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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/133/2506/ABeechH160924.2.mp3
fbf6535de25eacc502310dbb5c624985
Dublin Core
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Title
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Beech, Harold
Harold Beech
H Beech
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. The collection consists of three oral history interviews, three photographs and one artwork related to Harold Beech (b.1933). He was a schoolboy in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire during the war and experienced an aircraft crash.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Harold Beech and catalogued by IBCC staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-17
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.
One item in this collection has not been published in order to comply with intellectual property law.
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound. Oral history
Still image. Photograph
Still image. Artwork
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Beech, H
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GB: Hello. This interview is being conducted on behalf of the International Bomber Command. The interviewer is Gill Barnes and the interviewee is Mr Harold Beech and we’re talking together at Mr Beech’s home near Kettering in Northants on the 24th of September. No one else is present at the moment. So, good afternoon Harold.
HB: Good afternoon.
GB: Thank you so much for agreeing to share your memories with us this afternoon and your experience of the heroes in Bomber Command. It would be really useful if you could tell us a little about the background. I know we have a lovely letter from you giving us all the history, but it would be great to hear a little bit about the background of how you came to live so close to all of those Bomber Command stations. Where you were born and how you grew up.
HB: Right. Well I was born in the village of Middle Rasen. In a farming community to a farming family and when war broke out I was only six. So, it didn’t make a great impression on me then. I didn’t know things. It was always things were black and things were blue so, I was willing to learn and always had my ears pricked up and as I say, they brought the news on the war on Sunday and on Monday when I went to school I sat on a grassy bank thinking where could they get a boxing ring big enough to have all these people in it to fight, because my recollection of fighting was cowboys and Indians and boxing matches.
GB: Yeah.
HB: As things got clearer the first thing I knew, the first cloud on the village was when the government declared that they were taking over everything and could make anybody go anywhere to do anything for the war effort. And that did cause concern about the farmers and the elders. So when they were worried I was worried. However, that sort of took it in its stride, but shortly after that, by the end of ‘39, my sister had been drafted into munitions and had to go and live away to be nearer work. My brother was in the army and he was on his way to India and the community was really adjusting to what was happening and their main concern especially amongst the farmers was immediately was we going to get bombed because we’d got these stations around and those stations were being built. And so harvest had been in and was getting in and it was completed and the corn was thrashed rather early, and what wasn’t wanted was surplus and was sold. The other was stored as well away from the farmyard as possible because of the fear of the stacks getting on fire. Well, as time went on it didn’t happen thankfully, and so w — the next step was the rationing. Now every, well the biggest part of the village, the villagers kept pigs and killed them for the house, and the government had declared that they were going to get a slaughter policy and everything had stopped. Nothing could be slaughtered until this policy come out. Well there was another fear then that they were going to commandeer all our pigs and eggs and what have you and we were going to live on the scratchings. Anyway, when, when the government had decided, it was back to normal — state as normal so from then onwards as regards the rationing and food shortages we didn’t know that there was a war on really because we lived off eggs, bacon, milk, cheese. You name it. We got it. And what we hadn’t got we swapped for something that somebody else hadn’t got. There was a barter trade through the village, and that’s a another milestone that stuck with me was the way the village pulled together, because as kids we used to roam the village and if we fell off our bike or tripped up and hurt ourselves we didn’t go running home, we ran to the nearest house and they would take us in, bandage us up and give us an orange squash and a piece of cake and pat us on the back and off we’d go again. And this is how we lived. One big, well I wouldn’t say happy family, we had our ups and downs but one big family. We looked after one another and it’s, it’s surprising when I do think back to think how well we pulled together. It’s — my brother in law, well he was to become my brother in law, he was a haulage contractor based at the Oxford Hotel in Lincoln, using it as his headquarters for carting materials to the airfields.
[someone enters the room]
Other: Hello there.
GB: Hi.
Other: I’m stealing the dog.
HB: And so he carted materials to many of the local, local airfields and we had an Irishman lived, lodged with us. He was in a gang that was you know laying the concrete and what have you and eventually my sister and he met up and they married in ‘43. So — the airfields were going up at a great rate of knots, and more and more aircraft were flying around and that was a bit unnerving because we thought we’d got the airfields we are going to get bombed. This was the dread all the way through and we got five airfields very close to us. Dunholme Lodge which was the quagmire it was nicknamed because it was so muddy. [laugh] That was the air force nicknamed it the quagmire.
GB: Yeah.
HB: Faldingworth which was right next door to my mum, my grandma. You went sort of out of her gate, across the road, through my the man’s fields, through my man’s gardens which wasn’t very wide and you were on the airfield. So we got a close contact with the airfield there and gran, I was at gran’s house when we saw the one bomb and a German had followed one of our aircraft in.
GB: God.
HB: And it must, must have been late on in the war because we’d got the Polish squadron there. Now, the airfield didn’t open till ’43 but the Polish squadron were after that.
GB: Yeah.
HB: So, and the cry used to go up, send for the Poles they’ll sort the B out [laughs]. He was flying down — the ground from gran’s house went away and he was flying low and he dropped a bomb, the one bomb he’d got and he cleared a spinney, it felled the little spinney but if he’d come about two hundred yards to the left he’d have hit the searchlight unit.
GB: Oh gosh.
HB: But I don’t think he was aiming for anything. He’d just got a bomb that he didn’t want and let go and then the next thing we knew there was — he was legging it for the coast with one of our lads behind him and we heard later they’d been shot down in the North Sea. That was my only bomb. Now, the one or two villages around got the odd bomb as well. Lincoln got two or three bombs but nobody got bombed like Coventry.
GB: Yeah.
HB: And we used to, we had a house with a window at that end of the house in the bedroom and a window at that end of the house bedroom, and we used to stand at that one and see Coventry light up and we used to see that one when Immingham docks used to light up so we got it all going on around us but we, so far, were free and as I say what concerned us more then was eating. You know, providing the food and we could and we did and well to the outside world and them poor devils in the east end we were living like lords.
GB: Lords, yeah.
HB: We were. But we saw, every day of the week we saw aircraft of some sort on the backs of lorries. Big, you know, the old Queen Mary’s.
GB: Yes.
HB: Taking, and they never stopped and wouldn’t let us climb on it [laughs] you know. We were most annoyed because they’d got these ruddy great fuselages and wings and we wanted a closer inspection. We could do it when the army stopped with their Bren gun carriers. They would let us play in the Bren gun carrier but -
GB: These were new planes, or older planes?
HB: These were the Wimpies and the Lancasters.
GB: Right.
HB: And the odd fighter pilot, we didn’t have many fighter planes going through but we did have a lot of the — but we never, now my father’s land sloped and if we went to the top of the slope we could stand there and we could watch going west, we could watch them going for Faldingworth.
GB: Yeah.
HB: A bit to the left going for Wickenby. If we stood up and turned around we could see them landing at Ludford and Binbrook on the hills, and the other way if they veered to the right, say one o’clock, they were going to Hemswell. So we got them going around and if we, as an old boy I’ve stood many a time at about half past three, 4 o’clock to see these flies coming up the sky and then they’d get to a certain point and then they’d all veer on a certain route. And then in the summer time when I used to get up early, if I got out I could see these planes coming to limp back and I remember — this was, this was late in the war I saw this aircraft coming back with a ruddy great hole between the pilots end and the tail gunner’s end and I thought, ‘Oh that’s going to crash,’ and I stood there, stood there. Waiting. No. No bump. Now, we had a man lodged with us who was in charge of fifteen other men in a gang repairing aircraft and he said to me, ‘Would you like to come with me?’ And mother said, ‘He can’t come with you. He’s not allowed.’ And I said, ‘Oh, I’m not going if it’s going to get me into trouble.’ ‘You’ll not get in to trouble if you do as you’re told,’ and he put me in the motorbike, in the sidecar, put coats on top of me. In I went and there were, they’d got a Lancaster in the hangar that was being dismantled for parts. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘Go in there but don’t show yourself and don’t start moving things cause if somebody sees the tail rudder moving they’ll want to know what’s going on. And if anybody comes,’ there was the dome underneath, ‘Get in there and pull these blankets over you.’ Well, do you know from about 8 o’clock in the morning till 5 o’clock at night I had the biggest thrill of my life. I bombed everywhere, I flew everywhere. I shot every aircraft down. The only thing was I couldn’t tell anybody.
GB: No.
HB: And whilst I was in this aircraft of course there were holes in the fuselage and I kept squinting out and watching them repair and they were repairing the body, the fuselage on this aircraft and there was a hole, well about this big and all of a sudden I see him with the old spray gun and then he put this paper on and sprayed again and he put some more and then he went inside and did something else. A man, obviously a pilot or crew went and stood and watched him and they must have said something to him but I did hear the man saying to the mechanic, ‘That’s right, Ben. Put plenty of paper on. The bullets don’t ricochet so bad.’ Well I went home to mum and said, ‘Ben makes aircraft like, repairs his aircraft like I make my models.’ ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. He said, ‘He’s right my duck. If there’s a hole of a certain size we paste over it.’
GB: Yeah. I thought they use canvas. I was surprised to hear they, they used paper.
HB: Well it was a peculiar type of paper. It was glossy.
GB: Yeah.
HB: Oily, but used to, well, whatever the glue they’d used it was glue.
GB: Yes. Yes.
HB: It stuck and that’s what they did.
GB: Gosh.
HB: I just couldn’t imagine it. And another thing that impressed me was what they did — there was seven men in a crew. What they did in that confined space.
GB: I was going to say —
HB: With all the clobber.
GB: Yes.
HB: And being an old boy I said, ‘Where do you go to the loo?’ [laughs] and they’d got a five gallon drum with the top sliced off, screwed to the floor and that was their loo and I said, ‘Well you wouldn’t have to turn upside down.’ [laughs] I mean —
GB: Good grief.
HB: That’s how my mind worked.
GB: Yeah. Well it would.
HB: Yeah. But —
GB: So it felt very confined inside.
HB: Oh yes, to me it was very confining. When I thought of them trying to run around with their chutes on their back —
GB: Yeah.
HB: And then was told well they don’t put the chutes on their back. They pick them up, put them on and then jump out.
GB: Right.
HB: I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ You know and —
GB: What was the rear gunner’s space like?
HB: Well I got in.
GB: Yeah.
HB: And it was claustrophobic. Your knees were up near your chin and you wriggled your bum to turn around.
GB: Yeah.
HB: And you’d only got a little aperture to get in and out of. You were exposed. You were out there. You were tail end Charlie.
GB: Yeah.
HB: And I thought I don’t want to be him. No. [laughs] And I didn’t want to be the pilot ‘cause I couldn’t see out the top. [laughs] I couldn’t sit down and look over the top. But having seen those aircraft flying and then seen that aircraft there and been inside for eight or nine hours I absorbed that much I didn’t sleep at night thinking oh what happens if I can’t get out? You know. Where’s my parachute? And, you know and then to think well there’s all those flaming holes that were coming in, there was bullets coming in.
GB: Yeah.
HB: No. I just couldn’t, I just couldn’t envisage it.
GB: Incredible.
HB: It was incredible but when I got home you see, both mum and Ben lectured me on the dire consequences if I ever spilled a little bit.
GB: Yes.
HB: And there, when I were, I mean when you’re in the school playground well I know that. I’m different, you know. Oh dear, I can’t tell you and then when, of course when I could tell anybody they weren’t interested were they?
GB: Incredible.
HB: But it was an experience that’s lived with me for –
GB: Yeah.
HB: From that day.
GB: Yeah.
HB: And it taught me even a lot more respect.
GB: For what they went through.
HB: Yes.
GB: It must have brought it home.
HB: It was and —
GB: And you saw other planes in the hangar being repaired.
HB: Being dragged in and out
GB: Right.
HB: In and out. Some of them had got little or nothing. Some, well they had to cut ruddy great patches and put patches on and weld and rivet them and what have you. All he did was repair. The other –
GB: Yeah.
HB: Air force mechanics serviced.
GB: Right.
HB: Got the engines ticking over. But oh dear, I used to think — and he used to have a deadline, 3 o’clock in the afternoon. If he said he could get three aircraft on the runway he had to have three aircraft on the runway. And then, well, I could see out of the hangar door but it was long distance, the tractors coming with the bombs. I didn’t see them loading it onto the aircraft but I saw them dragging these and I thought, ‘Oh blimey what if they go off.’
GB: And so this mechanic, this guy doing the repairs, he was your lodger.
HB: He was our lodger.
GB: Yeah. And where had he come from?
HB: He came from Lower Wortley, Leeds.
GB: Right.
HB: He worked for AV Roe.
GB: Right. Oh yes.
HB: And, well a more conscientious chap I’ve never come across. He never ever spoke of his work.
GB: Yeah.
HB: Never ever spoke of his work but obviously he’d said something to mother because she said, after he’d gone home again, he worried about the airmen going out in his aircraft. Would they come back?
GB: Yes. Did he get to know the airmen and the aircrew?
HB: Briefly.
GB: Yeah.
HB: Briefly. As they’d pass through.
GB: Yeah.
HB: They’d come to inspect their kite.
GB: Yeah.
HB: Well if their kite bought it that was the end of them.
GB: Yes.
HB: And, I was bitten by the air force at this very early age ‘cause it was the great I am and I wanted to join the air force from that day onwards but I didn’t want to fly.
GB: Right.
HB: I didn’t want to fly. There was too much going on.
GB: Did you ever get to do that?
HB: I joined the air force. I got the job I wanted and I did it for five years.
GB: Wow.
HB: And that service in the air force made me a man. I was a country bumpkin, very seldom had gone across the village boundary from childhood to seventeen and a half but when I got out and got in the job I was an RAF policeman.
GB: Oh right.
HB: And at eighteen I’d got a lot of authority.
GB: Yes.
HB: And I got the old elders saying, ‘Now, keep your mouth shut and your ears and eyes open,’ and that was the soundest advice I ever got because boy did I walk into a few brick walls.
GB: So that would be the mid ‘50s. Would it?
HB: I joined the air force in 1951.
GB: Right.
HB: At this railway station with them having the ordinance there they had to have the RAF police to come and supervise.
GB: I see. Yeah.
HB: And they said to me, ‘Well you’re big, tall and awkward. You’d make a good policeman. You ought to go in there,’ so I quizzed them and they talked to me about it so I wanted to go into the air force. I wanted to be a policeman and my brother, when he came out the air force, er out the army said, ‘Don’t go as a conscript, go as a five year man’ -
GB: Yeah.
HB: ‘And you’ll see the world.’
GB: Yes.
HB: ‘At the country’s expense like I did.’
GB: Yeah.
HB: ‘Only I saw it being knocked about. You’ll see it when it’s put back again.’ So I joined for five years and I saw Bridgenorth, Lyneham, Clyffe Pypard, Weston on the Green and Abingdon.
GB: Oh, very nice.
HB: So I didn’t go very far.
GB: No.
HB: Abroad even. So that was my worthwhile RAF experience.
GB: Yes.
HB: And because of that I am the person I am.
GB: I can understand that.
HB: And, now as I say we used to walk five miles to grandma’s –
GB: Yes.
HB: At weekends and what have you, and this particular weekend we’d walked on Saturday night, and we only, well we’d walked on Saturday afternoon and about 3 or 4 o’clock an airman come, ‘Hello ma.’ Sat down. She give him a cup of tea. Then another airman come and I thought, ‘What’s going on here?’ Anyway, that evening seven turned up. Chatted, had a cup of tea. But now, as I said being farmers and the farming community the food was there so we brought sandwiches. We brought ham sandwiches, back bacon sandwiches and what have you, all on the table and they were tucking in saying how delicious it was and what have you. How the hell can you do it? To start with they refused to eat it. And I thought as a kid, you cheeky devils, you know. You’re refusing gran’s sandwiches? No. Rationing was on and gran could not afford to give them food. They got theirs on camp. Well gran being gran she stuck her hands on her hips and she said, ‘If you don’t eat that you don’t come again.’ And after that it was a little oasis.
GB: Yeah.
HB: They, they come regular, but not night after night and this, this set me up again wanting to be in the air force because they used to put their coats on me and their hats on me and what have you. I thought I was the great I am and then again getting back to the other how the heck could they do it? They found gran had got a piano in the front room. Well the sing songs they had in there and again they’d be gone and they’d probably go early, say 7 o’clock and, ‘See you tomorrow then gran, see you tomorrow.’ No, ‘See you tomorrow ma.’ It was always ma. ‘Oh righto boys, righto. When you like. Anytime.’ And I thought, ‘Where are they going? Oh are they going on a raid?’ And I used to be on tenterhooks till Sunday and if they didn’t come back Sunday night that was it but they did. Except one, one night gran turned around and said, ‘Where’s Taff Lloyd?’ Pregnant pause. Arm around her shoulders. Outside. She come back, tears down her face. She’d been asked not to mention any face that was missing. Just leave it. So that’s what she did. And these men they used to come, well, they were half inching stuff out the mess [laughs] ‘cause they used to come with coffee and tea and sugar and, you know.
GB: Why not?
HB: Well, this is it.
GB: Yeah.
HB: She said, ‘Don’t get into trouble for our sake. We can do it.’ But they couldn’t understand how we could do it. Well, if they’d seen that it was a little hamlet and nearly everybody in the little hamlet when they got to know what gran was doing there would be a screw of tea, a screw in a newspaper or a bit of paper. Coffee, sugar, you know. Some would come with a cake. Some would come with two cakes. Some would come with— the butcher used to leave potted meat.
GB: Wow.
HB: The baker used to leave some scones or cakes. It was, it was all pitching in together.
GB: So this was a complete Lancaster crew.
HB: This must have been a —
GB: Yeah.
HB: Complete Lancaster crew because this went on for about, just about three months and it stopped as abruptly as it started and we couldn’t, well gran, couldn’t get an answer and we had the service in church hoped and prayed that they’d been posted.
GB: Yes.
HB: But those seven men were close to us today and gone tomorrow and we never had an inkling of what happened to them at all to this day. Oh that did — it took the heart out the little hamlet. It really did.
GB: And did you know the various roles that they played when they were flying? Did you know who was the pilot?
HB: No. I didn’t know their names.
GB: Yeah.
HB: But I knew there was an air gunner ‘cause I wanted to ask him. There was an N for navigator but that was all I knew. And gran, my parents, my aunt, I was not to question them.
GB: And were these English aircrew or —
HB: Oh yes they were English lads.
GB: Yeah.
HB: English lads.
GB: And they all got on as equals.
HB: Oh yes. There was no sir, this that and the other. Nothing, nothing there when they were in the house.
GB: Yeah.
HB: And they come in uniform so, no it was, they were all in together. But I would imagine later on in life I would imagine that there were no barriers because you were all out doing a dangerous job.
GB: Yeah.
HB: But at six and seven I didn’t know what was going on but they, and it all happened because a man, gran used to have a little shop.
GB: Yeah.
HB: Well, it was a shop, such a thing that sold the essentials. The Elastoplast’s, the box of matches, something like that. The baker would leave half a dozen loaves or cakes and what have you and the people would come and pick it up. And he come in for a box of matches just as gran had poured a cup of tea out. ‘Do you want a cup of tea mate?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Come and sit yourself down. Have a sandwich.’ Have this, that and the other, and he was one of the crew and so he said, ‘Do you mind if I bring a mate?’ She said, ‘Bring as many as you like but it’s only a little house. We can only get so many in,’ and he come with his six mates.
GB: Fantastic.
