ‘The hydraulic pressure's reading zero’, I said, ‘Well tap the gauge Ivor, you know, use the old knuckle’, [laughs] he tapped it, wouldn’t come back you know, I said oh, ‘Hang on then I’ll see if it’ll move my,’ got a little scoop on the rover gas turbine in the wing, a little motor, I put my switch on and off, didn’t move, I said, ‘This looks ominous Ivor, it looks to me as if we’ve lost all our hydraulic pressure’, ‘But we’ve got air, we’ve got air, yes, have no fear, we’ll go back and use the air,’ he says, 'Okay, right', so we, we came back to base and um, burnt off a bit of fuel, you know as much as we could and then he said, ‘Right selecting emergency air, undercarriage down,’ down it went, bang’ [emphasis]. Two greens, one red. Oh dear, [sigh] ‘Which is the one?’ he said, ‘It’s the starboard wing, port undercarriage has not gone down and locked’. Now that’s bad, you can’t do anything about that at all. ‘I’ll check the electrics just to make sure that it’s not a fuse’, it wasn’t. So, he said, ‘Well , what about bailing out?’ I said, ‘Bailing out!, the nose wheels down', I said, 'I’ll go sliding out and the first thing I’m going to hit is the nose wheel,’ I said, I’m not too keen on that Ivor, if you don’t mind,’ I said, ‘The navigator and the radar might want to have a go?’ but, he looked at me and said, ‘No sir, I said, ‘What are you going to do Ivor?’, he said, ‘Well, I’m going to land her’, he said, ‘I’m going to try and land’, I said, ‘Well I'm, you are going to have two, three passengers on board as well, so to make sure you don’t clear off we’ll keep the safety pins in the seats all right, if you don’t mind, so you don’t accidently pull those handles and disappear,’ [laughs] he said, ‘Right oh,’ he said, I said, ‘Well, shall we prepare for a crash landing,’ he said, ‘That’s a good idea,’ so, we went through the drill, he said, ‘What we’ll do, we’ll pull the handle, get rid of the canopy, so that we can get out of the top at the front if anything happens,’ you know, that, and he said, ‘We'll, we’ll try.’ So he, he did a roller and it held up, but eh, and we went round again, came in, he said, ‘Well, here we go, hang on fellas.’ And eh, as he lowered the wing, bump [emphasis] down it went, straight onto the ground [laughs]. Round we went, twice [laughs]. We came to a halt about twenty yards from another Vulcan [laughs]. The bottom, our exit was okay, it was clear, actually, we could get out and the aero, the aeroplane was still upright, there was enough room for us to get out and clear off, which we did, as quickly as possible [laughs]. The aeroplanes left there with its wing on the ground, eh, yeh, a complete failure of the down leg had cracked [whispering], split, and all the hydraulic fluid had vented [?] to air. Nothing you could do about it [background noises].
CH: Let’s just pause this.
[interview paused]
PB: Crash landed twice in Rhodesia, [laughs] flying along and the pilot [background noises] said to me, ‘The controls have jammed,’ he said, ‘I can’t move the control column Phil, [background noises] can you come and give me a hand up here?’ I did, we couldn’t shift it at all, we were in a steady slow climb, so he said, ‘[unclear] I'm going to wind full nose trim on, we’ll go down and look for somewhere flat’ [laughs]. Which is what he did, [laughs] we did a very slow descent, we got two nav- cadets on board and I said, ‘Get in your crash landing position, it might be a bit bumpy when we land,’ but they [unclear] were very good you know, straight in, bent the props back and all the rest of it, chopped the ground up a bit, but er, opened the back door and the two lads jumped out, not even a bruise, yeah, yes. A clapped out old Anson you see, the control cables had dropped through the guides and jammed, you couldn’t move 'em, but there we are [laughs]. These are little things you’ve got to be ready for [laughs]. Yes, I had a time when I had to fly the aeroplane back when the pilot fell asleep, as well, poor [unclear] Freddy [laughs]. I said, ‘Fred, [laughs] we need to go back to base Fred’, [laughs] Fred Holloway, ‘What you say Phil?’ [laughs]. I said, ‘One eighty and head for Thornhill Freddy,’ [emphasis] [laughs] ‘oh, you’ll have to do it Phil’, I said, ‘Oh, crikey, I’ve not done this before Freddy,’ [laughs] ‘Nothing to it,’ he said, ‘Just keep it steady,’ he was right, you know I just [laughs], half an hour we were back over the top and he was awake by this stage. I said, ‘Do you think you could land it Freddy?’ oh, got the goose necks out there they are, I could see them, oh, he managed it. Ah, he’d been flying continually for, I think it was a week we’d been doing night flying and without any rest, or something like that, he’d overdone it [pause] yes, right oh, [pause] yes. Well the, the trips to the Congo were, well the Russians packed it in, they wouldn’t go, they, they’d got their aircraft out there, but , they said it was too dangerous, apparently. The weather was always icy [unclear], you know, going through the front but, we just, filled the old Hastings up with their soldiers and off we went and did it, but , we managed to get there and back okay.
CH: What was it that you were doing in the Congo?
PB: Ferrying the United Nations troops from, Nigeria and Ghana into the Congo to, as a peacekeeping — peacekeeping force really, because there were, having a, a dreadful war out there, Katanga, and political as well. They were slaughtering each other left, right and centre, as they do, out there, and so that’s what we were doing, ferrying the troops back and forth [pause]. RAF Transport Command, the black people saw 'em and thought they were commandos, that we were ferrying commandos in to attack them. And eh, we had to go through Leopoldville, which every time we went through, this chap in his ragged [unclear] came out with his hand, wanting so many thousand dollars so that we could go through and get into the Congo proper, where we wanted to be, and, I've forgotten how many thousand dollars we had to hand over, and if you didn’t they set up a light machine gun and trained it on the aeroplane, [laughs] so we paid [laughs]. Yes, we had to put on our United Nations hats, be part of the United Nations force, as opposed to the Royal Air Force [pause].
AB: I don’t know I didn’t hear what she said either Phil.
PB: Eh [unclear] yes, but , yes, yes, you never know — know when you were going to get through or not, that was the trouble, they tried to pull us back once because they thought we’d got the Prime Minister on board, they thought he was, the, the Prime Minister that had been giving them all the trouble, they thought we’d kidnapped him and we were taking him away [laughs] and they said, you must return to Leopoldville immediately, but er oh, it was old Bill Corker[?] who was flying, he says, ‘Tell 'em not bloody likely,’ [laughs] he said, ‘We’re going back to Accra as fast as we can [laughs] and we're not going back to Leopoldville, thank you’ [laughs]. Yes, that was their, the, the biggest problems were handling these people properly, so they could be very tricky these, black politicians. I’ve forgotten what his name was now but he was, [background noises] he caused a lot of trouble out there [pause], 'cause they’re all starving, and, we gave them all our food, all of us [unclear], as much as we could [pause].
AB: And this is one of the letters from the one he's talking about.
PB: Yes [unclear].
AB: Because they used to write regularly to us, letting us know what was going on in the other, the half and I just thought there might be something in here, erm, well there is about killing two Europeans before they got off, before we let you go we are going to kill two Europeans. I’d have to go through the whole of the letter for. I think they're the only two letters we kept, we had piles of them, didn’t we? [pause]. Yes, why I brought that out that was to show you that that’s how we used to communicate.
PB: I remember that, that’s the first time I saw Dennis’s name in, in print after he was , in the chapter called, “Men Like These”, yeah.
AB: Yes, it is only a small part of it, but I just thought that you would be interested, you know, because a lot of it happened in the era that you don’t remember. But, I think maybe David’s got the book.
PB: Oh yes, possibly yes, the one with the red cover, yeah, yes, bit tatty but , yes, yes it was a good book, yes.
AB: Any book that’s got a bit about the family in it, is good [laughs].
PB: I’m sixty, four, forty, KCs, but, as I say the aircrew of course, treat these things with er, well I, I can’t say it really, because its racist but er, [laughter] ‘Hello, hello darkies speak to me you black’ [laughs] and such like, as aircrew a lot, but, bit like that I’m afraid [laughs]. But, er, he’d never heard of it he said, but I said, 'Oh I can assure you it was an emergency [unclear] system during World War Two'.
AB: I know this has only got to do with [unclear].
CA: Not to mention the high jinks you got up to after a dining in night, and you decided to drive down to London to see the Queen, in a sports car, four of you, do you remember that?
AB: I remember them going, yeah. I remember them coming home [laughs] yeah, but that, is that the sort of thing you also want to know about?
PB: What's that?
AB: When you and, erm, what’s his name, all climbed into his sports car to go to visit his auntie, in London.
PB: In Mayfair.
AB: You and?
PB: Stan Grierson.
AB: And Ivor Galway.
PB: And Ivor Galway.
AB: All in their mess kit.
PB: Yes, not, not the best thing to do.
CA: Not having [?] imbibed a certain amount of alcohol?
PB: Weren’t in our right senses, no. ‘We’ll go and see my aunt, she lives in Mayfair [interrupted].
AB: This is from Cottesmore [unclear].
PB: 'She’s got a very nice flat’. ‘Okay Stan, yes, let’s go’. We get the car [laughs] oh dear.
AB: Carry on love.
PB: Yes, then all the wives panic, ‘Where’s my husband gone?’ [laughs]. ‘Don’t know, haven’t the faintest idea?’ We were on our way home, safe and sound.
AB: Yes, all of us were ringing each other up, the wives, to find out, is he home yet, to [unclear], Ivor’s wife, ‘No he’s not home yet, haven’t heard from him’, 'Haven’t you heard from them?’ ‘No.’ They were in London, in their mess kit, all in one sports car, they'd stayed the night, had their breakfast with auntie and then set off to come home. Arrived home at, oh I don’t know, maybe eleven o’clock, eleven am, to irate wives as you can well imagine, having been, been one [laughs]. Go on carry on, what happened then?
PB: Well, that was it wasn’t it, young and irresponsible, absolutely, totally irresponsible.
CA: As children, we were told you’d gone to see the Queen.
AB: Yes [laughs].
PB: Especially for a mature gentleman like you, yes.
AB: Well, you were the oldest member of the crew, you were the responsible one, all the others were young.
PB: Yes exactly, yes, I was the leader, yeah, yeah.
AB: I mean what a thing to do after a dining in night, you'll know about the dining in nights and how they, raucous they can get. Let’s go to London and see the Queen.
PB: It seemed a good idea at the time, yes, yes [laughs].
AB: You can imagine them arriving in London can’t you, all in their mess kit [pause]. Auntie didn’t turn a hair, did she?
PB: No.
AB: Gave them breakfast and sent them on their way [laughs].
PB: Yes, she did have a very nice flat, in Mayfair.
AB: It’s a pity those sort of things can’t come in the thing, 'cause they are hilarious, you know, but erm, what else did you do?
PB: Oh well, I’ve always been a good fellow you know that, I haven’t done anything.
AB: What about the ones in Nottingham? Auntie, in Nottingham, and Fosco?
PB: [laughs] Yes.
AB: I think we wives could write a book.
PB: Yes, come home, all is forgiven, Mother Vallance [laughs].
AB: This was, shall I carry on with it? This was one, one of the young men was, was violently sick when they went to stay in this house in Nottingham where they all used to go if they couldn’t get home 'cause the last bus went at seven o’clock at night, I mean, ridiculous really, so they used to go and stay, and he was very sick in the bedroom and he didn’t tell any of the crew, 'til he got home, and of course, she, the landlady went up and found all this, and she, she eh, was furious obviously. They all sent her a bunch of flowers and a letter saying, you know, we are sorry about this, and she wrote a letter back saying, all is forgiven, come home, love Mother Vallance [laughter]. 'Cause, this is when they were all at Coningsby.
PB: [laughs].
AB: But there’s lots of little stories like that, you know, that don’t come under the terms of flying, you know, but I think we should do a book on what the wives remember [laughs].
PB: Yes.
AB: Anymore?
PB: No, he’s still going strong, isn’t he Fosco?
AB: Yes, the one who was sick, he must be about, they were, they were all probably five or six years younger than Phil, he was the oldest member of the crew, erm, so he will probably be in his early eighties.
PB: Yes.
AB: Still lives at Coningsby. It's funny thinking about them all now, you know, it —
PB: Yes.
AB: 'Cause, Ivor Galway, the pilot of the plane that crashed, he used to live at Woodhall Spa.
PB: Yes ah.
AB: She had an unhappy end didn't she, committed suicide, a lot of the wives couldn’t take the pressures, as they were in those days, you know, the bomb and what not, you know. You, you never knew when they were called out on a QRA, does your husband, still do, is he still in the air force?
CH: No, it’s my son.
AB: Pardon?
CH: My son.
AB: Oh son. So, he would still do QRAs, rushed out in the middle of the night.
PB: Yes, that’s right.
AB: A lot of funny stories about QRAs and being called out.
PB: We used to wait for the call, ‘Attention, attention, this is the bomber controller for Waddington QRA only, readiness zero two is now in force’, and jumped in the car and straight out to the aeroplane and fire it up and get ready. That’s what they used to do [pause].
AB: It’s alright, that’s just a little passage, from the book. They arrived at the door in their flying kit having been brought home by bus because they were all, you know, a bit shaken.
PB: The MO thought we were all shook up, he said 'Go home', yes, I said 'I’m not shook up'.
AB: And we didn’t care less anyway we were, we were too busy with our sherry [laughs].
PB: Yes.
[laughter]
PB: Yes, QRA was a bit of, bit of a, bit of a bind but eh — [interrupted].
AB: And your son will know all about that if he, do they still do QRAs?
PB: Yes, well I suppose they do really eh, sleep in your kit and er, be ready to go eh, at a moment’s notice and it was eh, sort of broken sleep, that sort of thing, mind you at the same time, the food in the aircrew feeder was excellent eh, 'cause we had our own little restaurant, yes, but , [coughs] and of course, you could probably go a couple of nights without being called at all, and then suddenly, you know ‘Attention, attention, this is the bomber controller,’ and eh, and off you’d go, but, but you took your turn, you weren’t on it all the time [pause].
AB: Can I speak [whispered]. 'Cause that’s how a lot of the wives couldn’t cope because they never knew when they were called out on QRA, where they were going and what they were going to do. They could have been called to Russia and when they've passed a certain boundary time, place, they can’t turn round and come home again, they have to keep going, and a lot of the wives, lot of the wives could not cope with this, not knowing when their husbands went out on a QRA call, whether they were coming home or not.
PB: Yes.
AB: Especially the ones who were called out on the, the last, the Falkland do.
PB: Yes.
AB: They actually all wrote letters to their wives because once they got out they wouldn't have been able to turn round and come back.
PB: I think the really serious one was the missile crisis with Russia, you know, with the ships eh, going to Cuba, and J F Kennedy was the really serious one [pause]. That’s where — where we were on full alert, ready, ready to go, actually. Not that anyone wants to 'cause you know well that, there'd be nothing to come back to, if it ever happens, that’s why we want to stop these missiles spreading, it’s very difficult to do but we must try our best.
[laughter]
CH: I shall end that there. Thank you very, very, much Phil.
PB: Yes [laughs].
CH: Thank you.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Philip Batty
Description
An account of the resource
Philip Batty grew up in Walsall. He discusses the death of his older brother Dennis, a wireless operator with 226 Squadron, early in the Second World War. Philip volunteered for aircrew. After training, he was posted to 50 Squadron at RAF Sturgate as a wireless operator/ air gunner in May 1945. He was involved in Operation Dodge and United Nations peacekeeping in the Congo. He worked in Rhodesia and Cyprus and survived crash landings in a Vulcan and an Anson. He reminiscences about work colleagues and tells some humorous stories relating to his career in the Royal Air Force, which spanned 40 years.
Creator
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Cathie Hewitt
Date
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2016-10-14
Contributor
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Cathie Hewitt
Janet McGreevy
Format
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01:02:22 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABattyPH161014
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Congo (Democratic Republic)
Zimbabwe
Cyprus
Cuba
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
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1945-05
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
226 Squadron
50 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
B-29
Battle
Blenheim
bombing
crash
Distinguished Flying Medal
Initial Training Wing
killed in action
Lancaster
Lincoln
military living conditions
military service conditions
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operational Training Unit
RAF Bridlington
RAF Coningsby
RAF Madley
RAF Sturgate
RAF Wattisham
RAF Wyton
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/501/8392/PCurnockRM1602.2.jpg
643656b7e6ec193f16a6c4727abb34ce
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/501/8392/ACurnockRM160418.2.mp3
b80f69b98b79e3838478986eed3fab73
Dublin Core
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Title
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Curnock, Richard
Richard Murdock Curnock
R M Curnock
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Curnock, RM
Date
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2016-04-18
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
92 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Richard Curnock (1924, 1915605 Royal Air Force), his log book, letters, photographs and prisoner of war magazines. He flew operations with 425 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Richard Curnock and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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GR. This is Gary Rushbrook for the International Bomber Command Centre, Bomber Command Association. I am with Warrant Officer Richard Curnock, 425 Squadron and we are at Dicks’ home near Leicester in a village called Syston on the 18th of April 2016. Dick, just tell me a little about yourself, I know we are in Leicester, were you born in Leicester?
RC. No, I was born in Grantham [inaudible].
GR. So born in Grantham. Brothers, sisters?
RC. Three brothers I had Sam, Bob and myself, all three of us, well they went to higher school I went to elementary school myself and when the war came we all joined up together, well two joined up together in sequence with our age.
GR. Were you the youngest, oldest?
RC. Yes. I’m the youngest, and there was four years between us and Sam was the oldest and unfortunately he got killed and he went.
GR. Did you all join the RAF?
RC. He joined the RAF first and he passed out on, well he went over to Canada on training. I have got cousins and all sorts over in Canada. He had a great time over there and so when he came back he was in the [sic], where did he go into first. Oh I think he was in some training unit, but the next thing we knew he’d been seconded to the British Overseas Airways which is a civil airline and he was flying [inaudible] Whitley aircraft which is one of the worst things in the world. The Air Force sold fifteen of them, I think it was, to British Overseas Airways ‘cos they wanted to start a line up taking spare parts and that down to Gibraltar then onto the Middle East and he was, he was the pilot for one of these aircraft, fifteen of them sold to the Air Force.
GR. Had he, obviously we are going to talk about yourself in a bit, had he already done a tour with Bomber Command or anything?
RC. No he was straight over from training into BOAC and he got doing trips down to Gibraltar but on the fourth trip I think it was, he went on down [inaudible] there they had some aircraft, they wouldn’t fly properly. One time it was tail heavy, next time it was nose heavy, there was always something wrong with it and told him to have it [inaudible] from BOAC and give it some repairs on the tail unit and so they did that, gave him the parts to sort it out, so they thought would sort it out and they took off from Gibraltar and they went flying over the sea there, the bay, and all of a sudden it just dived into the sea. That was in 1943 [voice fades away].
GR. Just dived into the sea.
RC. No reason at all [inaudible]. That was in 1943.
GR. Was you in the Air Force by then?
RC. No I was at home then.
GR. Well we will backtrack a bit, so your elder brother did obviously volunteer for the RAF, middle brother?
RC. He volunteered as well.
GR. For the RAF?
RC. For the RAF yeah. He was accepted in the normal training and he finished up in Canada as well and he came back and he was on training Airspeed Oxfords. This is where I first met him, I didn’t know he was anywhere near me. We’d been up in Dalcross and saw him and I was on a gunnery course up there, air gunnery and flying in those things, Ansons.
GR. Ansons. Looking at a model of an Anson, looking at a lot of models actually but yes, the Anson training aircraft.
RC. Little did I know but he was on flying Airspeed Oxfords on night, night vision courses, sorry for night vision and I happened to be walking out one night with the lads. In front of me was some other airmen and I thought I know that walk [laugh] no it can’t be, it was, it was my brother, I didn’t know he was there. The last I knew he was in Canada. He’d come back [inaudible] in the Mediterranean doing, he was doing a bit of training up there, doing night flying. So we had three weeks together up there and he got posted away somewhere and he posted out of the Air Force I didn’t know what happened to him. But for some reason he was post, transferred from the Air Force into the Royal Signals but why he was taken I have no idea.
GR. And he doesn’t know.
RC. He wouldn’t know now because he is dead now.
GR. Yes, yes.
RC. He was supposed to be on a night vision flying course but I never knew, the next thing I knew was that [inaudible] he was a year later he was, it was over a year later he was in [inaudible] sorry.
GR. No, no, no, it’s absolutely fine.
RC. He got transferred to the Royal Signals then went over to D-Day over on the continent for the rest of the war.
GR. So the younger brother, yourself when did you join up, you obviously volunteered?
RC. That’s me, volunteered in 19 [Pause].
GR. Well am just looking through the memoirs and I can see a photograph of you in uniform in 1941 is that the three of you. You must have joined up in about 1941.
RC. Yeah oh I was in the ATC for ages, about four years and then the [pause].
GR. You obviously followed your two brothers.
RC. Yes I followed them and [pause]
GR. Where did you do your training?
RC. We went to start, first of all down in London and went to a oh a big hotel somewhere.
GR. Would that be St Johns’ Wood, Lords Cricket Ground?
RC. Lords Cricket Ground and we were stationed down there [inaudible] for lessons and that, marching, used to march like mad up the streets of London and my feet have worn out [laugh]. We got quite a lot of that down there for a few inoculations and that when we first went there and boy they were stiff.
GR. Yes your arms were too many, too many injections.
RC. Every time you moved your arms ,oh, ah, somebody hit you, oh, oh. Anyway we got over it and from there I went onto Bridlington, Bridgnorth for a start for training as as air gunner and from Brignorth we went up to Bridlington and we did a lot of work on the Aldis lamp, signalling. We were sending on the beach to somebody up on the pier, letters and figures, and reading this back and we were there for, oh, probably there, how long I was there, I can’t remember. From Bridlington where did we go after Bridlington, oh, to Scotland.
GR. Dalcross.
RC. Dalcross and at Dalcross we were flying Ansons.
GR. I think from Dalcross you moved onto Wellsbourne?
RC. That’s right that was the Conversion Unit and I went on to Wellingtons.
GR. Is that where you met your crew?
RC. That’s where we met crew first one that I met was those three there, the bottom three.
GR. Right I am looking at a photograph and those three gentlemen are?
RC. Bob Friskey, Eugene Fulham and the Skipper Chuck John were the three I met there and [inaudible] next one up.
GR. I think the other member of the crew was Gordon Dimswell.
RC. Oh Gordon that’s right, he was the bomb aimer.
GR. He was the bomb aimer.
RC. Yes that was the crew of the Wellington [inaudible]
GR. Which was the Wellington.
RC. Yeah we flew from Rosebourne in Yeadon.
GR. And then I presume you would have moved onto Heavy Conversion Unit where you would have picked up two other crew members.
RC. That’s right we picked up Gene
GR. Gene Fulham
RC. No
GR. Ginger Wheadon.
RC. Ginger yeah, Ginger was the [interrupted]
GR. And Wes Carrick, you normally picked up a flight engineer and another air gunner.
RC. Yes a flight engineer.
GR. Just looking at another photograph, yeah.
RC. And the other one was, eh.
GR. Another air gunner.
RC. Another air gunner [inaudible].
GR. That’s Wes Carrick.
RC. Yes.
GR. Just looking at a reunion photo with Wes on.
RC. [inaudible] we picked him up and then we went to a Conversion Unit.
GR. Then you spent about four to six weeks at a Heavy Conversion Unit getting used to flying four engined.
RC. [Dick speaking quietly in the background under Gary]
GR. What aircraft were you flying at the Heavy Conversion Unit.
RC. Halifaxes.
GR. I know some people used Stirling’s, you went straight onto Halifax.
RC. [inaudible] Halifax three.
GR. Halifax III’s yeah, what did you think of the Halifax?
RC. Fantastic, yeah it was a good aircraft [inaudible] yeah chucked about a bit being the rear gunner, skipper was good at landing most times, sometimes I was bounced, head to toe, boom, boom, boom, boom.
GR. This was during the Heavy Conversion Unit, and when did you find out what squadron you would be going to?
RC. I think we moved on from there, [inaudible] Conversion Unit then onto the squadron and eh.
GR. That’s 425
RC. That’s 425 Squadron yes and.
GR. Was that French or Canadian?
RC. French Canadian
GR. French Canadian squadron.
RC. Yes French Canadian squadron on eh
GR. I think they flew from Tolthorpe and then Dishforth wasn’t it.
RC. No Dishforth first Tolthorpe second, yes it was only our second trip was in fact. Did one trip and got half way there and turned around engine failure.
GR. That was your first trip?
RC. First trip, engine failure, I think we only did about three or four hours in the air and had to turn back, over France, had a port engine failure.
GR. How did the crew feel about that, you know, your first operation, was it daylight or night time?
RC. Night time.
GR. Night time.
RC. Yeah well you just worked it out, starting on our first trip this sort of thing happens and of course we had [interrupted] to turn around.
GR. And that’s the pilots decision to, eh.
RC. Yes, turn about, drop the bombs in the sea and come back home. Our next trip was, where was that.
GR. Your first mission was the 24th/ 25th.
RC. Yeah that’s right.
GR. Then according to your records you flew the following night.
RC. We did yeah.
GR. Augsburg.
RC. Augsburg yes.
GR. What happened then?
RC. We didn’t get there [laughs].
GR. So after your first trip which was aborted, your second trip.
RC. We got within I think we were about eighty odd miles away from where we were going, which was down at Augsburg. I think we were probably an hours flying from the target. The skipper said he could see the target, I couldn’t in the back, but they could see the target and everything. Target so and so, so and so the next thing I knew ‘Woom’ the anti aircraft.
GR. Anti aircraft fire.
RC. Anti aircraft fire hit the port wing in between the two engines the right place and set them both on fire and so I was in [inaudible] nothing but flames coming past my turret and it eh.
GR. And I can’t presume to think how you felt.
RC. You can’t no. Eh it was such a bang, just like dustbins, bang and so the skipper came on and said we have been hit, I think we will have to abort [inaudible]. I think we all said ‘do you want us to bale out?’ We all said our names, we got the message [inaudible]. The mid upper gunner and myself got out the back end [inaudible] he came down [inaudible].
GR. When you say the back end was that out through the rear turret.
RC. No I didn’t go out through the.
GR. There was a door, wasn’t there?
RC. Yeah, on the right hand side and so the mid upper and myself went out from the rear part. But the thing was we said ‘all right Skipper we are going now, happy landings’ or some stupid thing and as I was getting out of the turret the parachute was in the fuselage anyway [inaudible] so put that on and I said ‘remember what you got to do.’ ‘Cause you have all sorts of things plugged in there, you got to take these things out. So I thought alright, I was getting the things on before I took me helmet off, took everything else off before I put my helmet back on again, it’s going to be cold out there. And the sort of things that went through your mind you know so I spoke to Wes who came down and shook hands and said ‘see you later’ the stupid things you did so we both went out the back, there were flames dashing by us. And I went out, I think I, yes, I went out first, he said you [inaudible] and went out in front and he followed me behind and the things you think of when you are floating down. The first thing was count to ten before you pull your rip cord, then I felt my parachute was clipped on, I thought [inaudible] floating down I thought one, two, oh bugger it [laugh] and I pulled it [inaudible]. Floating down, do nothing [inaudible] coming down, no idea where we were, there were towns and everything but apparently we were coming down over a town. Of course towns have got buildings and when I started coming down I thought what am I going to come down on [inaudible]. Things coming up I thought ‘God, I am going to land on a Church’ and then I thought they are trees and I landed in between two big poplar trees. There was a little tree down below and apple tree, I shot through this apple tree.
GR. You went into the apple tree which was lower down.
RC. It was lower down and I frightened the squirrels a bit [laugh]. Anyway [inaudible] this could take time. I sat there and thought, oh, there is an air raid siren going. Oh [inaudible] taking my outer clothing of, get me flying suit, it was definitely colder, as it was winter time oh I tried, I climbed over the wall in the garden onto the road, I thought, how am I going to get out of this place? I walked round to see where I am, [inaudible] every time I walked out to go somewhere there was an all clear, so they had two, two all clears in [inaudible]. So one of those is gone, saw me walking round and I heard the siren go again so I thought quick turn around, I thought I had better get back into the place [inaudible] So I went back into the garden. I went in, put my flying clothes back on and went to sleep. Thought the best thing I could do. I couldn’t see myself going to walk out through a town with flying clothes, wouldn’t have got very far and, eh.
GR. And did the thought, because by 1944 obviously the German civilian population didn’t take kindly to Bomber Command going over.
RC. They didn’t.
GR. And we have heard some stories.
RC. Well I could tell you when we were taken from the police station.
GR. So what happened to you in the morning, was you?
RC. In the morning, sorry, I was still asleep and there was a squirrel came over me, that woke me up and two old ladies walked out of the house next door to me.
GR. Saw you.
RC. Well they saw the parachute stuck up the tree [inaudible]. I thought I will get somebody round in a minute. Anyway I waited a minute and a policeman came round. He was shorter than me, I have never seen anything like it, he’d got a hat, black, it was a big black helmet, nearly as big as he was. I nearly laughed my head off but thought I had better not, so anyway he told me to take my flying suit off, so I took those off and he had a bicycle there and made me put the stuff on the bicycle and we rode to the police station and he had a gun pointed at me [inaudible]. Took me round the police station and from there they, what did he do? He took us round to the Gestapo headquarters and, eh.
GR. When you said they had.
RC. The police had contacted the Air Force.
GR. Was you on your own or were there any more of your crew.
RC. I was on my own then but they picked up the mid upper gunner and the bomb aimer, three of us and they took us back to the Gestapo Headquarters but on the way down they decided they would take us in a tram. Of course there are Civilians in a tram [inaudible] I didn’t know whether we were going to get out of there after that because on the lamp posts on the way bodies were hung up. American airmen.
GR. American airmen were hanging from the lamp posts.
RC. Yeah hanging from the lamp posts which didn’t go down very well with us and we got lots of black looks from people around about us and we had to get off it. So then to Gestapo headquarters, I got all my flying kit on over me arms and that and the wireless operator, he done a stupid thing he landed in a tree and instead of finding a way to get down from the tree he decided to release himself, ‘woom’ dropped how [inaudible] fractured his spine. So we gets in this Gestapo headquarters and he was there and he said his back hurts and that. And this Gestapo chap comes in from the other room, picked up a chair and went to hit him with it. So it just happened I had got my clothes over my arm, my flying clothes, I put it up and stopped him hitting him, he was bashing him on the head with a chair. So anyway from then on I think we stayed one night in three cells and then they took us, we had three nights in a room, single room, as big as this. You was put in there and kept in there, I think it was for three nights they kept us in this room and kept coming in asking questions, switching the light off, keeping you in the dark and that went on for about three days.
GR. You yourself were physically?
RC. Oh no and then they took us in and put us all together in the interrogation. Taken in one at a time, the officer in the room first thing he said to me ‘did you like flying your Halifax’. ‘Yes it was very nice’. Oh dear, so he was going on about this and he said ‘let’s see, Canadian’, ‘no, not Canadian’, [inaudible] ‘no, French Canadian’. He didn’t like that much. [inaudible] This commander, commander so and so, could be. We know his daughter and he gave us the name of his daughter. He said ‘didn’t you go out with his daughter?’ I said ‘no, not me’ [laugh]. Yeah, that sort of thing, he didn’t say much about the Aircraft. He got sheets and sheets of stuff on the Halifax [inaudible]. And from there they took us to, where did they take us to, they took us to interrogation centre.
GR. Was that Dulagluft.
RC. Dulagluft from there [inaudible] what was going to happen from there on [inaudible]. We had the Americans [inaudible] I can’t think.
GR. A bag, looked like a suitcase. Little suitcase to put all your.
RC. Which had everything from a pipe.
GR. Did you get any Red Cross parcels then, I know you got them later?
RC. Yeah did later but for a start [inaudible] anyway we, we got this parcel with all the bits in it, beautiful shirts, underwear, ties, cigarettes, tobacco, pipes
GR. Everything you could.
RC. Everything you wanted.
GR. Just backtracking, did all the crew get out?
RC. Yes we all got out.
GR. You all got out.
RC. [inaudible] The wireless operator, he finished up in hospital but the rest of us finished up in the same camp.
GR. So you all got out of the aircraft.
RC Yeah we all got out all right yeah.
GR. So you were at Dulagluft feeling a bit sorry for yourselves.
RC. Yes we all were, anyway we weren’t treated too bad you know. They decided they had to move us out of the camp somewhere and I think from there we went to [interrupted].
GR. You ended up at Stalagluft VI Hydegrug.
RC. Hydekrug which was up in, eh.