HB: We, I mean that village for years after mentioned they would have liked to have known what went on and we know they enjoyed their selves and how they appreciated this little oasis for relaxing. I mean some nights they’d come and they’d get, they’d get on a chair or they’d sit with their backs to the chair and go fast asleep in front of the fire. Gran used to say, ‘Look at them poor devils. Tired out.’ No. It was —
GB: Do you know which airfield they were flying from?
HB: Faldingworth.
GB: Right.
HB: We had, in the end, this must be getting towards the end of the war, probably ‘44 something like that we had, the station was utterly manned by Poles.
GB: Yes.
HB: There was Polish WAAFs and Polish crews. And they invited all the Scout groups and Guide groups as near to the camp as they could, to a tea. Well, they served salad. Now, salad to us was lettuce, tomatoes, radish, onions and some celery. Now, we got the lettuce, we got the tomato, we got the cucumber but we got diced carrot er diced beetroot and grated carrot and grated cheese. What’s all this? But being kids that had been taught to eat what was in front of us we ate it and it was good. And the meat, I don’t know what the meat was but that was good too. And then of course they came out afterwards with Polish cookies. Oh we thought we were at the end of the world with these cookies. There you go and that was, as I say they were the Polish crews that gave us tea. I mean nowadays when you see salads dished up you think, ‘Oh blimey.’ [laughs] Oh yes there was the coleslaw.
GB: Oh yes.
HB: And the, well I presume it was Waldorf Salad, because I went home and said to mum there was pineapple mixed in it and there was nuts, and there was so and so and so and so. She said, ‘I don’t know what sort of salad that is then.’ But that’s what, that’s what it was. It was new to us and by golly we enjoyed it. It really was.
GB: So the war came and then passed and your experiences led you to join the RAF.
HB: Well, yes I did, yes, but we, having seen the other side of the airman’s work I saw the other side of life. I was, it must have been a Saturday I was on one side the village and I saw this aircraft and it was coming down and it crashed on the other side of the village. So, I’m on my bike round there, right next to the school was a farm and in the field it had crashed and exploded. Well, I’m bowling up past the implement hole and my mate Bob’s sort of hiding in there. And I said, ‘Bob what’s up?’ Well, he never answered. I said, ‘Come on, what’s up with you?’ So, I went in there and he wouldn’t move and he wouldn’t talk. Well the ambulance men and the firemen were all about so I grabbed an ambulance man. I said, ‘Look, Bob’s not very well.’ ‘Oh God has he been hit?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ So he went in to see him and he said, he said, ‘Come on Bob,’ and he carried him out and he said, ‘No. He’s in shock.’ So, anyway he took him home and that was the end of that for the day. But when we got to school about a week later poor old Bob had been at the top end of this field, seen this aeroplane coming for him. It didn’t matter where he ran it was coming for him and in the end he just froze, and it was shock.
GB: Gosh.
HB: ‘Cause it crashed at the bottom end of the field and he was at the top end of the field.
GB: He was lucky.
HB: And the aircrew were just blown apart. Men with a handle at each corner of a blanket were going around whilst others picked remnants up and we, as an old boy, we old boys, there were three of us, two from across the road saying, ‘There’s some more here. There’s some more here. There’s some more here.’ And, well to put it crudely we saw boots with feet in, masks with faces. It was gruesome. And then we were told to buzz off, you know, ‘Go on shoo shoo shoo,’ so we went into the fields around it and there were more bits in there so we kept shouting, ‘There’s bits in here, bits in there,’ and in the end we were taking them around. So, I’d gone home. When darkness was falling I went home. Went to school the next day, went out to play, come back. Mother says, ‘Here I want a word with you. What have you been up to?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘Yes you have. I want you to tell me about it.’ ‘I said I haven’t been up to anything.’ ‘Yes you have. The policeman and the district nurse have been here.’ I said, ‘What on earth did they want?’ She said, ‘What were you doing yesterday afternoon when you left here?’ I said, ‘Oh. Helping the men to pick up bits of the airmen. Oh.’ Well, obviously they’d come to see if I was alright. And that showed me the other side of life. I mean, when I didn’t think anything about it when you see a boot with a foot in it or bits and bobs here and you think, ‘Oh, well, you know, I’ve got to put it in a blanket.’ That was it. It never had any effect on me whatsoever. Nor the other two lads.
GB: Gosh.
HB: Why? We don’t know. Nobody can explain it because looking back it was gruesome. It was gruesome.
GB: And that was a Lancaster that had come down.
HB: Well, nobody seemed to know what it was.
GB: Right.
HB: We knew there was six or seven men in it and there’s a plaque in the church porch, but general knowledge I suppose somebody knew, but general knowledge didn’t come to my ears as an old boy to say it was a Lancaster that crashed. But it caused a bit of a rumpus. It didn’t half shake the earth.
GB: I can imagine.
HB: But, so, I saw, I’ve seen the bombing, one bomb. I’ve seen the carnage. I’ve felt the loss of my sister and my brother because our family, I was reduced to one, an only child bringing up ‘cause my brother didn’t come back till ’46, and my sister had got married in ’43 and she lived away. So that was the end of our family by 1940.
GB: And after the RAF what did you do with life then that’s brought you to Northamptonshire?
HB: Well, I came out and got a job in Gainsborough with an engineering firm. And I have never had a more boring job in all my life. It was cutting cog wheels with one tooth rotating on and it went from this side of the cog to the other side and that was done. Now, the hardest job was sorting out the cogs on the side to rotate this one. Once you’d done that you just went in and pressed it and if you got a thousand cogs to make it took you three weeks. You just went in for three weeks and pressed a button to stop it and start it and play cards and [?] and play cards and in the end I said, ‘No. I’m not having this.’ I came out. My father played hell with me. ‘You’d got a job, you haven’t got one now. There’s no work on the farm for you.’ So, anyway I said, ‘No. I’ll find a job. I’ll find a job.’ So, I then went on the railway as a plate layer. Now that was Fred Karno’s army that was. [laughs] Weeding and putting the tracks straight. Now, the line bends this way and the line bends that way. Now, to get the line straight again you have a little jack that lifted it up, and they packed granite chippings under the sleepers, let it down and it levelled out. Now, if it was this way nine or ten men got a crowbar, stood with their legs apart, put the crowbar between their legs and went ooph and shifted the track back. [laughs] Oh it was, it was all hydraulic. [laughs] But as a lad porter at fifteen, the station master and secretary would come along in the morning till 1 o’clock and then they’d buzz off back to their parent station and I was left with the signalman to run the station. I had to issue the tickets, service the air force station ‘cause when they went on leave it was pandemonium.
GB: Yeah.
HB: And that till had to be right. I remember it was a halfpenny short and I had to put a halfpenny in it. And I had to scrub the floors, clean the toilets, keep everything, wipe the edge of the platform, keep the lights going and I used to walk a mile one way and a mile the other way to the distant signals putting new lamps on.
GB: Gosh. Well, you weren’t bored [laughs].
HB: I wasn’t. No, I wasn’t but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thoroughly enjoyed it. And then as I say, I went into the air force and then came out as a plate layer. And eventually they, now I can’t think why I packed that one up, but I decided to join the RSPCA as an inspector, and I did that for thirty years.
GB: Wow. And that brought you here did it?
HB: This —
GB: To Twywell.
HB: That’s where I met my wife. Now, sitting in the guardroom at RAF Clyffe Pypard, Swindon was there and I forget now what was up there but it was a long valley, a long deep valley, and in the morning the milk train used to start puffing off and go slowly across this valley, and sat there, stood there at the gates watching it. You know in these cartoons there’s a thing like this with a caption in it from the bottom there, I could visualise that and I saw a house close across the bottom of the plot of land. Behind it was into the fields, and on the left was a spinney, and on the right was a house. When I met my wife, came here, went up the steps, stood in her garden I thought, ye Gods. The house was on the left but the spinney was on the right and I thought how uncanny can you get? So when I got to know her a bit better I said your fate sealed it.
GB: Absolutely. And in your five years in the air force in the early ‘50s and you were stationed all around Wiltshire by the sounds of things, and flying stations as well, what was the RAF feeling like then? Did you meet people who’d been active aircrew in the war?
HB: Yes. We used to have, at RAF Benson, we used to have a flight sergeant who was the unofficial test pilot. Mad as a hatter. Always went past the guardroom, ‘any boy for a lift this morning, men?’ So I said, ‘Now, are we boys or are we men?’ So anyway we got a new recruit and he said, ‘What does he mean?’ ‘He means he’s going up in an aeroplane. Do you want to go with him?’ ‘Oh. Do you reckon he’ll take me?’ I said, ‘Go after him.’ Anyway, we said, ‘Be back at five, ‘cause you’re on at five.’ Anyway, 5 o’clock come and he never turned up so we filled in. 11 o’clock this pasty faced individual come staggering into the guardroom, could hardly stand up. ‘What the devil’s happened to you?’ ‘I went up with him,’ he said. So I said, ‘Yes.’ Well apparently he went up and he kept going and he said, on his intercom he said, ‘Can we go down again?’ ‘Yeah, sure,’ and then he rolled and he said, ‘The contents of my stomach left by every orifice in my body,’ and he said, ‘When I got out of that aircraft fuselage I slipped down the side of it like a globule of oil going down the side of the can,’ and he said, ‘I’ve been all this time cleaning up the aeroplane and myself.’ [laughs]. There again, you know, you’ve got to see the funny side of it. Not like the banker’s wife who didn’t see the funny side of the police sergeant. We often, we often wonder how that got out because the police sergeant and the inspector would not spit a word.
GB: No.
HB: They were tight lipped so she must have complained about the police sergeant and the inspector to a friend or somebody who spread it around because by golly it didn’t half spread and she was, she was serenaded on many a night by the locals.
GB: So places like Lyneham, were they very busy at that time?
HB: Yes, because we were, we were bringing in, we brought in people like Sir William Penney and other important — and the Glorious Glosters man who won a VC in, wherever it were. We had to escort them. They were coming in and there was cargo flights of all sorts that were important and had to be put in bondage and what have you, and it was — we were constantly doing raids because people were lifting the cigarettes.
GB: Yeah.
HB: On raids. That RAF Lyneham was the place I got put on a fizzer. I was on duty in the guardroom with a colleague and he said, he just said to me, ‘Hang on a minute. I’m going to the flicks.’ So I thought, ‘I hope to God nobody comes and asks where he is.’ So, he went to the pictures and he come back. So the next night he said, ‘It’s your turn.’ I said, ‘No. I’m not going.’ He said, ‘It’s your turn.’ He said, ‘You have to.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t.’ He says, ‘Yes. You have to. One of us has got to be on duty at the cinema through the showing.’ So I went, shaking like a leaf. Come back. Sure enough a bloke who had been under open arrest had absconded. So muggins was up in front of the adjutant on a fizzer, and he started off, now he was an officer in charge of the guardroom. And he started off by dressing me down about neglecting duty and what have you, and the flight sergeant was my escort and he said, ‘Excuse me sir. Can I say something?’ He says, ‘He’s only standing by your orders. You ordered that since there’s trouble in the cinema a policeman had to be on duty at each performance.’ ‘Case dismissed. Get out.’ But he didn’t half scare me I’ll tell you. On a fizzer. What am I going to tell my parents? Reduced to the ranks and all that caper. No, but as I say, the war had a definite effect on me. It had an adverse effect on me because from a very early age my father, as I said, had this sloping ground that was two fields divided by a high hedge. Now, night after night I used to have this nightmare. Germans were occupying the top field, English down the bottom field and there was all hell let loose but never anybody got beyond this hedge. And I always ended up by being chased through the village, through town streets by the Germans with rifles, and I used to wake up crying my eyes out having wet the bed. Frightened to death. Night after night, after night, and my mother she used to suffer from bouts of asthma, and when my brother came back from the day he arrived on the doorstep she never had another bout of asthma. It was purely nerves. But it took me some time to get over my nightmares. I went into quiet times after the war for a long while.
GB: Can I just ask what happened to your father’s farm in the end?
HB: It was, he was retired in 1965, and a lot of his land was rented so it was taken back. He’d got two paddocks of his own near the house but the rest of the land was taken back because it was rented so it just packed up.
GB: Fizzled out. Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
GB: Well that’s great. Thank you very much Mr Beech for sharing your wartime memories with us today.
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 Harold Beech. One
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABeechH160924
Description
An account of the resource
Harold Beech was born in Middle Rasen, Lincolnshire. He was six when war was declared and saw the construction of many airfields near his home. As a schoolboy he also watched aircraft being transported on the back of Queen Marys. A lodger with his family was a mechanic who worked on damaged aircraft, smuggled Harold Beech into the hangar so he could hide and play in a Lancaster as well as watch the airfield at work. His grandma became friendly with an aircrew and hosted them at her home. One day the aircrew did not return home and the family never knew what had happened to them. He describes seeing an aircraft crash and helping to collect body parts from the field. During the war he had recurring nightmares about invasion.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Gill Barnes
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-09-24
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
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
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00:46:52 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Polskie Siły Powietrzne
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1943
1944
bombing
childhood in wartime
crash
home front
Lancaster
memorial
RAF Dunholme Lodge
RAF Faldingworth
service vehicle
tractor
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/133/2507/ABeechH170317.1.mp3
d02ef7ab6635b07d0aac2e73f7b10c4f
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
Beech, Harold
Harold Beech
H Beech
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. The collection consists of three oral history interviews, three photographs and one artwork related to Harold Beech (b.1933). He was a schoolboy in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire during the war and experienced an aircraft crash.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Harold Beech and catalogued by IBCC staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
One item in this collection has not been published in order to comply with intellectual property law.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound. Oral history
Still image. Photograph
Still image. Artwork
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Beech, H
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: This is a third interview with Mr Harold Beech. Date of birth 20th of June 1933 who lives at *** Kettering, Northamptonshire. This is further to the previous two interviews Mr Beech has done. It’s Harry Bartlett carrying out the interview. It’s the 17th of March 2017 and over to you Mr Beech.
HB2: Well I’ve already made reference to grandma’s little shop.
HB: Yes.
HB2: Now she sold non-rationable goods such as bottles of lemonade and she used to sell the big bottles of which there was a deposit of threepence on. You got it back when you returned the bottle empty. Now grandma had got all her empties stashed up outside her back, her front door and, ready for collection and all of a sudden she realised they weren’t there. So the air crew that frequented was questioned. ‘Now lads. What do you know about my bottles?’ and they all began to laugh and one chap piped up and said gran er, ‘Ma, you won’t need your bottles anymore. You haven’t got them.’ So she said, ‘I know I haven’t got them. Where are they?’ He said, ‘Well we dropped them over Germany,’ he said, ‘they don’t half whistle.’ And he said, ‘With a bit of luck there will be a lot of Germans looking for unexploded bombs.’ She said, ‘Oh really. Oh right. Thank you for telling me.’ And by that they’d had a whip around and reimbursed her for what she’d lost.
HB: For the deposits yeah.
HB2: So she wasn’t out of pocket but we laughed about that and thought how the devil does that crew, going on a dangerous mission like they are, might not come back, think about a prank like that?
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: But that’s the way it was and they did it.
HB: Yeah. So this was the crew that used to visit ma and —
HB2: Yes. Yes.
HB: Have a, have a cup of tea and a cake.
HB2: It was their little oasis. Yes.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. Oh that’s interesting.
HB2: But -
HB: ‘Cause I know they used to write on the bombs but —
HB2: Yes.
HB: Dropping lemonade bottles, that’s something different.
HB2: It is isn’t it?
HB: Yeah, it’s, that’s different. You know when we spoke before I can’t remember if I did ask you this because you were right next to Wickenby.
HB2: Wickenby. Faldingworth. Faldingworth.
HB: Faldingworth.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: And Wickenby. Did, was the airfield in your time ever bombed or attacked?
HB2: The only time Faldingworth was attacked was when a German aircraft followed one of our lads home.
HB: Right. Right.
HB2: And that was when he dropped the bomb on the spinney at the bottom of the road.
HB: Yes. Sorry yes I do recall that. But that was the only time you can recollect, yeah.
HB2: That was the only time I knew of any action against them.
HB: Yeah. But because obviously what crossed my mind was if that airfield is working the way it was working at Wickenby you’d got this civilian workforce repairing the aircraft.
HB2: Yes.
HB: Can you recall what aircraft they were repairing? Were they Lancasters?
HB2: Lancasters.
HB: They were —
HB2: Lancasters.
HB: Lancasters.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: And a complete civilian crew.
HB2: Yes.
HB: ‘Cause we’ve got the photograph of —
HB2: Yes.
HB: Then.
HB2: They were complete civilians.
HB: Right.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: So who would they report to?
HB2: They used to have, as far as I can remember, they used to have what we called the inspectors coming around.
HB: Right.
HB2: From the firm.
HB: Yeah. Which was a, the name of the firm they worked for.
HB2: AV Roe.
HB: AV Roe.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Right.
HB2: And they had people coming to check up on them from civilian organisations but were attached no doubt to the ministry.
HB2: Right.
HB: Some ministry or other.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: But they were supervised.
HB2: So the aircraft they were working on. Were they being returned to active service, operational service or were they just sort of stripping them down for parts and —
HB: No. No.
HB2: Things like that.
HB: If Ben said he could three aircraft on the runway by half past three he had to have three aircraft there at half past three.
HB2: Right. Right. Right. That’s —
HB: So —
HB2: Clarified that.
HB: Yeah. He, him and his crew were repairing Lancaster bombers.
HB2: Right. And where would they be coming from. Would they be coming from just Wickenby or would they be coming from all around.
HB: No. They was at Wickenby.
HB2: They were the ones that were based at Wickenby.
HB: Based at Wickenby.
HB2: Right. Right. That’s interesting. Well thanks ever so much for that Harold. That’s clarified a couple of things. I’m still intrigued with the lemonade bottles. Blimey. To think of that in the middle of a war.
HB: Well this is it. And what were they? Nineteen year olds. Twenty year olds.
HB2: Yeah. Thereabouts.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Thereabouts. They wouldn’t be much. Well the time now is quarter to one so I’m going to terminate the interview and we’ll record that for our purposes.
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 Harold Beech. Three
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABeechH170317
Description
An account of the resource
Harold Beech was born in 1933 in Middle Rasen and grew up on a farm. During his youth he lived near several airfields. His grandmother befriended an aircrew and in this interview Harold recounts another encounter with the crew involving lemonade bottles. He also explains more about the civilians who serviced the Lancasters at RAF Wickenby.
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
2017-03-17
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
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
00:05:32 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
aircrew
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Wickenby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/133/2508/ABeechH170302.2.mp3
ff294bf160397061e4a277da67f292c3
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
Beech, Harold
Harold Beech
H Beech
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. The collection consists of three oral history interviews, three photographs and one artwork related to Harold Beech (b.1933). He was a schoolboy in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire during the war and experienced an aircraft crash.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Harold Beech and catalogued by IBCC staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
One item in this collection has not been published in order to comply with intellectual property law.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound. Oral history
Still image. Photograph
Still image. Artwork
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Beech, H
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HB: This is an interview for International Bomber Command Digital Archive with Mr Harold Beech. The interview is taking place at ****
HB: Correction H. The, Mr Beech, his birth, his date of birth is the 20th June 1933. Right, Mr Beech.
HB2: Right.
HB: Over to you.