GR. Lithuania.
RC. Lithuania which was miles away from where we were shot down or the interrogation centre [interrupted]
GR. What did you think of the Prisoner of War camp?
RC. Well it took us about seven or eight days in cattle trucks to get there for a start. That was a strain for a start, especially if you wanted to go to the toilet and where do you go to the toilet in a, in a cattle truck? Which is, the cattle truck is divided into three portions, one end aircrew, other end aircrew ,the German guards in the middle. If you wanted a wee or anything we made a hole in the corner of the carriage it was all you could do and that was seven days, you thought you would never get off that train. It wasn’t our last trip, oh dear our longest and from then on we [inaudible] to Poland we started off, I think we.
GR. You will have been in the prison camp about nine months.
RC. We had been there in the war, yeah.
GR. And then what was well known as the long march, that is when they started moving all the prisoners from the East to the West because the Russians were advancing.
RC. Well we were [interrupted].
GR. What was life like in the camp, you were there nine months?
RC. It wasn’t too bad in the camps, but it was a well used camp so people who were in there got used to it, to life in there. I wasn’t too bad, we used to get, we had the parties and people doing stage, eh/
GR. Shows.
RC. And that sort of thing.
GR. And did you get your Red Cross food parcels through alright or did they start to dwindle off.
RC. Dwindled off. They were not too bad for a start and then they went sour on us, they brought one food parcel between fourteen men which wasn’t very much and it was a job for anybody that was in charge of the of the camp, the rations.
GR. To determine what you got.
RC. Ah, how many men to a parcel, you get about seven or eight men to a parcel, some were to ten to one parcel.
GR. And was you a smoker or did you use your cigarettes as currency.
RC. We used them for both. I had a pipe, I used to fill my pipe up and light it up, couple of puffs on it, somebody would come [inaudible] have a puff [inaudible] seven or eight men queuing up for it [inaudible] just before, it wasn’t long [slightly mumbled]
GR. How many of the crew ended up on the same camp?
RC. Six of us.
GR. Oh right so you all ended up in the same camp.
RC. Yeah two, me and the engineer we were in the same room and four Canadians were in another one. Yeah but we [inaudible] the easiest way because the Canadians went with the Canadians and we went with the English. And the room I was in was called D9 and it was for general use. The people that read the news, the news readers and the chap who took the news off the radio, were in our room and the camp Commandant, no all the people who had jobs in the camp were in that room, yeah.
GR. Did you have any specific job or eh?
RC. No, no I was just general dogs body [laugh].
GR. And then round about Christmas 1944 or very early ‘45 they moved you out the camps didn’t they?
RC. Yep and [inaudible]
GR. And obviously it was known as the long march because I know some of the men were literally on the road for four to five months, how long?
RC. I was about three weeks.
GR. About three weeks yeah.
RC. That was long enough.
RC. But, eh.
GR. Then I think you all ended up in a place called Fallingbostel.
RC. Fallingbostel yes.
GR. Which was like a transit prisoner of war camp, wasn’t it.
RC. There were Americans there as well, a unit of the Americans. Then from that place they shipped us out in April I think it was. They said you have got to go for a walk now. We said ‘all right do we need anything?’ [inaudible] the more people took with them [inaudible]. The Canadians apparently were the worst, their folks used to send them over ski, skates and all sorts of things, and places to skate in [inaudible].
GR. We are just looking through a very famous book called ‘Handle With Care’ which is what a prisoner did of all the different cartoons and drawings. And is there a picture here of the Canadians going out.
RC. A few cartoons.
GR. Yes, because you all had your own little log book that all your colleagues did drawings in, yeah.
RC. That’s another book.
GR. That’s another book, yeah. So when you started off on the march had the weather deteriorated or was it?
RC. April time.
GR. Not too bad then?
RC. Not too bad.
GR. Not too bad, and did you know the War was coming to an end.
RC. Well we knew more or less everybody was being pushed back [inaudible] It shouldn’t be too long, we just wondered how long, but I forget [inaudible]
GR. I will go back to the other one.
RC. Yeah, We crossed over the River Elbe and that [inaudible] a lone Spitfire cruising round this bridge, and machine gunners, New Zealanders on each end, trying to shoot at it [inaudible] we could watch it from where we were we were sitting , by the bridge, we could watch this aircraft, it was one of the single aircraft around. The machine guns belting away at it like hell, four machine guns belting away like hell, they didn’t get near it [inaudible] plastic eyes [laugh].
GR. And obviously you didn’t want the attention from the Spitfire because you didn’t want it to come down.
RC. No.
GR. No. So you are on the March, I must admit I am just looking through your memoirs and you have highlighted the 19th of April. Was that when you were attacked by the Typhoons?
RC. That’s when we got hit by the Typhoons, yeah, yeah.
GR. Which I know was obviously an incident that has been well documented.
RC. It has, yes.
GR. Can you just tell me a little about what happened that day?
RC. We had just gone through or been dished out with Red Cross parcels, we got initially Red Cross parcels and we had come through the main forest and we had come out where it was a bit clearer and we saw these aircraft flying away from us. I thought, oh they are probably some of ours and didn’t think any more about it. The next thing we know the four Typhoons came belting [inaudible] firing like mad. I flung, well flung myself on the floor, I was in a ditch, if you could call it a ditch. It would probably be a bit wider than this room and it would probably be about that deep.
GR. Dick is saying about twelve inches deep, so not very deep at all.
RC. I had been in this ditch [inaudible] I thought was a tree or something, it should have been a tree but it wasn’t, it must have been weed and it was about fourteen inches high [inaudible]
GR. You were trying to hide behind it.
RC. Didn’t do any good. The chap next to me, he got one through his shoulder, a bullet and the chap that was behind me in his heel, took it in his heel.
GR. So both men next to you were wounded. So not a very nice experience and they obviously didn’t know they mistook you for German soldiers or a column moving up so.
JC. And apparently one of the, what you may call it, never flew again.
GR. I bel, I believe the actual squadron leader who was the, once he found out what had happened he, he, he couldn’t live with it so.
JC. That’s right.
GR. I am just looking in your memoirs and Gordon Wheadon, Ginger, was he killed?
JC. He was our engineer.
GR. So your actual engineer was one of the ones killed.
JC. Yeah he was, he was behind me, I never knew he was in the column behind me somewhere, he must have run out across this field and got killed by bullets. I had to go and find him, I couldn’t find him anywhere [inaudible]
GR. And I think, again, there was about thirty five POWs killed that day and six German guards.
JC. Yeah.
GR. So obviously you carried on, tell me about the end of the war, how did the war finish for you?
JC. Eh well I finished in a very nice place [inaudible] when I came back from Germany.
GR. Sorry, so you are on the long march, you are marching and marching and marching, no, no my fault, did you walk into Americans or did you walk into a British Column or?
JC. We were we’d been marching [inaudible] to a little village and we stopped the night there and we woke up in the morning there were no guards about. I thought that’s funny there is no guards about, and then we looked out and said ‘there are no guards anywhere’ and then a lone American, was it American, I think he was American on a motorbike came along oh [inaudible] Oh he said ‘you are free now’, we said ‘you what.’ Then there was all hell bent trying to find transport to take us back to Luneburg which was about twenty, thirty miles away and some of our boys disappeared and came back. When they came back they brought a bus, a fire engine, horses, motor bikes, anything that was on wheels, anything we commandeered and so we then we had to make our way back down to Luneburg and the roads were in terrible condition or [inaudible] There was hardly room for one vehicle to go through but we just kept going and came down to the River Elbe, over the Elbe pontoon bridge and can’t think of the name of the place.
GR. So at Luneburg were you then flown home or.
JC. Yeah we stayed there, I think, for one night or two nights in Luneburg while they took our particulars down and then we got to, I forgot the sort of aircraft, there were Halifaxes and Lancasters.
GR. What did you fly back in?
JC. I flew back in a Lancaster.
GR. So you flew out over Germany in a Halifax and came back in a Lancaster [laugh]
JC. Yeah and treated [inaudible] when we got back on the airfield WAAFs and airmen everywhere, greeting, not that we wanted anything straight away [inaudible] [laugh].
GR. And I think by the end of the war there was something like ten and a half thousand RAF Bomber Command veterans exactly like yourself being flown back home.
GR. Did you stay in the RAF long or were you demobbed.
RC. I still had about ten months to go and I went to, I went to see a squadron leader, he said [inaudible] I said ‘yeah, I fancy a ground job now’, ‘oh’ he said ‘there is plenty of ground jobs. First three, pigeon keeper, clerk, what was the other one, there was three of them [inaudible] ‘five or six months to do, I don’t want to do that’. He said ‘what do you want to do?’, I said ‘well the best thing I can do is be a driver’. ‘Ha, everybody wants to be a driver’ so I said ‘ I tell you what put me down for MT driver or nothing’. It didn’t take long for the MT course to come through, I started me holidays initially. The first place I went to, oh I had a, I think I had a month or two months at an MTU, Maintenance Unit, we used to go round various airfields dismantling Spitfires. I was the driver and I had six mechanics came round with me and a corporal, we dismantled aircraft, to scrap and empty petrol out of them.
GR. Had a nice time in Italy.
RC. [inaudible] In a camp in tents for a start, when we went over there and it was beautiful weather and that and a job came up. They wanted three vehicles to go down to Southern Italy to pick up an officers’ equipment whose station was closing down and the equipment clearing out from it. Three, three tonners to go down, our MT Officer at the time was an ex aircrew man and so he said to me do you want a job, there’s you and there’s ‘em, there’s I have forgotten what his name was, two of us ex aircrew, he was ex aircrew the MT Officer, really good chap, ex aircrew. The corporal driver and the corporal knew the way down, knew the way down through Italy, stopping at Rome and [inaudible] Naples and all sorts of places, you name it. So we had three, three tonners and we had three guards in the back and went down there and stopped in Naples and everywhere we could on the way down.
GR. Very good.
JC. And the same on the way back, brilliant time, anyway.
GR. I am sure you deserved it after being in the prison camp for so long.
JC. Yeah.
GR. Did you want to stay in or did you have a choice?
JC. No I wanted to get out, Anyway, yes, came back from the trip down Italy and there wasn’t much else to do so they decided to send us home and they did and I got demobbed at the same time.
GR. I think that was early, early 1947.
JC. Yeah.
GR. And that was the war finished. Right so I am going to switch everything off, that was absolutely wonderful.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Richard Curnock
Creator
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Gary Rushbrooke
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-04-18
Format
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00:53:16 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACurnockRM160418, PCurnockRM1602
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
United States Army Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Richard Curnock was born in Grantham and joined the Royal Air Force in 1941. He achieved the rank of warrant officer and served in 425 Squadron. Richard tells of how he followed his two older brothers into the services, and his time serving in the Air Training Corp and in the Heavy Conversion Unit. Richard was in a Canadian crew and baled out after his aircraft was hit. He talks about his capture including details of United States Army Air Force aircrew being hanged from lamp posts and interrogation at the hands of the Gestapo. Talks about his time as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft 6. Richard took also part in the long march, when prisoners were moved west ahead of the Russian advance. Recollects when they were strafed by mistake by Typhoons, being flown back home, and his post war service in Italy dismantling Spitfires.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--London
Germany
Germany--Lüneburg
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Bad Fallingbostel
Lithuania
Lithuania--Šilutė
Italy
425 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bale out
bombing
demobilisation
Dulag Luft
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
lynching
Operation Exodus (1945)
Oxford
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF Dishforth
RAF Tholthorpe
Red Cross
sanitation
shot down
Spitfire
Stalag Luft 6
strafing
the long march
training
Typhoon
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/152/2146/AHemsworthR150729.1.mp3
da4b01008a71d120fe27835be4e272cc
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
Hemsworth, Ron
Ron Hemsworth
R Hemsworth
Description
An account of the resource
266 items. The collection consists of one oral history interview with Ron Hemsworth (1472158 Royal Air Force) and 265 photographs, mostly taken at Dulag Luft, Stalag Luft 1 and Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camps
The photographs have been organised according the initial letters of the caption.
A consists of 19 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in August 1942. They cover the non commissioned officers’ arts & crafts exhibition: some models are for display and others are for use; there are also paintings and jewellery.
B of 54 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 1 and Dulag Luft, covering sporting, theatrical, musical and model making activities. The funeral of Sergeant J C Shaw, who was shot whilst attempting to escape is covered with several photographs.
C consists of 42 photographs taken at the sports day at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in August 1942. Activities include rugby, running, high jumping, long jumping, long distance walking, shot putting, discus throwing and basketball. Betting on the events was carried on.
D consists of 42 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in 1942 and 1943. They cover theatrical, musical and model activities. The plays were written or adapted by the airmen. Some of the models seen in section A are being sailed or steamed on the camp pond.
E consists of 39 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in March and April 1943. They cover three plays written or adapted by the airmen.
F consists of 28 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3, Stalag Luft 1 and Dulag Luft prisoner of war camps. They cover two plays written or adapted by the airmen. Also shown are views of the camp, four recaptured escapees, a sentry in his box, the NCOs rugby team and Christmas dinner 1940.
G consists of 38 photographs taken at the Flieger Jockey Club Gala Day at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in August 1943. There are many varied fancy dress themes in addition to jockeys - an American cheerleader and an Uncle Sam, cowboys and Indians, a Welsh and a Scottish section, Indian (Asian) marching band, Maoris, Highland dancing, a lot of men dressed as women, bands, top hatted 'toffs'. Betting activities were carried out on the results of the hobby horse type races shown.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ron Hemsworth and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hemsworth, R
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-04
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.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Clare Bennett. The interviewee is Mr Ron Hemsworth. The interview is taking place at Mr Hemsworth’s home near Bourne on the 29th of July 2015. Well, Ron, lets first of all talk about your early childhood if we may. You were born in Peterborough.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Ninety three years ago. Do you remember much of your early childhood?
RH: Not a lot. Not a lot. [laughs] I remember when I was about five I’d had enough of school so I climbed over the gates and went to the recreation ground and played on the swings with another boy and all the while we were there, ‘Is there anybody after us?’ [laughs] I can’t remember much but as I got older I, me and another friend started the Peterborough Model Flying Club and we, I stayed in that until even after the war so we was always mad on aircraft and where I lived at that time was close to what was called Westwood Aerodrome and the aircraft always, well, nine times out of ten landed over our house and they were so low you could see who the pilot was practically. Hawker Harts. Funnily enough a friend of mine when he had to join up that’s where he went to and another friend of mine was at the same place and I think he stayed there most of the war. He used to go up and take the met report. He had a nice cushy job. And of course we used to get all these air displays. I can’t remember the name of the most prolific one. Used to do all sorts of stupid things but we always used to go to those. We couldn’t stay away. And when it come to joining up I decided that I would volunteer for air crew which was the way that you could get in and they said if you was in a model flying club you stood a pretty good chance of being air crew. Whether there was any truth in it I don’t know but anyway we got in and I joined up on the 1st of January. I started the year right. That would have been 1941.
CB: What did your parents, your parents were around at this time.
RH: Oh yes. Oh yes.
CB: And did they, were they happy for you to join up?
RH: Well I don’t suppose so. We never, we never mentioned it. [laughs]
CB: But it was what you’d set your heart on.
RH: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Did you have a particular crew position you wanted to do?
RH: Well everybody wanted to be a pilot didn’t they?
CB: Including you?
RH: Yes. Everybody. Everybody wanted to be a fighter pilot. I don‘t know why. Well I suppose probably safer than a bomber pilot, I don’t know, and actually I went in the first place as a W/Op AG.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Wireless operator/AG. But I failed the Morse code on sixteen words a minute. That was enough to drive you mad.
CB: Where was this at?
RH: At Blackpool.
CB: Oh yeah.
RH: I said I’d never go back and I never went back. You can imagine what Blackpool was like in the middle of winter. It was terrible. And the RAF took over, well all the places really. You know. And –
CB: Were you in a hotel or a guest room?
RH: Oh no. We were in guest house.
CB: Ah.
RH: And some of them were very good to us actually and some of them weren’t. And one we was at, one of the men, he was a friend of Charlie Kunz, the pianist and he used to give us, he used to give us a tune every night you know. That was alright. We were there having a tune one night and the boss came in with a dead cat and put it on the fire. Well everybody was up in arms. We went and reported it but nobody wanted to know.
CB: Oh dear.
RH: He said, ‘Well I’ve got nowhere else to,’ he said, ‘I can’t bury it ‘cause all I’ve got is concrete around the back.’ Every, everybody vacated the room quickly. And then when I failed that course I went on, I went in to the stores for a while while I was waiting for an air gunner course which, in those days you had to wait quite a while to get on one. Anyway, eventually I was posted to [pause] on the Fosse Way.
CB: Swinderby.
RH: Swinderby. Swinderby. Yeah. I went to Swinderby and of course everybody said, ‘Oh you’ll be here for years.’ Nobody, everybody was waiting. And I was only there a month or two and I got a course.
CB: How were things at Swinderby?
RH: Oh quite ok. Yeah. I went into the stores there as well. Oh, that, that was alright. But from there, after about a month I went into flying control. Now that that was a lovely job that was. I was in charge of keeping the availability of aircraft, of aerodromes. It was a huge book with every aerodrome in England on it and we used to get phone calls through such and such an aerodrome is not available, there’s a crash on such and such a runway and all that. All that had to be put down in the book. Yeah. So I was there for quite a while. There was only three of us in there. You wouldn’t run one of them for, with three people would you? Not today. And I mean I didn’t know anything about anything anyway and the one who was in charge was a sergeant pilot that had been, he’d been in a crash and he was sort of resting but I mean we didn’t know anything. Nothing in particular really. There were and there was, there was him, myself and a WAAF on the radio. That’s all there was. Anyway, from there on I went to, I can’t remember, oh I went to air gunnery school at [pause] up on the east coast near Scarborough. Bridlington.
CB: Ah.
RH: I can’t remember what number that was.
CB: No. Don’t worry.
RH: But from there we went to Morpeth and that’s when we did our air gunnery. And that was spectacular. We had Polish pilots and they were absolutely mad.
CB: What sort of planes would this be at this time?
RH: Do you know I was trying to tell somebody the other day? They were aircraft that nobody else wanted actually. They were supposed to have been torpedo bombers for the navy but they weren’t successful at all so they dumped them all at the –
CB: Albacores?
RH: No. They weren’t Albacores. No.
CB: Not to worry. Doesn’t matter.
RH: Yeah.
CB: So you, did you get on with these Polish pilots? They were -
RH: We got on fine with them. In fact, after the war one of them was a friend of mine for years but you know they’d do things like, ‘They say this aircraft won’t fly on one engine. Well it will. I’ll show you,’ and then switch one off you know. Absolutely mad. Yeah. I can remember while we was at Bridlington we were doing PT on the, on the beach and two Spitfires came over and they shot us up on the beach at about nought feet. Well everybody fell flat on the sand and then these two Spitfires went out to sea. They were so low one of their wings caught the sea. He did about ten cartwheels and burst into flames.
CB: Oh dear.
RH: Yeah. And they were both Polish pilots. The other one shot up to about twenty thousand feet. I don’t know what he told them when he got back. [laughs] Anyway, that was, after air gunnery school then we went to Honeybourne. Honeybourne was next. Cow Honeybourne and -
CB: This would be your OTU. Your -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Operational Training Unit.
RH: And we weren’t crewed up or anything then.
CB: No.
RH: We were all this and that. And I know it was a terrible day when we got there about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and there was about twenty people got off the train and everybody was saying, ‘I suppose we wait for transport,’ you know so we were hanging about and this Aussie came up. He said, ‘What’s everybody doing?’ So we said, ‘Well, we don’t know. We’re just waiting.’ ‘Where’s the telephone?’ So he got on the telephone. He said, ‘There’s about twenty of us here waiting at the station for transport. Get it down here quick.’
CB: Was he an officer or just a, just -
RH: No. He was only a sergeant. I thought he’d be alright, you know. He was a pilot. Anyway, after we’d soon got to Honeybourne we had to crew up. Well I suppose everybody knows how we crewed up. Everybody in a room. Just walk around and find who you want you know and I got Bruce. The one that said, ‘Send somebody down’. I got Bruce. He were brilliant. He really was. Yeah. He looked a bit like Churchill and he was more or less his build. Quite fat you know. Yeah. And we went on a, on a course while we was there. Escape course and that. And we had to do everything at the double. It was an army place we went to. Even when you went for your meal you had to go at the double. So we passed Bruce on the way, walking. He said, ‘If you pomme goers want to run,’ he said, ‘You run.’ he said, ‘I’m walking.’ And he never did run [laughs]. He walked everywhere. It was when we were, had to climb over this wall and the rest of the crew trying to push him over this wall [laughs]. It was hilarious really. He always said, ‘If anything happened to the aircraft I’ll never get out.’ Of course poor old Bruce never did. No. Anyway –
CB: So you, you’re a crew now of seven.
RH: No. Six.
CB: Six of you.
RH: Six. Yeah.
CB: And you gelled quite -
RH: We was on Whitleys.
CB: Right.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And you gelled well. You all got on.
RH: Oh yeah. Yeah, we got on well. Yeah. [laughs] The bomb aimer was about twenty seven so we called him the old man. [laughs].
CB: So you were on Whitleys for a while.
RH: We were on Whitleys. I did, I suppose I did about a hundred hours on Whitleys but you see you do what you call circuits and bumps getting used to landings and take-offs and the only people on it was the skipper and me in the back. To balance it out I suppose [laughs]. I was only a balance really.
CB: What did you think of the Whitley as a plane to fly?
RH: I liked it. Oh she was a steady old thing you know and Bruce used to say that if you, if you banked to the left if you didn’t bring the stick back again straight away she carried on going over [laughs]. Anyway, it was a steady old bus and I think it could have taken a lot of punishment as well. Big old thing. You could actually, from the inside, crawl into the wings. There was an opening where you could crawl into the wings and get to the back of the engine because it was quite a -
CB: Yeah.
RH: Wing root. You know. Anyway, from there we went to multi engines. I can’t remember the name of that place.
CB: Did you say it was near York?
RH: Yeah.
CB: And you don’t think it was Elvington though.
RH: No. No. It was only for getting used to multi aircraft. I’ve got a relation lives there now. I can’t even think of the name of the place. That’s the trouble you know. Your brain goes.
CB: No. Not to worry. It might come to you. So you then went to this place.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Went on to the Halifax.
RH: Yeah. And from there we went to Linton on Ouse which was 76 squadron.
CB: How would you compare the Halifax with the Whitley as a plane to be -
RH: Well of course it was completely different really. Faster, and could carry more and it had even got two beds in it. I liked the Halifax. We called it the Halibag actually. And I thought it was good but I mean they did have trouble with the, with the first few marks until they got it right. I think they got it right in about 1944 and they even changed the Merlins for some radial engines which were a lot better and more powerful but I don’t know about that. Anyway, we were there. We did, we only did four ops. The first one we had to come back. The intercom went. Then we went to Stettin and that was low level Stettin was. That was exhilarating. Quite interesting that was. We were low, we were lower than the land at one time over the water, over the Baltic and all the Dutch people were opening their doors, showing their lights you know and waving.
CB: What did you feel when you saw that?
RH: Pardon?
CB: It must have been moving to see that.
RH: Oh moving yeah and I mean we could see people on bicycles and all lit and everybody waved. It was lovely really. Until we got to the flak ships. It’s wasn’t very nice then. [laughs] Anyway, we did Stettin. I thought it was an easy op actually but a lot of people said it was, it was a bad one. I don’t think so. And then there was Duisburg. That was a horrible. Happy Valley was a Happy Valley. You know we called, [pause] Happy Valley, yeah. And mind you we were attacked at one moment but I gave instructions to slip him away because the idea was if you could get away without firing the rest of the fighters wouldn’t say, ‘Ah there’s one there,’ you know. Actually, you give the game away once you’d started firing. So I thought until he’s getting, you know, so he’s dangerous I won’t open fire. So we didn’t.
CB: You could seem him actually following you.
RH: He was just turning on to us.
CB: Oh.
RH: Yeah. I think it was a JU88 actually. And what was the next one? Oh the next one. That was a dead loss. We were doing a gardening trip. You know what gardening is?
CB: Mine laying.
RH: Mines. Yeah. And soon after we got off the ground the intercom went so we had to stooge around for five hours getting rid of the petrol. And then we had to come in with the mines still on board you know.
CB: Five hours.
RH: Sticking out the bottom as well, you know. The horns on them sticking out.
CB: Yes.
RH: A bit dodgy. Held your breath a bit.
CB: How did you feel when you were, you know, due for an op? You knew that your name was on the list. What did you feel?
RH: I can’t remember feeling particularly scared or anything. I think, I think you were so sort of tied up in it that you didn’t think about that aspect really.
CB: The morale was good with your crew.
RH: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Except my navigator. When we was at, we went to Duisburg. That was the Duisburg one and we were just coming up to the markers that the whatsitsnames had dropped and he said, ‘Skipper, can I go up front and have a look?’ He said, ‘I’ve never seen the target.’ He said, ‘Yeah Ted, you go up and have a look.’ We heard him unplug his, about two minutes later he plugged in, ‘I’m not going to bloody well look at that anymore.’ So he said, ‘We’re not going through that are we?’ He said, ‘Yeah. And it’ll be straight and level.’ ‘God,’ he said,’ I don’t want to look again.’
CB: So they’d dropped the target indicators.
RH: He, he -
CB: The target indicators had been dropped.
RH: They had been dropped. Yeah.
CB: And you were heading for the -
RH: And we were on the run in. You know.
CB: So you’d have all the colours and -
RH: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. All the colours. Yeah.
CB: But could you see them? Had he gone through them, sort of thing?
RH: Yeah.
CB: You saw them from the back.
RH: Oh I got a better view than anybody.
CB: So, what, tell me about the conditions in the back with you being the rear gunner. It’s always thought of as the worst position in -
RH: Quite tight.
CB: At five foot eleven and a half I expect it was.
RH: Yeah. And of course when you got your full flying kit on everybody else wore sids, what they called sidcots but I had full ervins on, trousers as well you see and you couldn’t move about. I tried to do this once or twice. Well you can’t. You can’t do it. The guns get in the way or your knuckles get bruised.
CB: Did you remove the panel from the turret like -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Some of them did.
CB: Yeah.
RH: To have a better view.
CB: Yeah.
RH: You did that ‘cause that obviously made it very cold.
RH: That’s right. Very cold. We used to get, they used to pack us sandwiches and some silly fool packed salmon sandwiches one day and of course they froze didn’t they. Couldn’t get your teeth into them [laughs]
CB: I hate to mention a Lancaster but I’ve got to. Was your, the parachutes like behind the, the doors. It wasn’t -
RH: Behind the turret.
CB: Yes.
RH: Yeah. And then -
CB: So you had to swing around to get to it when you needed it.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Right.
RH: Yeah. And the Lanc was the same. Must have been.
CB: Yes. It was.
RH: ‘Cause you can’t wear your parachute in the turret.
CB: There wasn’t room for much.
RH: No.
CB: At all.
RH: And then you had to go, about that far from the turret was a door with a handle on it and that’s what I caught the parachute on which opened it and I didn’t know.
CB: So you’d done, you’d done one, you had to come back on and Stettin and Duisburg and then your, your gardening so was that you being shot down on the fifth or was that a bit later?
RH: No. Now that would have been if everything would have gone right which of course as I say we had to go back on two of them that would have been our fourth trip.
CB: Right.
RH: And at that time everybody, it worked, well they’d worked it out that the average that people did was four. You didn’t last any longer than four so we nearly did it. Yeah. I mean people who did thirty, God knows how. I mean I was reading a book earlier that somebody did thirty and they never fired their guns. They were never attacked. Well they must have been damned lucky. Must have been lucky ‘cause I mean the night fighters there would be sixty or seventy up a night. All around you, you know. And you’d see aircraft exploding all around you when they were hit. You see what they used to do they had to come up underneath and they had a gun, or two guns protruding upwards so all they’d got to do was come underneath and just pull the trigger and you couldn’t see it.
CB: Sneaky.
RH: Couldn’t see it happening and they didn’t seem to do anything about it.
CB: You were told that the operations you know that it was about four before, you know, trouble or whatever. Did that put you off making friends with others or did you just keep to your, your crew and -
RH: Oh no. No. As a matter of fact I had, I had a friend on the same squadron who worked with me before the war who I knew very well and he, he baled out and his chute caught on the tale wheel. Bob Cadmore and he went down with the aircraft. Yeah. [pause] No. No. No. We all mixed up alright together. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Was it a good station? Linton on Ouse.
RH: I thought so. I thought it was very nice and of course we was at a famous hall about a mile away was where we were.
CB: Billeted. Yes.
RH: Where our mess was and our billet was and there was food on all day long there. You could just walk in and huge table with everything on it. It was a lovely place really and I’ve been back there since and we were in a particular room called the oak panelled room and when I went I went to that room and I thought I’d take a photograph, you know, just the same. There were nothing in it. Just the bare room and the panels ‘cause my, when we walked in my navigator said, ‘I wonder which one with the secret door is.’ You know. I always remember that. Anyway, this woman came along and she said, ‘You can’t take photographs in here.’ I said, ‘Oh what a shame.’ I said, ‘I lived in this room for a while in 1943.’ ‘Ahh take as many as you want.’ And I did take some.
CB: Good.
RH: Yeah. Anyway, that was, where did we get to?
CB: We’re on now, I think on this -
RH: 76 squadron.
CB: Yes.
RH: Yeah. Yeah. Which was Cheshire’s.
CB: Yes.
RH: Not at that time. He’d just moved on. Although he was around because I remember standing to attention as he walked in front of me once. Lovely bloke though. Yeah. Everybody liked him.
CB: Yes. I heard.
RH: Yeah. So there.
CB: So we, can we talk about the operation that was -
RH: Yeah. Yeah. Alright.
CB: The final one.
RH: Well it was dusk, duskish when we were taking off and everybody got in the aircraft and my navigator was still standing there. I said, ‘Come on Ted. Get in.’ He said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I’m just taking a last look around,’ he said. ‘I’m not coming back.’ ‘Don’t be so stupid.’ He said, ‘I know I’m not coming back.’ And of course he didn’t. Anyway, I bundled him in and so we took off but we had problems right from the start and this was a brand new aircraft actually. Went for a burton on the first night.
CB: Oh dear.
RH: Another fifty thousand quid gone. And Ted was, he gave the wrong instructions as navigator and Bruce was questioning it. ‘I don’t think you’ve got that right, Ted.’ Anyway, somebody went to him and his oxygen pipe had come undone and he didn’t know quite what he were doing, you know.
CB: Oh.
RH: Anyway we got back on course and as I say as we saw the red markers go down they hit us just as we were turning on to the markers. Yeah. And of course the flames went back about fifty to a hundred yards. You could see everything like daylight and the side of the turret was melting. It was pretty horrendous really. So I got out quick. Forgot I’d got my helmet on and -
CB: When you say you got out quick you mean you turned the turret around.
RH: Turned the turret.
CB: And got into the aircraft.
RH: Well, I was facing that way anyway.
CB: Oh right.
RH: Yeah. Opened the doors. You know.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Got out, threw my flying helmet and picked up the parachute two hooks not knowing I’d only got one on and I went up to the escape hatch and my mid upper gunner was arguing with my engineer. I could see them arguing. I could see that he hadn’t got his parachute and he was trying to make him go, ‘Get back for your parachute,’ you know, and in the end, to save himself he went you know and I’ve forgotten his name now he jumped [without] his parachute. Panicked I suppose, you know, yeah and so we were the only three that went out there. My bomb aimer remembers the aircraft being hit. He don’t remember any more but he woke up on the ground with his parachute at the side of him and he said he don’t know, ‘Who put it on or who pushed me out.’ Somebody must have done. And that’s was how we, that was the end of our trip.
CB: It must have been, we’re talking about seconds here aren’t we in-between being -
RH: Must have been.
CB: Shot and -
RH: I mean I went to jump out the escape hatch, took a last look around and the parachute was all up against the door where I’d just come out of.
CB: You’d got it caught and it had come out.
RH: Yeah. I’d pulled the rip cord. Yeah. And I thought well that’s it. I’ll go and sit with the skipper. I made a move to go and sit up front with the skipper knowing I’d had it you know but something seemed to tell me to gather it up and try.
CB: What was the plane doing at this time? Was it just -
RH: Going down.
CB: Steadily going down.
RH: Yeah. Yeah. Steadily going down. And we’d still got all the bombs on and everything and they’d hit the petrol tank and the incendiaries so you could tell the starboard wing was well on fire. Where did I get to?
CB: You just -
RH: Anyway, I fell out.
CB: Yeah.
RH: I can see it now as plain as anything the tail was that about far from me, zipped over me like that as I was going backwards you know and the tail wheel fortunately never caught on the [?] on the tail pump, the parachute never caught on the tail wheel which a lot of people had that. They made it a retractable tail wheel in the end. Anyway, it opened but it was spilling air all the because it was only on, and I tried to get the other one but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. So I was going down pretty fast but it weren’t half quiet. You can’t, you know, once you baled you’ve been sitting there for about three hours with all that noise and suddenly silence and you think to yourself, ‘Where the hell am I?’ And I didn’t really know exactly where I was to be honest. And then I could see this house coming up. I thought well I can’t steer clear of it and there was such a crash and I went through the roof up to there. I made a lovely mess of the roof.
CB: Good.
RH: Do you know that’s what, that’s funny that’s what crosses your mind. To think that’s buggered the roof up [laughs]. Sorry.
CB: No. That’s quite alright.
RH: And the next thing I was worried about was the parachute. I thought well the parachute’s alright. They’ll use it. What can I do about it? Nothing. But one of the Germans that come up he cut all the cords off me. I thought, good he’s ruined the parachute too. Aint it daft what you think about? It took them about half an hour to get me off the roof but they were very good. They were very good.
CB: It sounds as if they arrived pretty quickly.
RH: Yeah. As soon as I hit the roof I could hear voices. Well I made enough noise.
CB: And where was -
RH: Every time I tried to move clatter clatter clatter clatter you know.
CB: So this would be -
RH: In other words, ‘Come over here. I’m over here.’ [laughs]
CB: I think it’s in the book where you, do you remember the town or the place where you landed so gracefully?
RH: I can’t remember it.
CB: It is in the book over there.
RH: I don’t think it’s very far from Munster because they took me to Munster Hospital. The Luftwaffe picked me up. No, first of all I went to a little hospital which must have been close to hand and I’d dislocated my leg and they tried to put it in with chloroform but the chloroform wasn’t any good. I could feel everything you know so they packed it up and then the Luftwaffe came and they put me in this Mercedes. I remember it was a Mercedes because I remember that bit on the front, you know and inside it was my mid upper gunner. I said, ‘Where’d you come from.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I did a bit of walking but they soon picked me up.’ And they took me to this aerodrome and they dropped him off at this aerodrome. I can always remember this there was FW190s there. We were quite close to them. Then they took me to Munster Hospital and they were, they were marvellous. They really looked after me.
CB: A civilian hospital.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Was it? Yes.
RH: Big hospital. I had a room to myself and when I was getting better, I was there a month, I mean I needn’t have been there a month really. I could wander where I wanted. Go outside. Do what I wanted. And there were nuns. A lot of the nurses were nuns and they were lovely. ‘Anything you want you tell me. I’ll get it for you.’ You know. And there was a picture of Hitler on the wall like that, about as big as that and the first thing I did I turned it around face to the wall you see and she came in she said, ‘You mustn’t do that. You can’t do that in Germany. You mustn’t do that. ‘And she put it back. When she went out I turned it back again. I was doing that backwards and forwards.
CB: Were they German nuns? Yeah.
RH: In Munster.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Anyway, I had a good month there really. There was a lot of French kreigies as we call POWs. There was a lot of French kreigies there and they kept coming in and bringing me some of their food and, although I got plenty of food, and there was a few Russians as well and they stole some neat alcohol and they were drinking this stuff. They wanted me to have some. I said, ‘Not likely. I’m not touching that stuff.’ Anyway, I’d been there about three weeks, no, perhaps about a fortnight, about a fortnight when they did the dams raid. They did the dams raid on the 16th and they brought this other fellow in and he was off my squadron. He was off 76 squadron as well, and he’d got five bullets in him so the doctor there who was a General actually, red stripe down his trousers, you know, he said, ‘We want you to come and hold him down.’ I said, ‘Hold him down?’ ‘We’re not giving him - ’
CB: Chloroform.
RH: ‘Chloroform or anything because we need it for ourselves.’ He said, ‘You’ll just have to hold him down.’ I thought this is going to be fine. Anyway, I went in the operating theatre and held him down while they started taking them out. It’s horrible really and eventually well pretty early on he passed out anyway which was the best you know but he’d got one in his back that was close to his heart. He’d been shot in the back and they went in like that about that far around, took the meat out, took the bullet out, put some stuff around it and put it back. Do you know in a month you couldn’t tell it had been done? He were running around. Tommy Thompson. Yeah. So anyway, we, we got over our little problems and they decided to send us to Dulag Luft. I suppose you’ve heard of Dulag Luft.
CB: Near Frankfurt.
RH: At Frankfurt yeah. So they sent these three Germans to pick us up. The two of us. Well one of them was a fighter pilot who was on a rest and he were lovely. He really was and then there was two more. He was in charge of the other two. So he said, ‘Well before we go to the station,’ he said, ‘If you don’t mind, if you don’t mind, I’m going to see my girlfriend who lives in Munster,’ he said, ‘And you can come along with us. And we went in this house, met his girlfriend and her parents, we had a cup of coffee and then we left to go to the station and all the stations were under water from the dams raid. All the platforms were under water. It was alright at Munster but some of the smaller ones were. Anyway, we had a compartment on our own and he took off his gun belt and threw it on the luggage rack and said, ‘We don’t need that today. We’re all friends.’
CB: You wouldn’t have known that the flooding was due to the dams raid.
RH: No. I didn’t -
CB: Obviously.
RH: Know about that.
CB: Did they mention why it was flooded?
RH: No.
CB: In any way.
RH: No. No. I didn’t find out till afterwards.
CB: Oh.
RH: I wondered what all the water was about, you know. But I mean people say, ‘Oh they didn’t do any good,’ you know. Believe you me they did. Anyway, we had to go down the Rhine and we had to change at Cologne. Change trains at Cologne and as we were changing, no before that, I won’t go too far ahead, when we got to Cologne we had to wait for the train so he took us into a restaurant and we had a meal in the restaurant. There was all German officers and that around. Nobody took any notice. No. Yeah. It was alright. I’d got my cap, no my gloves stuck in my epaulets. He said, ‘Would you mind taking them out? We don’t do that in Germany.’ He said, ‘It looks bad.’ So I stuffed it in my blouse you know. So after we’d had the meal he said, ‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘We’re going for a walk along the Rhine so I’ll take you in Cologne Cathedral. So we went into Cologne Cathedral and had photographs, well he took photographs of us together you know and we come back caught the train, well we got onto the platform and there was a little Canadian air gunner who were being escorted by a German Wehrmacht and he were knocking him about. So this pilot said, he said, ‘Look at him,’ he said ‘A hundred and fifty percent national socialist.’ So he weren’t for Hitler evidently.
CB: No. Well you were going through, you know you were travelling through Germany.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And we’d given it, particularly Cologne, quite a pasting.
RH: Yeah, this was, this was on –
CB: Did you see any of the devastation that –
RH: No. I didn’t.
CB: We’d caused.
RH: I can’t say as I did actually. No. I think we must have missed it. [laughs]
CB: [laughs] So the thousand bomber raid was a bit of a waste of time [laughs]
RH: I will admit that the nurses kept saying, ‘You don’t think they’ll bomb us again will you?’
CB: Ah.
RH: You know. I said, ‘No. I wouldn’t think so.’ They did though not long afterwards of course. Anyway, we had hours long down the Rhine and they kept pointing the different places out. We had a lovely time really. It was lovely.
CB: What was the food like? I mean they had poor rations themselves didn’t they? What food did they give you?
RH: I can’t remember.
CB: Well if it had been poor I think you’d have probably remembered
RH: Yeah. I don’t think it was. Yeah, it was quite good. Course the cinemas and places like that were closed, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It seemed funny to see people walking about though and -
Other: Passed on the right
RH: On the left.
Other: No right through dear.
RH: Right through on the Rhine.
[machine paused]
CB: Ok Ron. We’ve gone down the Rhine and we’ve arrived now at Dulag Luft
RH: Dulag Luft. We were just deposited at Dulag Luft and they put us in a six foot cell to try to get information. I was in that for about a week. Eventually they let you out and when I got out they lined me up at the end of the room, there were five or six more there. Then they brought another one out, another fella out, stood him at the side of me and he said, ‘I know you.’ I said, ‘Yes. I know you.’ I said, ‘It’s Mr Hands. You used to teach me mathematics didn’t you?’ It was my teacher.
CB: Oh good grief.
RH: Yeah. And we stuck together for the whole two years. Yeah. Yeah. That was interesting. Yeah. Anyway, we got into the main compound and there were Yanks in with us as well and from there on they sent us to Heydekrug but we did have normal coaches but they were wooden seats and I think we were about four days. Oh those seats were hard. I finished up in the luggage rack. More comfortable up there. So we got to Heydekrug and it was a fairly new camp actually at that time and had already brought some of Luft 3 in and gradually the camp filled up. Well, I was there for two years. Well not that one for two years but I was there for a year I suppose. It was quite interesting because we did, well I didn’t but they dug a tunnel and I think we got about thirty odd out and I think two or three got back and it was quite interesting really. We did hear. We got letters from them in code to say, you know, ‘We got back,’ sort of thing and then they took us to, we was in Poland. Thorn in Poland for a while. Can’t remember much about that and then from there we went to 357 and there was a lot of paratroops there because as far as the Germans was concerned paratroops were Luftwaffe.
CB: Yes.
RH: So we all got in together you know and they were from Arnhem. We had a lot of the Arnhem fellas in. But that was quite interesting.
CB: So this would be about September ‘44.
RH: Yeah. That’s right. And of course they moved us out of Heydekrug because the Russians were approaching. That’s why they moved us from there. Anyway, back to, Fallingbostel was 357. I have to think about this. They went out on the long march. Fortunately I didn’t have to go on that because I was in hospital at the time. I can’t remember what was wrong with me. So I got out of that one.
CB: So the conditions weren’t, you didn’t think they were too bad during this prisoner of war time.
RH: No. Not until about the last six months, nine months. Then of course we were coming in from one side and the Russians in from another squeezing them you know. We weren’t getting the parcels through. I mean at first we were getting nearly a parcel a week each but towards the end we weren’t getting much at all. All we were getting was potatoes and soup. Soup. Couldn’t call it soup really but we existed on it and got a parcel here and there from the Red Cross. Don’t know what we would have done without the Red Cross really.
CB: The escape from Stalag Luft 3 in March of ‘44 when the, and the fifty were eventually -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Captured and shot.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Was there anything, you know, recriminations or, you know how did you hear about it?
RH: I think the camp commandant told [pause] our leader. I’ve forgotten his name now.
CB: Shaw?
RH: No. Not Shaw. It weren’t Shaw.
CB: Oh.
RH: You’ve got that wrong. The footballer, well he wasn’t but we called him that for a bit.
CB: Oh Dixie Dean.
RH: Dixie Dean.
CB: Right.
RH: Dixie Dean. I think he told Dixie Dean and Dixie Dean said, ‘How many were just injured?’ Because they said they were trying to escape you see. They’d made a run and tried to escape.
CB: Yes.
RH: So he said, ‘How many were only wounded?’ ‘Oh none. They were all killed.’ He said, ‘That’s not possible.’ He said, ‘If you just fired like that,’ he said, ‘There would have been some that would have survived,’ and of course they couldn’t say anything about that.
CB: No.
RH: So the camp went mad. Took all the shutters off the windows, took them in the middle of the parade ground and set fire to them. That was our –
CB: Protest.
RH: Answer to it. You know. So that’s how we found about this. Of course a lot of the fellas that had come from Luft 3 knew all of these people. I didn’t and a lot of us didn’t but some did so –
CB: Was, was morale damaged or did you –
RH: Well we was pretty damned mad really.
CB: More angry than –
RH: Yeah. Yeah. More angry than anything. Anyway, as I say we got 357 and they went on the march and we were left behind fortunately and all I can think of now is this little armoured car came in the gates. One morning we woke up and there were no guards. Everybody had gone and this little armoured car come in. Of course everyone went mad. They crowded around this armoured car. Eventually some of the army came in as well you know and they were looking after us. The white bread was beautiful.
CB: What sort of thing did you do in the prisoner of war camp for entertainment and to, you know, pass the time?
RH: Well -
CB: What did you do?
RH: Of course, Heydekrug people were studying and you could do. It was all, it had been arranged that you could study and some, some people passed exams. So everybody got something to do if you wanted to and there was a good library. I started Polish. Learning Polish. I give it up. I couldn’t stand that. But people were studying all sorts.
CB: And the camp would put on theatre productions.
RH: Oh yeah well everybody got a bit of a hand in that.
CB: Yes. You didn’t take to the stage yourself.
RH: No. No thank you. No. No. And then we were doing things like making panels in the wall that took out so you could get to the next room. You see there were, the hut, there was like two huts like a semidetached house really and the door, the doors were side by side but you had to go up steps to go in one. Well we worked it out it took them so many seconds to come down the step, just walk across, go up the next steps in the next room so we took a panel out of the wall and made it so that you could, somebody’d slip through and back again and somebody in the next hut was one of the escapees so they took a panel off as the Germans went down the first lot of steps, took the panel off, I whipped through, jumped into his bed at the side, pulled the blanket over as though I was asleep and they’d come around counting you see. Well everybody was there but they weren’t. That were good fun. Yeah.
CB: Were there any tunnels that you knew of that were being dug?
RH: I know there was one from the, from the latrines and you know the latrines were actually about thirty holes so you had quite an interesting time when you went to the latrine. ‘Hello John how are you getting on? What are you doing?’ Are you doing so and so, you know. Everybody was talking [laughs] and so you’d go in there and instead of being there for five minutes you’d be there perhaps an hour talking to two or three other people, you know
CB: Did you ever fancy escaping yourself?
RH: No. I didn’t. I couldn’t get in a tunnel. Oh I couldn’t do that. No. I’d helped. I helped them. I helped. I did belong to tally ho as regards helping out with things. You know. Anyway, I thought it was more sensible to stay where you were. Don’t get shot so easily that way. Hopefully. Anyway, went in to the latrines one day and some bloke was standing there and said, ‘Don’t go in number one. They’re digging a tunnel down there.’ They were down there digging a tunnel. Of all the places to pick. But you see that was the closest to the wire. That’s why they went for that one and they did get about thirty odd out.
CB: Right.
RH: Yeah. I don’t know how they smelt but, I think, I bet the Germans picked them up easy [laughs] from their perfume. Oh dear.
CB: So -
RH: Do you know there were people even making model aircraft and flying them? And the only way you could get the glue, you know this sticky brown paper? We never threw, never threw anything away all that was boiled down and finished up as glue at the bottom of the pot you know. And silver paper, you can make things out of silver paper. It was all melted down but you, you needed a pile about half as big as this room to get a little bit of, and then they used to make a mould out of soap and pour it in and you got whatever you wanted so when they were making a German uniform they made the buckle out of silver paper that had been melted down, you know. ‘Cause I mean, we’d got people there that made uniforms and made clothes and all sorts of things because I mean the RAF uniform was almost the same as Luftwaffe. You couldn’t hardly tell the difference. So there was always somebody slaving away on something. Never a dull moment. I mean people, they would say, ‘Well didn’t you get bored?’ We never got bored. Too much to do. Yeah.
CB: Did you know what was happening in Europe war wise at this time?
RH: Oh yeah.
CB: Did you have a radio or -
RH: Yeah we had the radio. Every lunchtime this fella would come in, ‘Right chaps. Watch the windows,’ and somebody’d sit near the window, watching out the windows, see if there’s any moles about. ‘There’s one coming up.’ ‘Hang on a minute.’ ‘Oh sit down. We’ll wait till he’s gone.’ Everybody that walked into that camp, every German that walked in that camp was plotted all the way around. We knew where he was all the while from one mouth to another you know. So and sometimes somebody would say, ‘Ferret.’ We called them ferrets and you see the huts were about this high of the ground and they’d crawl under to make sure that there were no tunnels you see and somebody would say, ‘Ferret.’ ‘Where?’ About ten blokes would get together. They’d stand there, ‘Ready, steady go,’ and everybody would jump up and down. Well all the dirt used to fall like that you know and he’d come scurrying out the other end dirt all down [laughs] Oh we pulled their legs something horrible really. I mean when a, when a guard walked up and down with his rifle over his shoulder there would be about five blokes right on top behind him following him like this you know and then as soon as he turned around they just vanished. One, ‘cause as regards tunnels we had to shore them up with bed boards so eventually everybody had only got about three bed boards left. Head, bottom, feet, you know. Oh it was uncomfortable. And one day they came in, take, they took nearly all the bed boards away on this lorry and there were the German guards standing on top of them with a schmeiser, you know. So when he looking over that end someone were nicking them off the other end. As soon as he swung around they was nicking it off the other end. [Laughs] Whatsisname came around he said, ‘I’m afraid somebody is going to get shot.’ He said, ‘Why don’t they pack it in?’ He said, ‘They’ll get shot.’ Dixie Dean. He said, ‘I’m scared to death somebody’s going to get shot.’ Anyway, nobody ever was.
CB: I think you mentioned that the guards had a peculiar way of searching. They’d search for one thing one day and -
RH: Oh yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. They only took what they were looking for that day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So if they were looking for scissors one day, the next day if they found some they weren’t bothered.
RH: No they weren’t bothered. No. Mad.
CB: What was the relationship between you and the guards? Did you -
RH: Well you got to know one or two of them yeah but don’t forget they were all old people. Not as old as me but they were, they were, some of them had been prisoners of war in England and you might get one that would talk to you, you know but there was always one or two of our people that spoke good German and they’d try and get things. You know. They were kept for getting and once, you know, they’d offer them something big or something that was not much at all but once you’d got him on, under your thumb the answer was well, I want so and so.’ Oh I can’t get that. I can’t get that.’ ‘Well you’d better or else you’ll be on the Eastern Front,’ ‘cause that was always their worry. Eastern front. You know. So they’d get it in the end. Bits for cameras and things like that. Yeah. But we did used to swap things with some of them. I mean I can remember when we were swapping tins of cocoa for a loaf of bread but I mean there was, it were full of sand with a bit of cocoa on the top. [laughs] Oh we were rotten. [laughs] Throwing it over the wire you know.
CB: Did you know when D-Day had happened?
RH: I was home on D-Day.
CB: Oh right.
RH: I was home about a week before D-Day.
CB: Oh.
RH: Yeah. Yeah fortunately because 357 was close to where they signed the -
CB: Oh the -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Armistice.
RH: Can’t remember where that was now but we were close to that. Yeah.
CB: So what was, what happened towards, you know the end of your captivity? How did it come about? The truck arrived. The, and was that the end? Did you -
RH: Yeah. Well they took us out in trucks to this aerodrome. I don’t know what aerodrome it was. I never did find out and we were there all day. There was thousands there you know and the army was in charge. There weren’t many RAF. Not at that moment. They were nearly all army and these Dakotas landed and Lancasters and Halifaxes. They’d pile the army in you know. Well we’d been there all day and one of our blokes said, he said, ‘I’ve had enough of this, they’re not taking all their men.’ He said, ‘We’re the ones, the RAF are taking us back and,’ he said, ‘We’re stuck here.’ He said, ‘I’m going to have a go at this.’ Anyway, the next Dakota came in and he ran across to it and when they put the ladder down he went up and had a word with the pilot, squadron leader somebody. So he said, ‘What’s your problem?’ So he said, ‘They’re taking all the army,’ he said, ‘And just leaving us.’ He said, ‘They’re not bothered about us.’ He said, ‘Well I’ve finished. This was my last flight,’ he said, ‘But I’ll take you. How many of you is there?’ So and so. ‘That’s a couple over what I should do,’ he said, ‘But,’ he said, ‘I’ll chance it if you will.’ He said, ‘All of you come across here,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you home.’ So he did an extra flight and brought us back. And when we got to the other end everybody had a WAAF each to look after us.
CB: This was at Cosford.
RH: At Cosford. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Yeah.
CB: What was your feelings when you landed?
RH: What?
CB: What were you feelings after, you know your captivity, all you’d been through?
RH: Well I can remember, I can remember passing and everybody was looking out the window saying, ‘Look the white cliffs of Dover. At last.’ You know. That was a lovely sight that was. And I don’t know where we landed. It wasn’t Cosford ‘cause we had to catch a train to Cosford.
CB: Oh right.
RH: But there was, on the train there was four of us to a compartment. We had the whole train to ourselves, you know.
CB: Did you ever think you weren’t, you wouldn’t make it back?
RH: No. I never thought about it. I thought we would eventually you know. I suppose we were lucky they didn’t shoot all of us really. Yeah.
CB: And you got to Cosford and then -
RH: We were there ‘til they kitted us out and I think I had six weeks leave. Everybody had about six weeks and back pay for two years.
CB: Wow.
RH: And all the Canadians and Americans were saying, every time they jumped out of bed, ‘Another pound in the bank.’ That were marvellous. I’d draw some money out and when you went back the next time there’d some more been put in. As fast as you drew it out they were putting some more in. I’ve never come across that since then though funnily enough. No. Lovely.
CB: So in your six, six weeks off or so and then what happened? Were you -
RH: Went back to Cosford and they didn’t know what to do with us really. We were going into towns where they were having these parties in the, street parties remember and they were taking us to these street parties and then they took us round Austin Motor Works to see that, all that. You know. It was all very interesting but really we were a dead loss to them really. Couldn’t do anything with us. Not many people stayed in. They asked you if you wanted to stay in. Of course my friend Ted did. He said, ‘Yes. I’ll stay’ and he got to squadron leader.
CB: And what did you do?
RH: Came out.
CB: Went home.
RH: I was a bit sorry. The last day I felt a bit sorry really. Still there we are.
CB: You had the camaraderie of your pals you know, even though -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Just for the four tours or whatever.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And then you had the friends you made in the camps and then it was just a sudden stop.
RH: Yeah and I mean we was all going to meet so and so and not many did.
CB: No.
RH: Once you got back into Civvy Street and you got into work again I suppose it all changed didn’t it really? Yeah.
CB: Perhaps some of them just didn’t want to remember what had happened.
RH: I don’t, I mean people say that. I don’t think we were very bothered any of us. I mean and others say they don’t like to talk about it. Well, all the ones I know don’t mind talking about it. Not really.
CB: What work did you do after the war?
RH: I went back to the Co-op.
CB: And you settled into that happily.
RH: Well only for about two years and then my stepfather was a sub postmaster and when he died I got it so I had the post office for thirty two years. Yeah. That was alright. That was a good job.
CB: Do you think your experiences in the war had any effect on you afterwards?
RH: I don’t know. I suppose in a way you got to the point you were frightened of anything anymore. Weren’t frightened of anything anymore. You know, you thought to yourself, ‘Well. I got through that I can get through anything.’ Yeah. I mean we had three raids at the post office.
CB: Oh crikey.
RH: We got rid, well we got rid of it. I didn’t get rid of one. The second one that come in. He pointed a gun at me and said, ‘Money.’ And my wife was in the corner. She said, ‘What’s he want?’ I said, ‘Money.’ She said, ‘Tell him where to go.’ I said, ‘I’m going to.’ I said, ‘Look. There’s the door. Get out of it.’ And then he turned around and walked out. Which was very lucky. I said to her afterwards, ‘He were pointing a ruddy gun at me not at you.’ [laughs]
CB: You never thought ‘Oh my God I’ve fought this war, I’ve been involved and then this happens.’
RH: It makes you wonder doesn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then there was another man that had been defrauding the post by ordering insurance stamps. Insurance stamps were worth a lot of money in those days and he’d order all these and they’d put them through and he’d say, ‘Oh just a minute. I’ve got a parcel in the car. I’ll go and fetch it.’ He never went back, he never went back with the money. I forget what they called him, they’d given him a name. Two years they tried to catch him and we caught him. He came in and did his usual, you know and the wife was in the corner and she went ‘psst’ you know so I didn’t, I didn’t put the stamps through. I kept them this side you know, he said, ‘Oh I’ve got a parcel. I’ll just go and fetch the parcel.’ I knew he was making a getaway really. He could see I wasn’t going to give and as he went out the postman came in the door and I said, ‘John, get the number of that car, that van for the person who’s just run out.’ ‘Where? Where?’ You know. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘You’re too late.’ I got straight on the phone to the, our policing department and the police put road stops up all around Peterborough and when they got to Stanground the woman on the counter of Stanground said, ‘Oh. I think I’ve just served him.’ Just like that you know. They see this bloke coming out the door, they grabbed him and it wasn’t him. [laughs] Anyway, he were further down the road and they caught him before he got in the car. But I think we got two hundred pound for that. Yeah. We had three lots of two hundred pound. Very useful. [laughs]
CB: Well Ron it’s been absolutely wonderful to hear you. Thank you very much for this interview.
RH: Oh it’s alright. You’re quite welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Ron Hemsworth
Format
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01:14:17 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHemsworthR150729
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-29
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Ron joined the Royal Air Force in January 1941. Initially a wireless operator/air gunner, he failed morse code at Blackpool. He was posted to RAF Swinderby and worked in the stores and flying control. Air gunnery school followed at RAF Bridlington and RAF Morpeth. Ron went to an Operational Training Unit at RAF Honeybourne where he crewed up and flew in Whitleys. He went on to multi-engine aircraft near York and flew Halifaxes. Ron joined 76 Squadron at Linton-on-Ouse and flew four operations: Stettin, Duisburg, a mine laying operation and two trips which were not completed because of issues with the intercom.
Ron describes how his aircraft was hit on the starboard wing and what happened to the crew. He had problems with his parachute and landed on a house roof, dislocating his leg. He spent a month in a civilian hospital in Munster. He was transported by a kind German fighter pilot to Dulag Luft, near Frankfurt. Ron was sent to Stalag Luft 6. People could study, and there was a library and entertainment. Ron made model aircraft. Provisions became scarce in the latter months. A tunnel was dug near the latrines and 30 prisoners escaped. The guards abandoned the camp and Ron was taken to an aerodrome and flown home in a Dakota. He went to RAF Cosford, but, with little to do, he came out of the RAF.
Creator
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Clare Bennett
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Lithuania
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Duisburg
Lithuania--Šilutė
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
76 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
C-47
crewing up
Dulag Luft
escaping
fear
Halifax
military service conditions
mine laying
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF Cosford
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Morpeth
RAF Swinderby
shot down
Stalag Luft 6
superstition
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/573/8842/AGardR160601.2.mp3
fcd7778bea89ec158665387315505ae0
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Gard, Ronald
Ronald Leslie Gard
R L Gard
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Gard, R
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Ronald Gard (-2022, 1852481 Royal Air Force), his log book, correspondence reporting him missing and membership of the caterpillar club. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 463 Squadron and was shot down on an operation to Leipzig.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Ronald Gard and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is Ron Gard. The interview is taking place at Mr Gard’s home in Liphook, Hampshire on the 1st of June 2016. Ok, well if we start off perhaps you could tell me a little bit about your childhood and growing up and how you came to join the RAF.
RG: Well, I was, I was born in Petersfield and in 1940 I joined the Air Training Corps in Petersfield and when I was seventeen I thought, well I’ll take my chance and go down to Portsmouth to see if I could join the RAF and they sent me home because I was too young but eventually they did send for me and I went to Portsmouth. I passed the medicals down there and then as I was going for air crew they said I would have to spend two days at Oxford through for the air crew at a station base. So I went there and I passed all the exams and the medical and they said that I would be suitable to be an air gunner so when I was eighteen and a half I was sent for and I reported to Lords Cricket Ground which was the reception place there and after a couple of weeks I went to Bridlington which was the place they sent you to for teaching you the Morse code and all that sort of thing and then I posted then to 7 AGS which was the gunnery school at Stormy Down in South Wales where I passed out as a sergeant air gunner. From there I went to Silverstone where I crewed up with four Australians and myself and another RAF gunner. Unfortunately, on one of the trips one night the Wellington I was in crash landed and the pilot was blamed for the crash and he was sent back to Australia and then we waited a couple of weeks and we were told to report to the flight office and there was a flying officer, RAF type, pilot who came down to sort of interview us to see if we were suitable to go with him. Actually we finished up we were very lucky because he was a pilot, a pre-war pilot. So anyway he was the flying officer then and he was our, from then on he was our pilot. From there we went to Syerston which was, no, we went to Winthorpe sorry which was on Stirlings to change over from Wellingtons to four engine bombers and we trained on Stirlings and then we went from there to Syerston where we had a few hours on a Lancaster and from there on the next move was to Waddington where we were very lucky to get to Waddington because it was a peacetime ‘drome and still going now and we, there we joined 463 squadron. We had three Australians in our squadron, in our crew. The navigator, the bomb aimer and the wireless operator, they were Australians and the rest of us were English. RAF. And there we’d done our operations. Unfortunately my skipper was deputy flight commander so we, we didn’t, we had, our tour was stretched out a bit because he wasn’t allowed to fly when he was doing flight commanding. Anyway, on our seventeenth trip we were going to Rositz which was the night after the Dresden raid and Rositz was just up the road from Dresden. We got over Leipzig and we got caught in searchlights and we got shot down by flak. I baled out of the rear turret. Then I landed in a field there and I walked all night on my own. There was nobody else about and the next morning I travelled, walked out of some woods where I’d slept during the night to see where I was and I walked straight into the arms of two farmers and one of them had a shotgun. The one with the shotgun knocked me to the ground and I think he was going to, thought he was going to shoot me but the other chap with him pushed the gun out of the way and then they took him, took me to the farmhouse to, and then there were some German, well soldiers I presume they were, they came along and they handcuffed me and took me to this barracks and I stayed there overnight and the next morning an officer, it’s funny really ‘cause an officer and his girlfriend came along, picked me up and took me to Leipzig station and we got in a carriage there and we went to wherever we went to and they took me along to this other camp there and that’s where I met my navigator and my mid upper gunner. From there we got on a train to Frankfurt on Main which was the interrogation place. I spent seven days in there in solitary confinement and then we, then they took us by train again. We were in box wagons and while we were going to Nuremberg we got shot up by American fighters [laughs]. So anyway we, when we got to Nuremberg were put in this compound there and of course I was with my navigator and mid upper gunner there and there was a crowd more and a couple of weeks went by and who should come in to the next compound was my pilot and the wireless operator. They’d escaped for about a fortnight but I think they, in the end they had to give themselves up because they had no food or nothing. Anyway, we were in Nuremberg for about six weeks or more and then we were on a forced march from there down to a place called Moosburg which was down near Munich which was, it took sixteen days to get there by just walking all the time and then we was in, when we were in Moosburg we were there for a couple of weeks and we were liberated by the Americans. The, which was under General Patton. Of course there was all manners of people there. There was Russians and all the, it was just a holding camp you know. Anyway, you’ve got to give the Americans their due they, they, after about a week we got into little sections of about twelve and we were taken then by transport to another aerodrome, small aerodrome. From there we sat there for about a week until our turn because Dakotas was coming in picking up people and taking them, I was taken then to Rheims in France. We got to, once we got to Rheims we were put in to, Lancasters were there and we got in and sat in the fuselages of Lancasters, this Lancaster and we were flown to Thorney Island on the Sussex coast and that was on my 20th birthday. From there we, we were given refreshments and that and then we were put on a, taken into Chichester and put on a train and taken to Cosford where we had all medicals and kitted out and whatever have you and from there we was allowed to send a telegram home to say where we were. That was the first indication that my parents had that I was alive. They didn’t, they knew nothing until then and after about a few days we passed the medicals and got kitted out we were sent home and I was home then for about two months.
DM: What, what made you join the RAF as opposed to going in to the army or the navy?
RG: Well because -
DM: I mean obviously you were in the air cadets but why, why -
RG: Because I was in the Air Training Corps.
DM: Yeah.
RG: I thought that was the next move on you see.
DM: Why did you join the Air Training Corps? Was it - ?
RG: Well, it was, it was the thing that all my friends were joining. They’d just started up in Petersfield and so I decided I would join the Air Training Corps and there was a crowd of us you know.
DM: Yeah. And did you have brothers and sisters?
RG: Yes. Well I got, I had brothers then.
DM: Older? Younger?
RG: No. I was the eldest in my family.
DM: So did your brothers join up then during the war?
RG: Well I had one brother, my twin brother joined the RAF. He was a transport driver. My twin brother that was and then I had three other brothers that got called up for National Service. Two went into the RAF and they were twins as well. And another one went in the army. I don’t know why he went in the army but he did but anyway that was it. There was five of us. I suppose it was called up after but the other three were after the war, you know.
DM: So what did the twins, the other twins do in the RAF after the war?
RG: One was a dog handler and one was just an ordinary AC I think. You know, just general duties.