HB2: Well as already stated my name’s Harold Beech and I lived in a village in Lincolnshire called Middle Rasen. It sat on the River Rase and a mile and a half to the east was Market Rasen and two miles to the west was West Rasen. Hence the River Rase gave them three places their name. We also sat astride the A46. It split, the village was split by, from east to west by the road, by the River Rase and by the [Bremmer Brook.] I lived on a farm. My father was a small farmer. He was one of the thirty two farms in the village. It was a mixed farm. We had arable which we grew vegetables and stuff for the house as well as the field er for the animals and we had cows that provided us with milk, cream. Mother made butter. We had poultry that provided us with birds for the table and eggs and we killed a pig for the house. So, [pause] I’ve gone blank.
HB: Don’t worry about that.
HB2: I’ve gone blank.
HB: Don’t worry about that. Sorry, just, what was the name of the village you actually lived in?
HB2: Middle Rasen.
HB: Middle Rasen.
HB2: Middle Rasen.
HB: Right. So we’re at Middle Rasen.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: And we’ve just killed the pig for the -
HB2: We’ve just killed a pig [laughs] right. Yeah. We lived in a rented farmhouse plus outbuildings, large garden, two paddocks and a farm building complex. This was in the High Street of Middle Rasen and that was my home for some time.
HB: And can you remember what the farm was actually called?
HB2: The Vines.
HB: The Vines.
HB2: The Vines.
HB: Right.
HB2: My father’s farm was under fifty acres but the complex consisted of a barn, a granary, biers for the cattle, biers for horses and smaller barns for keeping pigs and calves in and an implement hole.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And we lived off the land and we lived well. In 1938 I started school and I’d been at school for a year and was settling in nicely when 1939 war broke out and upset everything.
HB: Was that, was the school in Middle Rasen?
HB2: Yes. Middle Rasen Primary.
HB: Right.
HB2: And for some, I can remember for some time before war was declared when my gran came to the house or when my father met other people in the village it was occasionally, ‘Things are not looking too good. Things are looking black,’ and I kept asking what these things were and didn’t get an answer.
HB: Right.
HB2: So when war was declared I remember, well a gang of us asked the teacher what these things were and she just said, ‘Unfortunately Germany, people in Germany are now fighting people in England.’ Well we went home for my dinner and as I went back to school I sat on a grassy bank and I thought now where the devil are they going to get a boxing ring big enough for all these people to box, to fight in, because my, my idea of fighting was cowboys and Indians, keystone cops and robbers. And that was it.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Or boxing on the television, on the radio. So that was my idea if I, I just couldn’t understand how this fighting was going on. So anyway I do remember at a time a man called Chamberlain came back and there was pictures in the paper of him waving a piece of paper. What he, what he’d done or what he’d said went right over my head. I’d no idea. Not until many years later. When, when we got settled in the school with the teacher she did, did say again and that’s all she would say about the two countries fighting each other, people in the two countries were fighting each other but we were subdued because we didn’t understand. Now, I was a six year old and I was confused ‘cause when war was declared the government shortly afterwards put out a statement to say they’d taken some powers and I remember my dad and all the adults getting in a bit of a confused state because the powers they’d taken were like dictator powers. They could, they were going to control anything and everything, anybody and everybody and they could send a person anywhere at any time to do any job if it boosted the war effort. Well a lot of people didn’t want, didn’t think much to being shoved about the countryside and living away. Then they said that there would be rationing and that blackout would be imposed and that if you disobeyed the government orders you could get fourteen years hard labour or be locked up without a trial. Well that frit me to death ‘cause I used to look at the bobby and go around the other side of him.
HB: Right. You know at, sorry to interrupt Harold. You know at the time you started school. When you went into school -
HB2: Yeah.
HB: And the war’s been declared. The teacher’s explained it. Did you, did you have any training? Any air raid precautions training? Or was there, were there things that the teacher had to teach you about what to do?
HB2: Not that I can remember. The only thing -
HB: No.
HB2: That happened at school was the strips of brown paper stuck on the windows to stop flying glass.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: We were issued with gas masks and we were issued with ear plugs.
HB: Right.
HB2: And we, of course you had to take oh and you had to wear a luggage label with your name and address on because the ID cards hadn’t come out.
HB: Right.
HB2: So I remember going to school and watching, seeing this paper go on but there was a siren was put on the police station tower a mile and a half away and whilst we were at school we had one or two warnings but that was all and I remember one day we were all, it was a wet day and of course we all crammed in to the cloakroom and so teacher kept us in the cloakroom while the all clear sounded. Well of course there was panic then because half of us hadn’t have our gas masks with us. So anyway when we went home and told mum what had happened the parents said, ‘For goodness sake never crowd them in one place again. Let them go into the classrooms where they would have a bit better chance of survival.’ There was a big ditch between us and the farm and the next door and they said, ‘Put them in the ditch.’ Well I can imagine a gang of kids in a wet day in a ditch but that was, they weren’t very well suited but after that I’m afraid our gas masks hung on an internal door for the rest of the war and the earplugs went in a drawer and stayed there and the luggage label well it disappeared along with the identity cards and it wasn’t because of bravado but my dad said when I’m ploughing and I put the gas mask on the hedge I’m at the other end of the field and [laughs] I’m in the soup.
HB: Right.
HB2: So -
HB: Right.
HB2: That’s, that’s how they went on at the beginning of the war. It, we had preparations for the war. Now we had a big house called Willoughby house. It had got a paddock at the front and a paddock in the back and that was commandeered by a troop of cavalry and the men were in the house and outbuildings and the horses were in portable stables. Well that was an attraction for us kids. That was a magnet. We wanted to go and look at the horses in the stables but the flaming army was better at it than we were and they kept us out. We didn’t like that at all but when they went for an exercise, all these chestnut horses, they were a lovely sight. They really were but looking back we thought ruddy hell, charge of the cavalry again and on the, on the gateway they built a pillbox and it was two circles of galvanised metal. One circle bigger than the other fitted inside and the gap between the two bits was filled with concrete and one, one shell from a tank would have sent it into kingdom come. We also lost all our signposts. And as well as the tape on the windows and that was just about it. Then the blacksmith’s shop was taken over and was being turned in to an ARP cleansing station. Well us kids were nosy parkers, kept saying, ‘What are you going to do in here? What’s going to do in here.’ Anyway, nearly completion this man must have been fed up with us ‘cause he said, ‘Come in and I’ll show you.’ So he took us into this room. He said, ‘This is where if you’d been gassed this is where you come. We take all your clothes off you and then we put you through there and we hose you down with some cold water and a big scrubbing brush,’ and he’d got this ruddy great scrubbing brush and carbolic soap. He said, ‘You’re scrubbed clean and then,’ he said, ‘We get some very smelly ointment and smear it all over you, wrap you in a blanket and send you home.’
HB: Oh dear.
HB2: Well after that we weren’t interested in the ruddy cleansing station.
HB: Absolutely. Absolutely.
HB2: But that, that was, that was oh and we had an ARP warden appointed and the school teacher was in the Observer Corps. Now, he was a lovely head man, headmaster but oh dear he used to go to, go home, have his tea and at 7 o’clock he’d go and observe, he’d come back in the morning, have breakfast and a lie down and then start teaching school again. Well the first thing he did was open his desk and take out Rupert the cane and lay it on the bench. Silence reigned I’ll tell you. But he was, he was soon known as Ratty Plowright.
HB: Right.
HB2: ‘Cause he got very short tempered and we, we as kids we noticed that and we didn’t like it, you know.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. I think he had reason didn’t he?
HB2: Oh he did. He did and you know the, the, this is something which you had to experience because the change in that man over a few weeks was terrific. And then of course what upset my father and the farmers was there was going to be a War Agriculture Committee in every county that was going to advise but the farmers said no, tell us to what to do and he said they resented being told by broken down farmers who couldn’t make a go of farming and shiny assed clerks [laughs]. Oh there was, there was some opposition but again if they didn’t do as they was told they could have their land taken over by the Agricultural Committee and that would be it and one or two did unfortunately. But another thing that put panic amongst them was there was a sudden stop on all slaughtering of animals. Well that meant that everything we produced like our pig for the house and the eggs and whatever was going to be confiscated and we’d get the scrapings. So harvest was finishing, the corn harvest, the root harvest was quickly dug in and everything was put in clamps or pies or whatever you call it and stored and the corn that was, the corn was thrashed out of the stacks quick. That what was needed for feeding animals was stored well away from the stacks and the rest of it that was surplus they sold and the old pigs got killed and I mean when you got say ten or a dozen people in the village that’s killing a pig around about the same time there’s a bit of a glut but they was determined that what was produced was going to be eaten in the village so friends, relations and close relatives and friends got not only the customary fry or good plate of good cheer they also got a pork pie or some sausages or something else. The offal was quickly disposed of and then when it was time to take the bacon out of curing that was started on straightaway and they weren’t, they were intending on not letting much be confiscated but when the time come there was the biggest sigh of relief because not only was it back to normal it was better than normal because they were encouraging everybody to keep chickens, produce their own food, dig every bit of ground up there was and they even advised us where these, oh they advised us to set up pig clubs and poultry clubs, rabbit clubs and get allotment associations and they would advise us how to get the seed, the food, the coupons for the food and how to house and what have you. How to look after them. They were a real help. That’s, that’s about the only good thing they could say about the war agg. But there was, there was a glut in our village. We didn’t have a selling system. We had a barter system ‘cause somebody would have something. I mean we used to separate the milk to get the cream for the butter and we had a lot of milk spare. Well people would come up with a jar of pickled onions or something like that and say. ‘I’ll swap you. Can you let me have some - ’. ‘Yes. Go on.’ You know. And at times when the cows calved there was three days when you couldn’t use the milk. It was full of cholesterol and it used to make lovely custards so of course again a lot of swapping going on.
HB: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: And my father was out one night. It must have been winter time and the policeman met him. He said, ‘Evening George,’ he says, ‘Do you know I’ve come to the conclusion that we must have the healthiest babies in the country.’ So my dad said, ‘How do you make out?’ He said, ‘Well they don’t half like the night air.’ So my dad says, ‘Why don’t you have a look in the pram to see how rosy their cheeks are?’ He said, ‘No George, I’ve got to live like the rest of them.’ And we all knew what everybody was doing, even the policeman so why the hell they had to hide it in prams ‘cause the policeman got his goodies in a bag. A brace of pheasants here, a rabbit or whatever it was hung on his gate. He was included. I mean it was all open but so secretive. But that’s how we lived. We swapped.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And funnily enough a common vegetable like the onion soon became pretty scarce and it was, it was said in the newspaper one day that The Times had an onion a pound and a half in weight and raffled it and it raised over four quid.
HB: Oh blimey. That’s not bad.
HB2: It wasn’t was it? But yes people were very careful. I mean there was plenty of onions in the village but people were very careful. They didn’t let them go too quickly and I mean eggs, when rationing come in were, well they were like gold. You got one egg a week. I mean, we, we used to sit there and my mum used to cook me a piece of bacon or a piece of ham and an egg. Sometimes I used to get a goose egg fried.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: And I used to say, ‘How many folks are eating ham and eggs like I am mum?’ She said, ‘Not many. Not many.’
HB: Amazing.
HB2: And another thing that upset the females, the women of the village was the warden could not only go into the house and switch your lights off if there was an infringement of the blackout regulation he could check your larder to see if you’d got more than a week’s supply of food in it. Well the women went up in arms and said, ‘Well that means he’s going to summons the lot of us ‘cause we’ve all got more and when you think of it to kill a pig we had to send our ration books up to have our bacon coupons cancelled. Now, my mum, dad and me could get, on them coupons, thirty nine pounds in weight of bacon per year.
HB: Right.
HB2: And they were all cancelled. We were then supplied with a licence to kill the pig and we’d get a twenty stone, thirty stone pig killed that would produce summat like three or four hundred pounds worth of meat. We swapped it for thirty nine so we didn’t think we’d done too badly.
HB: No. No. Not a bad outcome.
HB2: No. It wasn’t. It wasn’t. But then the old pig, it was, it was a Godsend it really was and I remember many years later I attended a illustrated lecture on the home front and in fact the lecturer didn’t give us the lecture. He listened to us on the floor telling him and we went for a meal and two ladies and a gentleman were sitting at this table, ‘Come on. Sit down here my duck. Sit down here.’ And I said, ‘Oh you sound as though you come from London.’ She said, ‘Yes. We come from the East End. What was your war like?’ So I said, ‘Oh East End,’ I said, ‘I daren’t tell you.’ So she said, ‘Come on. We want to know.’ So I told her and she nudged her sister and she said, ‘This bleeding bloke’s living in bleeding paradise isn’t he?’ I said, ‘Compared to you I was,’ I said, ‘Because we never saw a bomb. Not to explode anyway.’ I said, ‘It was tranquil. We went to bed and we slept.’ So she said, ‘Well we didn’t.’ I said, ‘No. I’ve read about you and,’ I said, ‘I’ve learned about it since the war, come across people like yourself,’ and I said, ‘What the hell of a life did you lead?’ She said, ‘Well that’s true. That’s true.’ And by golly.
[pause]
HB2: Right. Now, the blackout. It was imposed very quickly and it caused the blackout material that was for sale to dry up quick so people then had to make do and mend and they made wooden frames, covered it with old cardboard cartons and then pasted wallpaper over the top of it to start with until they could get curtains and what have you properly and that the way it was imposed quickly we thought, right, bombs are soon going to rain down on us. The, the government said you should paint all the outside rim, perimeters of your panes, your glass with black paint and so we said we ain’t going to do that ‘cause we only had one window in the kitchen and if we had cut off out any more daylight off we wouldn’t have seen. So we that was that wasn’t done. That was ignored but they painted the edges the curbs black and white sections, the bottom of poles with black and white rings but as we said in the village we never had street lighting so we could find our way around quite easily. What did cause a lot of trouble there was a lot of reports of accidents going up because of the blackout. You could have, you had to block out your headlights with a circle of concrete, er concrete [laughs], with a circle of cardboard with a two inch slit in one lamp only. Well you couldn’t see where you were going and they was hitting fences and hitting everything. Even people.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: So they had to relax the thing in the end. The restrictions on lamps on vehicles. Now I’ve done, I’ve done the farmer’s harvesting.
HB: Did you, did you find at that time as, you know, with the involvement of the restrictions or, you know the change in how you were providing your food did you find that people, it drew people together or did you find the odd individuals that really didn’t want to play the game if you, if you know what I mean?
HB2: Our village turned into just one family.
HB: Right.
HB2: As I said if we were out playing as kids and we injured ourselves, skinned our knees or anything we didn’t run home we ran to the nearest house and they would bandage us up, give us a glass of lemonade and a cake and we were off you’d again or if we were misbehaving we got a clip around the ear.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Pretty sharp so yeah it was they blended well. They really blended well.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: And if anybody was sick there was always, well we had a district nurse, she was always coming around but everybody did anything and the old folk they were looked after. If an old, we had several old people who’d got large gardens well they said to somebody else come and, if you want an extra garden come and do it and they would dig their, dig that garden, grow vegetables on it and keep the old folks supplied as well.
HB: Right.
HB2: So -
HB: Yeah.
HB2: We were doing very well and the only thing that hit us really was the imported stuff. The dried fruit. We knew jolly well that would be tight but they also rationed coal and you could have a pound a month. A ton a month.
HB: That’s not much.
HB2: It wasn’t. It wasn’t. So thankfully again living in the village with trees and there wasn’t much dead wood laying about I’ll tell you. Even at sales. Farm sales or house sales all the old trash wood would be put on a heap and they’d sell that as, you know for a few bob. Yeah
HB: Amazing.
HB2: Yeah. You’d get old, at a farm sale you’d get implements, old farm implements, chicken hut, hen huts, anything and they’d sell it to you for a few bob.
HB: Amazing.
HB2: Nothing was wasted.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Nothing was wasted. Now the effects on my family. Well, my sister she was directed into munitions. My brother, like a lot of other chaps in the village was called up so from about 1940 the family was split up and I was, I was brought up as an only child. My sister never did come back home. She got married and went to live away and then my brother when he came back was only home a brief time before he too got married so as a family in the early years we never lived as a family. Now, my brother was sent abroad in ‘41 and from that day that he boarded the ship my mother started suffering from asthma, asthma attacks, and they lasted right up to the day he come back and stepped over the threshold. And some of these attacks were, well they used to scare me. And me. I had a recurring nightmare. My father had two fields on a slope. One was arable, the other was grass divided by a big high hedge. The top was full of Germans. The bottom was full of English and we, when it occurred, this dream, this nightmare there was one hell of a battle and nobody got beyond the hedge but this battle raged like hell in my mind and I always ended up in the same, doing the same thing. Running through some streets of a town, I don’t know where, chased by ruddy Germans soldiers with fixed bayonets and rifles. They never caught me but I used to wake up crying my eyes out, shaking like a leaf, probably having wet the bed and wouldn’t go to sleep again. I had, it was regular. I wouldn’t say it was nightly but it was regular and I didn’t’ get much sleep but that thing lived with me for many well if I can still if I set my mind to it I can still recall every action now but it doesn’t have the same affect.
HB: Amazing.
HB2: Now, my father, he was advised or told by the War Agricultural Committee that he’d got to plough a grass field up and he’d be paid two pound an acre to do it but he must grow sugar beet on it. Well, he, he jumped up and down and he didn’t swear but he cursed a bit under his breath because he always maintained that this damned sugar beet crop wanted attention from early spring to late autumn winter and he didn’t think much to it. Anyway, he had to grow it which he did and come November time he used to have to take it up and top it and then wait for a permit to come to tell him which factory to take it to, when he could take it so then he could organise a lorry to come and pick it up and take it off there. I used to love that because I used to go with the lorry driver when we used to get to the factory and before we got anywhere a man come with a scuttle and took a sample off. Now the result of that sample depended on how much my dad got paid because there was a deduction for dirty beet, too much soil on it, too much top or low sugar content.
HB: Right.
HB2: But he was allowed to buy a by-product which was beet pulp for the cattle. Now that come in very coarsely woven sacks and these sacks were snapped up to make snip rugs.
HB: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah. What do you call the kind of rug?
HB2: Snip.
HB: Snip rugs.
HB2: Snip. Peg rugs.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Snip rugs.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And I spent many a time in front in front of the fire snipping these, this ruddy, well we had one the size of this mat here and at the end of the winter mother put it on the line to beat and she said, ‘I’m not bothering with that, there’s more holes than a colander.’ Sparks had come from the fire and -
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Burnt a hole in it.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: But they very useful were them sacks but as soon as dad could he got, didn’t grow sugar beet. And another thing that upset him was he was advised to feed the tops to his cattle. It was very good forage. Well he did and it tainted the milk.
HB: [Ringtone] Oh I do apologise.
HB2: That’s alright.
HB: I should have turned that off. Now. Turn that off. Just make sure this is completely off. I made the same mistake yesterday. I do apologise. So. So, so the forage, the forage was good for the cattle.
HB2: Providing you didn’t sell milk.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: But it tainted obviously.
HB2: It tainted the milk.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: You could still use it but you had to realise that it wasn’t sour, bitter or anything else it was just the flavour of the tops and it wasn’t dangerous so again we had people coming with cans and, you know, carting it off.
HB: Right
HB2: So but oh no he wasn’t he wasn’t too pleased about that. Oh, we couldn’t make butter either.
HB: No. Right.
HB2: He did swear at that. Well, and then we had, another crop that farmers had to grow was flax and we had billeted on us a man who had a tractor and a special machine for pulling the flax. It had to be pulled up by the roots and then dried and it went for, I think the roots went for webbing, something like that so we’d got this chap billeted on us. He didn’t last long because he was making his way around the farms in his area doing his job so he went and that man was replaced by an Irishman who was in a gang working on the airfields laying the runways.
HB: Right.
HB2: And he stayed for quite some time ‘till the, well I think he came for a couple of years.
HB: So when you say he was billeted with you he was given a, he rented a room in the house.
HB2: No.
HB: Farmhouse.
HB2: Well he got a bed in a bedroom.
HB: Right.
HB2: And he got his food at the table.
HB: Right.
HB2: And he did, mum did his washing.
HB: Right.
HB2: So he didn’t have a room.
HB: Right.
HB2: He was one of a family.
HB: Right.
HB2: And then the third man was an engineer, an aircraft engineer in charge of fifteen other men who repaired aircraft and he went, he was working at RAF Wickenby and he was with us for some time. Well ‘till the end of the war from about ’43 so, but he, one day said to me, ‘Would you like to come to work with me?’ And I said, ‘I can’t. I’m not allowed.’ And mum said, ‘No. He’s not going if he’s going to get you and everybody into trouble.’ He said, ‘He’ll be alright. He’ll be alright.’ So after a lot of persuasion mum allowed me to go and he had a motorbike and sidecar and just before we got to the camp I had to snuggle down and he put a coat over me and in we went into the hangar and in the hangar was a Lancaster that was being stripped for bits, spares. Now, he said, ‘You go in there. Don’t show yourself. Don’t start peering out of windows and moving levers that waggle the tail or anything like that,’ but he said, ‘If we shout “hide” you go in the canopy under there and pull these old blankets over,’ well they were all stinky with oil and what have you. Anyway, yes I would. Do you know from about 8 o’clock in the morning till 5 o’clock at night I had one hell of a time in there. I flew everywhere, bombed everywhere, shot everything down but there was one thing, I said, it’s a bit crowded in here for when they run around with their, with their parachutes on and I tried getting in the rear turret but I didn’t like that. I thought my God sitting in a glass bubble here all over, nothing under you, nothing around you and then I struggled to get out. That was me. I didn’t want to go in there. So anyway I said to him, ‘Look. Where do I go if I want the loo? What do they use for the loo when they’re on the flight?’ Well I suppose they’d made arrangements for me ‘cause they’d screwed a five gallon drum with a lid off to the floor and I said, ‘Is that it then?’ So he said, ‘Yeah. Use that. That’s the loo.’ So I said, ‘Well I hope to God they don’t fly upside down very often then,’ [laughs] but I could look out, there was holes in the fuselage and I could look out and see what the men were doing and in the distance I could see trollies with bombs on them being moved about. I never saw them being loaded on to aircraft but they was there and then I were watching them repair these holes. Now a hole about the size of a tea plate this chap had some, looked like shiny paper and he did this with a spray and then he stuck it over the thing and then he got something else and sprayed it, I suppose that was the paint and then he went inside and did something else inside and I heard an airman come in and he said to this chap, ‘That’s it Ben,’ he said, ‘Put plenty of paper on it,’ he said, ‘The bullets don’t ricochet so bad.’ And I thought egads you’re running about in this confined space and there’s bullets coming through. Well of course they would be wouldn’t there? Could be.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And I thought oh my God I don’t want to fly. I’m not going to fly. I want to join the air force but I don’t want to fly. Anyway, I as I said I had this whale of a time in there and when I got home I was really dinged into me you don’t speak to anybody, dire consequences. Well by the time I could tell anybody nobody was interested.
HB: Yeah. So the chap who took you in there was, he was a civilian.
HB2: He was a civilian charge hand in charge of this gang of men that repaired the aircraft and if he said, ‘I could have three on the runway for next afternoon,’ he had to have three there. I didn’t know it until after he’d gone home but mum said he used to worry. He used to worry about sending the aircraft out and hoping to God everything worked and if they didn’t come back was it his fault. What had they done right? I said oh I didn’t know, you know. He didn’t show it because he never talked about his work.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: But you know everybody was affected differently.
HB: Yeah. That was, that was at RAF Wickenby.
HB2: Wickenby.
HB: Right. Right.
HB2: Wickenby. Nobody could, I might have said had to make radio silence but nobody could tell anybody but nobody could take the joy of that day from me.
HB: Oh no. No.
HB2: Oh and another thing that was started was the V for victory sign.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Churchill was encouraging people in occupied countries to go out and chalk up victory signs. Well we kids took that literally here and I remember somebody said that they expected it to take off in this country. Well we did our best. We sprayed everywhere. In fact the poor old police constable used to come to school and say, ‘Enough’s enough boys, you know. Don’t do it anymore.’
HB: Oh right.
HB2: So we had to limit it to the pavement [laughs] but we, we did our best.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Now, again, in the fields, in my dad’s fields if I went to the highest point I could see aircraft leaving. They used to come up from one direction like flies, get to a certain point and then all turn and fly off and in the morning if I got up early enough I could watch aircraft come back limping and I remember getting up there one summer morning and this aircraft come in and there was a whacking great hole between the front end and the back end in the fuselage and I thought oh God that’s going to crash and I listened and listened and listened. No. There was no bump so I assumed it got down alright but to see them come back with bits hanging off and short tail, short wings.
HB: Which airfield was that that you could see?
HB2: If I went and looked in the east I could see Ludford and Binbrook. If I went we’ll say at 11 o’clock or 10 o’clock I could see Wickenby. If I come a little bit further it was Faldingworth and Waddington, Lincoln things. A bit further around to the right Hemswell and we’d got one right on the doorstep, Faldingworth and Dunholme Lodge so there were, in actual fact I think there was about I think there about were eight airfields within about ten miles of the, of my house.
HB: Right. Right.
HB2: But oh you know I used to sit there and think good God how they, where have they been and how long has it taken them to come back?
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Then we had the military movements in the village to start with was, well it was regular. We would have lorrys loads of convoys of men, with men in towing guns and God knows what and then we’d have men march, troops of soldiers marching through the village. We couldn’t understand where the hell they’d come from ‘cause Lincoln was fifteen miles one away and there wasn’t a camp in between us and them and where they going? There was no camps between Market Rasen and Grimsby so we just wondered what the hell they were doing ‘cause if they’d got to Lincoln they could get on a train and come to Market Rasen. Anyway, we loved it because they used to have the Irish Innisskillens used to have a pipe band and of course the Scots with all their kilts and things oh man they had pipes and bands as well. We loved it and we used to we could hear them coming down Lincoln Lane and we used to rush to the junction and then march through the village with them.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yeah. It was great but that, that didn’t last too long.
HB: Did you ever find out where they were or why they were coming?
HB2: No. No. It was a mystery. We, my mum assumed that when they went to town they marched through town to the racecourse where there was plenty for them to shelter but, well nobody camped there. There was never any official camp.
HB: Right.
HB2: So we just didn’t know where the hell, so whether it was just training. Route marching. I don’t know.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: But we didn’t think much to that if they’d walked from Lincoln.
HB: Yeah. I can see that.
HB2: Any shorter numbers like you’d probably get two or three vehicles come through. They’d pull up for a smoke or you’d get a half a dozen vehicles and they’d do the same thing. Wherever they stopped in the main street people would come out with pots of tea and sandwiches and give them a feed and if if them in the front giving their stuff away was backed up by other people in the village giving them -
HB: Right.
HB2: Stuff.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: It was, this is how they pulled together. I mean we used to, off the main road there used to be a ford where they used to sit and watch the tanks and Bren gun carriers and we used to love that because they used to let us get in to the Bren gun carriers and play around.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: The tank, the tank commanders were a bit different. They didn’t want us anywhere near.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: But yeah oh yes we used to have some fun and as I say that’s how they went on. There was, there was always something to drink and something to eat.
HB: Right.
HB2: And it’s marvellous how you can supply that when you are on ration.
HB: Yes.
HB2: But these housewives were masters in the art of making something out of nothing and stretching things. They were all damned good cooks.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And their main aim in life was to cook a meal that was tasty. Whatever else it was it had to be tasty and oh I’ve been to, I’d go to my mate’s house sometimes and go oh mum can we have some of that and Columbus discovered America at one old boy’s house. His mum said to me one Saturday morning, she said to me, ‘I’m making some potato scallops. Would you like them?’ Well, not knowing what a scallop was and not wanting to miss anything I said, ‘Yes please.’ Well they’re slices of potato dipped in batter and fried. They were lovely. They were lovely. I even do it now for my two grandsons. ‘Can we have some scallops dad, grandad.
HB: Yeah. Lovely.
HB2: Yeah. Oh it was so simple.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Mother never made chips. She always, whatever the size the potato was she sliced it and fried it.
HB: Right. Yeah.
HB2: And oh it used to go brown and crisp and oh you put your salt and vinegar on and they were heaven.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: They were heaven.
HB: Yeah. I can imagine.
HB2: Then, oh our Market Rasen station lost its roof.
HB: Right.
HB2: It was taken down to go to King’s Cross to repair the damaged roof there. Well the locals were up in arms about that.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yeah. Yes they robbed Peter to pay Paul and the thing is Market Rasen station never got another roof back and now the signal box has gone. It’s virtually a dead station.
HB: I would, I mean I presume it was pretty busy and you know quite a busy little place.
HB2: Oh yes it was. It was. Because to start with they’d got a coal, the coal yard, the coal operators were in there and you used to have to go, you could go in there with your pram and get a bag of coke or bag of something like that. Oh there was always, always a trek. There was always people going in and out and as you say, it was easy to get on there and go to Lincoln. I think it was about a penny. One and a penny return or something like that and so you got the traffic. It was a convenience. Easy to go and easy to get there.
HB: Yeah. And did that supply the military as well? Did the military, did the military use that -
HB2: Well -
HB: Route?
HB2: Wickenby had got a station of its own.
HB: Right.
HB2: Snelland was next door to it. Langworth was Fiskerton and, yes you could. You would get them supplied by the rail but not at Market Rasen.
HB: Right.
HB2: I wouldn’t say never at Market Rasen because they would. Ludford. The Ludford and Binbrook people would come down to the station. That sort of thing but as you went up the branch the other side to Grimsby, the stations would do the local, the local stations so yes there was access there. It was busy. It was busy.
[pause].
HB2: Oh now from, from the outbreak of the war we were bombarded with information to be on guard against strangers. Now, we kids were going to do our bit because we’d, it had been dinged into us not to speak to anybody so we didn’t know anything, we didn’t know anybody, we didn’t know where anybody lived and we didn’t know which way you went to anywhere [laughs]. And if we saw one of these house to house salesman we used to go running to the post office to tell the warden. Now whilst he was very polite and we often think you lot are a pain in the bum [laughs] but he never said so.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Now, one day, I lived up a surfaced lane, a road surfaced lane but I lived off a little ash track and up above us about a half a mile was the big farmer had bought a farm so he was making use of the buildings but the house was empty. Now in the garden there was some lovely fruit trees so this particular day we decided we’d go and rescue some of this fruit. So pushed our bikes up, going down the side of the house, around the corner, we got to an open door and there was voices coming out of this door so we listened and couldn’t understand what was going on and one of, one of my mates said, ‘Ruddy Gerries,’ and we’d gone, zoom, gone on our bikes pedalled like hell back home shouting ‘Mum. Mum. Mum.’ She said, ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ ‘Oh Mrs Beech. Mrs Beech,’ he said, ‘There’s Gerries in the Naylor’s house.’ So, ‘Get off with you.’ So we said, ‘There is.’ She said, ‘What do you mean there’s Germans?’ We said, ‘Well they don’t speak our language. We can’t understand what they’re saying.’ So she said, ‘Well that’s strange.’ Now, I didn’t know it at the time but about a mile the other side of Market Rasen on the eastern side they’d commandeered a big house and used it as a prisoner of war camp. So it was the thinking then that they’d escaped. So of course she went down to the warden, post general and said to him, ‘Look this is it.’ So he got the policeman and he went to investigate and he came back. He said, ‘Now rest assured Mrs Beech the Germans haven’t invaded. These Germans are prisoners. They’re released to work on the farm and the big farmer who owns the house has let them go in there on wet days and meal times to light a fire and make a drink and what have you. So,’ he said, ‘It’s all above board.’ Well when we saw these devils come out I mean they got big yellow diamonds on their back, they’d got round patches on their hearts and legs what the hell’s all that for. Well that was if they did escape that was where to shoot at. We didn’t think much to that at all. Germans. Oh dear. No way. Well then when I got to the secondary modern school we were released from school on a blue card system to help with the harvest or help with the crops so it was potato picking time and I got time off to go potato picking so I went to pick on this big farm and lo and behold sitting in the ruddy heap of straw was three Germans. So if they come on that side we went that side, me and this other lad. We weren’t going near them.
HB: How old would you be then Harold do you think?
HB2: Eleven. Twelve. Twelve.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Twelve.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And I wasn’t going there.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Anyway come dinner time, I used to take my dinner and I sat having it there and I looked at these Germans and they were tearing a loaf of bread to pieces and I said, ‘What are they eating?’ So one of the foremen I think it was said, ‘Oh they’re having a bit of bread.’ ‘What. Dry bread?’ ‘Yeah. They’re washing it down with cold tea.’ So I said, ‘Oh all right.’ So never thought any more about it. I went home and told mum. I was full of this having to work with Germans and I said for dinner they only had this, whatever they had. Well the next morning when I went there was a pack. ‘Take that to the Germans.’ I said, ‘I’m not taking them to the Gerries.’ So I said, ‘What are they?’ She said, ‘Sandwiches.’ There was one apiece. So I said, ‘I’m not taking them.’ She said, ‘You jolly well are.’ So of course I took it up there and my mate, his mum had done the same thing. So I said, ‘Well are you going near them?’ ‘No I’m not. Get Mr Fawcett to take them. He’s the foreman.’ Well he wasn’t going to take them. You had to take them yourself. Well we wouldn’t go. In the end he got between us hand on each shoulder and said, ‘Come on I’ll take you.’ So we took them and when one lad opened his thing he wept. So it didn’t, it didn’t endear me at all that didn’t, you know, he could weep his eyes out as far as I was concerned but I went home and told mother and I said, ‘Why do you send them?’ She said, ‘Look. Your brother’s in the army and I would like to think that if he was in the same condition somebody would do the same for him.’ Well I couldn’t understand all that. Giving them. No way. But anyway I took it you know and in the end she was right. That was somebody’s son and after, after the war there was a lot of these prisoners had worked on farms, were still working on the farms and they never went back. We couldn’t understand it but we realised then they were in the Russian platoon, the Russian sector and they weren’t going back.
HB: Right. Yeah.
HB2: And they, they stayed and they married local girls. Some of them married local girls which didn’t go down to well with the lad that were coming back. On one occasion, prisoners used to walk into town and stroll in the streets. It was a regular occurrence as far as we were concerned. They didn’t do any harm you know. Well six load of Belgian soldiers come and they parked on the market square. Gordon Bennett there was riots. They were out them trucks. They were beating them up, they were chasing them back to camp. There was hell on until we could get a lot of our army lads in to quell it down but by, didn’t them lads, a spokesman give our residents a right pasting. They were disgusted that they should allow them there. ‘You want some occupation,’ he said, ‘before you allow them to do things like that.’ God they didn’t half wipe the floor with them. And the newsagent, poor chap, he could speak, what is it, Flemish or whatever it was and he had to be acting as interpreter. Well he didn’t know where to put himself because the language was a bit, a bit rough.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: But he said they got the message across and it was ages and ages before the prisoners would come out again. No way.
HB: And that was just after the war.
HB2: No. That was during the war.
HB: That was during the war.
HB2: During. Right to the latter part. But they weren’t having that. Oh dear. We were educated in warfare.
[pause]
HB2: Now, as we know rationing began in 1940 and gran was heard, when she come to visit mum one say she said, ‘Oh dear I hope it’s not as bad as last time.’ Well she wasn’t really saying about the rationing because rationing started in June and finished in November in the First World War. She was talking about the fighting but anyway I took it that she thought rationing but it wasn’t that because rationing started immediately more or less and lasted fourteen years and got worse so but she we first of all we got four ounces of butter and twelve ounces of sugar and four ounces of bacon. If it was cooked you got three and a half ounces. Why the difference I don’t know but that was it. Tea and meat come in later and meat was rationed by price. You could have one and ten pence worth per person so me, mum and dad could have five and six penny worth of meat a week which when you come to think of prices in them days you could live pretty well. I mean it topped up. We could top it up with a chicken or something like that but in them days you could get decent meat. You could get three pounds a neck of lamb and that sort of thing. Offal wasn’t rationed but it was rationed by availability.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Because you could only get so much offal off an animal and the cheap cuts but the things you never hear of now such as brains and feet, calf’s head, calf feet, cow heel, well it’s not allowed to be sold and but as I said it was, it was rationed by availability. Now, I know we used to get orders put in. Mum used to put an order in when she got one week supply she’d order another. She didn’t always get it but she got something and we used to often have bullock’s heart for Sunday dinner because that was always good meat, plenty of it and Monday washday cold meat and sliced potatoes or bubble and squeak but it was all, it was all good stuff and then I remember when we killed the pig and made sausages mum and I would have a day out at Hull market. We used to buy, she used to buy while she was there fresh marjoram to put in the sausage meat to season it and I was in, we were coming back one day down this street and we were passing a butchers shop and I went by and then I went back again and there was thrushes, starlings blackbirds and sparrows hanging on the butcher’s rail and it was hanging over this dish with something green on it, greenish, and I was shouting to mum, ‘Come and look here mum. What’s this then? What’s this?’ And another lady was coming up the street she stood to me and she said, ‘Don’t you know what it is?’ I said, ‘No. What is it?’ She said, ‘Its whale meat.’ Oh dear. It looked ghastly.
HB: Yeah. I bet.
HB2: It looked ghastly. Well after that it was being pushed as, you know, meat to eat. Well it was described as a lump of cod liver oil.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: It took ages to get the smell out the house.
HB: Did you ever eat it?
HB2: Never. Never. No.
HB: Your mother never cooked it.
HB2: Oh no there was none. I don’t think the butchers were allowed to bring any in the village. They got enough aggro.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Sausages. We used to make our own sausages when it was pig killing time and I have never seen anything like these in the war. They were salmon pink were some of them.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: And the ladies in the things, ‘What’s in these today then butcher?’ So he said, ‘What’s that?’ She said, ‘What do we call them now? We can’t call them sausages.’ So some of them would call them bread in battle dress.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: Or the butcher’s dustbins.
HB: Oh dear.
HB2: It got, it got really rich.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And I remember gran giving a basting to the butcher. She said, ‘Where the devil did you get that last bit of meat from that I had last Sunday?’ So he said, ‘What did you have?’ She said, ‘Ruddy jump dike. It had jumped every damned ditch in the country. God it was tough,’ she said.
HB: Oh dear.
HB2: That was, that was your bit of mutton. But this is it. You had to eat what you got and everything went in.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: I mean I don’t ever think, you know a cow’s stomach it’s covered by a thin bit of flesh and skin. Well that used to be cut off and they used to sell, make meat pies out of that. Oh stews and mind you it got put on the old pan on the hob from about 6 o’clock in the morning till 6 o’clock at night -
HB: Right. Yeah.
HB2: To cook it but it was cooked.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yes. You turned it out. That was the thing about having it on the hob or put it in a stew jar in the oven. It was long and slow and it was cooked and it was tasty ‘cause I must have eaten some things, you know [laughs]. The only, the only head mum ever used was the pig’s head.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And she used to, they used to cut in to half. Top half and bottom half. Bottom half was cut in half again and that was called bathchap. They used to cure it with the salt and then cook it as bathchap and the head you just put that in a pan and boiled it until all the meat fell off. The ears you could leave in as well, chop them up, mince them up or you could cut them off having been boiled you could then slice them and fry them until they were crisp and eat them like scratchings.