DM: They didn’t stay on after -
RG: No. No.
DM: The National Service.
RG: No. And anyway, after I, afterwards I was called, I had to go up to Catterick, I think it was, to be assessed. What air crew was there you know and I was trained as, in stores and then I went from stores, I got posted down to Barnham in Suffolk and I was on a bomb dump place there. I was in the office there on stores and then just after that I was promoted to warrant officer and unfortunately they decided that all air crew with rank of warrant officers and flight sergeant would be reduced to the rank of sergeant so I was reduced then to the rank of sergeant and from there I was posted to RAF delegation in Brussels so I went out to Brussels for about three or four months and then I swapped postings with somebody. I went to Farnborough and when I was Farnborough I was there for about four months and then I got demobbed and I come out there and I joined the civil service and I worked for the Ministry of Defence, the army, for forty two years and then I retired at sixty three and I got the Imperial Service Medal for that.
DM: Go back to when you joined the RAF and you were training to be a gunner. How did the crewing up process work for you? How did you all come together?
RG: Well that was when we got to Silverstone. We got to Silverstone and of course when we, when I arrived at Silverstone there was all these bods there and of course there was lots of chaps in dark blue uniforms and I thought, who the heck are they, you know and of course I found out they were Australians and then we all, on the second day we all got in to this big hangar there and then the pilots went around and picked people out to crew up with you see. And this Australian flight sergeant came up to me. He said, ‘How would you like to be one of my gunners?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. Suits me.’ And that was it and of course when I, when we sort of got together there was a pilot and a navigator and a bomb aimer and we didn’t have a, we didn’t a flight engineer then. We didn’t pick the flight engineer up until a lot lot later you know so there was only six of us really in the crew to start with.
DM: Did you, I assume, did you not pick the flight engineer up until after you changed pilots?
RG: Yes, that’s right.
DM: Yeah.
RG: Yes.
DM: When you’d gone on from the Wellingtons.
RG: Yes. Yes, we went on, I think it was, I think it was when we got onto Stirlings I think. We didn’t, he didn’t come, we didn’t pick the flight engineer up until then.
DM: So the exception of the pilot when you were on Stirlings and afterwards he was obviously an officer.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Were you sergeants, the rest of you?
RG: Yes. I was sergeant. Till I got on the squadron I was a sergeant and then you automatically got promoted after twelve months but I was lucky ‘cause I got promoted after nine months. But so I was flight sergeant then and then a year on from there I got promoted to warrant officer but as I say I think they did the dirty on us a bit because why they did it I don’t know because we still got the same pay as a warrant officer but, but they, it was, I mean I couldn’t believe it because I was a warrant officer, it looked ridiculous because I was a warrant officer and then all of a sudden I was a sergeant. Back down to sergeant again.
DM: Strange. When you were on the squadron, you did seventeen operations I think I’m right in saying.
RG: I was shot down on my seventeenth yeah.
DM: Yeah but as you say it took longer because your pilot was a flight commander so -
RG: Yeah. That’s right. He was a deputy flight commander so -
DM: Yeah. What were your feelings sort of when you went on operations? Were you sort of nervous or frightened or -
RG: Well I wouldn’t say I was frightened you know because you had so much going on you know that you didn’t intend to be, I was never frightened. I don’t think I was ever frightened but because you were always sort of busy you know. Busy doing nothing as you might say you know because you were always searching around you know looking for, and then course when you, when you got over the target you was always thinking let’s get out of here quick you know sort of business you know.
DM: Did you get to fire your guns in anger?
RG: No. Never once. No. No I never fired, no I never fired my guns at all. I suppose when you come to think of it it’s the people, the lucky ones that got away. You know you get all these people who, who I mean I was only just, well I might interrupt and say I’ve just read a book on Group Captain Cheshire. He did a hundred operations. Well he must have been a very lucky man to do that number of operations.
DM: Particularly some of the operations he did.
RG: Well that’s right.
DM: Yes.
RG: Because I mean a lot of the chaps of course obviously they finished their tour, you know and as you went on you sort of felt a bit more safer you know, you know and when you I say I was on my seventeenth and that was it.
DM: Did you have any dicey moments before that?
RG: Yes. We got hit a couple of times by flak but as far as fighters was concerned we didn’t see, I didn’t get involved in any of them but no we were hit once or twice you know at different targets and we got over. Not enough to fetch us down but this one really caught us you know. It hit two of the engines out for a start you know and of course I was very lucky because the rear gunner had what they called a dead man’s handle so you could wind the turret around but otherwise I was very lucky because at that time they were issuing rear gunners with pilots type chutes so I was sitting on the chute but before that they were, they were stacked outside the turret. Well if mine had been outside the turret I wouldn’t be alive today because the flames was right up to my turret so I had to wind the turret around, open the doors and go out the back. That’s the only way I could get out but my bomb aimer and flight engineer were both killed and they’re buried in Berlin.
DM: Do you know if they baled out or were they still –?
RG: Well from what I gathered afterwards I think they were caught up with the machine. I think they probably baled out too quick and their parachutes got caught. One, I think one of them must have had a terrible death because his parachute was caught up in the plane and when the plane was, I think our wireless operator, he was, he contacted with the Germans that live around that way somewhere along the line because he wrote a book about it and he said that one of them was attached to the plane. His parachute was still intermingled with the, with the propellers.
DM: And you, did you, were you still in contact with the pilot when you baled out? Were you given the order to bail out or did you just decide it was the time to go.
RG: Well I couldn’t hear anything. I mean they said the pilot said bail out, you know but of course the intercom was all gone and being as I was at the back I saw the mid upper gunner come down and he went out the side door and I just rotated the turret with the dead man’s handle, opened the doors and went out the back that way. That was the only way I could get out.
DM: Do you remember much about the journey down?
RG: No. Not at all. No. No.
DM: They say most people don’t remember pulling the rip cord. I don’t know if -
RG: No. No. You don’t.
DM: I don’t know why.
RG: No you just go out I mean it’s the thing that I felt that I was always saying what happens if I have to bail out anytime, you know and you think oh you sort of dreaded that but when the time comes it’s a case of survival isn’t it?
DM: The lesser of two evils I suppose.
RG: Yeah that’ right
DM: If the plane’s on fire.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Yeah.
RG: And I suppose at night you see when it’s dark you can’t see anything.
DM: No.
RG: And all of a sudden you’re down, you know.
DM: Did you have a reasonably good landing? You didn’t injure yourself.
RG: Yeah. I didn’t get hurt or anything. No.
DM: And you still had both your boots.
RG: Yeah [laughs] Yes. Yes. Yes, I kept them for a long time. It’s funny really because the boots that we had you know and the soles were, were the rubber soles and they were stamped inside Petersfield, Hants and that’s where I came from and there was a factory in Petersfield who made all these rubber soles and things like that and the bottom of my boot was stamped inside Petersfield, Hants. Down the bottom.
DM: So you were shot down. The two farmers -
RG: Yeah.
DM: Captured you basically -
RG: Yeah. They did. Yeah.
DM: The army came and got you and took you off. Eventually you went to the interrogation centre.
RG: Yeah.
DM: What happened at the interrogation centre?
RG: Well again you got interrogated by these Germans. I was quite surprised and I think that anybody who was a prisoner would probably tell you exactly the same that when they got to this place at Frankfurt on Main I was, we were in little cells on our own and one day, about the second day I was there they took me into this office with this German officer was there to interrogate me and on this, 463 RAAF Waddington. ‘I expect you know group captain…’ so and so, ‘Don’t you?’ And, ‘He’s got a nickname hasn’t he?’ And this was it. ‘I’m sorry about the two of your crew that was killed.’ I mean he knew more about the squadron than I did after being on the squadron for about five months you know. They had it all there you know. I mean the Geneva Convention says you just tell them your number, rank and name, that’s all you know and that was it. He was telling me more than I knew you know, there was so much on the squadron and group captain so and so was in charge at Waddington. And he just, I was, you know I stood there I could see all this 463 squadron, Waddington. He opened it up, telling me all about all these, commanding officer and all that you know.
DM: Did you ever feel threatened?
RG: No. No. Never felt threatened at all. No. No. I don’t know whether it was because well the war was almost coming to an end. I can never understand really why, why they moved all these people out of these, out of the camps like they did, you know. I mean they just told us we were going and that was it. Why they did it I just don’t know because they could just all left us there and let the incoming troops take us over you know but they, they as I say we was, I mean they did this all over Germany apparently. I mean this place at Moosburg was full of different people you know. There was Americans and there was Russians and there was English people there and goodness knows what. All nationalities so they all, and of course it happened all up the north as well you know all these chaps was in different camps.
DM: When you were moving about sort of like from the farm to the police station and so on and then eventually to the prison camp did you ever encounter any civilians and was there any hostility?
RG: No. Well, we, we, well I say no because when we first got taken to the place where I met my navigator and the mid upper gunner there was another three other chaps there. I think one was Canadian, two were RAF and the six of us then and we had three guards. Three old chaps there. And we got on this train and we got to a place called Erfurt which was halfway between Leipzig and there and of course the RAF had just bombed the place as we, and of course we had to get out the train. The funny part about it was we got out the train we was holding the rifles and helping these chaps out you see. Course they were our safeguard really. We went to the station and they got us up into a corner and of course all these civilians were there and they thought we’d just, we’d just been captured and bombed and after bombing the place and of course they tried to attack us but the guards were there and kept them away and they marched us out of there and we went and stopped at the school about two miles up the road for the night to get us away from the people there. But as I say we were, we were, then we got on the train to go from Frankfurt to Nuremberg we were strafed by the Americans and we were in these box wagons and fortunately, I mean we were sort of, the thickness of the wood was alright because you could hear the bullets rattling across the roof of course they shot up the train. The engine as well. That didn’t do us a lot of good.
DM: What was the camp like at Nuremberg when you got there because being towards the end of the war, was it -
RG: Yeah
DM: Was it -
RG: It was pretty quiet you know. There was no animosity at all amongst us then. I mean we had nothing to do really. Just sit about all day long, you know.
DM: What was the food situation?
RG: Pretty sparse. If we hadn’t had the Red Cross parcels which we did have you know I think we would have been in pretty bad straights then because we got Red Cross parcels through from, and they came through and I think we had one loaf of bread during the day which was divided between seven of us and then we had Red Cross parcels which was probably one between two or three you know. Very difficult sometimes to share it out but otherwise it was pretty sparse you know.
DM: Now when you were marched from the camp how many days were you on the road?
RG: Sixteen days.
DM: And this was winter.
RG: Well, no well it was -
DM: April.
RG: April time yeah. Yeah.
DM: So not too bad weatherwise.
RG: No it wasn’t too bad. No. But I mean we just slept where we could, you see, I mean. If you got into a barn you were lucky you know. Sleep the night, then off again the next morning off you went again. Course it was stretched out for a hell of a long, I mean I lost, lost the, my navigator and that, and my bomb aimer, sorry my mid-upper gunner. We, they sort of went, you know, and you just fell in anywhere you could and just sort of walked along you know. We were glad when we got to Moosburg but then that was, we were in old tents and that there until we got liberated by the Americans. Of course then the Americans went mad because General Patton came in [laughs]. He was like a tin god to them but I mean I must say that with the Americans they got themselves organised because they had their bakeries and all that came along and baking bread and all that sort of thing and when we, when we came out of the camp there there was American lorries as far as you could see. The whole field was full of American lorries and we got, as we say we were in groups and so we was put in these individual lorries and taken off. Some went one way and some went another and then we had the Dakotas come along to take us to Rheims as I said before.
DM: So, on the march was it hard?
RG: Well it was in comparison, it was comparison that we never had much food you know. We sort of struggled along and they did give us a bit to eat you know like a soup kitchen or something like that there or a slice of bread but as I say it was, it was pretty hard going.
DM: I suppose it was probably –
RG: Course being, I was comparatively young so I didn’t, you know like -
DM: More resilient. Yes.
RG: I could keep going you know.
DM: Yeah. So you came back. As you said you came back to Britain. And what did you, when you were attached in Brussels what was that? What did you have to do there?
RG: Well to tell you truth I don’t really know what I was doing there [laughs] I mean it was funny really because I was, I was there at Barnham there and they said, I was there and they said there’s a signal come through and I was, I was a warrant officer at the time. I was doing and I went to the signals, and they said this airman must go on immediate leave. Posting to follow. So I went across to the officers’ mess. There was only about three officers there and I saw the OC and I said, ‘There’s an urgent signal.’ ‘Who’s it for?’ I said, ‘Me.’ He said, ‘Oh don’t worry about that,’ he said, ‘I’ll get that cancelled,’ but anyway he couldn’t so they sent me on leave for a month and when I came back my posting was cancelled so I’d been home for a month and then the posting was cancelled and eventually when I got made, brought down to sergeant the posting came up again and I was at the RAF, it was a posh name the RAF Delegation Brussels but actually it was RAF chaps there handing over to the Belgian Air Force and just getting them started up again you know but I was just there doing stores and that there. As a matter of fact the last job, the job I did have there was with an old warrant officer and he was fitting out some married quarters for the officers there. All the stuff that was going in so I was giving him a hand with that and then he came up to me in the mess one night and said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You live near Farnborough don’t you?’ So I said, ‘What Farnborough the [RAE?],’ so he said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘There was a chap posted there and he doesn’t want to go.’ Well I said, ‘Well give it to me then and I’ll take it.’ So I came, they got me a posting there fitted up so I went down, they sent transport for me, took me down to the Gare du Nord in Brussels. I got on this train and what I didn’t realise, it was, it was an officer’s train and the chap came along, he said, ‘Breakfast is served, sir’ you know and there was me with three stripes sat there and there were all these officers there so I, and I got down I got down to, where did get to? Calais, on the train and of course I was all on my own so I just got off with my kit and that and I said to one of the policemen there and I said, ‘How do I get to Dover?’ He said, ‘Well there’s a boat there.’ So I walked on to the boat and that was it and it was, I’ll always remember it was a Friday. I thought well I’m not going to Farnborough today. I’ll wait till the weekend. I’ll go Monday morning so I caught the train, I came down to Petersfield where I lived and stayed the weekend there and on the Monday morning I caught the train back up to Guildford, I think it was and then I went from there to Farnborough and reported in there and the chap said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You should have been here on Friday.’ So I said to him, ‘Have you ever tried getting across from Calais to Dover on a Friday?’ I said, ‘I didn’t get there till last night and come straight here.’ Of course he didn’t know any different so that was it. But again I just stayed there until I got demobbed and that was in the July I think. That was about, well it was the winter of ’47 which was a terrible winter then and that you know but that’s when I got demobbed.
DM: You didn’t think of staying in?
RG: Well I say again with aircrew you sort of had two trades. I mean as an air gunner I was finished flying so then they gave you, sent on a course for stores and I was AC, or something, stores so if I’d have stopped in I would have had to lose my aircrew rank and start again.
DM: So you ended up in the Ministry of Defence.
RG: Yeah. I worked for the Ministry of Defence in Liphook here because there was a big army depot here.
DM: Right.
RG: And that’s where I went to work. In there.
DM: But as a civilian obviously.
RG: Yeah. Oh yeah.
DM: So, when did you marry?
RG: 1948.
DM: Children?
RG: No. We got no children. No. No. But I, my wife worked for the, for the Ministry of Defence as well and so when my wife she took early retirement. So at fifty eight and I was sixty two, sixty three so I thought I’d take early retirement as well so I took it just afterwards. So I’ve been retired since I was sixty three.
DM: When you were at Waddington what was the social, sort of life like? You, as obviously, as a crew I imagine you were associated with each other.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Did the pilot associate with you as well off duty?
RG: Oh yes. Oh yes, most well I don’t say most nights but if we weren’t on flying he had a car and we used to go down the local pub. Everybody mixed in you know. I mean even sometimes you’d go down the pub and there was your ground crew was there as well you know. There was always drinks on us sort of business you know. But you know, the, everybody, always spoke well of their ground crew you know ‘cause after all you relied on them. I mean I was reading an article there once where the chap was writing in the paper and said, ‘Oh it was always them and us.’ Well it was never them and us you know.
DM: Were the ground crew a mixture of British and Australian or were they all British?
RG: No they were a mixture, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There were Australian engineers and that there. Fitters. Whatever have you.
DM: What did you think of the Australians?
RG: I got on all right with them, you know. As a matter of fact in 1982 my wife and I went to Australia for six weeks and stayed there with my wireless operator and he died just last year. But they invited us over there ‘cause they, it was funny really ‘cause I was here one Saturday afternoon, we’d been out in in the garden there, just sitting there and having a snack, you know and the front door bell went and I went the front door, the front door and this chap was stood there and I thought well I know his face but I just couldn’t place who he was and he said, ‘Hello Ron. I’ve come twelve thousand miles to see you.’ I said, ‘Oh Dudley Hanniford.’ He said, ‘Yes.’ That was my wireless operator and him and his wife they had come over for a big reunion. It was about, I suppose it was about fifty Australians or more came over to Waddington and stayed up there for a week in Lincoln and of course I knew nothing about it then but afterwards I think that was in, well it was the thirtieth anniversary or something in 1975 so they decided they would all get together and fly over to Waddington and they stayed all around the area and the next time would have been about 1990 I think it was. 1995. And I was then a member of the Association which I didn’t know anything about and my wife and I we went up to Lincoln and stayed there for a week at Waddington doing all manner of things around you know in the station and we went out around. We had, we had an invitation to the Lord Mayor’s do up in Lincoln. He invited all these people there to Lincoln, to a party up there and we had a couple of invitations to the officer’s mess. They weren’t very happy about the Australians coming over [laughs] I think they were a bit of a gung-ho lot you know. I mean I remember once I had because at the end of every month you had to take your log book in to the squadron leader, the OC, to sign it to verify it, sign it, you know. And I went there one day and the squadron leader was sitting at his desk you know, and I went in and saluted, you know and he said, ‘God don’t frighten me to death,’ he said. He said, he said because they never, they never used to salute anybody then. I mean they might do it once in a day but they never, didn’t salute every time you met an officer there ‘cause they were all crewed in together, you know but they was a good crowd.
DM: And you’re still a member of the Association.
RG: Yes. I’m still member of the Association. Yeah. But I haven’t been up to Waddington for the last couple of years you know but I get a newsletter every, about twice a year from the Association. What goes on.
DM: And are you the sole surviving member of your crew now?
RG: I must be yeah.
DM: Yeah.
RG: Yes, because my pilot and rear gunner and mid upper gunner I know have passed away and last year, two of the crew were killed so that only left five of us and the wireless operator which I used to share a room with in Waddington in the sergeants mess and he passed away last year. His son in law rung me up and told me about it you know but we spent six weeks out there with them.
DM: How do you feel about the way Bomber Command was, I won’t say treated but perhaps perceived and dealt with after the war? Do you have any feelings about that?
RG: Terrible.
DM: Yeah.
RG: I mean –
DM: Did you think that at the time?
RG: Yes because they sort of, I mean today you read about all these chaps coming out the army and the services and they think the world owes them a living but nobody thought that about us. You know, I mean as I say I was a warrant officer one day and then I was reduced to the rank of sergeant. Of course when I come home people thought, ‘I wonder what he’s done,’ you know. And it was so stupid because they still paid us, I still got paid as a warrant officer. The funny part about it was I had a, I had a warrant officer’s uniform and an overcoat and when I was posted to Brussels I was walking around there with a warrant officer’s overcoat with three stripes on and I was in Brussels one Saturday afternoon and one of the military, the RAF police came up to me and said, ‘Excuse me sergeant,’ he said, ‘But do you realise you are walking around with a warrant officer’s overcoat on?’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ So he said, ‘Why is that?’ So I told him. Thought no more about it. ‘Ok’, he said, ‘Can I have your number, rank and name.’ ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Where are you stationed?’ I said, ‘I’m at the RAF delegation.’ ‘Alright. Fair enough.’ Well fortunately it had come out on orders that although you were reduced down to sergeant you could still wear the overcoat but you had to put three stripes on it. So fair enough. So this, this friend of mine, he was in charge of the orderly room so I said to him, ‘Can you dig out that DCI that come out about wearing the overcoat,’ you see. He said, ‘Why?’ So I told him. He said, ‘Alright. I’ll look it up Monday morning.’ So anyway, funnily enough first thing on Monday morning I was sent for by the commanding officer out there and he said, ‘I believe you were pulled up sergeant,’ he said, ‘Well Saturday afternoon in Brussels for wearing a warrant officer’s overcoat.’ I said, ‘Yes. That’s right sir.’ I said, ‘I’m quite entitled to it,’ I said because they didn’t say we could hand that in and get a new overcoat so he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Can you prove that?’ So we sent for the sergeant in the orderly room and of course he didn’t know that I’d already spoken to him and he came out with this, showed it to him. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Oh you’re entitled to wear it then.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ So he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Get rid of that bloody overcoat,’ he said, ‘And go and draw a new one from the stores.’ So I went and I said, ‘Have you got a spare overcoat?’ He had an overcoat that fit me so I had two overcoats then. Of course when I come home I had two overcoats. I still kept the other one but, and I think as for this Bomber Command clasp they’ve given us I think it’s a disgrace. You’ve seen it have you? You know I, when they said they were give the Bomber Command a medal and then I received this little bit of tin with Bomber Command on it I thought, useless.
DM: Yeah, obviously now there’s the memorial and there’s the new Bomber Command Centre but I think a lot of people think it’s too late in a way. It’s better that, you know it’s good that it’s happening now but it should have happened thirty years ago.
RG: Oh yeah.
DM: Or even longer.
RG: Yeah. Even now you see it’s, it’s all done by charity really. You know. Donations to keep it going and that and to build it in the first place. I mean they had these people who had plenty of money and built it. I mean, it’s a wonderful memorial. It’s a lovely place but again it’s just too late.
DM: Another veteran said to me, I don’t know if you think this is true that there is only one thing wrong with the memorial. When you look at it they’re too old.
RG: They’re too old.
DM: The people in the statues are too old.
RG: Yes.
DM: They look like thirty five.
RG: Yeah.
DM: Forty year olds.
RG: Yeah. Yeah.
DM: You know and you were all very young men.
RG: Well the average age was about twenty two. Something like that. I mean as I said you had chaps flying Lancasters who couldn’t even drive a car, you know. I mean most of them, I mean, as I said the wing commander, our Wing Commander Forbes. I think he was only twenty six and he was a wing commander and he got, he got killed on his second, last trip of his second tour.
DM: Do you remember how old your pilot was? How old was he?
RG: My pilot was thirty two.
DM: Right.
RG: My mid-upper gunner -
DM: An old man then really.
RG: He was yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DM: And the mid upper gunner you were going to say.
RG: He was thirty two as well. Yeah. I was the youngest one in the crew but I mean most of these Australians they were say twenty, twenty two something like that because they’d come over like and done all their training and that so they were getting on, I’m not saying getting on a bit but the average age was only about twenty two, twenty three something like that. If you took it right through you know.
[machine paused]
DM: Catch up sort of thing.
RG: Up, up till 1943 before D-Day rather up to D-Day the aircrew blokes got the Aircrew Europe star you see. After D-Day we got the France and Germany which everybody got. You know, all the troops. Anybody who’d spent twenty four hours in France got the France and Germany medal and that’s all they gave us. So, but what they should have done really in my opinion they should have extended the Aircrew Europe right through the war. If they’d have given us the Aircrew Europe, after all, we went, I know, I know we were probably going over France, bits of France which had already taken you know and we were not likely to get shot down there but I mean we went to, I mean I went to, some trips took ten hours.
DM: And you did get shot down.
RG: Yeah. Got shot down.
DM: At the end of the day.
RG: You see.
DM: Yeah.
RG: I mean Leipzig is a fair old way across there you know and that but I mean they should have extended the Aircrew Europe and given it to everybody who was on operations but they didn’t. They gave, all they got was a France and Germany. I didn’t even get the defence medal. I mean a lot of these air crew blokes got the defence medal. I don’t know why but they did but I didn’t qualify for it but I mean, I think with the Aircrew Europe they should have ext, the Bomber Command Association should have put their foot down and said, ‘Well look, we want that extended.’ I mean when they brought the ’39/ ’45 medal out that was only ’39/ ’43 to start with and they extended that to 1945 so why couldn’t they have done that with the Aircrew Europe instead of giving us a little bit of tin with the Bomber Command. When I went to Coningsby to the, when the Canadian came over we had we had a chance there for the, if you wanted it for the commanding officer at Coningsby to present you with your clasp and a lot of the chaps did it. They just came up and said, they gave a bit of a spiel what they did and goodness knows what and the commanding officer handed, I suppose what they had to do was to send their clasp in their box up to there and then you didn’t probably get the same one back anyway but the commanding officer you know they gave a spiel out about what you did and then the commanding officer handed it over but I wouldn’t do that because I didn’t agree with the clasp and I think that Churchill let us down badly ‘cause he wouldn’t admit that he had anything to do with the Dresden raid and that was the top and bottom of it all I think.
DM: Dropped it like a hot potato didn’t he?
RG: I mean these people turn around and say oh what a terrible thing this was and what a terrible thing that was. As far as I was concerned we were just doing a job, you know. You didn’t think about all the people that were getting killed down below. Never thought about that at all. You were just thinking about yourself really but I mean when it came to, when you say, ‘Well yeah but what about Coventry? What about Plymouth? What about Southampton and what about London?’ All these people who say these things now I mean it’s like the president going to Hiroshima now and saying you know he didn’t say sorry, but he shouldn’t have to say sorry. What these people didn’t realise that unless you were there or were about at that time the fact was that we would have lost thousands of troops if we had tried to invade Japan. I mean they had the opportunity to give in but they didn’t. It was typical of the Japanese but they, I mean the way I look at it is this if they hadn’t dropped the atom bomb over there we should have lost thousands of people trying to invade there. And they say oh you killed thousands of people and all this sort of business. Well that’s wartime I’m afraid isn’t it?
DM: It is.
RG: Last year, about this time a chap rang me up ‘cause I had a bit of write up in the local paper because it was my ninetieth birthday and that you know and somebody got to hear about it and this chap rang me up and he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You were in Bomber Command.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘How would you like to go up to Cosford for the day for a reunion?’ You see. I said, ‘Cosford.’ I said, ‘Well how do I get to Cosford then?’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about how you’re going to get there.’ He said, ‘Just say if you can go or not.’ I said, ‘Oh yes, I’ll go.’ ‘Well I’ll give you, let you know what happens.’ So about a few days went by and he rang up and he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We’ve laid on some transport to take you to Blackbushe Aerodrome and from there there will be a plane to fly you up to Cosford.’ So I went up in a Cessna. So anyway there was quite a crowd of us there and the funny part about it was well there’s only about four people sit in a Cessna. There was only the pilot and three others. So I went with three other chaps and the pilot came out and said, ‘We’re ready to go now,’ So there was quite a crowd there and all these Cessnas out there. They were all privately owned. So we go around there and we get in the plane and he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Can’t start at the moment.’ He said, ‘We’ve got a job to start it. It won’t start.’ So anyway, it was quite funny because there’s the pilot, and another chap came out, apparently he’s the chief instructor at Blackbushe whatever he was there. He said, ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said, ‘Because I’ve been flying this plane all the week,’ he said, ‘and nothing, it’s been going alright.’ He said, ‘Perhaps the battery’s flat.’ You couldn’t, you’d never believe this. They couldn’t find the bloody battery. They didn’t know where the battery was. So me and these other two blokes were sitting there. I thought ‘cause it was quite a struggle to get up into a blooming Cessna so he said, ‘Oh well.’ So they took the bonnet off the front. No it ain’t under there. I thought oh a good job this isn’t wartime. So they put the bonnet back on. They found out it was in the back. ‘Oh we’ll have, we’ll have to charge it up. So will you get out again and go and sit back in the old canteen there,’ he said, ‘And we’ll give you a call.’ And so of course all these other planes were taking off to Cosford and we were just sitting there. So eventually the pilot came through after about an hour and he said, ‘Oh we can go now.’ I said, ‘Alright,’ so everybody climbs back and gets back in to the Cessna again. Chap comes along with a battery, looked like a twelve bolt car battery. I thought they’d already put it in the plane, you know. Oh no he come along with it. Anyway, he got the plane started up and off we took and flew to Cosford. I think we were about the last ones to arrive there you know ‘cause all packed out there. So anyway and of course then when it was time to come home the pilot said, ‘I think we’d better..’ and of course when we got to Cosford you had to wait until there was a van to take you out to the planes, you see. They wouldn’t let you walk out but they were only just up the road, they wouldn’t let you walk, they took you so were one of the last ones to take off. I think it was about two Cessnas left. Anyway so that was their day at Cosford. And this other bloke said, ‘We’ll see in 2016 but I think this year they said there’s something about it was at Scampton but I’ve heard nothing this year. Perhaps it’s too far down for me to go up there.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Ronald Gard
Creator
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David Meanwell
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-01
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGardR160601
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Pending OH summary
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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00:52:13 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Ronald Gard flew operations as a rear gunner with 463 Squadron and was shot down on an operation to Leipzig.
Spatial Coverage
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Belgium
France
Great Britain
Belgium--Brussels
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Bridgend
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1943
1944
1945
463 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
crash
crewing up
Dulag Luft
Lancaster
memorial
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF Silverstone
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Winthorpe
Red Cross
shot down
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1000/10691/PGerardJA1801.2.jpg
e5a7614ba6146e4260ccc84450352f8d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1000/10691/AGerardJA181122.1.mp3
78e1d3aa7d49cf3b7efcecd1216a67d8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Gerard, Tony
John Anthony Gerard
J A Gerard
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Tony Gerard (1925 - 2020, 301083, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 90 and 7 Squadrons.
(The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-11-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Gerard, JA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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SP: So, this is Suzanne Pescott and I’m interviewing John Anthony Gerard known as Tony today who was a flight engineer with both 90 Squadron and 7 Squadron during the years 1943 to ‘45. Today’s interview is for International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive and we’re at Tony’s home. It’s the 22nd of November 2018. Also present at the interview is Tony’s son Richard. So, first of all, thank you, Tony for agreeing to talk to me today. Do you want to tell me a little bit about your time first of all before you joined the RAF?
TG: Oh, I was in a bank in, in Liverpool. First job. I had to move from, from Dingwall. I was in Dingwall office because the manager there retired and the [old man] who was in the bank was made manager and of course he couldn’t, I couldn’t stay there so I had to move to the Liverpool branch. You know, because you, you couldn’t be managing a place where your direct dependants were, were employed. So, I was in Liverpool office for about six months in ’43 until, you know I had six months by which time I’d spent quite a lot of time in Southport because I got one of the girls in the bank lived in Southport so we used to go there, and she, she, it’s rather interesting as I went abroad because she used to be some, this this is not known to you, she used to be in in what they called, there’s a big hotel in in Southport this side you go so. At the time it was an American Forces leave place and she used to be one of the, they used to call them something and so [pause] so anyway so I was annoyed with her so I went off to Iraq on the, on the what was it? [pause] Oh, a South African ship. What was it again?
RG: Wasn’t this after the war? Sorry.
TG: This is after the war. Yeah.
RG: Yes. No. Life before —
[recording paused]
SP: So, Tony, that was about a year in the bank then in total before —
TG: Yeah. Yeah.
SP: You decided to sign up, was it? So —
TG: Yes.
SP: And what made you decide on the RAF?
TG: I was in the ATC as well, like. In the ATC, and most of the people in the ATC went in to the RAF. Most of my pals in West Kirby here joined the Navy, because they would be on the Naval sails here and I sailed here as well but I joined the RAF. I think I liked the uniform. I forget now like.
SP: So, what sort of things did you do with the ATC to get you prepared for the RAF?
TG: You had a uniform in the ATC and they used to meet in the, meet at the, it was very suitable. But the, what’s the name was [pause] the Golf Club because they had sort of outside so we were able to have —
SP: Like a drill square outside.
TG: A drill square. Yes. That was very suitable and we had every week it was. I forget now which night but it was very very suitable. Where were we?
SP: So you decided to join the, you were in the ATC. You decided to join the RAF.
TG: Yeah. Oh yeah.
SP: Do you want to tell me —
TG: So I had to go to Liverpool first in, in Liverpool where everybody who went to the war, for the initial [pause] initial oh, say who you were, what you were. How you were fixed with mental, night flight and all of that lot.
SP: Whereabouts in Liverpool was that?
TG: That was in, in, I can tell you the exact place. It was in Minshull Street. Minshull Street and that was, and they said righto, ‘Well we don’t, we don’t want anybody else now.’ This was in halfway ’43. So they said we’ve got enough people waiting now for pilots and navigators and bomb aimers because they went to Canada so you can either be, you can be on the list for either air gunner or flight engineer. We didn’t like the sound of air gunner so [laughs] A few people did but that was in March or April of ‘43.