HB: Right.
HB2: Oh aye. I mean you offer somebody a pig’s ear now [laughs]
HB: Well yeah.
HB2: Well.
HB: You’d get a different reaction I suppose.
HB2: Yes. I was I was in this supermarket and they’d got pig’s trotters and this well he wasn’t an old chap but he was mature and he said to his wife, ‘What they hell are they selling them for? What can you do with them?’ So I said, ‘Well if you’re like me you’d eat them and enjoy them.’ ‘Enjoy them?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well what would you do with them?’ I said, ‘Well you’d boil them, leave them till they were cold, sprinkle them with vinegar and then eat them.’ ‘Well there’s no meat on them.’ I said, ‘No it’s all gelatine.’ ‘Oh my God,’ he said [laughs]. I said, ‘I’ve had no end of them in wintertime.’
HB: Yeah.
HB2: I said, ‘They’re lovely.’ ‘Oh hell,’ he said, ‘It’s fat.’ I said, ‘No. It’s gelatine.’ They weren’t having that. Oh yes the government come out with a thing. Lemons had gone, you’d missed all the lemons and they said that by sprinkling, by sprinkling it with vinegar and adding some sugar it was quite, quite tasty [laughs] I mean, now, my mum had been in service from school leaving in the big houses. She said, ‘We never had vinegar and sugar on pancakes before,’ she said, ‘We’re not having it now.’ ‘Course we had homemade butter didn’t we?
HB: Oh sorry. I’m with you. So that was like come Shrove Tuesday or whatever.
HB2: Yes. Yes.
HB: You’re doing pancakes.
HB2: That’s right.
HB: Instead of your lemon juice.
HB2: Vinegar and sugar.
HB: Right. And was that, did your mum get these sort of leaflets that the Ministry of Food put out and you know like they used to distribute them through the Women’s Institute or something like that.
HB2: Well I was going to say they were available.
HB: Right.
HB2: I don’t think she had many.
HB: Right.
HB2: I don’t think she had many. I don’t think many of the housewives in the village did.
HB: Right.
HB2: Because they’d been brought up on the old recipes. The stodge. Oh my mother used to make, you know how you make dumplings with suet and what have you.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Well she used to make a pudding, put it on the tea plate, put it in the steamer, and let it steam and she’d have half we’ll say with liver and onions and the other half sprinkled with jam or treacle and she used to call it her dual purpose pudding [laughs] When I was visiting my aunt once a lady across the road, a very refined lady, she came across and she said, ‘Harold, something smells very good. What is it?’ I said, ‘It’s liver and onion.’ ‘Can I have a look?’ ‘Of course you can.’ So she looked in the frying pan that was sizzling away there and then she said, ‘What’s in that pan?’ I said, ‘Oh madam that’s a secret that is. That’s my dual purpose pudding.’ And she looked at me. She said, ‘You’re kidding. What are you, what are you doing?’ I said, ‘Have a look.’ So she had a look. So she said, ‘Well it looks like a suet pudding to me.’ I said, ‘That’s what it is but it’s dual purpose.’ ‘What on earth you do you mean by that?’ So I told her. Savoury and, oh she went out giggling, ‘I must tell my husband. Dual purpose pudding.’
HB: Lovely. Lovely. I like that.
HB2: Yeah the old rations were going up and down. Milk used to be a terrible thing. At its maximum it was three and half pints a week. Well it used to go down to two pints or two and a half pints. It was always like a yoyo that was. How the hell some of them managed I don’t know. There we are having a mug for our supper and going to bed on. A mug of milk and all the milk we wanted.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yeah. It’s fantastic really when you think back as to just how some people did live.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. You can imagine yeah. It’s difficult.
HB2: And then when they brought out dried egg. Oh dear. You could get a tin. One tin a month plus your one egg a week. Well mum tried it. Mum and gran tried it for baking. Well the Yorkshire puddings wouldn’t rise and the cakes were useless. They used to, sponge cakes were useless so they used to use that in the dishes that you could mix it in with that didn’t -
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Didn’t show too much.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Oh no and dried milk was more of a favour than than the dried egg but one thing we did like and that was now what did they call it? It’s spam. Supply Pressed American Meat. Spam. And we used to love that dipped in batter or just plain fried. That went down a treat.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: The old spam fritters. Even in the air force we had spam fritters.
HB: Wow. Did, did you, did any of the small farms around you did they actually supply any of the airfields direct?
HB2: Not that I know of.
HB: Or it all went through the ministry I suppose.
HB2: Well I think it all went through the ministry because there was bacon factories, egg factories, potato marketing board, apple marketing board. Everything had to go through a board but I think a lot of it might have ended up there because, but it didn’t go direct from the farmer.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: Prices were fixed at what a farmer could buy and sell at.
HB: Right.
HB2: So it would be possible for them to sell it if they got sort of permission but I just don’t think many did.
HB: No. No.
HB2: Fish was never, fish was never rationed but that again was availability because the poor old trawlers used to get sunk and whilst we, whilst we got a supply of fish, the fish and chip shops were never open regularly. Only when it was available and the wet fish man on the market sometimes he was there and sometimes for weeks he wasn’t ‘cause he just couldn’t get the -
HB: Yeah
HB2: He just couldn’t get the fish but oh and we had, we had a fish in a tin called snook.
HB: Right.
HB2: Barracuda.
HB: Was it?
HB2: Now funnily enough it had got a rotten name but it didn’t taste too bad.
HB: Right.
HB2: No. We only, we had very little of it but what I had I wouldn’t turn up my nose at it again. I do remember that but we didn’t eat, we didn’t have much tinned fish. We didn’t. Mum used to, when it was available, get a bit of fresh fish, batter it and fry it herself but no, we didn’t have a lot of fish.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: As I say we stuck to the stodge which was sometimes repetitious but it was still good.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: You know if it was a case of having a dry crust and a plate of meat and potato we’d have a plate of meat and potato. You know, it was stodge.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And we ate what we had. If we’d had it yesterday it didn’t matter.
HB: Yeah. Did you ever, did you ever have evacuees in the village?
HB2: Yes. We did. We had nine.
HB: Right.
HB2: From Lower Wortley, Leeds and these were dumped at the school one dark evening and as one lady described it dished out like prizes at a whist drive ‘cause you couldn’t refuse to have a evacuee. If you did you got fined fifty quid.
HB: Blimey.
HB2: Now the nine kids that come to our village were in that school looking very bewildered, very frightened with a ruddy label attached to their coat collar and the gas mask hanging around the back of their bum. Poor little sods. And they were doled out to these people in the village who never should have had them. They were all houses that had got toilets, running water, mains water but the people that lived in them were, two of them in particular were old couples, house proud, never had any children. Now, one lived, two of them lived in a bungalow at the bottom of our lane and they crossed the road from our lane end. Now, the girl, she wasn’t too badly treated but we couldn’t go, we could go and call for her to play with but we couldn’t play in their yard, their garden. No you had to go out. The other lad, he was a saddler, this bloke that had him. He was house proud and no children and he was a sod. I remember one night we’d gone to Scouts and we was a bit late coming out and he’d come to meet him and he started going at this old boy because he was late and I said, ‘We were doing things. That’s why we were late.’ Anyway, it was none of my business and as I ran off I heard Bob shout, ‘Ouch that hurt.’ Well I run into an RAF sergeant. He said, ‘Where are you going in a hurry?’ I said, ‘I’m going home.’ He said, ‘Is somebody chasing you?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Who just shouted “ouch that hurt?” ’ I said, ‘Oh that’s Bob.’ So he said, ‘Well what’s Bob got to do with it?’ So I told him. He said, ‘I’d better go and see.’ Well I earwigged in a woman’s gateway in the garden and crept along the side of this hedge to listen and I heard this sergeant say, ‘I’ve a bloody good mind to give you a thrashing with that.’ What he’d done was he’d hit Bob on the back of the legs with a plaited riding crop, a leather plaited riding crop. Anyway, I run home and told mum and oh didn’t the villagers let rip but the authorities didn’t, didn’t contact mum to fetch him back again. He was there for quite some time after this incident. I mean we could go and call for him but he had to come away and he didn’t have to get dirty, he didn’t have to get dishevelled. I mean mum’s used to spruce him up. Would clean his hair, wash his face, his hands, clean his shoes before they sent him back and if he, if we’d been fishing or anything he had to leave everything with other kids. Oh this bloke. Well he was a wrong one.
HB: What sort of age would Bob have been?
HB2: He’d have been the same age as me. Ten. Twelve. But as luck would have it if and when his mum found out they fetched him back.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: But it must have been, it must have been towards the end of the ‘43 ‘44 type because the evacuees, as soon as things started to get easier I mean Leeds, Leeds was getting bombed but it was nothing like London so mum’s were fetching them back except for one lad. He came in the village with his two sisters. Now, funnily enough they got put with a family of three boys. The two sisters. They’d got a big family already what did they want, but they had a good time, they were alright. The brother, he got billeted with a farmer and his wife and he was, the three of them were brothers and sisters of Ernie Wise.
HB: Really.
HB2: And the brother, he went through agricultural college and went into farm management. So -
HB: Wow.
HB2: He did alright. Another girl called Mary she was stationed with the traction engine man. The contractor, who was an old couple. No children. But she landed on her feet. They were good to her and she, she did exceptionally well. She won a scholarship to the grammar school but for some unknown reason she finished up with me at the secondary modern and people couldn’t understand that. If she’d got a scholarship she should be there. So anyway things began to boil and they used to get on to the big farmer who’d got a finger in every pie there was, you know. He was one of these sat on every committee and got a say on everything that went on. ‘Why is it that your daughter’s gone to grammar school and she never passed a test? Why doesn’t she go?’ Anyway eventually she went to grammar school did Mary and she did well. She even stayed back with the couple until she finished her schooling.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: And then, I think she finished up in Canada.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: So she did alright and as I said the other, the two twins, well, that came they they sort of hit the chair and bounced off again ‘cause their mum couldn’t bear them being parted and came and fetched them so they’d gone but no poor old Bob got the short straw.
HB: Yeah. Sounds like it. Sounds like it.
HB2: But we had, we had a teacher come with them. Thank God we did. She was a lovely teacher. She was a granny type teacher. You know. Loved by all us kids and she acted as interpreter.
HB: Right.
HB2: And we were out in the field one day, village kids playing football this two or three lads lined up and, what do they want? So we said, ‘What do you want?’ [Can we [lay it with the casey?] ‘You what?’ [laughs]. Can we [lay it with casey]. So by using sign language they got the message across so we said, ‘Yeah come on in,’ and then when we started playing at marbles [can we lay it with the cars]. Oh my God. So again sign language, ‘Yeah come on.’ We fitted them up with marbles and away with them and they taught us a little ditty –
“we’re right down at cellars oil, with muck slats at windows, we’ve used all our coil up, we’ve started on cinders and when the bum bailiff comes he’ll never find us, ‘cause we’ve got mud splats on windows.”
HB: Oh right [laughs]
HB2: And when you’re confronted with that type of talking.
HB: Yeah and the teacher was the interpreter.
HB2: And the teacher was the interpreter oh and would they hell as get used to getting milk out of a cow? There was two of them with me one day. Dad was milking. ‘What’s he doing?’ I said, ‘Milking his cow.’ No he’s not. That’s not milk.’ ‘It is. Do you want a cup full?’ We got a cup. No way were they going to drink that. If you put it in a jug on the table they’d have it out the jug on the table yes, but not that so it took us ages before they accepted it. Once they did I mean once they were drinking milk till it was coming out of their ears.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: But it took them ages to that and then one day they would go around and collect the eggs and one hen had just squatted and dropped her egg. They wouldn’t touch it. It had come from the chickens bum. It was dirty.
HB: Oh right. Yeah. Course we don’t think of that do we?
HB2: No. And then and what they did like was we used to get a slice of bread, mother used to spread it pretty thick with butter and then we’d go out in the spring and pick the hawthorn shoots, the green buds of and stick it in there. ‘What’s that?’ ‘Its bread and cheese.’ ‘You can’t eat the hedge.’ ‘Yeah you can. Come on.’ Well when they got used to that, I mean every time they come they wanted a slice of bread and butter.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And goosegogs.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Used to top and tail the goosegogs and if they got golden drops which were sweet oh they loved that. They’d pick them up and stick them in and eat them.
HB: Brilliant.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: But we used to, they balked at eating carrots pulled out the ground. I mean we used to pull the carrot out of the ground, go to a bit of grass and wipe it on the grass and then rub it in your hands and [click click].
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Nothing. Or swede. We taught them how to peel a swede with your teeth. Well they thought we were absolutely filthy.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. But of course that’s, I mean their experience was totally different.
HB2: Oh God.
HB: Coming from Leeds.
HB2: I mean, the first thing we asked them was, ‘What were the Germans doing in Leeds. Have you got Germans up there?’ ‘No.’ And then we used to say, ‘Why don’t you eat that?’ Because they were amazed at the food that was presented to them. What the hell they’d eaten I don’t know. It couldn’t have been varied much but we used to say to them, ‘Well it’s food. This is what we eat.’
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: I mean bread and jam. They’d have eaten that till it come out their ears.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And cakes. I don’t think they’d ever seen a cake or pastry and because we’d got plenty of fat, I mean the old fat bacon used to get rendered down for lard and we, mum used to cook pastries as she did before but all you know they used to like the egg custards. Oh they loved them and the curd tarts.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yeah. But in the end I mean they used to tuck in. None of them went home any lighter than they were before they come. They all went home pretty well stuffed.
HB: Yeah. And did you ever see them after the war?
HB2: No.
HB: Did any of them ever come back?
HB2: Never saw, except Gordon. The farmer. He used to be in town, he used to play cricket for the town.
HB: So that was that was Ernie, one of the Ernie Wises brothers?
HB2: That was Gordon Wise. Gordon Wiseman -
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Was his name. Ernie Wise.
[pause]
HB2: We had, just after the evacuees arrived we started school dinners and we used, at the infants, at the primary school and we used to get a third of a pint of milk a day and I think it was more or less compulsory and I used to say, ‘Mum why do I have to drink milk at school? Don’t I get enough at home?’ She said well at halfpenny a time it was tuppence halfpenny a week for the five days and then they started doing school dinners. They converted the church hut into a kitchen and that was sixpence a day. Half a crown a week. Well of course when it started I had to be in to start, you know, it was something new so I had to be in there and they were, they were nice but before they got the canteen they tried serving them up in the cloakroom and they’d got these ruddy great big oval steamers and pans on a cooker next to a Belfast sink and they used to cook nothing but parsnips and mutton and I, oh I got to the state where mum couldn’t, couldn’t have a joint of mutton because I couldn’t eat it. I used to be sick. And that lasted, that lasted until I joined the air force at seventeen and a half. Now I enjoy mutton like the rest of them.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: But oh dear. When I used to go to church on a Sunday, evensong and as the vicar was coming down the aisle to go to the pulput to sermon I was going to the vestry to be heaving. In fact mother thought I was up to something. She come out and found me there and when she saw I wasn’t she was a bit surprised.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yeah. I was allergic to mutton. Now whilst we were at my grans one day -
HB: Sorry. That was one thing I did want to ask you. Where did your gran live?
HB2: Newton.
HB: She lived in the village of Newton.
HB2: Newton. Right next to the church near the village pond and if you went across the road through like going from here to the other side the road there, across his garden you were on the airfield.
HB: Right. Right. It was as close as that.
HB2: On the peri. Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yeah. And one day we’d gone to see gran and we heard these, these aeroplanes in a bit of a hurry and then we heard a burst of gunfire so of course we were out and stood under a big elm tree that gran had in her garden and a chap shouted, ‘Get in your shelter.’ ‘We aint got one.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘In that case I’d better join you,’ so we stood there and the road and the ground slipped away in a dip so it was panoramic and obviously a German plane had followed one of our lads home and he got to the bottom of the valley and he’d got a bomb he didn’t want so he dropped it and demolished a little spinney. If he’d gone to the left a bit he’d have hit the searchlight unit.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: But anyway he disappeared in the distance, the next minute the pair of them came roaring back. The English plane was chasing him across and back and when this old chap who’d said get in your shelter shouted, ‘Send for the bloody Poles,’ he said, ‘They’d get the bleeder down.’ Anyway, they did get him apparently towards the east coast.
[pause]
HB2: We had, in our little cottage, we had, it faced more or less east to west and in one end was the bedroom window which overlooked Immingham and Grimsby and we could see Immingham docks getting bombed or if we looked out the other time we could witness poor old Coventry going up in smoke. It was an eerie sight. ‘Course I used to say to my mum, ‘Coventry? That’s a long way away from there.’ ‘Yeah and that’s how big the blaze is.
HB: So that was the night Coventry was bombed.
HB2: Yeah. Oh yeah. But -
HB: Well actually that is a very, yeah I suppose you would see it that far away yeah.
HB2: Well there was a glow in the sky.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: A very vivid glow in the sky and that’s what it was put down to.
HB: Ahum.
HB2: But we thought, we thought that we would be getting bombed because not only of the airfields but there was Scunthorpe Iron Company and things like that. Immingham docks and around that way but you know we didn’t really know. It was all in the distance. We never got anything locally and then we, enterprising youngsters that we were, we decided we’d do waste paper collection so we found a ruddy great big old wooden crate and I’d got some cast iron wheels off a [hen hut].
HB: Oh right.
HB2: We were only little and we put this on a piece of a wood, made, got axles on it and then we put two handles and we had to put two ropes on the front for someone to pull it ‘cause it was too heavy when we got anything in it to manipulate and we used to go around the village collecting waste paper and scrap metal and rags and anything like that and take it to the local carpenter whose yard, he’d got several little sheds and he used to have waste paper in one shed and rags in the other. Anyway, we used to go in there and we used to spend a lot of time in the waste paper sorting out comics and colour magazines like Illustrated News and Post and comics. Cor blimey. And paper that had only been written on one side ‘cause we were short of paper to draw on and the carpenter’s wife come out on many occasions. She said, ‘I’m sure you take home more than you bring in.’
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Then on another occasion we had to collect, we was asked to collect conkers to use them as a dye.
HB: Right.
HB2: And of course we, we loved that ‘cause we used to keep the big ones out for conker fights.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And that -
HB: So where did the conkers go? Did they just go to some central collection point?
HB2: Well yeah. Carpenter’s shop.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: He put them in a, in a sack in the shed. Somebody used to come and collect them. And we used to go around collecting rosehips and oh that used to give us an excuse to go on the farmer’s fields and they tolerated us. They tolerated us. Telling us not to climb on gates and makes holes in hedges but they, they tolerated and for our sins we got, we got once got a free bottle of rosehip.
HB: Wow.
HB2: We thought we’d done great guns there. Then we had news of a complaint made by the banker’s wife in town against the airmen going home from the pub singing bawdy songs. So she reported it to the sergeant, the police sergeant who said, ‘Yes Madam. I’ll come around and see you.’ So he went around there, ‘Now madam what did you say they were singing?’ ‘Bawdy songs.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘But I can’t stand up in front of the magistrates and say these men were singing bawdy songs because he’d turn around and say, “What were they singing?’’ Anyway she stuttered out about the first verse but when she got to the chorus and they had to whip certain garments away she kicked him out and reported him to the inspector who then went around and said to the sergeant, ‘You did it all wrong. I’ll do it right this time.’ So the first thing he said was, ‘Yes madam. Before I can stand in front of the magistrate giving evidence against these brave men who risk their lives nightly,’ he said, ‘I want to know what they were singing.’ ‘Well there’s the door. Get out.’ Now for some unknown reason and we don’t think it was the fault of the sergeant or the inspector but this tale got out.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: And for many many lengths of times afterwards the locals when they left the pub serenaded the lady.
HB: Oh.
HB2: She wished she hadn’t mentioned anything.
HB: I’m just going to check the battery on this -
HB2: Right.
HB: Harold, ‘cause I’m just getting. No. No. We can keep going for a while. Keep going for a while.
HB2: Right. As I said my sister worked in munitions but she was relieved because she suffered badly from dermatitis.
HB: Right.
HB2: And she went into, into a job in a hotel, the Oxford Hotel in Lincoln as a general dogsbody and in the same hotel was a man who had a haulage business and he was managing his lorries going from local quarries to the airfields carting materials and they met and got engaged and got married in 1943 and it was, we were all determined, the village and the family were determined that she should have a proper wedding. So coupons were pooled to buy the dress for her and the bridesmaid and mum would cater for the reception. Well muggins here had to go in the washhouse and scrub the copper till it shone so that we could boil the ham.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: The whole ham.
HB: Ok.
HB2: In there. Well first of all I had to spend a week turning it, soaking it, getting the salt out. Then we put it in the copper and it had to be gently boiling so we got that done and then we lumbered it out, put it in a dish and put it in the pantry ready for the day. The next thing was I had to scrub the cart out, the old horse and cart, line it with newspaper, put sheets on it and then put the food in there to take it the half mile down the road to the church hut.
HB: Right.
HB2: Anyway, we got it all there and laid out, the wedding went off alright and then these people I think there was over twenty came into the reception. Now, all his side come from Leeds and, ‘cause I remember the best man turned up in his lorry piled with gear so I said, ‘What have you brought the gear for?’ He said, ‘Your dad wants it.’ I said, ‘Does he?’ So he said, ‘Yeah.’ Anyway, left it at that but what he’d done was he’d loaded it up with this with what dad wanted because he had to have his petrol, he had to have an excuse to do the journey.
HB: Oh right. Yes. Of course with petrol rationing.
HB2: Anyway, he come and he took his overalls off and there he was in his best suit with a button hole. And he said, ‘Have I come wedding boy?’
HB: Yeah. Oh dear.
HB2: Anyway, the wedding went off and the reception went in and when they got in and saw what was laid out ‘cause the villagers again had come with cakes, pastries, bread, butchers with potted meat and what have you, mother with her ham and the people with salads. It was April so we got salad stuff and these people from Leeds just couldn’t, just couldn’t understand how mother had put the spread on that she did. So she said, ‘Well it would take a long while to explain but just sit down and enjoy it.’ Well enjoy it they did. I mean a whole ham for twenty odd people and it went.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: What they didn’t eat they took home in doggie bags.
HB: Well yeah. Yeah.
HB2: There was, there was the cold ham, there was the salad, there was cakes, fancy cakes, there was trifles, there was jellies, there was blancmanges and there was wine. Oh and I fell out with the best man because he wouldn’t give me any, any wine.
HB: How old were you then?
HB2: I were ten. I said, ‘It’s my sister’s wedding and I can have some wine.’ Anyway, I went crying to mum and she said, ‘Oh for God’s sake give him a drop.’ Well when I tasted it I wished I hadn’t. [laughs]
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: But being a good lad and what was in my glass I had to drink.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: So I tipped it back, swallowed it back. Well I thought I was going to burn the back of my throat out.
HB: Oh dear.
HB2: Yeah. But that was, that was, that was the wedding.
HB: So boiling up the ham, the copper that’s, that’s the laundry copper that the washing used to be done in.
HB2: Oh yeah. Washday copper.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Make sure there’s no soap in it.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Lovely job.
HB2: Laxative.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: But that, that’s the sort of thing that went on you know. For occasions like that the people in the village turned up trumps, you know. They did. They really did and you know to us the spread wasn’t, well normal run of the, it was a bit exceptional but it was things that we always had. We hadn’t given them up because of the war. I mean you could still buy jelly and we had enough milk to make custards. You could get custard powder.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: So that was a jolly good, a jolly good spread out because everybody thoroughly enjoyed it and absolutely amazed at what went on. Now gran as I said lived at Newton and she had a little cottage in which she sold, she had a bit of a shop. Sold the essentials like firelighters and plasters. The baker left his bread there, orders of bread there and she sold lemonade and one day an airman came in for a box of matches just as gran had made a pot of tea. So she said, ‘Do you want a drink of tea?’ ‘Oh yes please.’ ‘Well, here, have a cake as well,’ and they had quite a chat and she said, ‘That’s it old lad. Cheerio. Come back again when you like. Bring your mates.’ ‘Do you mean that ma?’ So she said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got six more.’ So she said, ‘Well it’s not a very big cottage but bring them,’ and that’s when this crew turned up and made her, they didn’t come every night or every weekend but they come regular. Turned it in to a little oasis. They would come and first of all they wouldn’t eat or drink what gran offered them and she was a bit annoyed and she said, ‘What’s wrong with my food?’ ‘Nothing’s wrong with it.’ Ma they called her right from the start. ‘Nothing’s wrong with it ma.’ She said, ‘Yes there is and if you can’t find room to eat it then don’t bother to come.’ ‘Oh don’t be like that ma. You can’t do it. You just can’t do it. It’s rationing.’ ‘Look,’ she said, ‘if I couldn’t do it I wouldn’t offer.’ So anyway after a lot of arguing and umming and erring she won the day and she brought out the fat bacon sandwiches and whatever. Well these old boys they were amazed to think and each time they come there was tea and something to eat. Again the people in the hamlet used to come with a twist of paper with some tea in it. A twist of paper with some sugar in it or gran would put some sugar to one side and she said, ‘This is why we can give you the meat. Because we kills pigs.’ Oh right well that was alright. Well then they started coming with bags of sugar and bags of tea they’d nicked out the mess and gran got really worried. She said, ‘Don’t you lads get into bother,’ she said, ‘Because we can manage.’ No gran. ‘No ma you’re alright. You’re alright.’ And they, sometimes they’d come and have a chat, sometimes they would go in the front room and just sit around the fire on the floor leaning up against the chair going to sleep. Gran often said, ‘Look at them poor devils. Tired out.’ Anyway, when they found out she’d got a piano oh didn’t they used to have some singsongs there. Then one night gran put her foot in it. She turned around and she said, ‘Where’s Taff Lloyd tonight?’ Pregnant pause. Shoulder went around, arm went around her shoulders, ushered her outside, come back tears streaming down her face. He hadn’t made it back and they’d said, ‘Look ma if there’s a face missing don’t ask. Just don’t ask.’
HB: Yeah.
HB2: After that it was plain sailing until like I said the time come when they just didn’t appear and it was the hope and praying of the village that they’d been posted and not -
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Lost in battle but that was the one thing that -
HB: And this was just the one crew.
HB2: Just the one crew.
HB: Just the one crew.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. And so they’d lost a crew mate.
HB2: Yes. Yes they had.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Oh and I was dinged, I hadn’t to question them as what they did.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: I was not to question them what they did.
HB: What sort of time would this have been 44ish?
HB2: Well, it was, it was must have been 44ish and I think it was after Christmas because the nights were still dark and I can’t think that we were leading up to Christmas so it must have been after Christmas.
HB: Right.
HB2: But I know, I know the nights, the nights were dark when they arrived. I mean they didn’t stop till midnight. 10 o’clock and they’d gone.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: And they would always say, ‘Ma see you on such and such a night. We might be a bit busy.’ So once she knew what night it was then the villagers used to drop off. The butcher used to drop off potted meat. The baker used to drop off some cakes or scones or a loaf of bread.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Looking back it was, nobody asked. It was done.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. And that, and that sort of follows this supportive trend through the village -
HB2: Yes.
HB: With everything else.
HB2: Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh God yes I know gran used to benefit no end by it. The farmers used to drop her off a bag of logs or a -
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Few spuds.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: You know. She was well taken care of.
HB: And they, so they were obviously flying operationally.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: They were all English crew I presume.
HB2: Except for the Welshman.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yeah but they were all English.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yes.
HB: Yeah that -
HB2: And I know, I know one was a gunner ‘cause he got air gunner, AG is it? The other was a navigator because he got N and the other had got two wings so I presumed he was the pilot.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: But we didn’t, I didn’t dared ask.
HB: No. No. I understand that. I understand that.
HB2: Oh and they used to dress me in their coats, put their coats on my shoulders and their hats on. I thought I was the bee’s knees you know. My God. ‘Look at me mum. Look at me.’
HB: Yeah. Yeah I mean ten eleven year old would be.
HB2: Yeah. Oh God yes.
HB: You’d be all over that.
HB2: And in them days, yes because I was more of a child at that age then what kids are today.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Yeah. Absolutely delightful that. And then just one day.
HB2: They went home at night. Never seen again. Never seen again. Not even a word. Just gone.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Oh, that, that did grate with the villagers not knowing what had happened to them.
HB: Can you remember roughly when that would have been? Would that have been, you know what period of time they would have been visiting do you think?
HB2: Well I think, I think it must have been January to March because as I said I don’t recollect getting excited about going up to Christmas so it must have been after.
HB: Right.
HB2: And -
HB: So just two or three months then.
HB2: It was only two or three months. Three months would have been the most. But in that time they’d made several visits, regular visits, you know. Sudden bursts and there they were happy and singing and jumping about and then next minute just gone.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Another thing in the village the teenage girls. Makeup was scarce.
HB: Right.
HB2: And so were stockings. There was all sorts of substitutes sort of made up such as olive oil and bees wax for skin softener, bird cork for mascara and a mixture of soot and something else for an eyeshadow and they used to, we could get a liquorice sweet. It was a piece of liquorice soaked in like an icing that used to turn red and they used to use the red for the lipstick. Or beetroot juice.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: And we used to shout out after them, ‘sugar lips.’
HB: Oh dear.
HB2: And the best of it was we used to have to run because some of these girls could run and when they caught you they could thump and all. ‘Sugar lips’ or beetroot, ‘beetroot lips’ and then they, my sister was one of them. She used to paint her legs with gravy browning.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: And then her mate used to have to put a seam down with a big leaded pencil and we used to shout, ‘Your gravy’s gone lumpy, your gravy’s lumpy,’ or ‘Your seam’s slipping.’
HB: Oh dear.
HB2: That was it but then, then they brought out a thing, some liquid called silk toner. Liquid stockings. And there was enough in the bottle for twenty four applications. I mean. Can you imagine just painting your ruddy legs with it?
HB: Right.
HB2: And another thing is if they got the start of a ladder they nearly always carried nail varnish and they’d put a blob of nail varnish at the top of the ladder and at the bottom to stop it running.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Stockings were treated like gold. Some of these poor women used to be darned heals and sewn up ladders. I mean patches were worn with honour.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: I mean men used to have patched knees and elbows. Oh God yes.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Now they don’t bother to patch them now do they?
HB: No. That’s true.
HB2: Yeah, poor, yeah, that was it, gravy legs. ‘You’ll be in a mess when it rains.’ [laughs] ‘Look there’s a dog following you.’ [laughs]
HB: Cruel.
HB2: And I went to school in short trousers made out of mum’s old great coats or men’s greatcoats, shirts out of her dresses. Things like that. You see these housewives were masters at needlework and cooking and what have you.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Oh yes. The old jumble sales did a roaring trade. Knitted, knitted garments were soon picked up and pulled down and recycled.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: They used to, they used to wear little woollen bibs instead of collars the men working in the fields.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Instead of scarves in the winter.
HB: Right.
HB2: Oh used to fit down front in the V of the jackets.
HB: Oh that’s, yeah.
HB2: Then then they started, the ladies started making coats out of candlewick bedspreads and out of black out material for other things because blackout material wasn’t rationed.
HB: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Oh God and if you could get hold of a blanket, an army blanket, a coloured one oh you’d have a coat out of that as quick as lightning.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And hats weren’t rationed and there was no end of tips how to make felt hats into a pair of slippers.
HB: Yes.
HB2: Yes. And how to titivate it up to make it look more expensive.
HB: How did they find this out? Was this through newspapers or -
HB2: It was the -
HB: Leaflets?
HB2: Greatest tip provider was “Home Chat.”
HB: “Home Chat”?
HB2: A woman’s magazine. “Home Chat.”
HB: Right.
HB2: I mean nearly every magazine covered tips of some kind or other. If it wasn’t recipes for food it was how to revitalise a drab dress or something like that.
HB: Yeah. That’s, yeah, I’ve not heard of “Home Chat” before but, yeah.
HB2: It was 1940 ’41.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: When that was on. Now food on the table. I can’t recollect eating less in the war than other time.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: It remained the same. As I said my mother’s generation and grandma’s generation were masters in the art of making something out of nothing and they could cook and it was tasty.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: They used to make dumplings. Now, the variety of dumplings. There was parsley dumplings. There was dumplings with, we called green dumpling. Now these green dumpling could have little juicy spouts off the hedge, some bits of growing corn or dandelion leaves chopped up in them.
HB: Oh right. You’d pay a fortune in a posh restaurant for that now.
HB2: Yeah. You would. You would. But most of the food was provided locally. You know. It was grown locally.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: And we, my father had a house with, we moved in to a house with two large gardens so that was providing us with veg of all sorts, shapes and sizes and extra potatoes and stuff like that were grown in the fields.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: So we got plenty of that sort of thing and around two fields we had ten apple trees, crab-apple trees, all of different varieties.
HB: Right.
HB2: And in the middle hedge was Bullace trees. Little, little blue plums. So we’d plenty of fruit in season in the hedgerows.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And a big pear tree stood in the bottom field. And a Coxs. Not a Cox. An apple tree stood in the garden.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: So we, and again the apple used to be floated around. Nobody wasted an apple. It was swapped then or turned into jam or something like that.
HB: You know just taking you back a bit Harold you know you mentioned about going with the girl who stayed, the evacuee girl who stayed to go to the secondary modern school.
HB2: Yes.
HB: Obviously the war was still going on
HB2: Oh yes.
HB: When you went to the higher school.
HB2: ‘44 yes. Yes.
HB: Where was the secondary modern school?
HB2: Market Rasen.
HB: That was in Market Rasen.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: So how did you get -
HB2: Oh we had a bus.
HB: Did you?
HB2: Oh yes we had a bus.
HB: So you got from this, from Middle Rasen.
HB2: Yes. Yes.
HB: To Market Rasen.
HB2: Yes.
HB: By bus to go to school.
HB2: Yes.
HB: Right.
HB2: Mind you I think it went our as far as West Rasen.
HB: Yes. Yes.
HB2: To a catchment there but yes we went by bus.
HB: Yeah. So obviously as you move in to the secondary modern school and you meet some of the older pupils and kids obviously some of your attitudes must have to change do they?
HB2: Oh yes. Yes they did. We were a bit more grown up.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: You know. But we were governed then by female teachers when I first arrived there up till ’45. Then when the male teachers came back they didn’t mess about. They weren’t harsh but they’d got the military discipline hadn’t they?
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: And when we say jump you jump. I remember a kid at the back wasn’t paying attention and he got a board rubber thrown at him and he threw the rubber board rubber back at the teacher. Oh God.
HB: By the shirt scruff and -
HB2: He give him a dressing down in front of the class and made him stand at the side of him, at the side of his table until he said he could go and sit down. No. They weren’t, they weren’t cruel.
HB: No.
HB2: But by God they were, you know, you’ll do as you’re told and I don’t think any of them gave them the stick.
HB: No.
HB2: No. They just I mean they wouldn’t allowed it today physically yanking them out or grabbing them by the ear and pulling them out of the front. That was sufficient.
HB: Yeah. So by, by that time when you were at the secondary modern the Polish squadron would have moved into the air base, the air field. Did, did you because I think you said to me on the phone there wasn’t an awful lot of contact between the Poles and the village.
HB2: No. There wasn’t. There wasn’t.
HB: But I mean at any time did you ever go to any sort of social dos or you know invitation dos at the airfield.
HB2: Oh yeah. We had a tea party.
HB: Right.
HB2: We had a tea party. It, all the, all the scouts, local scouts, guides, brownies, cubs were invited to a tea party there and oh what a day that was. We were shown some aeroplanes and then we were taken into this long room where the table was set and we were sat down to tea. Now, on my plate in front of me was some ham cured by Polish methods, some chicken seasoned by Polish methods and then there would be if I said a spoonful, a tablespoon full of chopped tomato and cucumber with a dressing on it. There was something like curds or cheese with bits of fruit in it. There was grated carrot and grated cheese with a dressing on it. Everything had got a dressing on it. There was what we call now today potato salad and there was coleslaw and all these were on a dressing and I mean nearly everything was a first to me and my eyes used to look a bit suspicious at it and think, what’s that? What’s that? But oh and the lettuce was chopped up, sliced up thinly with a dressing on it and we ate, it was neither a biscuit nor bread but it was soft so it must have been a type of bread or bread cake to eat with it. Well we didn’t have anything on it but by gum it was good and so of course with my fork I’m there tasting this and tasting that and thinking this is not too bad and my plate was clean like the rest of, the rest of the other kids.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: It really was and then when they come out with the cookies oh our faces must have been a picture. I mean we’d never seen anything like that and as most of the kids had been told to eat what was put on their plate there wasn’t much left.
HB: No. No.
HB2: And it was all washed down with a fruit cordial.
HB: Right.
HB2: Oh that was memorable was that tea party. That was memorable.
HB: So who was serving the food? Was this the -
HB2: The WAAFs and the men.
HB: The WAAFs and the men.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: And they were English.
HB2: No. They were Polish.
HB: They were all Polish.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Right. Right. And they, so how did, I mean obviously they could communicate.
HB2: Oh they could speak better English than we could speak Polish.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: No problem. I mean kids could speak naturally don’t they?
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And they had no difficulty. Maybe with the dialect but no, they understood what we said ‘cause we said, this was dinged in to me and dinged into the others, ‘You remember your manners. Please and thank you costs nothing,’ so it was, ‘Please’ and, ‘thank you,’ a thousand times over.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How many, did that only happen the once or -?
HB2: Just the once.
HB: Right.
HB2: Just the once.
HB: Was that early when the Poles came or was that after they’d been there a little while? Do you remember?
HB2: Oh I think they must have been a bit established a little bit there because I think it was even quieter. The war was going better than ever.
HB: Right.
HB2: You know.
HB: Right.
HB2: They was in there.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: But oh yes. But that was a day to remember that was.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: I mean I can, well it must have been for me to remember the details today.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. It’s obviously stuck in your mind.
HB2: It has and I mean even today we’ll try, you know, the Poles did it this way so we’ll chop up our tomatoes and cucumbers different. What the dressings were I don’t know. Didn’t get them out but they tasted good.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: That was the first time I’d had slices of apple, raw apple and raw pear on a salad
HB: Right. Yeah.
HB2: I thought.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: I thought oh God. Apple? With a salad. It went down.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: It went down.
[pause]
HB2: Now then we had, we got bombarded with make do and mend and waste not want not.
HB: Right.
HB2: Now, clothing, as I said, second hand clothing was turned into all sorts of things from snip rugs to short trousers. And the food. Well, nothing was wasted. It was not wasted at all.
HB: No.
HB2: And some of the things would make them stare today because, take for instance growing broad beans. The tops are nipped out.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: They weren’t thrown away. They were cooked as a vegetable.