SP: And how long did it take until they called you up for your training?
TG: So, I actually joined the RAF I think on the 8th of November. 8th of November 1943. My number was 015 [laughs] What was it now? Oh, fancy forgetting that. I can remember that at any time. The number. Nobody forgets their number [laughs] Everybody remembers their number.
SP: And what was your number, Tony?
TG: 3010831.
SP: Ok. Fantastic.
TG: [Laughs] yeah.
SP: So, what was the first thing you did?
TG: It’s not in here. The number. I don’t think.
SP: Yeah. Not in your logbook. So, what was the first thing you did with the training then? So, you got your service number and in the November ’43.
TG: 8th of November I joined up, down at um. What’s the name of the cricket ground in London?
SP: Lord’s.
TG: Lord’s.
SP: Lord’s Cricket Ground.
TG: Everybody who joined up, and fortunately I found that this, the whole of the intake was about twelve or fifteen intake were Durham miners and I’d never met any Durham miners before [laughs] At that time I was a bit, you know. I was a bit [pause] and they didn’t trust me of course. ‘From a bank? What’s a bank? We’re miners.’ And I forget now. I think, oh I know the only interest up there was I found they were good people and they’d already got the idea that you looked after everybody. That was in, intense. Intense outlook at, at [pause] what’s that name?
SP: Down at Lord’s when you were all together.
TG: Down at Lord’s. Yeah. We were there for about a fortnight or three weeks. And they, they learned that in about a day because you had to have about half a dozen injections and goodness knows what so, and one night, we’d only be there about a day and I was on the, sitting on the bed, on my bunk and we used to be in bunks and I had the top bunk of this place. I was dropped out through, through all these thingies and in the morning I found myself in the right bunk covered up with clothes. And that that convinced me they were [laughs] they were alright.
SP: They’d looked after you.
TG: Yes. They only learned it took one day and it didn’t matter what you were, you were part of that team at the time and therefore they had to look after you. And one of the blokes had took me, well they must have lifted me up on to the top bunk and, and that was a good start. But that was the, that was a good, a good start to I think probably your, your father thought had the same experience. That as soon as you joined the RAF whatever little bit you were in you were part of that and and everybody looked after each other. And even in that small number and the days, they would have only have been in a day but they looked after me. But, I always forget that, always remember that. And they were all Durham miners. They were tough characters. And I was [unclear] but we went to, in to ITW. ITW was, was a very cold spot because it was in, what’s that place?
SP: So ITW is the Initial Training Wing for you, isn’t it? So, that’s where you went to next.
TG: ITW. Yes. ITW. When you’d been two or three weeks and gone through all the rigmarole and in uniform etcetera in London you went to ITW and I went to ITW in Bridlington of all places. In December [laughs] It was howling gale off the North Sea and we were frozen stiff but we had a very nice corporal running our lot. Very nice. He was, he was a nice chap the corporal was. I can remember him now. Well, I’ve got a picture of him standing in front of our little group and he was a, mind you there was a bloke, a huge big chap and he’d been, he was a warrant officer, or [pause] He’d taken his doings off because he was on the course and he, he’d originally been motorboating.
SP: Right.
TG: Going out the North Sea picking up people who had pranged in the North Sea. There was a lot of people that pranged in the North Sea and he’d been a, he’d been originally been a, been running this motor boat and he was a warrant officer. He was a huge blooming chap and of course he got preferential treatment from the corporal having been a warrant officer before.
But he was the same as us then really. He was alright. But I got flu at the end. The day we, we, and the day we got leave we got leave at the end of ITW and that was six weeks. That day I ended up at Lime Street Station with a dose of flu and you know what you can be like with flu and I had to ring up the old man because it was about midnight. So I would have been there ‘til morning. The train had dropped us there late so that I managed to ring up the old man so he said, oh well of course he had, he had, he didn’t have much petrol but he had a bit and he came over and picked me up at Lime Street and I was sitting against the wall leaning against my kit bag [laughs] I was, and I’ll never forget that because I had flu for about a fortnight. Of course, I lost my course and it proved a very good thing because I met blokes off the following course who had gone, they had started having training at Weston Super Mare. This Locking. Locking camp outside Super Mare and I met some very good blokes there and we had, we had we used to have a good time at Locking. Mainly climbing over the fence at about midnight.
SP: Climbing over the fence at midnight. Where was that?
TG: That was in Locking. It’s, I think it’s still going. It’s about [pause] five miles I would say out of, outside Weston Super Mare. It’s a nice town Weston Super Mare. And they had some good hotels in it. It was —
SP: So was that because you were getting back late you had to —
TG: Yeah.
SP: Go over the fence. Yeah. Because you had missed your squadron bus back.
TG: Yes. We should have been back at eleven.
SP: Right.
TG: We were climbing through, mostly through the fence underneath. Always doing that and never got caught. Never got caught. And then of course eventually, having done six weeks there, six or ten weeks I forget now we went and joined the, the rest of the course at, at, St Athan in, which was a very good place to be there. St Athan. It was a good little place. Mind you, you had to work hard there. We were ten weeks or so there. It was about sixteen week course altogether and we had done ten of it at Locking. So, when this, this, when we’d been sort of six weeks or ten weeks at Locking we had already moved and then we were the next course and they were one above us that I’d been with. But never, you never met them because you were with your own lot.
SP: So, what sort of things did you train on down in Weston Super Mare? What was at Locking? What —
TG: Mainly on, on the Lancaster. There were two courses going on simultaneously there. One was we trained on the Merlin engines and and also on the other plane you were going in to and I was selected or put in the Lancaster lot and some were put in the [pause] what’s it called? Your father.
SP: Halifaxes.
TG: Halifaxes. To learn about the, but the whole thing took, it was in the, in the following August so I’d been nearly twelve months then. The fellas, I was posted and everybody got posted to different places and I got sent to Scampton of all places. Scampton [laughs] what a good place to start your [laughs] I went to Scampton for a few days and waited to be, because there were three Scampton men to the, I was in 5 Group and so that we stayed in 5 Group then. Of course, I spent about oh I’d only been in Scampton a few days when I was posted to Swinderby by myself. And I was still by myself. There was only one. One that had gone from Scampton. That’s where I met my crew. Swinderby.
SP: So, so your crew had already crewed hadn’t they? So they’d been flying.
TG: No. I hadn’t. They had —
SP: They had but the flight engineers always joined —
TG: They always joined at —
SP: At the end.
TG: At the end.
SP: Not at the end. But the end, when the crew got together, wasn’t it?
TG: Yes.
SP: Yeah.
TG: They’d been together for two or three months.
SP: Yeah. How was it to fit in to a team that had already been working together for that time?
TG: Well, I was, I was on in the ground in the, in the, hut when, it was a permanent, permanent station. Swinderby. Yes. It was. And so I was in the ground floor because there was just a spare bed there. So, I took it when I went there and I suppose I’d only been there about a day when a bloke came downstairs and said, ‘Is your name —’ so and so? And I said, ‘Yeah.’ So he said, ‘Oh, well, you’re joining our crew.’ [laughs] And he was the bomb aimer. He was a nice bloke, Tom and I used to go out with him quite a lot. We, Tom and me. Tom said, ‘Well, come and meet the rest.’ They were upstairs. So we just, the beds were moved around. I went in to that. That’s how I joined the crew.
SP: So, it was quite welcoming. That atmosphere that you talked about before.
TG: Oh yes.
SP: About everyone realising it was a team. It was straight away that you were part of that. Yeah.
TG: They, they’d already —
SP: Yeah.
TG: Been with each other for and they’d had a bit, a bit of a time of it. They had been to, been to training places themselves before I joined them. But there was no the point in joining until then because what we knew about the aircraft was, they didn’t need to know. You had to know because you had to mend it [laughs] if it went wrong. So anyway, that, that was how I met the crew and I couldn’t have met, everybody says the same thing. So, they were good blokes. I was, I was. Just as though I’d been with them all along. So —
SP: So how long was it then before you were on operations?
TG: Oh, well you can see here how many trips we did on Stirlings. On, because they, they didn’t have Lancasters at Swinderby.
SP: Right.
TG: They had Stirlings so you were, you were on a Stirling learning to be on a Lancaster but you went to Lancaster Finishing School. There were only four trips there on, on that.
SP: And where were you at Lancaster Finishing School? Was that —
TG: That was at, what’s it called now [pause] What’s the name? It says the name on the top.
SP: So, they’re at Warboys, Hunts’.
TG: Warboys.
SP: Yeah. So that was a Finishing School. What sort of things did you —
TG: No. That was, Warboys was —
SP: Yeah.
TG: Was the Pathfinders. Before we went to [pause]
SP: So, it was the Lancaster Finishing School and then you went on to —
TG: Went straight to, down to south, south, to Tuddenham.
SP: Tuddenham. Yeah. And that’s when you joined 90 Squadron.
TG: The squadron. That was the squadron.
SP: So, what was life like at Tuddenham?
TG: It was a wartime old place. Wasn’t a regular place. It was, actually it was only about a mile or two to our, where we were because we were Tuddenham. 90 was, was a sub to, to Mildenhall which is 15 which was a very posh squadron. Mildenhall, which was, we always had our our post, you know, post and we used to meet once a year. We always had those at Mildenhall.
SP: So, where the Associations used to have their annual —
TG: Yeah.
SP: Meeting.
TG: That’s right.
SP: Yeah.
TG: The annual meeting at Mildenhall which was very posh of course. They had a lovely [pause] it was a mess actually but we took it over for the day. But it was like a, you know a posh [pause] big it, was big and there was a big room with the eating and because originally at first huge but they only started it in about 1948 I think and we packed it in in 1960. But we only packed it in, I will never forget the bloke, he was a, the bloke who was chairman was, he was one of these in Norway and all this sort of caper and he was [pause] I forget now what he was but he was miles above us. We were all, while we were together we were all messed. Not officers. We were all other ranks. Even the pilot was. He started off with us and we had him for quite a while before he got his commission but he only got his because eventually they made all what they called captains of aircraft they made them all officers. So he, he was automatically was away but the way the navigator [laughs] saluted him just the same. He never got on with him really. He was a, he was very good navigator. He went on Transport Command and he always tells the story of the day he went into Transport Command he, he went in to the interview and he said, ‘I said to them, now I’m only a warrant officer and you’re, you’re only, if you’re not going to pass me say so now because I’m not an officer.’ So they passed. He was passed in the end. He was that good.
SP: What was his name? What was your navigator’s name?
TG: The navigator. He’s the next door to me on that, on that photo.
SP: Photo.
TG: The only one alive apart from me now and he’s the one that’s gone deaf. Solidly deaf.
SP: Right.
TG: I’m trying to think.
SP: And what’s his name?
TG: Bill.
SP: Bill. Do you know Bill’s surname?
TG: Bill. Bill. Bill. What was his surname?
SP: Don’t worry I’ll refer, everybody referred to everyone just by their nicknames or first names, didn’t they? Don’t worry.
TG: His name was Bill anyway.
SP: Yeah.
TG: Always to me. Then Fred was next door to him.
SP: And what was Fred?
TG: He was pally with Fred.
SP: What role was Fred on the crew?
TG: He died. The first one that died was Fred. After the war. He lived in Hull. Yes. That’s — [unclear]
[recording paused]
SP: Right.
TG: In, what’s in London? London East End. He was very, his father was [pause] was either couldn’t see or he couldn’t hear.
SP: Right.
TG: I’m not sure. But he had a rough life in the East End of London.
SP: And what was his name?
TG: Bill [laughs]
SP: Bill. And what role did Bill play in the crew?
TG: He was the navigator.
SP: The nav. Right. Yeah. That’s Bill. The navigator. Yeah.
TG: He was a damned good navigator.
SP: Yeah.
TG: He used to —
SP: So, Bill the navigator. And then who else was on the crew?
TG: That’s Fred. He was the first man to die. We all went to his funeral in Hull.
SP: And what role did Fred do?
TG: He, he was ooh, ooh when I left.
SP: Yeah. But he, what role did he play? Was he one of the gunners? Or was he —
TG: No. He was the wireless op.
SP: Wireless op. ok.
TG: He was a very good one.
SP: Yeah.
TG: Because he used to fly in in the Yorks so he was a very good. We had two very good. There we are in—
SP: So just looking at the pictures of the reunion with Tony.
TG: That right.
SP: At the moment.
TG: I’m at the end.
SP: Your pilot’s name?
TG: He was Skip. Always Skip.
SP: Kip.
TG: Pilots are always Skip.
SP: Kip. And where was Kip from?
TG: He was from down, what’s the further down the east coast? What’s the name of the places? Where they’ve now got a big [pause] Anyway, he was engaged. He used to always fly around that because his girlfriend who he married eventually and went to Rhodesia. He was, Proome was his name. P R —
SP: Yeah.
TG: O O M E. Because when he got his [laughs] his pilot, he was a flight lieutenant. No. He’d got a warrant by then. The day he got his his announcement of his, his —
SP: His commission.
TG: Officer Proome.
SP: Yeah.
TG: The bloke came in and said, said, ‘Flight sergeant —’ or whatever he was, ‘Proome. You are now Pilot Officer Proome.’ Of course, Proome [laughs] The whole place just descended in to laughter. He was, and he was writing. Proome his name was but of course it was the old saying. You know. The old P O Prune. But he was, I’ll never forgot the day he got. That’s the rear gunner.
SP: What was the rear gunner called?
TG: Jimmy.
SP: Jimmy.
TG: Jimmy. He got very pally with, after the war, he got very pally with the, what was he? The chief Pathfinder. What was the chief Pathfinder’s name? I C. He ran it from the time he, he was a so and so. I didn’t like him at all. Nobody liked him but he did and he, he got, there’s a memorial on Plymouth Hoe that he organised and got it going after the war.
SP: Yeah.
TG: It’s very good actually. It’s alongside —
SP: Yeah.
TG: Introduced me to—
[recording paused]
SP: And so this is your bomb aimer. What was his name?
TG: Tom.
SP: Tom Saunders.
TG: Tom Saunders. Yeah. And there’s the mid-upper gunner. A bit of a character as you can see.
SP: What was his name?
TG: His name was, oh what was his name now? [pause] Do you know, I can’t. I’ll send the —
SP: Don’t worry. We’ll get the details. So, were all your crew British?
TG: In the same positions there. The same positions. That’s in the bar downstairs in Mildenhall.
SP: So, we’re just looking at your picture of the reunion there. Yeah.
TG: Yeah.
SP: So, was, were all the crew British on yours or was any —
TG: Yeah.
SP: Yeah.
TG: Yeah. They were all British.
SP: So, you didn’t have any Canadians or —
TG: No. Didn’t have any, any, no.
SP: Or Australians.
TG: They were all British.
SP: Yeah. So, so if we go on to your time at, with 90 Squadron do you want to talk were any operations that stood out? What —
TG: Yeah. Well, we did, what did, twenty one of them. Was it twenty one? And then after the war, the war was ending, thank you we did one or two trips to Holland with the, with the what did they call it? They called it something —
SP: Operation Manna.
TG: Manna. We did a couple of Manna trips and then we did a couple of [pause] a couple of bringing POWs home from Juvencourt. We went to Juvencourt and the first day we went there we carried a load of, well about four or five anyway of new, new, new tyres in case anybody, because there were quite a number, quite a number of squadrons going to Juvencourt and in case anybody needed any. We, but of course we didn’t know that until the end of the day so we arrived there about 10 o’clock or eleven and we found out oh well, we never said anything. We don’t take any that day and so we went into Reims. And we went to Reims and in the middle of the square in Reims there is this cathedral. Reims Cathedral and it’s a magnificent frontage and a bloke came up and we got pally talking to him. He said, ‘There’s the, you can still see where the Germans had fired before.’ They were trying to ruin the cathedral and they fired and we saw chips off. Chips off afterwards. When we went back he said, ‘Well, I’ve been keeping this for a special occasion. Now, you come to my house with me.’ And we went around the corner and walked round’ And well, blow me he opened the back door. It was a back door wasn’t it? We thought where are we going in to here. We went inside and he brought out the most beautiful, of course it’s Reims is the centre of, of what’s his name? Yeah.
SP: Champagne, is it?
TG: Champagne.
SP: Yeah.
TG: And he brought out the most beautiful Champagne and he’d been keeping that all through the war for a special occasion and we went in to his house and he gave us a drink of this champagne and it was the best champagne I’ve ever tasted. Champagne’s nothing compared with that. It was marvellous. So that was our day in —
SP: In Reims.
TG: In Reims.
SP: Fantastic.
TG: When we came back. Back, during the afternoon we came back to Juvencourt and saw that we were the only one left. Everybody had left. They didn’t need us. They didn’t need the space for spare tyres.
SP: No.
TG: So, and we so we flew over Paris. We weren’t supposed to but we landed outside via. Skip said, ‘Well, we’re not going to get another way out.’ We were properly on the way southern. We went over Paris on the way and saw the Seine. A nice day that was.
SP: So those, those would have been towards the end of your tour, wouldn’t it? The dropping. The Operation Manna.
TG: Oh yes. We had done the thing.
SP: Yeah. So, do you know, just thinking back to when you joined the crew at Tuddenham. Can you remember where you went on your first operation?
TG: Yes. We, we went to Siegen. Or Siegen was it? Siegen. We went there twice. Where was the first? [pause — pages turning] Actually, we went there twice in wo days. The first day was coming on Christmas. Excuse me. And we [pause] our escorts couldn’t get. We had daylight escorts then. Fighters. And they couldn’t get off from their ‘drome so we were just approaching France and the recall came and we had to drop the bombs in the, in the channel. We couldn’t take them back in case they were dropped on the way down. But that was the first trip. To Siegen. There was a few like —
SP: Were there any major trips that stand out to you because you had a lot of operations that you went on?
TG: Yes. We went on quite a few. A few daylights. There’s oh there’s two. The red ones are night and the green ones are daytime and that was night.
SP: How can —
TG: Munich. I don’t know whether it was Munich or, or the other one.
SP: Cologne?
TG: Cologne. No. Cologne’s this end. Munich’s a long way.
SP: You’ve done operations to Nuremberg.
TG: I don’t know whether it was Nuremberg or Munich where where Jimmy said, ‘There’s a fighter alongside us. He said, ‘Don’t blame me. I’m sure he hasn’t seen us.’ And he said to Bill, ‘Bill, don’t fire anything. Don’t, don’t take any notice because he hasn’t seen us.’ So when [laughs] I can remember that. It was quite a, quite a hefty response from below. I think it was all this business going on so, but he was, the light from the, from the, it was night, both night trips. The light from, from the bombs and the fires.
SP: The flak.
TG: Coming up. There was an air brake on the aircraft, and you could look through and see other aircraft, and he must have. Must have seen us. But he was right alongside us and it was a German fighter. And eventually he left and so Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief, ‘Ok. He’s gone.’ [laughs] But he, ‘Don’t try and shoot. Don’t be a fool and shoot him down because —' he said, ‘He hasn’t, I’m sure he hasn’t seen us.’ I can remember little Jimmy saying [unclear] He was a very good rear gunner though. He never fired at anything but he was always on the lookout for things. And he was better than [pause] than the big big chap in the mid [pause] I think he was better because Bill used to say, ‘Jimmy, have you seen anything?’ ‘No.’ ‘Oh, that’s good.’
SP: So, you got quite a mixture of night and daylight raids.
TG: Yes.
SP: What, what did you find was the biggest difference between the two? What was the experience like?
TG: Well, the night ones you see we ended the night ones when we went to, to the training place at this [pause] we didn’t do many night ones later. That’s the training area for the aircraft.
SP: That was Warboys. So —
TG: Warboys. Yes.
SP: Yeah.
TG: This is —
SP: So, you did. So you did like Essen during daylight and Siegen at night.
TG: We only did four trips with, with, we were there about a month or six weeks before we got seen off back. Back to —
SP: So, what was the biggest difference between, you know a night operation to a day operations? Would it be a different atmosphere in the plane? Was there anything different you did day light to night?
TG: No, I don’t think so.
SP: No.
TG: Well, you could see. I never said [pause] the thing I I can remember the most is the arguments with, between, excuse me. My eyes water.
[pause]
I don’t think there was anything. I remember one, one daylight raid we we shot off the runway and we used to you know sometimes they, he used to like to push the engines up to a certain point and he would say, ‘Right you —' on the right, tell me what, right. And he would let me know. But at that point we headed off the runway and shot across [laughs] really bounced. Poor old Jimmy in the rear turret was bounced up and down and then of course it was just a rough, rough part of the aerodrome. [unclear] started again. Ok. He was a good pilot. He was a good pilot. Even, even [pause] even Bill recognised. He didn’t like him. He used to argue with Bill and he, he’d look round, oh we’d be going [unclear] these were and, ‘Well, other people are going that way. Why are we going this way? What’s your —’ And Bill said, ‘If you want to get shot down go the other way.’ So he said’That is the right way.’ And it always was.
SP: Yeah.
TG: He never never gave him —
SP: Ok.
TG: You know, the wrong course or —
SP: Yeah.
TG: Yeah. Always. And at the PFF I was supposed to drop the bombs but, because Bill, what’s his name, the bomb aimer Tom used to be sitting next to Bill from behind us. Just behind us. We were all on top level in the Lanc. You were down below more in the Halifax. We were all on the top level. You could always see what was happening round you and you were given a course and say, ‘Well, everybody, other people seem to be going the other way.’ They’d be arguing and, ‘Well, I don’t care if they’re going upside down. This is the way.’ And he was always right because he was such a good navigator. Oh, he was. A clever lad Tom and ended up as an IC in London one of the one of the main places of of where you applied for extra, extra money or anything like that and and got to the top of tree by that. He was a very clever lad.
SP: Yeah.
TG: Very clever.
SP: You were telling me before about formation flying. So you’d done sort of formation flying on some of the raids. So that was quite, you saw some events happen on those. Do you want to tell me about [pause] about the formation flying?
TG: It was never the worst one was when the bloke alongside who lost a wing heading in to Cologne. Never forget that. Didn’t know until, until we suddenly [pause] Jimmy probably told us. He was alongside of us and if he, if he’d tipped that way and if he’d tipped too far he’d have gone in to us. That happened quite often in the war books I’ve read.
SP: So can you tell me what happened on that? So, how did it lose the wing?
TG: Nothing happened. Well, something, we presume it must have been a bomb dropped by somebody else because it was near the bombing point. But it was the last raid to Cologne. The last time we went to Cologne so it must have been when we’d gone back from Pathfinders then. It was twenty one or twenty two raids. We didn’t see anything at all. We just disappeared. All of a sudden you looked and the wing had gone.
SP: What effect did that have on the crew?
TG: None. None at all. ‘Hard luck,’ sort of thing. He couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t do anything about it. But he was, if he’d been a bit further over he’d have dropped it through our starboard wing because it wasn’t very far from us and he had the, a port wing went. It wasn’t our squadron though. It was one of the other. Probably one of 15 but it might have been one of ours. I forget now.
SP: So, you did quite a few of your operations with 90 Squadron but then you got posted to 7 Squadron.
TG: Yes.
SP: What, what, what role did you do at 7 Squadron?
TG: Sorry?
SP: You mentioned Pathfinders.
TG: Pathfinders. Yeah. They were, 7 was one of the [pause] what was the, the posh squadrons were 7. Were 7. Ad the, what’s its name?
SP: The one at Mildenhall.
TG: The bomb, the people who dropped the bombs on the dams.
SP: Right. So, 617 Squadron.
TG: 617.
SP: Yeah.
TG: Yeah. They were very unlucky really. Or he was. Very unlucky because the bloke who was IC of that business, what was his name? I can’t remember his name now. He was killed towards the end of the war flying a [pause] what was it called? A twin engine. A twin engine. Very good. A twin-engine thing.
[recording paused]
SP: So, a Mosquito.
TG: He was flying a Mosquito and he was killed at the end of the war. But he wasn’t a popular bloke although he was, he was very smart, very oh, oh the king and that sort of thing but he wasn’t popular. But he wouldn’t have had him killed himself because he did hundreds of operations. But he was, it was about the time of the bloke who started the, the [pause] started the —
[recording paused]
SP: So, when you were at 7 Squadron that was Pathfinders and you were doing some activity with Pathfinders. You mentioned Illuminator.
TG: Yeah. Where you, where you —
SP: You talked about the Illuminator role within Pathfinders.
TG: Yes.
SP: What, what was that role?
TG: Do you know, I can’t remember what [pause] It was the first thing you did when you got there was you were the illuminator. Now, what you did as an illuminator I don’t know. But at this, I remember this particular raid this Hanover one because we were with two aircraft. Only two of us and we were going through cloud. We were flying above the cloud a bit and all of a sudden there was a bang in front of us which blew part of the [unclear] in so we had a howling gale so. [unclear] dived into the bottom and chucked out Window quick in case they were, that would be, it was late in the war this was. Very late. Very late. In case it had been predicted flak flak and the next one would have been, would have been so [unclear] have been alive.
SP: So, it took part of the plane out.
TG: Shot down.
SP: Where the first part of the flak took the first part of the fuselage or the window?
TG: No. It was, maybe it was, I remember seeing a red, a big flash of the, of the whatever it was that they’d thrown up at us. But he was past it and we were following him. I don’t know why. He was past that. The next one might have, could have been even nearer and this was the nearest we ever got to a bit of anti-aircraft fire. But by Jove I was quick. I’d never moved so fast in my life.
SP: And that was on the trip to to Hanover.
TG: That was one to Hanover.
SP: One of the last ones. Yeah. Yeah.
TG: It turned out it was the last trip because [pause] I wasn’t with, I don’t know what had happened there. Whether they’d never, but I didn’t understand what this was all about and I couldn’t ask Tom, because I was supposed to know. But I knew I hadn’t been there. It was a [unclear] drop, you see. Dropped the main one before we got [pause] but I could see what we were supposed to be aiming at was a square in Hanover. It was a square. We were very low at the time. We were, oh a thousand or two feet and what we were doing there I don’t know. But I remember this and thinking this isn’t quite, this isn’t going to hit that square. And I never knew why. And after the war I never asked Tom. [unclear] for which I had the, the understanding of it. Of the, or whether he had just forgotten. Didn’t bother with the bomb aiming part. Fed up with his his navigation and his [unclear]
SP: Screen. Yeah.
TG: Rigmarole of the, on the navigator table.
SP: So that was your last trip with 7 Squadron.
TG: Yes.
SP: You were telling me about a little incident about a motorbike whilst you were at 7 Squadron. Do you want to —
TG: That was during our time.
SP: Yeah. So, what happened there?
TG: This, this, he was a warrant officer so I thought well, he must be a reasonable chap and he was going on leave and he knew Fred, you know. He, I forget now how he came to know about this motorbike and he asked Fred if he could borrow it for his leave in London. He reckoned he was going to London. And —
SP: And this was your brand new motorbike.
TG: It wasn’t new.
SP: Right. But it was new to you.
TG: You couldn’t buy them. You couldn’t buy a new one then.
SP: Yeah. But it was new to you.
TG: Hmmm.
SP: Yeah.
TG: Oh aye. It was too big actually but it wasn’t dear. It was about twenty five quid round about that point, and it was, so I said yes. ok. He only wanted it for a few days. And we didn’t hear anything for a week and then we’d heard he’d had the smash. And there’s a police car of all things. Bang with the investment. He was in hospital. The best. So of course, the police found out that it wasn’t his bike. So, I had to say well I I lent it to him which I did. I did lent it to him. So he hadn’t pinched it but I had to write it off.
SP: And how many times had you been out on the bike before that?
TG: Once.
SP: Once.
TG: Yeah. On the pillion behind Fred.
SP: So, you’d never actually driven.
TG: I wasn’t actually driving the bike, vroom we went off and Fred said, ‘Going to take you a while to sort this out this bike. It’ll do a hundred miles an hour. It’ll —
SP: So you never get to enjoy your bike.
TG: Never got the chance.
SP: No.
TG: Never got it out. Went back to Tuddenham again.
SP: So then yet you went back to Tuddenham.
TG: To Tuddenham. Yeah, that must have been one to[pause] that last one at Tuddenham.
SP: So, your last few operations were there.
TG: Yeah.
SP: And that’s where you did Operation Manna. Do you want to tell me a little bit about Operation Manna?
TG: Noe, we only went once to there. Twice to Juvencourt for for. Twice to Juvencourt. Because, because they drove. You could see them coming in there. People in in droves. In lorries. Big lorries the Americans had and they were all standing round. They were all POWs and you used to see them coming in into the [would be] sitting round wondering what to do with ourselves. That was at Juvencourt. That was, was Juvencourt, when we first went there was, was to carry a load of spare parts. Spare tyres for anybody who.
SP: But this time it was to pick up POWs.
TG: Yes. Yes.
SP: What was that like?
TG: [unclear] the top of, the top of the road. They’d come in and you could see them on the road, on the runway. And I can remember seeing so many people on the back of a lorry. There was, they were big long lorries. Americans of course had to have something big. Bigger than anybody else. And they, they were crammed. They were all POWs. Ex-POWs. And they used to feed the, up there on American K-rations. They used to be K-rations. Think I’ve got one anyway. What on earth it’s like now goodness knows but it’s [pause I I dare open it. They used to wander down to us and then they wouldn’t move. They thought we were going to take them back again. I remember when we were the last one that day. I can’t think of anything before. We’d been to Juven, we’d been to Reims and we came back and they all crowded around the aircraft and we were the only one there. The rest had taken theirs. We had to leave them there. That, that wasn’t good leaving them. They thought they’d be, you know packed in. They were the day after. But —
SP: Where? Which base did they bring them back to in the UK?
TG: We brought them back to a ‘drome near, near, oh I can’t tell you now. It was in the centre somewhere. Anyway, they would drop them there. They would brief them there. Take them up. Take them off our hands. They were so keen. I can remember that crowd. And we couldn’t start one of the engines and I had to get out and fiddle with it and blokes were coming up and you had to climb on, the Lancaster you had to climb on the wheel, up the wheel and then climb up to get at the engine and they all crowded around the [laughs] They were all trying to get me to lift some of them in and we couldn’t because you, I had to say well look when, I remember this so well and then they’d say, ‘We can’t take you because we’re not going where you are. We can’t land you at Tuddenham. That’s where we’re going because you wouldn’t, there’d be nobody there to take [pause] take you.’ But they wouldn’t be, and they were all in funny hats and funny they’d been, had, they had all been POWs. Some of them a long probably a long time.
SP: Desperate to get home.
TG: ‘No. You’ll have to wait another day. You’ve got to wait until tomorrow.’
SP: So obviously you brought other POWs back on other trips and what about the, you brought POWs back on other trips didn’t you? On some of the trips you brought POWs back. Right.
TG: No. The only time we brought —
SP: Right.
TG: The first time we, we, yes the first time we’d been out and had the day in the [pause]. Marvellous. Never tasted anything really like it.
SP: Champagne trip.
TG: Champagne trip.
SP: So, what about Operation Manna? You did a food drop. How? Tell me about that that food drop that you did on Operation Manna.
TG: Yeah. A couple of trips I think on Manna. I can remember we were very low and looking down and seeing people walking in the, in the [pause] That’s about all I can remember about that. And seeing people walking in the streets and it was one of the big towns. But that’s all I can remember about that.
SP: Was it quite a low flight for you to be able to push the food out?
TG: Yeah.
SP: You had to fly quite low, didn’t you?
TG: Yeah.
SP: Do you know about what, what —
TG: No, we didn’t, it wasn’t parachuted out. It was chucked out.
SP: Yeah.
TG: So they must have lost quite a bit but they chucked out quite a bit of grub out. Yeah. That was all—
SP: Yeah. So —
TG: That was all I can remember about Manna is that we flew low.
SP: So, obviously —
TG: Looking down and seeing people walking in the streets. Good grief.
SP: Yeah. Heading towards where the food was coming in were they?
TG: No. They were just [pause] because we didn’t drop it on the town itself. There was specified areas that you dropped these in.
SP: Yeah.
TG: This was it, and they had to be, they had to know it was coming because they were hit by one of them it could kill somebody.
SP: So, I’ve got, sorry so the time you finished Operation Manna and you’re picking up the POWs that’s your tour come to an end.
TG: Yes.
SP: So, what happened then?
TG: Well, we did nothing except go out every night [laughs] and slept while we could. We were all about to be posted. First the two gunners were posted and they became [pause] I forget what they became. Aircrew ended up, and the people that were flying at the end of the war had not been in the Air Force all that long and therefore they, they tried to get bring people from abroad and I was posted to Valley as a gardener.
SP: Right. To RAF Valley.
TG: Yeah. At RAF Valley. And I spent most of the time at home of course. I used to get told off by, I forget who it was. It was on the other side of the aerodrome you see and there was a garden in, a garden in front of the entrance. That was always the IC’s garden.
SP: [Unclear] And then you flew abroad again.
TG: No. I didn’t fly again. Oh, except of course went abroad on the Cape Town Castle. She was a fairly new ship and the Bay of Biscay was a bit of a do. I had to stay on deck and went to sleep on the deck. The Bay of Biscay. She was about thirty thousand tons but she still rolled.
SP: And where were you going on that trip? You were still in the RAF then?
TG: Yes. Oh yes.
SP: Yeah.
TG: That was, well I was on my way to Iraq but it, it was. I don’t know whether it was in Iraq or if it was outside Iraq. Just outside. But there were loads of us. Loads of us. All driving lorries. I’d been on a course in Blackpool but I already knew how to drive a lorry because no one had a car before the war. We used to go to Halkyn Moors on a Sunday and I’d have, I’d drive this car off the moors. I was only about thirteen at the time.
SP: A good experience for your driving.
TG: Yeah. So, I’ve been driving since I was thirteen.
SP: So, after your time in Iraq. What happened then?
TG: I spent about fourteen, fifteen months in Iraq in the same ‘drome and the only routine we had was occasionally they used to [pause] up the, what was it? Euphrates or or the [pause] what was, we used to go in go in to drive a fifteen hundred weight. And I used to have a pal in, who went with me actually but he was IC motor. Motor business. It was a terrible job to keep the engines going it was so hot and you couldn’t. You couldn’t. They were always breaking down. But you used to once a day you went into [unclear] into [unclear] that’s right into [unclear] which was up river from, what’s that place called that’s always in the —
Other: Pause.
[recording paused]
TG: She’d been blown up or something during the war. She wasn’t as good as the one we went out on. That was —
SP: So you sailed back to the UK.
TG: Yes. Back to UK. She came in to Liverpool actually the [unclear] did and we, we all we all got off and we were sent to what’s that place? You called, you named it. It used to be an American.
SP: Burtonwood?
TG: Yes.
SP: Near Warrington.
TG: Yes. That’s right. We all went in lorries to when we got out and from there we got chits to go on leave and they didn’t see us again until they needed to give us you know, yeah you know. Your civvy suit.
SP: No.
TG: And that was [pause] So, I didn’t see the RAF at all. There were so many coming into [unclear] what’s it called? Burtonwood, or this. They used to send you on leave straight away. There was a queue for chits for leave and, you know. So, I didn’t, didn’t bother. I rejoined the bank in Liverpool.
SP: So, then you went back to banking after the war.
TG: Yeah.
SP: Yeah.
TG: Back to, back to Castle Street. That’s the main branch. So I went back to Castle Street and that was that.
SP: And did you stay in banking then the rest of your life?
TG: Yeah.
SP: Until you retired.
TG: Yes. I had a few arguments with the bank because I I used to have a boat to sail. I did a lot of sailing and I have all my life. That’s the last boat I had. That’s off Anglesey. Beaumaris and Anglesey. That was the thing that I’d always wanted since I was about seven or eight years old. I wanted one of those and I was lucky I got one in the end. So for my twenty five years until we, until we we got a flat on the front which was very difficult. I mean to drive to Beaumaris every Saturday for a race as I always used to race, I never used to [pause]. So that was the last one I had. I had her for about twenty five years. Magnificent. So, I’ve been very lucky. I got what I wanted. Thanks to my wife who put up with the sailing. And I got what I wanted. One of those. So, I’ve been very lucky. Very lucky.
SP: What you wanted and what you deserved.
TG: Yes.
SP: So, Tony it’s been a real privilege to meet you today and I just want to thank you.
TG: Thank you.
SP: On behalf of the International Bomber Command story for taking the time to share your memories of your time during World War Two.
TG: Yeah.
SP: And in the RAF.
TG: Yeah.
SP: For people to be able to listen to in the future. So, thank you.
TG: Don’t mention it.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Tony Gerard
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Susanne Pescott
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
2018-11-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AGerardJA181122, PGerardJA1801
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:11:06 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Tony lived in South Pool before moving to Liverpool with his job in a bank. He also belonged the Air Training Corps. After about a year he decided to sign up for the Royal Air Force. His assessment and medical were at Liverpool. He was called up to in November 1943. He then went to the initial training wing at RAF Bridlington for six weeks, before going to RAF Weston-Super-mare to train on Lancasters and Halifaxes. He was then posted to RAF St Athan for about ten weeks before being posted to RAF Scampton and finally to RAF Swinderby working on Stirlings as a flight engineer. It was there where he met the rest of the crew. After Lancaster finishing school he went to RAF Tuddenham and joined 90 Squadron. From there their first operation was to Siegen. On one trip an enemy fighter flew alongside them and the crew held their fire so not to draw attention to their aircraft. He did some formation flying on some of the operations. Later he joined 7 Squadron on Pathfinders. During this time, he remembered an incident involving his motorbike which he lent to a colleague who had an accident with a police car. The bike had to be written off - tony had only ridden it once. The crew then went back to RAF Tuddenham where they took part in operations Manna and Exodus. Tony was posted to RAF Valley and then went by sea to Iraq driving lorries. The crew sailed back to Liverpool and went to RAF Burtonwood. After being demobbed he went back to banking in Liverpool until he retired.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lancashire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Liverpool
England--Merseyside
England--Somerset
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Anglesey
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany
Germany--Siegen
Iraq
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-11
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
7 Squadron
90 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
flight engineer
Halifax
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Pathfinders
RAF Bridlington
RAF Burtonwood
RAF Scampton
RAF St Athan
RAF Swinderby
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Valley
RAF Weston-super-Mare
Stirling
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1224/16230/LBrownJ2205595v1.1.pdf
68f04a9ac0e97a321619e6e864c46ad3
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
Brown, Jeff
Jeffrey Brown
J Brown
Description
An account of the resource
35 items. One oral history interview with Flying Officer Jeff Brown (b. 1925, 2205595, Royal Air Force), his log book, service material and photographs including 16 pictures of B-29s. He flew operations as a Flight Sergeant air gunner with 576 Squadron from RAF Fiskerton towards the end of the war and took part in Operation Manna.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jeff Brown and catalogued by Peter Adams.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-18
2017-01-31
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Brown, J-3
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
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
Jeff Brown's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers for Jeff Brown, air gunner, covering the period from 18 August 1944 to 31 December 1951. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and post war flying. He was stationed at RAF Dalcross, RAF Oakley, RAF Westcott, RAF Bottesford, RAF Fiskerton, RAF Wellesbourne Mountford, RAF Marham and RAF Coningsby. Aircraft flown in were, Anson, Martinet, Wellington, Lancaster, B-29, Oxford and Tiger Moth. He flew 5 Operation Manna sorties to Rotterdam and Hague, and one Operation Exodus to Brussels with 576 Squadron. His pilot on operations was Flight Sergeant Fleming. Post war flying was with 149 Squadron.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
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 booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LBrownJ2205595v1
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.
Belgium
Great Britain
Netherlands
Belgium--Brussels
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Warwickshire
Netherlands--Hague
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Scotland--Inverness
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1945-05-01
1945-05-02
1945-05-03
1945-05-05
1945-05-08
1945-05-26
1945-06-19
11 OTU
149 Squadron
1668 HCU
576 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
B-29
Cook’s tour
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Martinet
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Bottesford
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Burn
RAF Coningsby
RAF Dalcross
RAF Driffield
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Hartford Bridge
RAF Marham
RAF Oakley
RAF Sturgate
RAF Wellesbourne Mountford
RAF Westcott
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/550/18653/LLambournJP1851376v1.1.pdf
af9aae0647230ddd7cad5a290472481e
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
Lambourn, John Philip
J P Lambourn
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lambourn, JP
Description
An account of the resource
Two iitems. An oral history interview with John Philip Lambourn (1925, 1851376 Royal Air Force) and his log book. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 514 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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.
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
John Philip Lambourn’s flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers for John Lambourn, flight engineer, covering the period from 4 July 1944 to 8 December 1944. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF St Athan, RAF Chedburgh, RAF Feltwell and RAF Waterbeach. Aircraft flown in were, Stirling and Lancaster. He flew a total of 30 operations, 23 daylight and 7 night operations with 514 squadron. Targets were, Falaise, St. Trond, Russelsheim, Kiel, Stettin, Eindhoven, Boulogne, Calais, Cap Griz Nez, Saarbrucken, Duisberg, Stuttgart, Flushing, Essen, Bottrop, Solingen, Homberg, Castrop, Heinsburg, Gelsenkirchen and Hamm. His pilot on operations was Flying Officer Edmundson.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
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 booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LLambournJP1851376v1
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.
Belgium
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Poland
Atlantic ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Belgium--Sint-Truiden
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Norfolk
England--Suffolk
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Calais
France--Falaise
France--Pas-de-Calais
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamm (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Rüsselsheim
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Solingen
Germany--Stuttgart
Netherlands--Eindhoven
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Poland--Szczecin
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Germany--Heinsberg (Heinsberg)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1944-08-14
1944-08-15
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-28
1944-08-29
1944-08-30
1944-09-03
1944-09-17
1944-09-20
1944-09-25
1944-09-26
1944-10-05
1944-10-14
1944-10-18
1944-10-19
1944-10-21
1944-10-23
1944-10-25
1944-10-28
1944-10-29
1944-10-31
1944-11-04
1944-11-05
1944-11-08
1944-11-11
1944-11-15
1944-11-16
1944-11-20
1944-11-23
1944-12-05
1944-12-08
1653 HCU
514 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Luftwaffe night-fighter airfields (15 August 1944)
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Bridlington
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Feltwell
RAF St Athan
RAF Waterbeach
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/630/30869/BPotterPLPotterPLv20002.1.jpg
d7c69792ca89098621a3f93222ab1352
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/630/30869/BPotterPLPotterPLv20003.1.jpg
394bc1e9fcafcf35b7e6b4877f19cec8
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
Potter, Peter
P Potter
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Potter, P
Description
An account of the resource
39 items. Collection concerns Peter Potter, (1925 - 2019, 1876961 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 626 Squadron. Collection contains an oral history interview, his logbook, memoirs and photographs
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Potter and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined]Memories[/underlined]
On joining and training at Grove Court, the Padre told us which sins we must not commit. The Medical Officer told us how to commit them and the Discipline Flt/Sgt told us what would happen if caught.
[underlined]Bridlington[/underlined]
[underlined]1943[/underlined] On leaving Grove Court in London, I then went to
Bridlington. We lived in huts by the Spa. We actually had our meals in Bridlington Spa, which had been taken over by the RAF. We used the Spa as a communal centre and for lectures. A" my time at Bridlington was classroom stuff, apart from clay pigeon
shooting, which was also part of the training for gunnery. We were being taught the basics of navigation, bomb aiming, wireless operating and morse code. We also had physical training which could be a ten mile run or a route march along the beach,
avoiding the mined areas and of course there was always square bashing which everyone hated. We started to learn about machine guns, Brownings mainly, all the types that fitted into a Fraser Nash turret. Point five s, three oh three's. The point fives
were the type being used by the group we were going to in a Rose turret. I had two point fives instead of four three oh three's.
[page break]
From Bridlington, we went to Lindholme, Pembrey and Sandtoft to Bridgnorth. This is where I started flying, but we also did everything else, but just the basics.
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Gives account of time at Bridlington which included training on basic navigation, bomb aiming, wireless operating and morse code. Also included physical training and drill. Mentions training on machine guns and then moved on to Lindholme, Pembrey, Sandtoft and Bridgnorth.
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1943
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eng
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BPotterPLPotterPLv20002, BPotterPLPotterPLv20003
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Royal Air Force
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Great Britain
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England--Lincolnshire
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1943
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P Potter
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David Bloomfield
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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air gunner
aircrew
bomb aimer
ground personnel
Initial Training Wing
medical officer
military discipline
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
navigator
physical training
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Lindholme
RAF Pembrey
RAF Sandtoft
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/501/22419/BCurnockRMCurnockRMv1.2.pdf
dd6c1f8bb85b78fcd0c5a2ab7464a67a
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Curnock, Richard
Richard Murdock Curnock
R M Curnock
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Curnock, RM
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2016-04-18
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Description
An account of the resource
92 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Richard Curnock (1924, 1915605 Royal Air Force), his log book, letters, photographs and prisoner of war magazines. He flew operations with 425 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Richard Curnock and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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[photograph]
Richard Montague Curnock
My War Story
[page break]
[underlined] CONTENTS [/underlined]
Page Number
Foreword 4
World War II begins 5
Samuel William Curnock 7
Dick's War Begins 10
Dalcross 10
Wellesbourne- Warwickshire 11
Heavy Conversion Unit - Dishforth (York's) the crew is completed 13
Tolthorpe - Squadron station 14
Our First Mission 15
The Second and Final Mission 16
Prisoner of War-number 2108 17
Stalag Luft VI - Heydekrug 18
Kriegies 10 commandments 20
Torun Stalag Luft 357 25
Oerbke near Fallingsbostel 27
The Long March 27
19th April 1945 28
The end of the War nears 31
Military Transport Training 33
Horsham 34
Egypt??? 35
To Italy 36
On the Road to Bari 39
Mercy Mission to Egypt 43
Dakota back to Italy - Treviso 46
2
[page break]
Reunions 49
Appendix 1- RAF flying log book 52
i) Gunnery course results 52
ii) Gunnery training 53
iii) - vi) 22 O.T.U 54-57
vii) - viii) 1664 Conversion Unit 58 - 59
ix) 425 Squadron 60
x) Flights to visit Bob in Egypt 61
Appendix 2 - Berlin cemetery plan 62
Appendix 3 - The March 63
Appendix 4 Red Cross map of prisoner of war camps
i) Long march route and map correction information 65
ii) Long march route 66
iii) Blue cross in circle marks where Dick was shot down. Red
cross near Frankfurt where he was moved to 67
iv) Red line shows route taken by Dick. Torun (Thorn camp) 68
v) Poznan - Stalag Luft XXI D 69
vi) Stalag Luft VI - Lithuania 70
3
[page break]
Foreword
The following writings are a combination of Dick's recollections as he remembers them in 2013/14. Also within are additions (in blue) from earlier recordings by Barbara, and information taken from his Wartime log (given to him by the Red Cross when in his first POW camp). And from his RAF navigator's; air bomber's and air gunner's flying log book.
Richard Montague Curnock (in his own words January 2014)
I was speaking just recently to Shirley and Steph about the anniversary of the shooting of the 50 POW's that attempted the escape from Stalag Luft 3, as I was at that time also a prisoner in another camp and was recounting how we took the news of this wholesale murder of our fellow airmen, also what the Germans retaliated with was an excuse for their prisoners over in North Africa having to sleep in tents (which anybody knows most troops lived that way in the desert) they took all our mattresses off the bunk beds, which left us with about five or six bed boards only and one blanket too sleep on, also we had two tables and a few chairs to each room, these they also removed.
All this happened whilst we were herded out of huts on to the parade ground where we were surrounded by hundreds of the German army in lorries with mounted machine guns, also the troops were on the ground with machine guns also lying on the roofs of the huts were virtually surrounded and all you could see guns pointing your way.
4
[page break]
[underlined] World War II begins [/underlined]
Guess it is time for me to start this saga of my war time story, which started when it was announced that Hitler had not replied to our letter stating of no reply had been heard from them by 11am on 3rd September 1939 then we would be at war with them, no reply so we were at war again.
I was a fifteen year old and had been working for a year and half, the first twelve months in a piano shop on Belgrave Road, was sacked for not dusting the violins and bows that hung on the walls "enough times".
My day started at 8.45 washing the front of the shop which was on a corner, so had two large windows and tiles along under the window, then dust all the pianos and they needed polishing regularly, sweeping regularly, attending to customers who wanted to pay for the their [sic] pianos which they paid for weekly. Pianos were priced at the lower being 12 pounds for an upright and 15 pound for an over strung, we had a special made for a customer a baby grand, the wood used was walnut and cost 35 pounds was on show for a week.
[photograph]
Dick, Sam, Bob and Mary, Minehead Street. 1940-1
Next job was making boot polish and paint that was used in the boot and shoe industry. My job was delivering the product to a lot of factories in Leicester and as far as Wigston and Oadby on a bike with a large basket over the front wheel, which held quite a lot of cans, they weighed nearly as much as I did that's another story.
5
[page break]
[photograph] [photograph]
Dick in ATC uniform 1941 Bob, Dick, Sam and Mary (1941)
6
[page break]
[underlined] Samuel William Curnock [/underlined]
[photograph]
Samuel William Curnock RAFVR: newly qualified sergeant pilot 1942
Brother Sam was already in the RAF and over in Canada training to be a pilot and I had then joined the Air Training Corps on third September 1941 as an aircrew cadet, brother Bob I believe was waiting to go into the RAF as a trainee pilot, I believe that during his tour over there Sam was killed in a flying accident at Gibraltar in 1942 (26th September 1942).
7
[page break]
[photograph]
Our flying crews have their recreation room at the United Kingdom landplane base
Sam (second from left) in a recreation room
There was nothing to how the accident happened but that the aircraft crashed into the sea at Gibraltar with no survivors. The pilot was a senior captain, Sam was a second pilot officer and they had an officer wireless operator. We were led to believe it could have been sabotage but no one knew.
It was then I decided I would get in the RAF quicker if I re-mustered as an air gunner instead of waiting for my pilot navigator course to come through.
In 2009 Peter and Jayne received a phone call from Jonathan Falconer who was researching Sam Curnock, the extract below gives more information on the circumstances of Sam's death than the family had ever known before.
Extract from "Names in Stone"-Jonathan Falconer.
Sam had volunteered to join the RAF in October 1940 on his eighteenth birthday, just as the fortunes of the RAF seemed to be swinging in its favour after the desperate air battles of the Battle of Britain in the summer months. He learnt to fly on Tiger Moths at 7 Elementary Flying Training School, Desford; Leicestershire. Before sailing to Canada; for further flying training at 73 Service Flying Training School; north Battleford, Saskatcheqan [sic] .
Sam qualified as a pilot and returned to England. With a shortage of flight crews for civil aircraft he was transferred in May 1942 to fly transport aircraft with Britain's national airline; BOAC.
in September 1942, Sam was Second Officer in the four-man crew of Whitley MK V, G-AGCI, which was operated by BOAC on its route between the UK and Gibraltar. Thirty-three year old Capt Charles Browne was in command of "Charlie-India".
8
[page break]
Charlie-India had flown into Gibraltar from England on 10th September 1942 and the aircraft's Master had stated in his Voyage Report that the aircraft was tail-heavy for the landing. The aircraft left again for England on 13th September, but her Master decided to turn back after only 25 minutes, reporting that Charlie India was now flying nose heavy.
Not long before his death, Sam was second pilot in a BOAC Whitley that crashed in England on take-off due to engine failure. He was uninjured and managed to walk away from the wreckage. In the fortnight that remained before her fatal crash, Charlie-India was the subject of several engineering inspections and three test flights after report by several pilots of nose and tail heaviness during flight. These problems appeared cured, but on 19th September the Master reported that Charlie-India was underpowered during take off and the initial climb, and unstable in flight. A further detailed inspection was carried out and another test flight was arranged.
To add to Charlie-India's woes, on 24th September the twin Bristol Hercules engines of an RAF Beaufighter was run up on Gibraltar's tarmac, tail on to the BOAC Whitley. The powerful propeller wash from the two radial engines caused damage to the trailing edge of the Whitley's elevators and the rudder trim tabs. Engineers made temporary repairs to the elevators, the damaged trim tab mechanisms were replaced, and a test flight was arranged for 3.56pm on 26th September.
With Charles Browne in command and Sam and the rest of the crew, Charlie-India took off normally from Gibraltar's east-west runway at 3.56pm and climbed out over the Bay of Gibraltar to about 300 feet, whereupon Browne eased the Whitley into a left-hand turn. Then something went badly wrong because the aircraft assumed a power glide attitude and continued in a shallow dive until it struck the sea at 3.59pm, sinking almost immediately in more than 900 feet of water.
Naval vessels were on the scene within minutes. Apart from a few small items of wreckage floating on the surface, the aircraft was not recovered. There were no survivors from her crew of four, and no bodies were ever recovered.
BOAC's technical investigators launched an immediate inquiry into the crash and on 29th October 1942 they made their report. Its conclusion was based more on informed speculation than hard fact, but in the absence of any wreckage or survivors this was the best that could be hoped for: "The precise cause of the accident cannot be determined, but a possible cause was an uncontrollable elevator trimmer tab due to a fracture in some part of the actuating mechanism .... There exists a possibility that subsequent to the take off one or both of the elevator trimmer tab mechanisms fractured, with the result that the Master was unable to maintain longitudinal control of the aircraft."
9
[page break]
[underlined] Dick's war begins [/underlined]
22nd March 1943; When l was 18 and 11 months I was called up (RAF (V.R) volunteer Reserve) and was sent a rail warrant for travel to London and Lord's cricket ground which was the Aircrew Receiving Centre (A.C.R.C) for al! aircrew candidates were we were kitted out and billeted in hotels all around the St Johns Wood area, loads of marching around going from one lecture to another with lots of marching exercises around the hotels, and in between times you were taken to a medical centre for inoculation, stand in line both arms bared, left arm two injections one inoculation right arm then out to the street, where there were bodies al! over the place, some bodies flat out other holding their arms and moaning. When they managed to get all of us in some semblance of order, we marched back to our hotels, but swinging of arms was painful and was not done with any energy.
After our initiation into RAF life we were on a train to Bridlington to learn navigation, armaments mathematics- aircraft recognition plus as always plenty of marching from one lecture to another, one other pastime was Morse code and the Aldis lamp, this was done with someone being sent to the end of the breakwater with an instructor with an Aldis lamp and they sent signals to the rest of us on the beach in twos, one reading the signal being sent and your friend writing it down, we used got some very weird messages at end of a session.
My next stage of training after Bridlington was Bridgnorth where unfortunately there was an outbreak of scarlet fever and German measles and unfortunately I happened to catch German measles and was put into an isolation hut, one of many for the recruits who had caught one of the diseases. I was put into a room of my own and had two weeks being looked after very well by a WAAF nurse during the day, and my night nurse who looked after me exceptionally well and was a lovely young lady. And as my condition improved she brought a radio into my room and we managed to have a dance and then she would tuck me up for the night with a cuddle and kiss goodnight.
After two weeks it was back to work where we did have a lot of lectures about armaments - aircraft recognition - Morse code with mathematics also but mainly armaments, how to dismantle a machine gun and also put it back and hope it worked alright.
Aircraft recognition was a priority knowing which the enemy was and which ours. My time spent with aircraft recognition at home kept me getting top marks in every exam we did, we had night vision exams where pictures were shown on a screen as if you were in a turret and had to identify the aircraft shown, my trouble was the fellows around me were always asking me what the aircraft was, the instructor stopped me helping them, he said that they would not be any use unless they got to know themselves. From then on I was removed from my seat and had to sit by the light switches turning them on and off as required. After finishing this course my instructors gave me a very good report and should get on well.
[underlined] Dalcross [/underlined]
Dick RAF flying log book information can be seen in appendix 1
My section was then sent on leave for a week after which we had to board a train to Scotland, destination was a place called Dalcross (near Inverness, Moray Firth) which turned out to be our Initial Flying Training course on Avro Ansons.
10
[page break]
Pilots converting on to twin engine Airspeed Oxford after training in Canada. This was now 17.7.43 and my course here lasted until 28.8.43 (appendix i) and ii)). The training consisted of being taken up in Avro Ansons six training gunners and an instructor we took it in turns to sit in the turret which had one gun in it attached was a camera which we had to train on a fighter aircraft which made a dummy attack on you, all exciting stuff, except when the fighter was late arriving and you had to fly round and round a church steeple, that was when my last coffee and biscuit decided to reappear, this happened three times, each time I was sent to the sick bay and gave an explanation of what was happening, I was given a glass of horrible liquid and told to report back for more flying. This occurred twice more by that time my stomach stopped playing around and settled down to the rigours of flying.
We also had firing with the one gun at a drone towed behind another aircraft and our bullets had colours on the tips so that they could record the number of hits. Our results were pathetic as the guns would only fire two bullets at a time and then jam so you then had to rearm it; we also used camera guns with which we had more success.
It also happened to be a training camp for pilots on night flying on airspeed oxfords.
Bob had by this time gained his pilots wings in Canada and was back in England and was posted to Dalcross near Inverness. I think this was during July 1943 and August 1943 to train on twin engine Airspeed Oxfords. Neither of us knew we were there until one evening we were going into Inverness and just happened to be walking down the road to catch the bus into town when I spotted Bob who was as surprised as I was; from then on we spent a bit of time together until he was posted elsewhere.
I continued at Dalcross to become a Sergeant air gunner had quite a good report from all the training staff and was given above average report from most of the tutors, not that it helped much as the ammunition we were using had a wide flange on the bullet casing as it was American and caused it to stick, you could only fire a couple of rounds and then you had to re-cock it again, life was hard on us.
[underlined] Wellesbourne- Warwickshire - meet the crew [/underlined]
18.9.1943. (Appendix iii) t [sic] vi)) My next posting was to Wellesbourne (Warwickshire) the Operational Training Unit to start being crewed up with members of a crew. The procedure was for the pilots to have a chat with the navigators, wireless operators, bomb aimers and air gunners and then ask the ones he wished to be his crew if they would join him Charlie (Chuck) Stowell, the pilot picked Bob Friskey as navigator then Eugene Fullum our wireless operator, the next was our bomb aimer Gordon Dinsmore, which left the rear gunner, which I believe was unanimous decision by them all that was me. We then spent our time getting to know each other; that is we went out at night doing a spot of drinking and rather a lot of talking or the other way round.
11
[page break]
[photograph]
Bob Friskey, Eugene Fullom and Chuck Stowell
[photograph]
A copy of the only photo of the crew: Back row: Bob Friskey, Gordon Dinsmore
Front row: Eugene Fullom, Dick Curnock, Chuck Stowell
This was at Gaydon the satellite airfield to Wellsbourne, here we started flying as a crew in the Wellington bomber, doing practice bombing at targets on the coast and various places also we had
12
[page break]
fighter aircraft doing dummy attacks during which I had a camera gun and it recorded my success against these attacks we also did firing at a draught [sic] towed behind another aircraft, with our bullets being painted different colours so they could count the number of hits we scored. This proved to be very hap hazard as the ammunition we were using was American and every second round got stuck in the breech and had to be manually ejected so our scores were very low. We did quite a lot of cross country flying for the navigators to gain experience a lot of it at night time.
We also did a lot of circuit flying at night so that the pilot could manage to get us back to the airfield safely. Some nights were a bit bumpy as he misjudged his height, my head used to get a lot of knocks on these occasions and the skippers name was anything but "Chuck".
[drawing]
Picture drawn by Dick whilst a prisoner of war
[underlined] Heavy Conversion Unit - Dishforth (Yorks) - the crew is completed [/underlined]
14.1.1944. ( appendix vii and viii) We moved on next to a conversion unit which meant going onto four engine aircraft this was at Dishforth (near Ripon, Yorks) 1664 Heavy conversion unit. The aircraft was a four engine Halifax bomber for which we needed two extra crew; a mid upper gunner and a flight engineer. These we met and we all moved into a hut so that we would could get know each other. The mid upper gunner was a Canadian from a farming background a rather slow on the uptake but we got on well together. The engineer was from Salford a tall lad and red haired. The mid upper gunner was Wesley (Wes) Skerick and the engineer was Ginger Wheadon.
13
[page break]
[photograph] [photograph]
Ginger Wheadon Wes Skerick
At this stage we were beginning to get to know each other and in the evenings we were usually down in mess having some light refreshments, Bob Friskey didn't very often come, as he had not been married very long and took to writing to his wife almost every evening, so the rest of us went into Burroughbridge [sic] the nearest town to have a few beers, this we managed quite well with a another couple of Canadians from another crew who Chuck knew, and we each bought a round of drinks which lasted us most of the evening.
[underlined] Tolthorpe - Squadron station [/underlined]
7.2.1944. (Appendix ix) We then moved from Dishforth on to our squadron station which was at Tolthorpe near Easingwold still up in Yorkshire. It was the only French Canadian squadron from Canada, although all spoke English there was a lot of French spoken between most of the other crews, also most of the senior officers were from French ancestors. They could get very aggressive to each other as happened one evening later on.
Here there were four squadrons of Halifax bombers with around 60 planes. The squadrons with mainly Canadian or French/Canadian crews were:
[picture of 425 Squadron crest]
420 Snowy Owl
425 Alouette (the Lark- Dick's squadron)
431 Iroquois
434 Blue Nose
14
[page break]
We did lots of night cross country to various parts of the England to give the navigator, targets to find and which would be our target to bomb later on, also we had a bombing range which we had to find and drop practice smoke bombs on and from a certain height, some pilots tried to drop from a lower height so that they were getting better results and a higher percentage of hits. Not our pilot he said we would go as high as the aircraft could climb and then drop our bombs, which we did, only to be told on our return we were still too low, to which the skipper said that the Wellington couldn't climb any higher, and the rear gunner had a tin of drink in his flying suit pocket that was frozen no more was said on the subject.
We as a crew were sent to a camp which was to improve our fitness, which we didn't think was necessary as we all felt fit and well, we were allocated a hut and promptly forgot, we went for meals regularly and were not called on to do anything apart from eat and sleep, Eugene Gordon and myself walked around the fields and found where they were growing swedes, carrots, turnips, so we borrowed a few and cooked them on our stove in the hut and with other bits from the cookhouse and had some good meals in the evenings. Fortunately we were only there for about 10 days, and then were sent to squadron.
The squadron was from Canada and had only been in England a short while and we joined it at the end of January 1944 in which time we got to know the aircraft we to fly in, it was a Halifax MK3 K.W.U for Uncle. Unfortunately for us we only did about 14 hours training on our aircraft.
[photograph of Halifax bomber]
Halifax Bomber
[underlined] Our First Mission [/underlined]
February 24th/25th we were called for a briefing and found we were due to fly a bombing trip to a place called Swinefurt [sic] , a long trip to the south of Germany which would be an eight hour round trip but unfortunately the port outer engine decided to cause a problem and stopped altogether, we couldn't climb to our bombing height due to lack of power and could not carry on at this low height, so the skipper decided we had best abort and return to base dropping our bomb load at sea. Which we did, and landed back at air station about three hours after take off. Not a good start at all, but the fault was found to be a blockage in the fuel pipe to the engine.
15
[page break]
[underlined] The Second and Final Mission [/underlined]
February 25th/26th we were on our second trip which was a bombing raid on Augsburg (North West of Munich) to bomb a factory making ball bearings for tanks, from which we failed to return. Our aircraft was hit by anti aircraft fire and both the engines on our left side were put out of action and caught fire. The noise it made when the shell hit our left side was like a firework being let off inside a dustbin. Then the next thing was flames coming past my turret Chuck our skipper came over our intercom asking if we were all uninjured which he did by calling each one by name. Then he said that we were not going to keep going, so had to bale out, each one of us saying we understood, good luck and made ready to bale out. What to do first I thought, disconnect my intercom, then the oxygen tube, think we were flying at a height of around twenty four thousand feet so would I have enough oxygen to keep going to get my parachute which was in a rack in the fuselage and then get the panel open in the fuselage floor for myself and mid upper - which was Wes to jump out. We shook hands and shouted good luck and looked down through the hatch to see the flames from the engines flying by so put my leg out and flow of air pulled the rest of me out!!
Suddenly everywhere is quiet, you are supposed to count to ten before pulling the ripcord to your parachute by the time I counted up to four I didn't hear any noise so pulled my ripcord and was instantly jerked upright, with my flying suit collar up round my ears and it was very quiet.
My thoughts whilst drifting down were varied and very worrying to say the least, it had my thoughts in turmoil.
Below was a patchwork due to snow and could have been fields, but from a height of 20000 feet there was no telling what it was going to be. My thoughts of a church spire came to mind or there was an industrial town down there with factories with tall chimneys also electric power cables, or a town with tall house and me hanging from the roof. The later [sic] was near to it as I came down between two poplar trees and I landed in a town house garden in an apple tree. I had my parachute hanging up in the tree, which I decided to pull down but it must have snagged and a piece ripped off and was left hanging in the tree what I had pulled down and bundled up and slipped under some buses [sic] . I then decided to find a way out of the garden; so removed my flying kit as I would be very conspicuous walking around in it. At that time I was just in my battle dress getting very cold, I then found a road running alongside the garden, so jumped over the wall onto a road started walking past some large houses all about five stories high, I had landed in a large residential area of a town. Then the siren for what I presumed was an air raid starting, so I walked up another road to miss people around that area, then the siren started again and people started running around (I discovered later that they had two sirens at the start of a raid and also two all clears) by which time I was back to where I had landed in the garden. So I hopped back over the wall and decided to put my flying suit back on as I was feeling very cold.