HB: Oh right. Right.
HB2: Pea vines were nipped out and tender shoots took out and boiled out as vegetables. The tops of Brussels sprouts was always cut out and used as a veg and the tops of them newly spouted tops on swedes was done the same way and when we grew spring onions, when we grew the normal onions from a bulb or when we grew celery the tops were cut and chopped up to put in stews and soups as seasoning.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: We had, always had a row of chives to put seasoning in so there was plenty of seasoning going on and when we, when we had a leek we took the leek up out of the ground, cleaned it off, cut the mushy root off, took the pair of scissors and snipped the brown tips of the leaves off. Then we cut the blue from the white but we chopped the blue up, put it in a pan and cooked it five or ten minutes before we put the white in.
HB: Right. Yeah.
HB2: So that wasn’t wasted.
HB: No.
HB2: And when we, when we cut, cut a cabbage we used to cut it within the tops of the first set of leaves, trimmed the leaves off to about this much stalk, split the stem into a cross and then a new shoot would come out where the leaves joined the -
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: The thing. And the cauliflower, we’d always cut that off and use all the leaves around it. We’d strip all the leaves off to get the bare flower first of all and put them in to cook first.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And then we’d cut the florets off the stalk and chop that up finely and put that in.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And the top half of the Brussel plant or a cow plant, something like broccoli plant we used to cut that off ‘cause it was soft and chop that up and put it in a stew or the thing.
HB: Right. Yeah.
HB2: And I remember getting in to awful bother in the supermarket when the broad beans come in ‘cause I was picking them up about as thick as my little finger and this old boy with his wife come to me and said, ‘Why are you doing that for boy?’ ‘Because I want them.’ ‘Well they’re no damned good,’ he said. I said, ‘They’re exactly what I want.’ ‘What do you mean? What are you going to do with them?’ I said, ‘I’m going to top and tail them and cook them in the coshes.’ ‘Come on misses,’ he said, ‘This bloke’s gone mad here.’ And off he went. But we did. We used to cook the beans. Now field beans are tough old things aren’t they?
HB: Oh yes. Yeah.
HB2: Well there were so self sets up the top here. I went up there one day and they were there were just forming, the beans, I pulled them off, topped and tailed them and cooked them and I went up there one day and as they were just forming I pulled them off, topped and tailed them and cooked them and you couldn’t have better tasting beans in all my life.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And my wife’s grandfather kept a shop and he had one lady used to go in and ask for the broad bean coshes and she used to trim the edges up with the scissors and then cook the rest.
HB: Yeah but it’s a skill learned -
HB2: Oh my God, yes.
HB: In adversity.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: And it’s seen you through the rest of your life.
HB2: That’s right. And we used to cook bacon. Slice of bacon in the frying pan or a joint. Well the skin used to come off. The rind used to come off and it used to be minced up and put in a stew.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: Or a soup.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Oh yeah. And when, when we had a carcass of a chicken or some big marrowbones when they went out and got thrown away they were white. They’d been boiled and boiled.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. So as you come, as you’re coming through now you’re sort of eleven, twelve year old, you’re heading towards the end of the war really. What, did you as a boy then, as a young boy did you notice a change in people in the village and around, in the fact that you know we’d had, I presume by then we’d had D-Day and were starting to, you know, make inroads did you notice a change in attitudes with people or were they still pretty well set, you know we haven’t done the job yet. That sort of mentality?
HB2: Yes I did because rationing hit them. Rationing in peacetime was worse than rationing in the war.
HB: Right.
HB2: I mean for instance bread was rationed in peacetime. It was never rationed in the war. And the cheese ration went down to an ounce and milk went down to two and a half pints a week or two pints a week sometimes. We had first of all there was the end of lend lease and so the food that was available had to be eaten then and it wasn’t plentiful. Then they had a world shortage of dollars and that was a thing, another thing that we had to pull our belts in, tighten our belts up and then there was, we had to, now then, meat went scarce or something because we had to feed the Germans which didn’t go down at all well so there was reasons. Oh there was a world financial crisis and that caused us again to cut down on rations. So in, all in all the feeling was that the war was over but we’re still on rationing.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: We were still paying.
HB: Did you, did you have, did, I mean you lived in a relatively small village compared to Market Rasen, did you have, did you have your own VE celebrations or -
HB2: Oh yes we had our street parties.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: We had a bigger celebration for VE day than we had for VJ day.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Because that was I’m afraid a long way away. When we was at school and Germany, Dunkirk had occurred mother met one local lad whose family she knew well and he’d just escaped with them and I remember her coming home and crying her eyes out. She said, ‘that poor devil escaped with what he stood up in,’ so that’s how it hit her and then having, having the Dunkirk thing happened that, that, that had a very gloomy effect on the village and there was little things like that that sort of reminded them that they hadn’t finished with it yet.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: They, they, they did relax at the end of the war when we had our celebrations but not completely because we had a reminder. Two lads come back having been prisoners of war of the Japs and one of them had suffered very badly. He lived in a row of little, four little cottages where we used to play marbles outside his house. Well when he went for a rest oh he used to scream his head off and he used to frighten us kids to death. How long it took him to get over it, if he ever did get over it, I don’t know.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: But he had a rough time and as I said then there was the lad from Dunkirk who presented that side of it and so we knew what was, we knew what was going on.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: I mean the gloom on the village when Dunkirk happened was, was noticeably, even me as a kid noticed what it was like.
HB: So as you come into the end of ‘45 and into 1946 what were your, what were you looking forward to? Can you remember what you were looking forward to? ‘Cause the war’s, the wars almost over but it’s not quite over. You’re heading towards, you know there must have been a point when you realised there must be some kind of peace coming. What were you, what were your expectations?
HB2: I, my one thing I was thinking about was my brother coming back.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: What he’d be like because I hadn’t seen him for five years.
HB: And I mean very early on in the interview you just said that your brother went abroad. I mean -
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Where did he go? Do you know?
HB2: He went to India to start with and then picked his way over into Egypt and up the toe of Italy to the German border.
HB: Right.
HB2: Then they sent him all the way around by sea home again to send him across the sea to finish off his service in Germany.
HB: Right. Right.
HB2: So yes and I didn’t know until I’d started my job, left school and started my job we had a relief signalman and he said to me, he says, ‘Are you the brother to Jack Beech?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘How do you know him?’ ‘In the army.’ He said, ‘I was long range desert patrol and,’ he said, ‘I come across him and a bunch of his buddies just standing in the desert.’ So I said, ‘What do you mean standing in the desert? He was a driver.’ So he said, ‘Yeah the front line had moved up and down and where it was safe before for them to go the Italians had been stood waiting for them,’ and he said, ‘They just took their vehicles and left them what they stood up in.’ He said, ‘And as luck would have it we come across them.’ I said, ‘Oh is that why he doesn’t like Itys?’ It was always those damned Itys. I could understand it but he never spoke about it. We never got to know about that.
HB: No.
HB2: No.
HB: What age were you when you actually left school Harold?
HB2: Fifteen.
HB: So, so you were there at the secondary modern through to fifteen.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: From ’44 to -
HB: Yeah.
HB2: ’48.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. And so, as, as the war is ended and you’ve touched on the rationing. All the guys who had been away who had survived and been away they’re come back what was happening on the airfield? Was that, did you notice that winding down or -?
HB2: When I got my job I did.
HB: Right.
HB2: I left school at fifteen in ’48 and got a job as a lad porter at Snelland Station and Snelland Station serviced Wickenby airfield.
HB: Right.
HB2: And Wickenby airfield was getting rid of all the old ordinance and scrap vehicles so they were constantly coming down to the railway station to dispatch vehicles and these ruddy great bombs and didn’t [Sabu] the crane driver get me going ‘cause there he is swinging five of these ruddy great bombs and putting them down on, in the wagons saying, ‘Be very careful when you’re nailing the chock don’t make a spark because you’ll be going up in smoke.’ [laughs]
HB: What were these? Were these like the big oil drum type bombs or -?
HB2: Yeah. We had an open wagon, railway wagon and five would get in nicely that we could scotch them.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Five in a truck and they were the width of -
HB: Scotching obviously being putting the wooden wedges in. Yeah.
HB2: It was a wooden wedge.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And don’t you cause a spark. Well me and my mate were frit to death. I remember us sitting on these bombs one day when we’d scotched them and we said how the hell could a spark set this lot off? And then we came to the conclusion they weren’t live, well live enough but you know.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: They were pretty safe.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Egads we used to have to spend so much time building a wooden frame so they wouldn’t roll because I mean if them five had hit the end of the truck they’d have been gone.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: But touch wood we never had a complaint about them being littered up on the line but they were going up to Stranraer to be dumped in the sea.
HB: Were they now?
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Right.
HB2: I think the vehicles were going to a depot to be to be scrapped and -
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Broken down as scrap.
HB: So that, so that would have been the bombs that would have been all the way to Stranraer that would be all on the railway then.
HB2: Oh yes.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Oh yes. Boxed wagons had got the smaller ammunition.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And the low, the low wagons had got the vehicles.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Oh for a fifteen year old I were busy. I was really busy.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Me and my mate from the next station.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: We really were and I mean we were both young and inexperienced and yet we’d got a responsible job of making sure nothing fell off.
HB: Absolutely. Absolutely. You wouldn’t want one of them rolling off anyway.
HB2: You wouldn’t. No.
HB: No.
HB2: And it was a, it was a real experience being working as a lad porter ‘cause as I said at fifteen I was responsible for keeping all the lights in the signals and the other little things on the line alight.
HB: Oh right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: ‘Cause when they put, well they had dollies that used to turn and I mean they had to have a light in there. They had to have lights on the gates, lights on the platform, lights in the signals.
HB: And what was, what was the source of light?
HB2: Paraffin.
HB: All paraffin lamps.
HB2: Paraffin. Oh and what did stop, when you got, I don’t know, three quarters of a mile away from the station to the distant signal and the ruddy lamp blew out and you were trying, down the bank trying to shelter it with your coat to light it again and you’d get up to the top and the damned thing had gone out again.
HB: So you’d have go up the ladder and put it in the, in the signal.
HB2: Yeah you had a lamp that was stuck on a spike -
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: And put it in and sometimes I’d go back the next morning and get down to that signal. The light’s out.
HB: Yeah
HB2: Oh dear. Primitive.
HB: Oh yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Primitive.
HB: But did it work?
HB2: Oh it worked. Yes it worked.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Yeah. And we had a pony delivered by passenger train. It come on the end of passenger. Well if you’d seen the rigmarole of that. The signaller pulled the line so the lines went over and I had to run over with a G clamp and clamp the ends so they didn’t open again.
HB: Sorry what’s a pony?
HB2: Riding pony.
HB: Oh. Riding pony. I’m with you. I’m with you.
HB2: Come in a horse box. Behind the -
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: And I had to shunt it across the line. I had to put this G clamp on the end of every section that opened.
HB: Oh right. Blimey.
HB2: There was a delay of the passenger train I’ll tell you.
HB: Yeah. I would, yeah they wouldn’t be very happy would they?
HB2: No.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Oh and you had to shout out the name of the station.
HB: Oh yeah. Yeah.
HB2: One day I was in an impish mood and I said, ‘Anyone for here. This is it.’
HB: You’d get away with that?
HB2: Yes.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. How long were you there at the, sorry what was the station I’ve forgotten?
HB2: Snelland.
HB: Snelland. That’s it.
HB2: Fifteen to seventeen and a half. Two and a half years.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: To ‘51. ‘48 to ‘51 because I’d made up my mind bringing bringing the ordinance down the RAF police would come down -
HB: Yeah.
HB2: To supervise and I used to talk to them and they said, I used to say I want to join the air force and they said oh you go in the police [you’re big and awkward?] you go in the police which I did. I got the police and I got the air force.
HB: Oh right.
HB2: So -
HB: Right.
HB2: Seventeen and a half when I was taken into the air force in 19’, February ’51. Whilst I was in the air force I got in to awful trouble at RAF Benson with this messing sergeant. I’d gone up as you usually do with your plates and they dished out the spud, the veg, the meat, pudding and the custard and I, the pomp ‘No thanks.’ The cabbage. ‘No thanks. The custard. ‘No thanks.’ And the sergeant said to me, ‘When you’re finished your meal I want to see you in my office.’ So I said, ‘Right.’ So I went in her office and there was the WAAF catering officer there who had just taken over and so catering officer there who’d just taken over and so the catering sergeant said, ‘Oh hello corporal. What do you want?’ I said, ‘I’ve been asked to attend here by the sergeant.’ ‘What’s he done wrong sergeant?’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘He refused the potato, he refused the cabbage and he refused the custard.’ So she was a wily old cuss was this sergeant, she was lovely. She turned to me and she said, ‘Well what’s your answer?’ So I said, ‘Well first of all I was told and brought up that if I didn’t want anything and I wouldn’t eat it I didn’t have it on my plate.’ ‘Right,’ she said, ‘So what was wrong with the potato?’ I said, ‘It was pomp.’ ‘What was wrong with the cabbage?’ I said, ‘It was dehydrated.’ ‘What was wrong with the custard?’ I said, ‘It was made with water.’ Well the sergeant’s face was a picture so the sergeant stepped in, she said, ‘How do you know it was made with water?’ ‘Because it was blackish. It’s very dark and blackish.’ So the old WAAF officer she turned her head away. I think she’d had a quiet smile. So the sergeant then said, ‘Alright corporal, are you some sort of a chef? Are you in the food trade?’ I said, ‘No. I’m just a farmer’s son living on a small farm.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Well explain yourself.’ I said, ‘Well I live on a small farm that produces milk, plenty lot of it and the custard that they make is nowhere near what you’re making there so I assumed it was made of water.’ Well she didn’t say it was and didn’t say -
HB: No.
HB2: It wasn’t and I said, ‘I don’t like, I’ve tasted and don’t like the pomp and the dehydrated cabbage. So the old WAAF sergeant said, ‘Fair enough corporal. Fair enough.’ She said, ‘I can see you’re a man that’s had an upbringing that’s different to others.’ I said –
HB: Yeah.
HB2: I said, ‘Well’ –
HB: Yeah.
HB2: ‘It might be simple but,’ I said, ‘It’s good.’
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And she said, ‘Well alright. Off you go.’ Well then we used to take the swill of the messes and feed pigs ‘cause they’d got a pig farm on there and send them off to be processed for bacon and the general public. She said, ‘Stop that. They’re coming in the mess.’
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Oh we used to have some lovely dishes. Yeah.
HB: Right.
HB2: ’Cause she did say after that she used to come around, both of them used to come around the mess and say, ‘Is anything alright?’ And mean it.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: If you’d got a complain you said so and I know I said to them one day I said, Look, I do patrols through the night and I come in to the mess for a sandwich,’ I said, ‘And it’s usually the time when the joints of meat come out of the oven I said and they don’t taste anything like what we get at 1 o’clock.’ ‘Oh?’ I said, ‘Well let’s face it you’ve got a thousand odd men. How do you keep slices of meat warm from 2 o’clock in the morning till middle of the day?’ She said, ‘Well there’s the snag. What’s wrong with them?’ she said. I said, ‘Well they’re like cigarette papers aren’t they?’ I said, ‘It’s tasteless.’ Anyway, she did something about that.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And I said, and she said, ‘What about the eggs?’ I said, ‘Well they’re like rubber. They hit the wall and bounce around the camp.’
HB: Oh right.
HB2: She said -
HB: Right.
HB2: She said. ‘Well again unless we have somebody frying them and dishing them out, then we’ve got a bit of a problem there.’
HB: Yeah.
HB2: So I said, ‘I understand,’ I said, ‘It doesn’t stop me eating them.’
HB: Yeah. But it’s different.
HB2: But it’s different. So, she, she it was a, it was an ex-naval man that was the thing before, messing officer before and he just got what was easy. Of course -
HB: Yeah.
HB2: When she took over we had to eat what was in the stores.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: To clean up but after that she got it going.
HB: So what, you know as obviously we’re coming towards the end what do you think, it’s not an abiding memory that’s, that’s the wrong phrase but what, what do you think your experience of being a boy in the countryside and on a farm and near an airfield, what do you think your experience has given you for the rest of, you know, for your adult life.
HB2: It’s, I had the opportunity on occasion to see the rough side of war. I was messing about at home one day when I heard an aircraft that was making a funny noise and I saw it hit the ground. It crashed on the other side of the village and I jumped on my bike and got over there and I was going up the yard and in the implement hole was a mate of mine, Bob and I said, ‘Are you alright, Bob? What’s going on here?’ And he never answered and when I went up to him he never moved. So I said, ‘Are you alright?’ And he never answered again. Anyway, an ambulance man was going up the yard and what are you two doing in here and I said, ‘It’s my mate. I can’t get him to talk,’ so he come in and he said, ‘Oh has he been hit?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ So he picked him up and carried him out to the ambulance and he, I stood waiting and he said, ‘It’s alright. He’s suffering from shock but what he’s done I don’t know.’ So he says, ‘I’ll take him home.’ So they took him home and I wended my way into the field. Where the crater, you couldn’t get anywhere near it. There were people busying about so I went up the other side to the hedge and watched them and there was men on the corner of a blanket, four on a corner, on each corner of the blanket metal things picking and I thought what on earth are they doing? Well as they came around the outskirts of the crater it was remnants of bodies, flesh. And then I started wandering around the outskirts and I found a boot with a foot in it and I thought oh God yes they’ve been blown to bits haven’t they? Well by the time more police had arrived, more ministry people, more air force people had arrived and there was keeping us further and further away from the wreck so I went through the hedge and damn me if there wasn’t bits of body in there so I came back and the chap’s coming near me I said, You’ve got some more out here.’ ‘Oh come on then show us where.’ And I spent some time showing them where in the other field. Eventually I went home and the next day I went to school, come back home and my mother said, ‘I want a word with you.’ So I said, ‘What for?’ ‘Well what have you been up to? Where did you go yesterday?’ I said, ‘I went down to Hankins farm.’ So she said, ‘What did you do there?’ I said, ‘Walked around a field.’ So she said, ‘I’ve just had a policeman and the district nurse here.’ So I said, ‘What for?’ ‘Well they told me you were interfering.’ So I said, ‘I wasn’t. I kept out of the way.’ Course she’d suspected I’d done something wrong and they weren’t telling her the truth so I said, ‘No. I hadn’t done anything wrong.’ So she said, ‘What did they mean by asking questions of me if you’d slept alright and did you eat your breakfast this morning?’ I said, ‘I don’t know what they’re talking about.’ Anyway, it come out that Bob had been in the field at the top when the aeroplane crashed at the bottom and he saw this thing coming for him wherever he went and he just froze but eventually managed to get in to the hovel and hide. Me? I’d witnessed too much.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Which was gruesome so they wanted to know if I was fit and well. Now me and the two lads from across the road who were there as well never had any effect on us at all.
HB: No.
HB2: No. It was strange that.
HB: Never came back to visit you.
HB2: No. No. It was something that was being done and I couldn’t visualise the bodies with that in the blanket.
HB: No.
HB2: I knew what it was but I just couldn’t visualise that that’s what had happened so I saw that side of that. I saw the German prisoners of war. I saw the rationing so I, oh and I saw the Lancaster. I was in the Lancaster and saw what they had to put up with so I got a good insight, only briefly, but a good insight on the other side of the war.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: And you know watching the aircraft coming back and going out.
HB: Yeah that’s yeah I mean that obviously came through your character. Helped, you know well I wouldn’t say helped, it didn’t help but it came through your character after the war then.