What to do now I thought; sleep seemed the best option or wake someone up and tell them who I was and call the police. I ended up curling up and sleeping and was woken by a squirrel running around me and then two elderly ladies coming our of the house next door and saw a piece of my parachute stuck up the tree, they shouted and ran back indoors and about 10 minutes later a policeman came down the garden path with a little pistol pointing at me and said hands up or words to that effect. Which I obliged, he then told me to take off my flying suit and go in front of him where
16
[page break]
he had left his cycle, and for me to put my clothes on his bike and we walked into the town to a police station. There were lots of people in the police station a lot were ex army with battle scars but quite polite, except one old boy who should have been in a home for the elderly along time ago, saying we would never win the war by sending us over to spy on them.
[underlined] Prisoner of War -number 2108 [/underlined] (Appendix 4 - iii) -Red Cross Map of prisoner of war camps)
I was then escorted to the Gestapo headquarters in the town which I discovered was Darmstadt (South East of Frankfurt) (on this journey Dick cut up his parachute with his penknife so that it couldn't be used by the Germans), and there met up with Wes, Eugene and Gordon whilst waiting there a rather irate man came in and picked up a chair and was going to hit Eugene with it, but fortunately I was able to stop the blow hitting Eugene with my flying suit, we found out later that Eugene had fractured his spine, releasing himself from his parachute harness whilst still hanging along way from the ground, which meant he had to go to a hospital so we didn't have any further contact with him.
Wes, Gordon and self were then taken by two armed guards to a building being used by the Police and handed over to Dulagluft Interrogation HQ on a tramcar with civilians on board who looked at us rather hostile, good job we had a couple of Luftwaffe guards with us, on the way through the streets there were a number of bodies hanging from lampposts turned out to be American airmen shot down on an earlier raid, quite a jolt to the system.
At the Interrogation HQ all our belongings were taken from us and we were then put into a cell with only a bed and a chair in it, no windows and an electric light on all the time, so you didn't know what part of the day or night it was. Dick became prisoner of war number 2108.
Then every so often an officer came in and said he was from the Red Cross and he would make sure that my parents would be notified where I was and was alright, but was being held in Germany as a prisoner of war and would be able to write once we had been sent to a POW camp. This treatment went on for quite a time you didn't know what day it was or time of day, we were fed soup and black bread and had brown water which they said was coffee, two or three times I was taken out and interviewed by an officer who told me who our commanding officer was and he had a daughter, had I met her, and then proceeded to tell me about the Halifax bomber but it wasn't doing much damage and we were losing them at a fare [sic] rate every night. When after a few days we were taken into the camp and given an American plastic suitcase in which was all manner of toiletries and clothes -a pair of slip on slippers, a towel, a face flannel, soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, pyjamas, packet of pipe tobacco and a pipe, packet of twenty cigarettes, some vest and pants, a bar of chocolate a meal can opener, also an American army shirt.
We stayed there for a short while until they had enough bodies to fill up a lot of cattle trucks to take us to our next camp. I was then issued with our name and prisoner of war number, mine being 2108 and made of metal, we still had only our battledress uniforms and it was February so felt the cold. (Appendix 4 - iv)
Then one morning we were paraded on the square with our cases and marched off to the railway yard where our train awaited, there was no difference between first and third class, you were just herded along and pushed up into a cattle truck 20 prisoners into each end of the wagon (The wagons had written on the side - 40 hommes or 8 cheveaux, this became part of the POW insignia after the war),
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with the centre section for the guards, so each wagon was divided into compartments by a wire netting wall. There were no toilets so you had to wait until we had been shunted off the mainline and were then allowed to do your do's sitting on a log which was alongside the railway line, at first it was very embarrassing but after three or four days you didn't bother just got on with it.
We had a stop each day for a bowl of soup and drink of so called coffee. Forgot to mention that each truck had a guard sitting on top of the wagon and must have been covered in smoke from the engines. Sleeping was almost impossible with twenty people in a small space, but you managed you might have had feet by your head or a bottom, because the only pillow you had was your plastic suitcase.
I didn't keep a record of how long the train trip was but was told it was ten to twelve days, we passed through a couple of large stations but could only see out through the gaps in the sides of the trucks as the guards closed the doors, were surprised at one station when we went slowly past a train of open trucks packed with people they were either Jews or displaced persons being taken to places of forced labour, we couldn't pass them anything so had to just let them pass without being able to speak to them.
[underlined] Stalag Luft VI - Heydekrug [/underlined] (Appendix 4 - vi)
We finally arrived at our destination Heydekrug (in Lithuania) and Stalaf Luft 6 which meant in German prison camp for airmen. This was in East Prussia on the Baltic coast and was built on sand, so that tunnels couldn't be dug in the sandy soil, that didn't stop some of the hot heads from trying. Only one was tried and the Germans had some idea this was happening and brought a motor roller in to run up and down between the huts, it found a tunnel starting out between two huts and it sank into the sand about six feet and was stuck for two days, when they finally tried to move it, they couldn't start it as a lot of the parts had somehow gone missing, the Germans never did the same trick again.
All the crew members met up again here, except for Eugene, who was in hospital. The camp was divided into 3 compounds, two of which contained 2,000 men, the third being smaller held 1,000 men. Dick was in one of the larger compounds, with 60 men to a room. Dick and Ginger were in the same hut, the other crew members elsewhere.
We had some good men who cold [sic] turn their hands to anything and make things out of bits and pieces, one being a clock which went backwards made from an old gramophone. Also we had radios I think there were two, both were built inside Dixie's which was an eating and cooking pot.
We had some well educated lads with as a lot of early aircrew were from college undergraduates who were in the call up age range, so they started up classes in the camp on a variety of subjects, and you could qualify for a degree as the Red Cross got permission from the Germans for this to happen. One of the POWs that made use of the books was Peter Thomas, who became a Welsh MP after the war and later Lord Thomas.
My only inroad into anything like this was to draw in our POW book, we were issued with, like a diary was the drawing of the aircraft they flew in and the air force inscription over the top; and I charged one cigarette for each drawing, not a lot but helped out. I believe a number of people at home sent me cigarettes through the Red Cross but only two tins of tobacco got through to me, these were St
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Bruno and they lasted me some time. They would have lasted longer but I used to roll some into cigarettes and fellows used to drop by for a couple of puffs.
[drawing of book]
One of Dick's drawings
Dick also found a talent for needlework. He unpicked the silk lining from his flying boots, and made a cravat, with the RAF crest embroidered on it.
Cigarettes were used as currency for buying food, if and when the Red Cross food parcels arrived, they were divided up and were allocated, as 1 parcel between seven or ten men, not a lot, but as some kriegies didn't want some of the item they sold them for cigarettes. (Kriegies was short for Kriegesgefangenen which is the German word for prisoner of war)
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[underlined] Kriegies 10 commandments [/underlined]
[drawing of scroll]
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We had radios which were hidden in various places. In our hut we had the men who looked after the radios. One evening after being shut in, lookouts kept watch whilst repairs were being done. Suddenly someone shouted Goons up. An officer with three men plus an Alsatian dog walked in, the tables were cleared very quickly, everything dropped into a carton and passed down the lower bunks, it arrived at my bunk and I had nowhere to pass it to so I hid it under my knees under a blanket and picked up a book to read. The dog came sniffing around but kept on going by, when I sort of came too I found my book which I was supposedly reading was upside down. Good job the dog didn't notice it.
[drawing of hut interior]
Inside one of the huts in a camp
Mornings started with the overnight latrine bucket having to be emptied, not a nice job we had a rota in the hut and two of us had to take a 30 to 40 litre container almost full and take it and empty it at the toilet block you invariably finished up rather damp and needed a good wash.
Next it was the guards shouting "RAUS!" get out the parade ground for morning head count and anything that the Germans thought we should know, like how well they were doing in the war but didn't say where.
After the head count which could take quite some time, they couldn't agree on the figures and had to do it again sometimes it was our own faults [sic] for moving around whilst they tried to count us.
Finally all was right so off for breakfast the German rations were not very plentiful. It started with what they said was coffee, first in the morning, but what it was made with didn't question, but it was hot and with adding powered milk you drank it, it had to be fetched from the cookhouse in metal jugs.
Dinner was usually a soup of some sort could just be potato or sauerkraut and on a good day you were given corned beef which was send to the camp from Argentina, another soup was swede with potatoes, we were also issued with a fish cheese which was not very palatable but you ate it.
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Bread, black was issued per day, it varied in the amount which was either 6 or 10 persons sharing a loaf which was about 8 or 9 inches long about 4 inches wide and could be 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 inches deep that is they were thicker one end than the other, so one can imagine trying to share it out to either a combination of three or twelve.
Then to the cookhouse for our very large cans of ertzats [sic] coffee I still don't know what it was made of but it was wet and warm and washed down your breakfast if you ever had any. You were dreaming about eggs and bacon and toast and marmalade but didn't make a habit of it.
The next part of the morning was spent washing and shaving or not then cleaning up your space and making it tidy, then any washing you had to do for which you had to boil water which meant finding some material to burn, bed boards were used but there was a limit to how many you could sleep without and still have a straight back. As I previously mentioned classes were being held in huts all around the camp during the day also we had the parade ground on which was played sports, football, rugby, rounder's and also they had physical exercises for those who wanted it, we had a stream running through a part of the camp which was used to see who could jump it in one go! If not you had a free foot wash and legs and shorts!!
During the evenings one of our newsreaders would come in the hut, with days news that had been listened to on one of the radios (Daily Express reporter Cyril Aynsley was one who took it down in shorthand), some of us would keep watch at the door and be ready to stop the reader if any Germans happened to be about.
Most nights it was a nightly ritual to have a walk, around your section of the camp and have a chat with anyone and everyone. Then back to your hut for a late evening drink of tea or coffee which entailed lighting up your blower to boil the water. When we then had to either get to bed or light a candle and try and read but not for long.
[cartoon drawing of brew up]
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[photograph of washing facilities]
Washing facilities of Stalag 357 Fallingbostel
Our washing and shaving facilities were very limited, with some of the camps having the washing troughs in the open, ours were inside, just a trough with cold water running along it with holes in it about 18 inches in between to allow the water to run out into another trough below. If you wanted hot water it meant you had to get the blower out find some paper - cardboard or wood to burn to get some hot water. Wood was hard to come by unless you used your bed boards, which left you with another bend in your back. So it was usually a cold water shave and not everyday.
There was a shower room but this was situated about half a mile from the camp and we were taken there under guard once in about six weeks, why it was so far from the camp no one knew.
We were searched on leaving the camp and again when we returned, what they thought we would steal from room which only had showers and all in one large room. The water was switched on for about 10 minutes so you had to be quick.
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[letter confirming POW status]
Letter received by Dick’s Father, from the Chaplain at Tolthorpe
We were allowed to write home one letter and two postcards each month, which I think most of us took the opportunity, although it took quite a long time for the first ones to come from home. My first on arrived on August 14th having been sent from home on May 28th in all I think my mail total for my stay in Germany was a total of 42. 34 from Mum and Dad and a further 8 from friends and the caterpillar club confirming I had become a member.
[photograph of family] [reverse of photograph]
Family photo Dick received, the reverse shows the German censor’s mark
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There was a lot of aircrew arriving in the camp that they had to get two large tents and add them on to the rows of huts, each one held a further hundred men which didn't help our food rations. Not long after this we were told that we were to be moved into Germany.
[underlined] Torun Stalag Luft 357 [/underlined] (Appendix 4 - iv)
The place was actually in a part of Poland which had been the Polish Corridor and was Thorn or Torun Stalag 357. So we had to get packed up and ready to go in two days as the Russians were headed our way, so it was take the essentials, our pots and pans and the blower which was used for heating water mostly; any food plus your blanket and toiletries any spare clothes, some of the Canadian families had sent things over which were ice skates and baseball bats, most of which were left behind.
A wind up gramophone was smashed up plus all the records, and on the walk to where we had to board our cattle trucks which was about two miles away the road or more like a country track for carts was littered with discarded equipment people decided they could do without.
Once we were at the train which was waiting us at the trackside, no station. We were herded into the cattle trucks, 40 persons per truck; 20 bodies in each end of the truck. The centre used for the guards. They also had a guard sitting on top of each wagon wearing goggles and had a machine gun.
This trip took us about five days and nights on a slow train to Torun (on the river Vistula), and one wasn't very clean and tidy upon arrival.
The others at Heydekrug that were being shipped by boat from the port of Memel had a very bad time on the boat as they were herded into the hold of a boat and spent between five and seven days on board in horrible conditions on the way to a camp in Germany.
Our trip by train took about five days of shake rattle and very uncomfortable and one stop a day for the toilet, and sad to say we had to use a corner of the truck to relieve ones self.
We arrived at Thorun, which was a large camp mainly army prisoners and we were crowded into huts about 120-140 per hut and the meals we had were very poor in quality and quantity. We were only there for 6 weeks and once again were on our cooks tour again, back into our 40 hommes or 6 cheveaux carriages with a small amount of straw spread across the floor which had large gaps between the floor boards and no central heating, and again another train journey of six days to our next camp which was Fallingshostel [sic] which was about 80 miles north of Hanover. This again was an army camp but now accommodated American air force as well as us British and was split into three separate camps which also included a Russian compound. (Appendix 4 - i) and ii)
Also around this time I wanted some shoes as mine were about paper thin and I managed to get a brown pair of American army boots which was just what was needed if we were going for a long walk.
The huts were the usual having two tier bunks down each side of the room and a further rows [sic] up the centre of the room, with a large stove in the centre which wasn't used as there was no fuel for it.
The cookhouse supplied us with what was called coffee and made from what we really never found out what, but we called it coffee because it was brown. The food from the cookhouse was mainly
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some sort of soup, mainly potatoes with some sauerkraut like cabbage added. Sometimes we would have a ration of corned beef which the Argentineans sent over in bulk for us and very good too. We did also had what the Germans called cheese, but it tasted very fishy but never quite found out what its origin was our supplies of Red Cross parcels were getting few and far between with so much disruption on the railway.
Where they originally intended to have one parcel person per week, we were now having to make do with one parcel for ten men and had to last them a week or longer until more arrived.
Being closer to some large towns we now had the sounds of bombers targeting them at nights, we also had some low flying Mosquitoes shooting up the railway not far from us.
We all stood outside the hut watching when one of the guards shouted at us to get inside; of course no one moved so he took his rifle off his shoulder and put a bullet in the chamber. But forgot there was one already in, so it sent a round flying out onto the ground. The old fellow looked at us shrugged his shoulders picked up the bullet and left us to watch.
[photograph of prisoners]
Prisoners of war watching allied aircraft - inside Fallingbostel
Life here was not very good as there were too many of us cramped into huts, we did have an unusual game some evenings - because as it got dusk we had some large flying insects around, about an inch to inch and half long with a hard shell body. We used to wait them and then hit them with a wooden stick, scoring two points for a certain hit and one point for a probable; you had to produce a body for the two points. But there wasn't any prizes for a high score only a mess of squashed bodies.
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[underlined] Oerbke near Fallingbostel [/underlined]
The news we had from the Germans was that during the next couple of weeks we would be leaving camp and would be marching north to a holding area somewhere near Hamburg.
Our last camp at Oerbke near Fallingbostel was very large and housed British soldiers - some Russians also American airmen, the war was drawing to a close and the Russians were approaching us from the East and the Allies from the South so the beginning of April 1945 we going to be made to leave the camp in sections and carrying all our possessions. (Appendix 4 – i) and ii)
[underlined] The Long March [/underlined]
There is more information on the Long March in appendix 3
Whatever a holding area was meant to be for and why they would want us there was never discovered. There was a lot of speculation that they were going to drive us into the Baltic and drown us or otherwise just put us in barbed wire enclosure and leave us, but they didn't.
Instead we were marched out of the camp early April to begin a long trek northwards. The first lot we were marched out of camp April 6th in parties of about 500, everybody loaded with bags and blankets a box of food, a water bottle and all your clothes which didn't amount to much. I was glad that I had been given a new pair of army boots, also an overcoat, French army blue but very thin and not very waterproof but better than nothing. We covered varying distances each day, the weather varied from wet and windy to very cold, and we were not sure where would be sleeping the next evening.
It turned out that first night which was rather wet with rain, our accommodation was a field, no trees or high hedges to shelter us so it was rather a nasty start to our walk, which was on rough tracks through farmland and we managed to collect some vegetables from fields we passed although the guards were told to shoot anyone found doing it, which meant just about everybody.
Our second night was under the stars in a field.
It was on our third day we arrived in a village and were taken in to the church for our nights lodging sleeping anywhere you could lay out on the pews and under them and in the aisles. We had to boil water outside for our tea, on our blowers.
As we progressed each day through the county we saw American aircraft by their vapour trails going on some bombing mission.
There were some days after marching or should say walking, or hobbling, that we would finish up in a farmyard, this was welcome as we soon found eggs about. Some lucky lads found barns that were not in use as the cattle were in the fields; this allowed chicken and sometimes a small pig to enter the barn which was quickly turned into a meal.
One occasion was a nice bit of garden behind a barn that was full of ripe rhubarb, must have been about 10 feet wide and 14 feet long, within a very short time it was clear, the farmer was furious, he got an officer who said he would punish any prisoner found with stewed rhubarb. He walked around
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with the farmer looking in every saucepan or a fire, in which lo and behold they were full of stewing rhubarb, he just shrugged his shoulders and that was it.
Later in the month we had to cross the river Elbe by a railway bridge, but as we approached it there was a column of tiger tanks coming over and their tracks were breaking up the road as they passed. Our guards suddenly vanished into air raid shelters and circling over the bridge was one Spitfire. With the Germans firing at him with machine guns mounted on the ends of the towers at the ends of the railway bridge, but they were nowhere near hitting him as they fired miles behind him. They were useless.
When it quietened down and the tanks had all gone our guards came out of their air raid shelter and herded us across the bridge.
We must have covered a fare [sic] distance as we have been walking every day from the 6th April and it is now midway through April and the weather is improving, but our lodgings don't improve, the villages we go through gave us drinks of water and now the guards turn a blind eye.
It must have been mid April that was about the 18th April that we stayed at a farm that was rather run down and neglected. Cow sheds were filthy and hadn't been cleared so no one could sleep in them so we were in the open up against walls. I was itching around my waist and found that it was lice, so I needed a good wash, but where so had a look around and discovered a duck pond covered in greed [sic] weed, there had to be water under the weed, so clothes off make a hole ain [sic] the weed and lower myself into about 8 inches of water and a foot of mud, it was wonderful and I got rid of a lot of the lice.
We stayed one night in a farm where the farmer had a stable for a couple of horse, on a walk round with another chap, I found this stable and it had a water tank on top, so we had a look and found a pipe leading down from the roof with a large tap at the base, we hurried back for our toiletries and towels. I said you sit in front of the tap which was about 4 inches across and I will turn it on, which I did, and oh dear the water came out with such force he shot backwards across the cobbled floor on his bottom. He said you wait until it is your turn. It was a wonderful feeling to get your self refreshed.
[underlined] 19th April 1945 [/underlined]
Still moving North on about the 19th April we were informed that at our next stopping place we were going to get a Red Cross food parcel, one parcel per man at a place named Gresse, this was very good news as it was about three weeks since we last had one.
We were walking through a rather large forest for quite some miles now and were informed that on the other side we would be issued with our parcels.
We had been living on soup some overnight stops and now and again ertzats [sic] coffee reputedly made from acorns.
So to be handed a parcel for your self was out of this world and very much needed. So we came out of the forest along a track which was about 18 feet wide and had about another 6 or 8 feet either side which was about a foot lower and then a few trees sort of along the edge after them were fields and quite a lot more trees.
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At this time we were having a rest on the track starting to open up our parcels, when we heard some aircraft flying parallel to us about half a mile away. They sounded like Hurricanes so could be ours so kept sorting our parcels, when we heard these load explosions coming down the road towards us. The aircraft turned out to be our own Typhoons equipped with rockets and cannons plus machine guns and anti personnel rockets.
I flung myself down and into the ditch which was only shallow and behind a plant which was about a foot high and about eight inches wide. it was just something to hang onto. The guard who had been sitting by a tree had been wounded and next to me an Aussie Sergeant wireless operator had been shot through his head and chest, my nearest bullet hit my boot heel, as I felt it but it just left a line across the heel.
The two others I shared everything with were Ginger Wheadon and Alec Laing, who were no where to be seen. So I decided to walk back and found Alec not far away but very shaky. So told him to stay put and I would look for Ginger, on my way back up the track, I was giving drinks of water to people who had been wounded and were waiting for treatment either shock or wounds, but couldn't find Ginger.
There were people calling out for their friends, I came across one fellow sitting by a tree with the lower part of his body a mess, although he asked me for a drink as if nothing was wrong. Just as I had given him a drink a couple of his pals came and took over whilst I carried on my search for Ginger.
At one hedge I passed there were legs sticking through so I hopefully looked on the other side, but hastily moved on as they were all there was.
There were quite a few bodies lying about on the track but not Ginger, someone suggested I looked in the fields near where we had been; a lot of men had run across them, so I did and found him but he had been hit in the chest whilst running and was dead.
He must have left his belongings in his haste as I never found them.
In Dick's Wartime log book he wrote on April 20th 1945 - "to our engineer Ginger Wheadon. Ging was killed by a bullet from a Typhoon whilst we were resting during a march on April 19th 1945, he was killed instantly. We are trying to get some of his personal kit to bring home for his Mother and Mary his girl. He was buried at a village of Heydekrug, 4km from Gresse where we had just drawn food parcels. He was buried by our Padre and a parson. The time of his death was about 12 noon.
Having looked after one or two other badly wounded lads, l went back to Ginger only to find that all his kit had been taken and his pockets empty. Some thieving B……. had pinched everything he had on him.
I only hope the food choked them and all the other things brought them the worst luck possible."
The count was 35 POW were killed also 6 of the German guards.
I searched around and found one of our seniors who I gave him Gingers name which apparently someone else had already done so after finding his name and number on his dog tags. So I returned to where I had left Alec and we moved on down the road to the next village where we stayed for the
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night in field with a couple of barns in it but some good thick hedges to bed down under and found a barn with some straw in which we used as bedding.
Dixie Deans our camp commandant spoke to the officer who was in command of the Germans guarding us to let him go through the German lines accompanied by a German officer with a safe conduct note, to then contact the Americans, and let them know that there were 20,000 allied prisoners on the line of their advance and to advise them to let their airbase know of this situation. This was done and Dixie Dean and his accompanying German officer cycled back through the lines and after sorting out the burial of our lads in the churchyard at Gresse.
They were buried in a mass grave and the German priest held a service for our lads and also the guards that were killed. (After the war the RAF personnel killed in this attack were reburied in a new Commonwealth War grave cemetery outside Berlin see appendix 2).
The injured where taken to a hospital at Boizenburg for treatment, and no doubt sent home for further treatment.
Our English Padre was to march on with the others as he would not attend the church service as it was not his parish.
That was April 19th 1945 which will always be remembered as it was just a few days before my 21st birthday which I very nearly could have missed, that was a dream that haunted me for quite some time.
We constantly saw American aircraft around but they were mainly bombers heading Hamburg way we did pass an airfield that had JU88's on it but it had been bombed and most of its aircraft destroyed.
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[War Graves Commission citation]
Ginger's burial place, to the right of the building in the distance (see Appendix 2 for cemetery map)
[underlined] The end of the War nears [/underlined]
We carried on Northwards and the farms that we stayed in were larger and did have some decent barns, but were rather a lot bodies and not everyone got in a barn. Alec and my self usually found a well and stayed out with the weather now being quite good. My birthday on the 26th April was nothing special I think maybe I had an extra piece of chocolate and maybe made a cigarette with my pipe tobacco and smoked it all myself, otherwise we usually passed them around.
It's now the beginning of May the weather is quite good and there are lots of American aircraft leaving vapour trails, we think Hamburg or ports in the North were their targets.
We settled down on the 2nd May in a small outhouse with no windows or doors just three walls and a roof that would have let in more rain than it kept out and wondering what tomorrow would bring.
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When we woke to a fine morning and made a drink someone said look all our guards have gone during the night, so we then went to find what our next move was.
We were told not to go out on the roads running North as there were German panzer troops still in that area, this information we got from an officer in jeep which came on ahead of the English and American troops who pushing the Germans back in this area.
We were then informed by Dixie Deans that we were to find some means of transport and make our own way South to Luneburg where our troops had built a pontoon bridge over the river Elbe and from there proceed to a German airfield situated near Luneburg, which had been turned into a reception area for POWs.
The area around the airfield became littered with vehicles we had acquired including a fire engine, a few tractors some civilian cars, horse and carts, motor cycles and a couple of buses.
My mode of transport was in one of the buses so had a comfortable ride to the reception centre.
May 8th 1945. The road we had to use to get the river crossing was littered on both sides with German and English military vehicles which had been bulldozed off the road so that others could get through to the pontoon bridge at Luneburg.
We spent a couple of days here being subject to a delousing period that incurred someone with a spray gun putting it down your back and front and also each trouser leg.
After which they took your particulars and you were given an identity card with your name, number, rank, and squadron number and told to find a bed in one of the huts and report back in the morning. If we had anything which we didn't need there was a bonfire on which we could get rid of old clothes not that we had much. But some of the prisoners had picked up guns and ammunition on the way which they decided to get rid of, there was a lot of exploding ammunition going off all night and the next day.
We had a breakfast of coffee and a slice of toast and then had to go on a parade ground and form up into groups of around 40 to await the arrival of aircraft for our homeward flight to England and a POW reception centre at RAF Cosford in a Dakota, used as transport and troop carrier the workhorse of the air force.
Here we were met by nurses and WAFs and again given the treatment of delousing, then a check over by doctors and lots of questions as to how you felt. Then it was a sit down meal, but our stomachs would only take a small amount, l can't remember what was on the menu but I know I could only manage a little, and a nice young WAAF sat with me and talked me into eating a little more. I really couldn't eat anymore, but had more tea so I could keep her talking with me.
We were then subject to being kitted out with new uniforms and glad to be out of the old stuff. The only [sic] I kept was my American army boots which had walked many miles or should say kilometres over German countryside, they lasted a good many years as my gardening boots. They still have the mark on the heel where a bullet from a typhoon clipped it when we were shot up.
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We only stayed at Cosford long enough to be kitted out and given some idea of how would carry on until our number for demob came up.
I had still about a year to do so was given a choice of ground trades which was, clerk in accounts, pigeon keeper or store keeper. What a choice is that it I asked and said that I didn't like any of these and wanted to be assigned to the transport division either as a driver or in admin. The Officer said he would put my choice forward but didn't think I would be lucky as so many had chosen transport as an option. So it was then we had to collect our travel warrants and any pay we had coming plus identity cards and ration book.
It was now late May and a start of long awaited leave which was for about four weeks to get me back into being fit again, I arrived from Cosford at London Road station and a neighbour who was a taxi driver happened to be at the stand and so he shouted over to me to get in his car. After putting my bags in and much hand shaking from other people I was on my way home. Mr Shuker talked all the way and got me up to date with what had been happening in Minehead Street, and upon arriving there he slowed down and hooted so people could know that he had arrived with a neighbour. There was quite a lot came out and gave me a cheer, and upon arrival at home I [sic] most of our neighbours were there with Mum, Dad and Mary. It was quite a homecoming with lots of hugs and kisses from all the close neighbours, it was something I’II never forget.
It took a while to get used to a normal bed and home routine but it was good to be home.
My two pals Ken and Derek who were both in the air force Ken was an engine maintenance engineer at fighter station, while Derek was a Corporal in the RAF police service. They managed a spot of leave whilst I was home so we spent a few days together.
The first evening they took me down to our local pub which was the Blue Moon. This was the first time for me to go out for pint.
Ken and Derek ordered pints, but I said that mine had better just be a half, which was just as well as when I got up to go the bar to order another round my legs gave way so I didn't have any more. So Ken and Derek took me home, I could manage to walk but not very steady, I guess that my system hadn't had any booze for quite some time but would get around that problem in time.
[underlined] Military Transport Training [/underlined]
My leave seemed to pass very quickly and very soon a travel warrant arrived to say that I was being posted to Melksham, and it turned out to be a course for Drivers-motor transport, I was told previously that there was no chance for this as so many had tried but were told they had no chance. Lucky me as my Aunts and Uncles all lived around this area at the village of Wingfield, so I would have some place to go at weekends.
So up one morning and off to catch the train for Melksham and becoming a driver for the air force in what sort of vehicles one wondered.
It turned out to be initial training was on vehicle maintenance as you had to be able to keep your vehicle in road worthy conditions at all times.
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We had a very rigorous course on engines and ensuring they were in good running order with oil and water checked daily, there were lectures every day on subjects such as Highway Code road traffic signs and use of hand signals and being courteous to other road users.
Our first driving lessons were with British School of Motoring civilian instructors driving mainly Austin cars, each car had three learners with tutor and took it in turns at the driving. I had some goes at driving but this was a trifle different as you had to double de clutch as if you were driving a vehicle without synchromesh gears. One instructor was very strict and if you didn't get it right he had a wooden mallet with which he used to clout your knee with, it worked well, my leg went up and down like a yoyo, after just one tap.
If you passed you then passed on to RAF instructors to learn the different types of vehicles you would encounter, these were classified as Hillman Minx used a lot by junior officers, then on to 15 cwt hundred weight [sic] for light loads, then three ton vehicles used for ration collection and general work. Progressing then to the lorries, eight ton and ten ton lorries and the five and seven ton cranes, last of all came the sixty foot long trailers for carrying aircraft when dismantled for repairs.
Having mustered [sic] this little lot you had to pass a driving test on a three ton vehicle and one of the other larger vehicles. After passing all this you had a written test on all subjects and if all was well you were given a driving certificate and were now an MT driver.
What was nice about this posting that every weekend I could spend on the farm with my Aunt and Uncle it was called Sparrow nest farm and they kept cattle for milking, and I was not at all good at milking but helped out fetching the animals in for milking and taking the milk churns on a tractor and trailer to a platform on the roadside ready for the lorry to collect which was twice a day.
Alternate weekends were spent in Wingfield village with Aunt Hilda and Uncle Bill and Granddad who was Aunt Hilda's Uncle, he and I used to play cards in the evenings and he used to beat me at cribbage quite often even though he was missing a lot of his fingers on both hands due to wounds in the First World War.
One morning I awoke and on looking out my bedroom window overlooking a field there was a white object there in a corner, so when l got up I said to my Aunt I'm just going to see what's in the field, and when I got there it was a mushroom the size of a dinner plate, yes I had it for breakfast.
Another time Granddad and I were walking down a lane when a rabbit ran out from the hedge, I had a walking stick which I threw towards it and it stopped running because I had killed it, broke its neck and so we took it home and Auntie skinned it and it made us a dinner.
I used to catch a bus from camp to Wingfield but Uncle Bill always took me back to camp on his motorbike and no crash helmet.
[underlined] Horsham [/underlined]
When I finished at Melksham I was posted to Faygate near to Horsham, it was a maintenance unit, where we were sent out to dismantle aircraft that were not required anymore.
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My vehicle that I was allocated turned out to be a six wheeled lorry a left over from the last war, a
1918 model it would not start on the starter motor so had to be towed.
I got up into the drivers seat to which there was no door only canvas panels which just hooked across also the whole cab was just canvas. The steering wheel was about 2 feet in diameter like a bus, the gear lever was about three foot tall and the handbrake was on the right side and about four feet tall, I wondered what I had let myself in for.
They towed me out of the gates with a three ton Bedford lorry on to a main road and I managed to get it started. They then left me and said over to you and don't forget that this vehicle has not got synchromesh gear so you have to double declutch on all gear changing.
After about two hours and 15 miles later I had mastered it all and found my way back to the unit.
There were no facilities for accommodation on the camp so we had to be billeted at Horsham and commute every day by train. But we were away quite often for three or four days, we spent two days at Monston [sic] airport dismantling an Avro Anson that had overshot the runway and went through a small plantation of trees, which left it a write off, so my band of lads reduced it down to a scrap heap. We had to stay there awaiting the vehicle to collect the parts so had an extra day there.
Over [sic] next trip was down to Boscombe near to Bournemouth and we were told we would be there for four or five days as we had to dismantle quite a lot of spitfires which had been made redundant at Christchurch airfield. So we had to look for accommodation in Boscombe, which we found in a Salvation Army hostel and had five days there.
I parked my lorry in the railway goods yard as there would be someone with a vehicle there to give you a tow in the morning. The old lady surprised me one morning and started first time on the starter motor but that was the only time.
That was my only trip with her as t was assigned to a brand new three ton Bedford lorry. It was the same that we trained on at Melksham and I was to use it to collect all the supplies for the officers mess also all the others so had quite a decent job, also whenever we had rations to collect I was
accompanied by a WAAF which was a nice change from a load of lads.
I was checking tyre pressures and as these vehicles were equipped with its own air pump driven by the motor it was quite simple, but as I was checking one of the front tyres the wind blew the drivers door open and I stood up and hit my head on a corner and finished up flat out, not very long though but decided I had better go to sick quarters and get patched up as it was bleeding a lot. I passed a few people who asked if I was okay but I just said yes and they carried on. At sick bay they patched me up and I went back to finish the job and the motor was still running. So switched off, locked up and retired to the mess prior to catching the train.
[underlined] Egypt??? [/underlined]
Next day I was back into camp and was informed that I was moving on. It was that I was being posted to Egypt, l made a request to see our commanding officer who was an ex aircrew Squadron Leader, saying that I wasn't happy being posted abroad and that I had done my bit for the country and thought it most unfair as there were lots of people who hadn't left England.
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He listened to me and yes, he saw my complaint but he didn't think he could alter the decision and if I gave it a bit of thought, look at it as a holiday paid for by the Government for what you went through. So, yes that sounds reasonable and I'll go along with that, and thanked him. He said he wished me well and try to enjoy your cruise. He would have liked to have joined me, he said.
Went home for a spot of leave and got ready for my next forage into the unknown.
I was then sent a travel warrant for an air force camp situated at Newhaven to be kitted out with my overseas uniform, two khaki shirts and shorts plus long trousers and socks, then some inoculations for tropical diseases then were claimed ready for travel.
We were then told we would be travelling by the Medlock route that is from Newhaven to Dieppe in France by boat and thence by train down to Marseilles where we would be shipped across the Mediterranean to Egypt.
After the trip across to France at night we then continued through Switzerland and snow, it was very cold, but the villages on the mountainsides looked like the one on postcards very romantic amongst the snow. The French trains were not the cleanest but must have moved a lot of British service men since the war had ended over here.
At Marseilles we left the trains at the docks and boarded an American Liberty boat for the next part of the journey. We were shown into the first deck which was fitted out with beds in tiers of three the whole width of the ship and about forty or fifty foot in length. I managed to get one of the lower ones. When we settled in I was told and shown to the bakery, and was put in charge of 6 airmen which was very good as we had very new bread at our meal times. The six airmen worked well and we got along very well with the American crew.
We set sail in the evening and had a quiet evening up on deck, the weather was calm so after supper decided to turn in but couldn't sleep, the motion of the ship wasn't helping me and it took ages for me to eventually nod off.
Our second day went well and my lads and I ate well, but this next night we had a storm and Liberty boats are welded together not riveted and creaks in every joint. I wasn't very happy but just kept lifting the bows up after it went down in a trough. Didn't get much sleep and was glad to reach Alexandria and then taken to a camp at Damunbur and it was very hot and our accommodation was in tents that were built over three foot deep dugouts which gave you a bit more head room than just a tent. We stayed here for about three weeks.
[underlined] To Italy [/underlined]
But apparently there was nothing for us in our line of work required here so we were shipped back across the Mediterranean to Naples in Italy, where we stayed for a couple of days. We made the most of it seeing a part of the world and some of the Roman era, also there were plenty of young and very beautiful senoritas.
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[photograph]
Stanco, Dick's dog
We stayed in Naples for two days and were then told that we would be moving on to any [sic] airfield a few miles outside of Udine in a northern village of Potsuolo, which was the desert air force headquarters known as D.A.F.H.Q. Here were 3 squadrons which flew Mustang fighters. We were attached to DAF headquarters transport section and did all the movement of materials and stuff. This was very good as it entailed collecting the rations from stores which was about twenty miles away, but the roads in places was awful and stony. One item was an open top tin of jam which an Italian was carrying in the back, unfortunately a back tyre exploded like a bomb going off, my poor Italian thought he had been shot as he was covered in jam. After changing the wheel we continued back to camp.
[photograph]
Potsuolo
Another job we had was taking personnel up to our leave hotel up in the mountains for a week at a time and the driver stayed with them and drove them to scenic places, one of which was a lake about thirty miles trip, but was well worth seeing. It was but the road was very rough running along the side of the mountains our wheels were on the very edge of a few thousand foot drop and were running on
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a log which had been built into the road where the edge had fallen away, very bad for the nerves. Other places were when crossing over the bridges from one side of the mountain to the other. These were just planks of wood about three inches thick and about ten or twelve inches wide about fourteen feet long spaced about six inches apart on wooden beams. There was just enough room to get the vehicle around the ends onto the bridge, I only bent the tool box that was on the chassis when we were going.
[photograph]
Dead Slow Ahead!
It was a wonderful place called Cortina quite scenic we stayed for lunch and then I decided to return knowing it was a long way back and I would be on the outside looking down into the valley.
I said to the chap sitting next to me when we get to the logs set into the road edge, tell me how much room I've got your side, his remark was that my side mirror was about two inches from the rock wall which meant when I looked out that my wheels were running on the top of the logs, my legs shook a bit but I thought we came through this way so should be okay going back hopefully.
[photograph]
Dick's leave hotel in Forni Avolti, to the left of the church with a cross marked on the roof
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The hotel was very good and there were quite a few locals and there was a lady there with her daughter, the mother worked in the hotel and her daughter who was about 10 or 12 decided that when a few of the locals and us went for walks she would come and hold my hand and look after me, her name was Tina. We walked across one field and the melting snow had made a three or four foot wide stream down the grass, there was about twelve in the group and it was decided to jump instead of finding a place to cross. We all decided it was no problem just a short jump should do it, but it didn't. I think we all had very wet legs far the rest of our walk, but we all enjoyed it.
[photograph]
Tina and Friends
Most evenings there were four musicians who would play for us, sometimes a good old sing song of tunes of the times, and that led into dance music which was very tiring, as the girls that worked there kept going most of the evening and made sure we kept up with them. Lana the Austrian girl if she got hold of you your feet hardly touched the ground. But they were all good fun. The week passed very quickly and it was drive them back to camp and back to work.
Every other week we were duty driver for a day, which meant servicing the commanding officers vehicles; that he wanted to use that day. You had to knock on his caravan door and go in and ask him which of his three vehicles he required that day. From a jumble of blankets a voice would say either Merc or Jep or Util, which interpreted was either Mercedes or Jeep or his Utility, so you checked all three to make sure you got it right. You were busy taking officers to meetings and also running them into town to various places sometimes just so they could do some shopping.
[underlined] On the Road to Bari [/underlined]
Some days I was office boy handing out jobs to the drivers, this I didn't like as I would rather be out driving, and I was very lucky, our M.T officer who was also ex aircrew said he had a job for three vehicles to go down to Bari, where they were closing down an airfield and we had to bring back the furniture from the officers mess. Would I like to be one of the drivers? Of course that would be very nice, he then said and I shall be going as well to make sure we bring back the right things. So my friend another ex aircrew now a driver and the third driver was a corporal who had spent quite some time in Italy and knew his way around. We also had three airmen armed with rifles as guards, on to each vehicle so we had all the bodies required for the trip.
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[photograph]
On the Road to Bari
So it was up early one morning, pack the essentials for the trip which we had no idea how long we would be, so we took a change of clothes for it [sic] we went out in the evening at some stage of the journey.
Out [sic] first stop was at Rimini which was a holiday resort on the coast and there was an air force station there where we could find a bed for the night.
We left Udine and passed by Venice into Padova then for Ferrari, the roads were quite good but the towns and villages had been taken quite a bit of damage. From here we headed for Ravenna on the Adriatic coast. It again was a holiday resort; like most places took a lot of damage, then on to Rimini and a well earned rest. Out [sic] mileage for this leg of our journey was approximately 432 kilometres.
Some of the vehicles we passed on the way were rather weary, the loads they carried were unreal some were the width of the lorry but finished up twice the width at the top. The tyres were smooth and the engines were held together with bits of wire. The Italians were noted for have good mechanics, we had one of them in our section who could just listen to an engine running and get to the cause of the trouble straight away.
Back to our trip, we left Rimini the next morning after checking our vehicles and filling up with petrol heading for our next stop which was to be Rome. Our next road was heading inland across Italy into the more agricultural part of Italy, the traffic was very mainly bullock carts with four of them in the shafts pulling very large loads which hung over the sides and took up a lot of road space. Also we kept passing a lot of women and children carrying canes on their heads and shoulders, l thought that if one turned to chat with another it would cause chaos down the line if we hit them.
One thing that we noticed was the lack of bridges crossing the roads, mostly the countryside was very flat and were either agricultural or cattle. The towns and villages we passed through were a bit showing the signs of war damage and were trying to get back to normal. In the villages there were always lots of children on the streets and all were begging for chocolate, no doubt remembering the times the Americans were there.
We reached Rome in the evening and found the army barracks were we to stay the night, we all decided we would have an early night as tomorrow was a shorter trip and we could spend a little more time in Naples which we did. The road from Rome was fairly good although there was plenty of damaged buildings everywhere and not much building taking place although it was mainly getting the
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places ready for residents to return to repair jobs mostly. Although in Naples we found that the night life was very much alive, and we spent a few hours around the night clubs, and the officer and we two warrant officers were quite happy after consuming numerous bottles of wine with some very good food. And so to bed quite happy, not looking forward the next day's trip which was going to be a long one.
Up early the next morning and had a good breakfast and refuelled our vehicles and away on the road to Bari which is situated on the North coast of Italy, known as the heel of Italy. The road out of Naples was very busy with most vehicles having enormous loads and engulfed in a fog which we were glad to leave behind and over to our right was Mount Vesuvius but only a trickle of smoke from it. We were then heading North East and the road was less busy, and was pretty rough, villages we passed through had been very heavily damaged. We stopped for a meal or I should say a sandwich, and a family in a nearby house were having their spaghetti, there was an old lady with a plate full which was devoured in a very few minutes, guess she was hungry.
[photograph]
Still on the Road to Bari
We pressed on as it was starting to look like we were going to head into some rather wet weather, we did, and finding the place we wanted was not easy. The leading lorry with our officer and corporal driving, found what they thought was the right track to the airfield which turned out to be a very narrow road just wide enough for one lorry. After about a mile the road finished and we were left with the prospect of reversing all the way back to the main road in the pouring rain. There was no where we could have turned round as the fields had been ploughed on both sides. So about half an hour later three very wet headed drivers, a very wet officer and a guard who had walked back along the track with torches to guide us. We found the right road and got to our destination, and a good hot meal was very welcome.
I seem to remember that we didn't need much rocking to sleep.
We found out the next morning after breakfast that what we were collecting was a lot of electrical equipment which was too valuable to leave and could be useful elsewhere along with quite a lot of furniture from the officers quarters some of which turned out to be large mirrors about 5 foot high by 3 foot wide with a very ornate surround, and I don't recollect whether they survived the journey, it would have been very lucky if they had. Our three young guards did alright and had an armchair for the ride back. After we had packed everything into the lorries it was dinner time, so we had a very
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good meal and washed down with some very nice wine, and decided to stay the night here and start at 8am the next morning, so we had a look round Bari which had a good port for ferries to Yugoslavia across the Adriatic. Retired to our beds ready for the start back.
The trip back to Naples was uneventful but in Naples our guards had their hands full keeping loads of youngsters from climbing up the sides of the Lorries and stealing anything. Most of what we had was furniture which was stacked on top of the wireless equipment so they left empty handled.
It was evening time when we finally arrived in Naples so didn't go very far around the town just had a drink or two and then retired to bed.
Next morning it is up and away on our next leg to Rome where we hoped to spend a little time looking around the place as there is plenty to see, and walked around the centre of the Coliseum where the gladiators did their acts, and I was glad that I wasn't acting in it, and I think the lions that did an act had already eaten that day.
[photograph]
Coliseum Rome
Later on we found a good restaurant where we had a good meal washed down with a very good Italian wine, and walked back to our billets in an army barracks and so to bed.
Not looking forward to our next trip as it is a long run and not very scenic from Rome up to Rimini, mainly farming country and only a couple of towns on the way, the one consolation was that it stayed fine all the way.
Rimini was an army controlled town so there were lots of tanks and all types of weaponry around and we stayed in army barracks that night and we were up early the next morning as it was a long trip back to Udine.
We took the road out of Rimini for Rarenna along the coast, hence our next town was Venice where we stopped for a short rest and found a restaurant for a meal which was steak mushrooms and tomatoes washed down with a red wine, very nice too.
We were then only a couple of hours from our destination and our own beds. The whole trip had taken us about ten days, but that said the items we brought back was it worth it.
Overall we had a good look at how the Italians lived and were good mechanics, as they managed to keep their Lorries on. the road tied together with lots of wire and a lot more faith.
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We had a football team made up of NCOs and we played against teams from other ranks and also from the squadron that was stationed here. I was given the position of right wing and was usually up against a six foot left back of the opposing team, I don't think we won many of our matches, but it was a bit of good fun.
[photograph]
Military Transport Football Team
It is now getting into September and we are still living in tents, and have had a lot of rain recently and the camp was rather badly flooded, my other occupant and I were lucky our tent survived the storm, we had a lot of tents blown down and the roads were flooded and it took quite a while for everywhere to dry out.
Our leave hotel in Grado on the coast was popular and we ran an evening bus most nights, and it was one of my jobs as a driver to take the bus down to the town at 5pm and collect them again at 10pm from the town square. Most made it in time and on my trips we seemed lucky and didn't have any missing bodies, most of them were quite happy. I had four days leave and stayed in our leave hotel, very nice food and comfortable beds also there were grapevines where we had breakfast, so grapes were on the menu every morning. First thing after breakfast I went down the road and at the store shop used to buy a melon and take back to the hotel and have a waiter cut a square hole in it and put in a good portion of wine then put it in the fridge and have it with our evening meal, very nice finished the meal with it.
[underlined] Mercy Mission to Egypt [/underlined]
it was around September 15th that I had a call from the office of the Adjutant to tell me that I had been given ten days leave to go to a hospital in Egypt where my brother Bob was ill, and it would help him return to good health if he had a relative to see him. I was staggered and amazed as I had no idea of his whereabouts and that he was ill.
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18.9.1946. So I had to sort my kit out what I would require and managed to pack it in my small side pack. I then had to collect the pass and papers needed and so to Udine airport, arrived there at an early hour as flight was at 9.00am in a Dakota aircraft next stop Rome. Had a hotel for my overnight stay and very nice too, good food and bed and a very good night sleep.
My flight next morning which was to be about nine hours leaving Rome at ten past seven in the morning and we landed in Malta at 9.45 to refuel the aircraft had a drink there then left for our next stop which was El Adam in North Africa. Only stayed fifty minutes again to refuel and left at 4pm for our next stop at Almaza which we arrived at 6.30pm which was my stopping off place for Cairo.
I was driven to the Heliopolis hotel and shown to my room and then taken to the dining room and had a good meal.
I was very hot after being quite cool in Italy so changed into my shorts, but it was still very sticky hot, so decided to have an early night see what tomorrow brings.
! was up early as the night was very hot and I didn't get much sleep. I had a good breakfast and had to sit around and await my transport to the hospital.
20th September a car arrived and I was driven to the Helmieh hospital, where I was taken to meet the colonel of the hospital, who welcomed me and hoped my presence would help in Bob's recovery. He then told me I was to be accommodated at the Sergeants mess of the main hospital. There were numerous sections to the hospital, a fracture unit, dental unit, isolation unit which Bob was in eye and ear unit, it was quite a large place.
I was issued with a pass the [sic] to the isolation ward in which Bob was in with note to say the above named warrant officer was permitted to visit his brother signalman Curnock in isolation ward 1 and full preventative measures should be taken.
The sister I gave the note to just laughed gave me back the note, took me by the arm and gave me a hug, and said how lovely it was that I was able to have leave to go there, and then she took me to see Bob. He was surprised as he had no idea where I was, but he was very thin, white, and I looked like an Indian next to him as in a photo of us together.
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[photograph] [photograph]
Dick and Bob at Helmieh hospital, Egypt
My time at the hospital was spent on visits to Bob every day, having a game of snooker with some of the other members of the mess, or at other times some of the nurses and sister would ask me to escort them into Cairo to do a spot of shopping which I did quite willingly.
My ten days leave passed rather quickly, but when I rang the air booking centre in Cairo, I wasn't on any of the flights so had to wait another week. In fact it was the 25th October before my flight for Italy was finally here, so I had about 6 weeks of a 10 day leave.
Each unit had its own Sergeants mess and most evenings there was entertainment in one of them. Once or twice a week there was horse racing in one of them, and in the dental mess one night they had a Derby meeting, the horses were bid for at the start and I bought number two for two pounds after bidding against the colonel. And it won the race and I was twenty two pounds richer for a while, but lost a bit on the following races, good fun though.
The other entertainment was a quiz night which was quite hilarious, with answers to some questions quite ridiculous but funny. Others had classes which were well attended by all, as we had lots of nurses and sisters to make a good evening of it.
At another sergeants mess they held a bingo night with some other entertainment as bingo wasn't very popular.
In the sergeants mess some of them had nicknames, one was known as bash he was a boxer in Civvy Street; we also had a slash as he was always cutting himself when shaving, so I had to have one and was known as the parachute kid.
We had a snooker table in the mess and I had plenty of practice on it as I had quite a lot of time to fill in.
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Time passed and I finally had my seat booked for my return to Italy. So then I had to say my farewells to all the friends that I had made during my stay and to Bob of course and also I went to see the colonel and thanks him for all they had done for Bob and also making my stay a pleasant one.
[underlined] Dakota back to Italy – Treviso [/underlined]
So on the 26th October my flight was at 6.30am so was up early for the return journey. One of the sergeants had said the night before that he would take me to the airport as he was duty driver for that day. So once again I joined up with a Dakota of the South African Air force at Almaja airport stopping at El Adam to refuel then on to Malta where we stayed the night. The next day we were away at seven am on the last leg to Rome.
At Rome airport I was informed that the personnel of the 239 Wing Desert Air Force; had been moved to a place called Treviso so that where I was being sent. They said my kit had been transferred already so I had to get to this place, but found out that I was booked on a flight to an aerodrome just outside of Treviso.
[photograph]
Sergeants Mess Treviso 1945, Dick and friend
There was transport at the aerodrome and I was taken to our sergeant mess which was a town villa in Treviso and was shown to my room and where I was reunited with my kit bag.
This was luxury after living in tents for a long period with wash basins and baths and there were ladies to do your laundry and any repairs to your clothes.
I certainly enjoyed having a nice hot bath and retiring to a good bed and hoped that I wasn't to be moved again, as I had had enough of travelling for a while.
At Treviso it was usual routine doing runs into town and around the airfield, towing petrol trailers around to the aircraft for refuelling. Also fetching blocks of ice for the bars of the officers and sergeants also messes of other ranks. By the time you got back to camp there was a lot of water in the back of the truck and you had to lift blocks of wet ice into the various messes, a cold job.
From Treviso it was only a few miles into Venice and we spent a few weekends there, and got to do a lot of walking, you could have a gondola ride but they charged the earth, so we usually walked.
St Marco's square was very popular with lots of shops and cafes around. There was an abundant supply of jewellery shops and also the square had hundreds of pigeons, making it quite messy.
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There was a bell tower in one corner which had a large bell on the top. Apparently an Italian gent decided to inspect it too close and his head flattened by the bell hammer, very nasty.
There were lots of bridges over the canals and as you went into the centre where they had warehouses it was a rather different place, the canals were not so dean, and people living alongside them just threw rubbish out of the windows, not a good healthy environment to live in.
We found a very good restaurant in Treviso down a back street a very smart little place, who did beef steaks, which you could pick from a large selection and then you could see them being cooked and you then selected what you wanted with it.
Time passed very quickly at Treviso and was January before we realised suddenly that our demob numbers would be coming up soon. And it was January when we were told that some of us were going home and that we could be going to Villach in Austria to catch a train for the trip across Austria, Switzerland and France and home.
The day arrived when we were notified that we had reached the final week in Italy and would travel by train to Villach, and thence start our journey home. We cleared with all the necessary forms as was needed, paid any mess bills and said our farewells to rest of the transport department and was then taken to the station.
It was an uneventful journey to Villach where we had to stay overnight and there was thick snow there and rather cold with long icicles from roves [sic] of our huts.
[photograph]
Villach - with icicles
I met up with some of the other lads who had travelled with me on our trip out earlier, when we were leaving; waiting on the road for transport to the station a whole lot of youngsters arrived with sledges, so all we had to carry was our small kit, the kit bags were loaded on the sledges and so on to the station.
Our train was in and so we went aboard with kit bags on the corridors and rest of our kit on the racks, it was then that we all got into the spirit of finally going home. The trains were French so the toilets had no seat, just two places for your feet and a hole in the middle, not very comfortable.
With it being January everywhere was very white with snow and I took some pictures of the mountains as we passed into Switzerland which was wonderful. Coming out of a tunnel on the
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mountainside and there was a village and it appeared to just be hanging on. It went on like this from many miles as we went through Switzerland and into France.
[photograph]
Switzerland from the train
We stopped in Paris station for a hot drink and a sandwich and managed to have a wash and brush up before our next stop which was to be Dieppe and a channel crossing to Newhaven.
The trip over was uneventful but the sea was rather rough and there were one or two heaving stomachs to prove it, and we arrived in the dock, and then when we had sorted out our kit bags from a very large heap, the train was waiting in the station to take us to the demob centre, which was at No 101 Dispersal centre at Kirkham in Lancashire.
This was the place where you returned to civilian life once again. It is now the 21st January 1947 about to sort out from a large selection of shirts, underwear and suits and find some that is a reasonable fit. After which you went and tried on the items you had selected and handed in your uniform, well most of it, l remember that there was a shirt, a pair of shorts and some desert socks along with the boots that I wore during our sight seeing tour of Germany. Then you had to see numerous sections who dealt with your pay due to you and the amount of leave which turned out to be eighty days from the 21st January 1947.
You then had to collect your travel warrant, your pay also was entered in the back of your service release book and you had to collect it from the post office when it was due, and they would date stamp it in the back of your pay book.
My return home was a wonderful feeling after all my travels. At the station the neighbour of ours who had a taxi cab saw me and had me in his cab very quickly.
Upon arriving at Minehead Street the first thing I saw was the street still decorated with flags and bunting after the end of the war in Japan and not for me.
Mr Shuker sounded his horn and slowed down and there were a lot of people came out to welcome me home and of course Mum, Dad and Mary and our close neighbours were all waiting and I was smothered with their welcome.
And so I looked forward to a nice long holiday and getting used to civilian life once more.
48
[page break]
[underlined] Reunions [/underlined]
Dick's mother (Arabella Curnock) had welcomed several of the Canadian crew members into her home, and had corresponded with members of their families back home in Canada during the war.
Bob Friskey's wife Isabella in Abbotsford also wrote to Dick and Barbara after their marriage, as well as continuing to correspond with Dick's mother. It was from them that the news came that "Chuck" committed suicide some time after returning home.
Rob died sometime after, but Isabella continued to write to Dick.
Wes and his (Scottish) wife Mae made contact again sometime in the 1970s, when Dick received a phone call at the Thurmaston plant of Thorpe and Porter where he worked. The call was from the railway station in Leicester where Wes and Mae were - accompanied by the youngest of their five sons!
Dick went to pick them up, and they stayed overnight with [sic] at Queniborough before carrying on their journey to Scotland. Wes and Mae paid a short visit to Dick's mother, as Wes had stayed with her during the war when on leave.
In 1984 a lady who lived on Upperton Road (Mrs Tobin) was clearing out a house on Minehead Street (no 59) which was formally the Curnock family home. Amongst the papers was an unopened letter from Eugene Fullum in Montreal. She looked in the phone book and found a R Curnock and rang and this got Dick and Eugene back in touch.
[photograph]
Eugene and Dick 1985 (Leicester Mercury photo)
Eugene came over the UK in 1985, and when Dick and he met it was the first time they had seen each other since the police station in Germany the day after they had been shot down.
49
[page break]
[photograph]
RAF Prisoner of War insignia
[photograph]
Gordon, Eugene, Dick, Wes, 1987 Reunion
50
[page break]
[photograph]
Dick in the rear gunner position of a Halifax bomber; at Elvington, Yorks. 2004
[photograph]
Dick exiting the Halifax, the last time he did this, the Halifax was on fire and he was about to parachute into enemy territory
51
[page break]
Appendix 1 – Dick’s RAF flying log book – 17.7.1943 to 25.8.1947
i) Gunnery course results
[document]
52
[page break]
Appendix 1 - ii) gunnery training
[flight log book document]
53
[page break]
Appendix 1 – iii) 22 O.T.U.
[flight log book document]
54
[page break]
Appendix 1 – iv) 22 O.T.U.
[flight log book document]
55
[page break]
Appendix 1 – v) 22 O.T.U.
[flight log book document]
56
[page break]
Appendix 1 – vi) 22 O.T.U.
[flight log book document]
57
[page break]
Appendix 1 – vii) 1664 Conversion Unit
[flight log book document]
58
[page break]
Appendix 1 – viii) 1664 Conversion Unit
[flight log book document]
59
[page break]
Appendix 1 – ix) 425 Squadron – shows the last mission Dick flew to Augsburg
[flight log book document]
60
[page break]
Appendix 1 – x) Flights to and from Egypt to visit Bob
[flight log book document]
61
[page break]
Appendix 2
[drawing of Berlin War Cemetery]
Ginger Wheadon is buried in 6.B.19
62
[page break]
Appendix 3 -The March - source Wikipedia
"The March" refers to a series of forced marches during the final stages of the Second World War in Europe. From a total of 257,000 western Allied prisoners of war held in German military prison camps, over 80,000 POWs were forced to march westward across Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany in extreme winter conditions, over about four months between January and April 1945. This series of events has been called various names: "The Great March West", "The Long March", "The Long Walk", "The Long Trek", "The Black March", "The Bread March", and "Death March Across Germany", but most survivors just called it "The March".
As the Soviet Army was advancing, German authorities decided to evacuate POW camps, to delay liberation of the prisoners. January and February 1945 were among the coldest winter months of the 20th century in Europe, with blizzards and temperatures as low as -25 O C and even until the middle of March, temperatures were well below 0 O C Most of the POWs were ill-prepared for the evacuation, having suffered years of poor rations and wearing clothing ill-suited to the appalling winter conditions.
In most camps, the POWs were broken up in groups of 250 to 300 men and because of the inadequate roads and the flow of battle, not all the prisoners followed the same route. The groups would march 20 to 40 kilometers a day - resting in factories, churches, barns and even in the open. Soon long columns of POWs were wandering over the northern part of Germany with little or nothing in the way of food, clothing, shelter or medical care.
Prisoners from different camps had different experiences: sometimes the Germans provided farm wagons for those unable to walk. There seldom were horses available, so teams of POWs pulled the wagons through the snow. Sometimes the guards and prisoners became dependent on each other, other times the guards became increasingly hostile. Those with intact boots had the dilemma of whether to remove them at night - if they left them on, trench foot could result; if they removed them, they may not get their swollen feet back into their boots in the morning or, worse, the boots may freeze or be stolen.
With so little food they were reduced to scavenging to survive. Some were reduced to eating dogs and cats and grass-anything they could lay their hands on. Already underweight from years of prison rations, some were at half their pre-war body weight by the end.
Because of the unsanitary conditions and a near starvation diet, hundreds of POWs died of disease along the way and many more were ill. Dysentery was common; sufferers had the indignity of soiling themselves whilst having to continue to march, and being further weakened by the debilitating effects of illness. This disease was easily spread from one group to another when they followed the same route and rested in the same places. Many POWs suffered from frostbite which could lead to gangrene. Typhus, spread by body lice, was a risk for all POWs, but was now increased by using overnight shelter previously occupied by infected groups. Some men simply froze to death in their sleep.
In addition to these conditions were the dangers from air attack by Allied forces mistaking the POWs for retreating columns of German troops. On April 19, 1945, at a village called Gresse, 30 Allied POWs died and 30 were seriously injured (possibly fatally) in a "friendly-fire" situation when strafed by a flight of RAF Typhoons.
63
[page break]
As winter drew to a close, suffering from the cold abated and some of the German guards became less harsh in their treatment of POWs. But the thaw rendered useless the sledges made by many POWs to carry spare clothing, carefully preserved food supplies and other items. So, the route became littered with items that could not be carried. Some even discarded their greatcoats, hoping that the weather did not turn cold again. As the columns reached the western side of Germany they ran into the advancing western Allied armies. For some, this brought liberation. Others were not so lucky. They were marched towards the Baltic Sea, where Nazis were said to be using POWs as human shields and hostages. It was later estimated that a large number of POWs had marched over five hundred miles by the time they were liberated, and some had walked nearly a thousand miles.
64
[page break]
Appendix 4 – i) Stalag Luft 357 – long march route, and camp numbering correction information
Red Cross map of prisoner of war camps
[map]
65
[page break]
Appendix 4 – ii) Stalag Luft 357 and long march route
[map]
66
[page break]
Appendix 4 – iii) Blue cross in circle marks where Dick was shot down. Red Cross near Frankfurt where he was moved to
[map]
67
[page break]
Appendix 4 – iv) Red line shows routes taken by Dick. Torun (Thorn) camp shown
[map]
68
[page break]
Appendix 4 – v) Poznan – Stalag XXI
[map]
69
[page break]
Appendix 4 – vi) Stalag Luft VI – Lithuania
[map]
70
[page break]
26th April 2014
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
My War Story
Description
An account of the resource
A memoir written by Dick Curnock. It covers his wartime service and also his service after the war for the RAF. It covers his brother Sam and his accident as a pilot. Dick started his training at Lords in London, Bridlington then Bridgnorth and Dalcross. Next move was to Wellesbourne where he crewed up and practised bombing from a Wellington, then Dishforth for conversion on to Halifaxes. His squadron was 425 at Tholthorpe and he undertook night flying training. On his second operation he was shot down near Augsburg. He was taken prisoner and interrogated before being transferred to Stalag Luft VI. He describes his life there. As the Russians got nearer they were transferred by cattle truck to Stalag Luft 357 at Torun. Next they were subjected to the Long March in April 1945. During this the flight engineer, Ginger Wheadon was shot by an RAF Typhoon. After being liberated and returning to the UK he served briefly in Egypt then Italy as an RAF transport driver. During this time he went to Egypt to visit his brother, Bob who was ill in Cairo. Eventually he was demobbed from Italy via Austria and Paris.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dick Curnock
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014-04-26
Format
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71 printed sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BCurnockRMCurnockRMv1
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.
Austria
Austria--Villach
Canada
British Columbia--Abbotsford
Québec--Montréal
Egypt
Egypt--Cairo
France
France--Paris
Gibraltar
Germany
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Darmstadt
Germany--Schweinfurt
Great Britain
England--Bridlington
England--Horsham
England--Leicester
England--London
England--Melksham
Italy
Italy--Bari
Italy--Cortina d'Ampezzo
Italy--Naples
Italy--Padua
Italy--Ravenna
Italy--Rimini
Italy--Rome
Italy--Udine
Italy--Venice
Malta
North Africa
Poland--Toruń
Germany--Lüneburg
Poland
Lithuania
Poland--Żagań
Lithuania--Šilutė
Germany--Bad Fallingbostel
England--Christchurch (Dorset)
Québec
England--Dorset
England--Leicestershire
England--Yorkshire
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.
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Bradbury
22 OTU
420 Squadron
425 Squadron
431 Squadron
434 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
animal
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
arts and crafts
bale out
bomb aimer
C-47
Caterpillar Club
crash
crewing up
Dulag Luft
final resting place
flight engineer
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
Hurricane
Ju 88
lynching
mess
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
P-51
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Cosford
RAF Dishforth
RAF Elvington
RAF Gaydon
RAF Inverness
RAF Manston
RAF Tholthorpe
RAF Wellesbourne Mountford
Red Cross
sanitation
service vehicle
sport
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 6
strafing
the long march
training
Typhoon
Wellington
Whitley
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force