HB2: Yeah.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Oh yes.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: I mean when we went, when we went to secondary modern school we were still collecting paper there. We had a baler in the girl’s things and we used to bale it up and send it off and we got something like eighty five tons in five years and we were, there was reports and letters saying how essential it was for us to do this and what was doing so I got another side of what was helping on because paper was important.
HB: Yes.
HB2: And the war effort could be made. I mean I couldn’t associate with making a shell about a piece of paper or anything like that but this is what it taught us.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And we we had a memorial service ‘cause we lost three, three old pupils. One lad come from our village and he was nineteen, an air gunner in a Lancaster and he got shot down and never returned. And another lad was a sailor and he never returned. So we lost two in the village.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And then we had the two men troubled by the Japs.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. A significant time.
HB2: Oh yes. Yes. We, I can understand there was hardship but ours wasn’t hardship it was an inconvenience.
HB: Yeah. Yeah. I see where you’re going. Yes. Yes.
HB2: I mean when, after I got out especially when I joined the air force and saw some of these lads that had come through the war and were still in the air force oh you got a different story out of that altogether.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: And I mean as I said before I just used to sit back and think what sort of men were they to do that? How could they do it?
HB: Yeah.
HB2: You know and here they are as happy as sand boys.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: They’ve weathered the storm and this is it. I mean we had one chap, a flight lieutenant and they used to say to him oh he’s a surly so and so yet he wasn’t. He’d spent six months in the jungle and survived and was now an expert in lecturing others on how to survive in the air force. He’d been shot down and survived and I used to sit there and watch him marching up and down, walking up and down and think what a chap you are. You know. God. Could I have done that?
HB: Yeah. Again towards that time you know you’ve come to the end of the war and the sort of year at the end of the war ’46 ‘47 can you have you got a memory of how your mum and dad sort of reacted when it was as it, well it was finished then. The war was finished.
HB2: Well mums best reaction with my brother.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: My father’s reaction was getting rid of the war agg.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: And being able to do what he wanted to do.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: But dad never said much about anything.
HB: No.
HB2: He, a grandfather and four uncles one of which didn’t returned had all served through the First World War. Now you couldn’t get an old soldier in the village to even mention anything.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: They wouldn’t talk to you. Especially to us kids.
HB: Yeah. So, yeah I mean your dad very pragmatic then, you know, he can get back to his normal farming as he would phrase it and mum has had chronic asthma.
HB2: Yeah. Yeah.
HB: Like you say your brother walks through the door.
HB2: That’s it. Everything was -
HB: Everything was fine.
HB2: Just like waving a magic wand.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Oh I know she used to walk to town, a mile and a half. She’d come back she could hardly breathe sometimes.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Used to frighten me to death.
HB: Was your family much of a church going family?
HB2: Oh mother was.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: I was a choir boy.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Dad didn’t.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: He was too busy milking cows at church time.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: But he would go on special occasions.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: Like harvest festival or something like that but no he wasn’t a church or a chapel goer.
HB: No.
HB2: But as I say I was a choir boy and mum was a cleaner and stoker of the stoves in winter.
HB: Yeah. Do you think your mum got some sort of comfort?
HB2: Satisfaction out of it.
HB: Comfort from the church?
HB2: Oh yeah. I think so. Yes I think so.
HB: Yeah.
HB2: She wasn’t deeply religious.
HB: No. No.
HB2: But you know that’s she had, she had her feelings.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: But oh God how, how many times did we urge these Christian soldiers onwards and sing for them that was in peril on the sea. Oh dear.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: Well that’s just coming up to quarter to two Harold and I think that’s absolutely brilliant. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed listening to that. It puts, it puts a context on it.
HB: Yeah. So I think what we’ll do unless there’s something else you want to tell me about, something you’ve been hiding you know I would close the interview down now I think and thank you very much for what you’ve, what you’ve given us.
HB2: I don’t think I’ve missed much out. No. I think I’ve covered it pretty much.
HB: Yeah. And you’ve got the bits out that you wanted to -
HB2: Yeah.
HB: To bring out.
HB2: Oh yeah.
HB: That’s good. That’s good.
HB2: It’s, it was not all milk and honey but as a kid it was an experience.
HB: Yeah. Yeah.
HB2: At times it was frightening but at other times it was pretty interesting.
HB: Well I’m going to turn the tape off now.
HB2: Yeah right.
HB: Harold.
HB2: Right.
HB: It’s, so it’s quarter to two. Thats lovely. Thank you very much.
[machine paused]
HB: This is a continuation of the interview that we terminated at quarter to two. Mr Beech was just telling me a little bit about his experiences with the Home Guard and what was going on in the villages so I’ll let him carry this on so we’ll have this as the second part of the file for this particular interview. Right, Mr Beech, it’s running.
HB2: At the beginning of the outbreak of war there was a home, there was a look, duck and vanish brigade which was commonly known as the Local Defence Volunteers but which was later were renamed the Home Guard now, made up of locals, usually the farm labourers and these farm labourers used to meet at the pub and exercise in the two paddocks, and train in the two paddocks but they were always eager to go on night manoeuvres. Now night manoeuvres covered a multitude of sins because the biggest part of them were poachers and they used to have, used to have great coats which was usually a World War One great coat that had a big, a skirt inside that used to get sewn up into two pockets. Ferrets in one and nets in the other and off they’d go across the fields and do a bit of rabbiting and some clever devil could also get a pheasant or two but no one seemed to tumble the reason why they wanted so many night manoeuvres but it was pretty obvious. Many a good dinner was obtained through the night. But another they used to train was camouflage and they held an exercise in this farmer’s field who’d got big bushy hedges and big chestnut trees and they were hiding. Well us kids used to go around and say, ‘What are you doing down there Mr Caps?’ Or he’d start to climb a tree and somebody would tell you in no uncertain terms to clear off. ‘What are you doing up there?’ So, in one, in one instance we were ushered out the field.
HB: Oh dear.
HB2: So, [laughs], as kids I think some times in the war we were very much a pain in the backside.
HB: Right. Well, yeah thanks for that. I do think that’s worth, worth just recording particularly getting the old rabbits and pheasants for the pot so we’ll just terminate this particular one at 1.55. Thanks again Mr Beech that was really interesting.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Harold Beech. Two
Creator
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Harry Bartlett
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ABeechH170302
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-02
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Julie Williams
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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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02:37:39 audio recording
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Pending review
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
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eng
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Sound
Description
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Harold Beech could see the activity of several airfields and witnessed stricken aircraft flying back to stations near his home. He also witnessed a crash and describes how he hid in a Lancaster, with the help of the engineer who was billeted with his family and was able to watch the activity of a Bomber Command station closely. His grandmother adopted an aircrew from RAF Faldingworth, but one day they did not come for their usual visit and were never seen again. He describes how the village always pulled together and he described the make do and mend plus the effect of rationing. He also recollects the arrival of evacuees in the village.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1943
childhood in wartime
crash
evacuation
home front
Lancaster
military living conditions
prisoner of war
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Wickenby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/335/3498/PSzuwalskaW1510.1.jpg
2e6242f277e30976d0a903e8ed41648c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/335/3498/ASzuwalskaW150910.2.mp3
bad2c71d058d0aa84ead68fac89a2896
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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Szuwalska, Wanda
W Szuwalska
Wanda Gawel
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Wanda Szuwalska (- 2020, 2793043 Royal Air Force). She travelled to Great Britain from Poland and served as a clerk and a driver with 300 Squadron.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-09-10
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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Szuwalska, W
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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SC: Make sure that that’s — This is now recording. So, I’ll start this by just introducing both of us. We’re conducting this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre Archive. The interviewer is myself, Steve Cooke. The interviewee is Mrs Wanda Szuwalska.
WS: Szuwalska.
SC: Yep. And we are at your home in [redacted] West Bridgford on the 10th of September 2015. Can I ask you then to start wherever you want to, even before the war started and tell us what your memories are of going into the RAF.
WS: Yes. Poland was, until the Occupation, four hundred and twenty-three years and when the first war started, in 1914, which we celebrated in this country, hundred year anniversary of this war. Poland become, in 1920, a free country. And there was a lot of lands left, not used, whilst Poland was under the Occupation because the people did not want [unclear] lands, went out from Poland and live in France. So what happened when Poland became a free country, descendants of those people came back and tried to obtain their land and sell it. And my grandfather with his six brothers and one sister, bought land, a lot of land and divided it before — because all of us. And we built a little village. There were seventeen houses because there was somebody else and we lived at a farm. I’ve been born on the farm. And we’ve been working on the farm. The life was wonderful. School was [unclear], to got to school, [unclear] and happy – we were very, very happy there. And in September 1939. 1st of September. From ‒ suddenly the worries. You see, the communication wasn’t at that time like it is now. Internet, telephones, anything. We had a paper and some had a telephone. And not telephone only, radio which — a little one. Not the sort of thing that you can hear, only, but — The war started. Hitler attacked Poland and completly ruined [unclear] little town. And then, all our army moved from west to east because we had a pact with Russia that they will not invade us. And all the Polish Army went to the East. I shall never forget — seventeen of September 1939, about three o’clock in the morning, we heard a lot of something noise. We woke up. Looked through the window and there was Russian tanks. Going on the road, because we lived very close to the main road there. And we found out that Sovietin, which was Stalin, dictator, invaded, invaded the Poland. Just made the pact with Germany. Invaded Poland. So. All our army was taken by Russia. By the Russian soldiers. And they’d been taking to prison, to Russia, Katyn and there was hundred and — I believe, there was hundred and twenty thousand Polish Army killed in mass grave in Russia. Now. On the 10th of February 1940, suddenly two o’clock at night, knock to the door, Russian soldiers come, and say, ‘You’ve got a half an hour to get ready and we are taking you somewhere that you have better life.’ And there was a sledge outside with the horses and we had to — The officer told us what we have to do and two young soldiers, not more than probably eighteen, nineteen, left in the house to, that we don’t escape, that we —. And I was [unclear] and these two young men told us what to take with us. They knew better that where we’re going that we knew. There was five of us. I was the oldest at sixteen. My youngest brother was only seven or eight. My mother completely lost it. Think she didn’t know what to do, but father kept it calm. So these two young men say, ‘Take the flour. Take some meat what we had preserved. Take blankets.’ Take, you know, everything like that. ‘Warm clothes because you’re going somewhere that’s —.’ If it wasn’t because of them, I don’t know how we will back. Anyhow, they took us to the station and put us in a wagon. A cattle wagon that was separated and eight people into one. Sort of like a platform and another one. And we started — we left our station on the 13th of February and we travelled for about four or six weeks, north, to Russia and we came to Kotlas, River Vychegda, and there, there was Arkhangelsk. Right to the North Sea. And then when we get from the train, we get into the sledges driven by horses and for three days we were going through frozen river and so many people were left in some barrack on the riverside. It was a barrack built and we’d been left in the barrack. In those barracks then, twice as long as my home and my room here. And they had only about half a metre for each person. And there was built, like a platform, so much away from the, from the ground. And we didn’t know why we’d been left so many in each place. But what happened. When they — April — spring came — start coming. All the, all the side of the — there were plenty of woods. They’d been chopping woods and putting them down the river and they were going to a place where they cut them and make the — something of this wood, sort of — So what happened, when the winter came very quickly, some of those big pieces of wood, you know, old trunk, were frozen into the river, so we had to dig them out from the ice because if they move with the ice, they would do a lot of damage to the riverbank. So that’s what we work. We all had to work. I was sixteen, already seventeen because I was born on the 18th of January 1923, so I was already seventeen and I had to work. And when we work, we got one rouble and a pound, one, one kilogram of bread, who works. But only twenty grams when the people, they don’t work. So my father work and I work so that was we could get some bread. And we get a little money to buy some soup. [sighs] The soup usually be made with the dry fish, which you never know what it was. [laughs] But it was very good, very salty and very tasty, so my mother could put more water to it so we could share for everybody else. And we just lived there. We didn’t know what’s happening in the world but we got sometimes some news from the boat that was travelling up and down the river. And of course I was young and flirt with everybody and see the boat and see somebody. We found some news. And then we got news that there are some Polish soldiers in Katowice, into one city. And then I was, well I was the oldest one and I had to do everything because my mother wouldn’t let my father to go in case he disappears or he lost his way, so I was — It doesn’t matter if something happened to me. So I, I went there, with one friend of mine, a young boy, my age, quite clever and we find out that we, that war started between Germany and Russia and officers came a few days later to our barrack and say, ‘You are free. And you can go wherever you are.’ So going the other way, we had a convoy, we had — We be looked after. But then we’d been left there on our own. You’re free. No money. Nothing. Not knowing that at all. We have to make our way. Find out that in south of Russia, Uzbakistan, the Polish army is being formed by General Wladyslaw Anders, and we have to go there because there is a big camp for all the people who came from Siberia down to south. We’d been travelling wherever we could walk. That’s why I see some people on the television now, how we walk, how we got on to some train. How we had to sleep on the station. And you sell everything what we had. Or simply begging for some bread. But I must say that the Russian people themselves, just people on the street, they were very good. They were sympathetic with us. And we travelled thus. So we found out, then, when Hitler advanced on Russia, Stalin wasn’t prepared for it. So he asked Mr Churchill to help. So Mr — Our diplomats here in, in London, the diplomats who escaped from Poland when the war started, said to Mr Churchill, ‘Tell Stalin to release all those Polish people from the prison camp and they’ll be the best fighter for Hitler.’ And Stalin went for it. That’s why we’d been released. Free to join the Polish Army so we can fight. Fight Hitler. Which which Polish Army proved that they could be — That they fight. So we went all this to this, to this, travel. Some people got lost. One lady lost her arm trying to get onto the train. Fell. It was tragic. It was always like you see in the war story. But now it’s better organised I think. And we got — I managed to get to the Army because I was already nearly eighteen. So it was. My youngest brother went to little Cadets, also. And we got into British uniform, and we serve and Russia wanted that we fight from the East together with the Russian. But General Anders was — He was in a Russian prison camp. He knew exactly what the Russia is. So he insisted that we travel to the Middle East, join the British, and American, and we were in a British uniform, because British — Britain gave us uniform and food. So. So we travelled. So of course he managed to get us and we travelled to the Caspian Sea to Pahlavi , to Persia. Which is Iran now. And then from there we travelled to Tehran and there were camps and we prepare, all the drills and things like that to get into the war. Now. I can remember very well, we’d been approaching on the 1st of April, to the Pahlavi, to the Persia, and we’d been so happy singing all hymns and different patriotic song, that, that we are free now. That we’re out of Russia. And somebody — We stood there — Because looking — Getting into the port, and somebody said, ‘Look. What are you singing for? This is the 1st of April. April’s Fool.’ And everybody went so quiet. We were frightened. And maybe it is April Fool. We don’t know where we were approaching. Where we were going. Maybe we were going to another prison or something. And then somebody started laughing, ‘No, no. We are going in the right place but it is April Fool.’ 1st of April 1942.
SC: Three.
WS: No. Two.
SC: Two. That’s fine.
WS: I joined the army in ‘42. And we train. All we do in the Middle East, we train to be prepared. There was different courses of everything and driving for the women and all sorts of special learning. English. Many languages. And in 1943, suddenly appeal came from Royal Air Force to, to our — Everywhere. If anybody would like to join air force because Battle of Britain which absolutely, now as you know, even — Then. So many forces, air force was damaged. So my cousin, who was there in Polish Army, advised me, ‘You go to Britain because there is quicker from England to Poland, than wherever we will be when the war finish.’ And I joined. And I came to England. Straight away I started to learn, language, and of course all advice. I must say this, this is a bit funny but I must say it. We learned, what, that Britain is very intelligent, well-educated country. Industry. Everything like that. You know Britain was always on top of the world. And we’d been told that all the British ladies are slim, tall, sophisticated. Always hair done. And we came from Russia. We ate everything. We’d all been a little bit podgy, you know, so, ‘Don’t eat too much.’ All the time. And you know what? We even got a lipstick, free. In forces, we got a lipstick, so we must use lipstick because that is how this English ladies look like and so we haven’t got to look any different. Okay. We just arrived to, in the port, into Liverpool. Liverpool. Five o’clock in the morning. So we all went ready. All lipstick. All saying, ‘How does English ladies look very, very sophisticated?’ [laughs] And suddenly, you wouldn’t believe it, we saw the normal ladies, going in overalls, having the curlers in the hair and with a bucket and mop, because they were coming to clean the ship, where we arrived to. And we laughed and laughed and laughed because, because that’s what we were told was completely different. [laughs] But it wasn’t different. It was just like normal. We travelled to so many countries, we knew all people that were sophisticated, well-bred, in the yard there were working people. I mean for us, it was normal how the world is. Anyhow, that is by-the-way how it is. And then we came from Liverpool to North Berwick near Edinburgh to be there before they allocate us. Naturally while we’d been staying here and there, always learn English or some typing or whatever. And then we were sending to Wilmslow near Manchester. There was a big camp. That we changed our khaki uniform to blue uniform. And, on several, on some interview, somebody asked me, ‘Why did you wanted to change khaki uniform to blue uniform?’ And I say, ‘Because it’s nicest. Better thing.’ I didn’t mean only because I wanted to be in air force, I was just saying, as a woman that it’s nicer, nicer to wear blue than khaki. And that was a laugh and I got a lot of applause because that interview was with a lot of people. I think it was in Faldingworth. And then after Wilmslow course I was allocated to 300 Bomber Squadron. That was a Polish Squadron. Ziemi Mazowieckiej. And I was there as the Clerk GD, Clerk General Duty. And I work on the flying control but not talking to the planes that they were going away. There was [unclear], a lady who spoke, but my duty was to get information about weather, because on every aerodrome there was a caravan standing there and getting every hour, a weather. Because the planes, the Lancaster were there. The biggest plane. The nicest plane there is, Lancaster. And it was very important. Yes I forgot to mention. Yes. And then you see, because they had to know. Usually, usually six or seven people in that plane. And I usually do General Duty there. Getting the information about the weather. When they came down, then it was take-over by me. ‘You go to dispersal.’ So and so. And what the section was advised to go to their dispersal because after a plane landed, they usually, drivers were going, usually women doing this work. Going to dispersal. Got airmen into car, well it was a little sort of lorry, and took them to the Briefing Room and that was my duty. And I was there serving ‘till the end of the war. Meanwhile my, I met a young man who actually I knew from Poland, and he was trained to be a radio operator on Lancaster, my husband, Jan Gawel. He flew seventeen operational flight, bombing, bombing Germany and two, another — I don’t even know how to say the other place. Well he done nineteen flights altogether. He was — The Gawel family, they all had a heart problem, that is the Gawels got a heart problem. He is a Gawel, yes. And he died very young, just as I say. Not even aged sixty. We got married in Faldingworth in a chapel. The air force chapel. Faldingworth is in Lincolnshire and there is something going on and I will be there in Faldingworth on the 26th of, 26th of this month. I’m going there, I’ve got an invitation to be there. And, I’ve been several times to Faldingworth. That is my station. So, then we had to — Now. We’d been demobbed and also we’d been left almost on our own. And there was no such a lot of organisation like it is now, they help. You can go somewhere. There’s a service centre here, here, here. Nothing. And we were left. So what are you going to do? Where are you going to live? English people were very, very good. When you walk in and say, ‘Have you got a room to let?’ I remember my husband was still flying in Thirsk and we walked to one house and it was a council house. Mr and Mrs Heal and with a son, and we say, ’Have we got a room?’ I had already a little girl, Jadwiga. And she looked at us and you know, I cannot I cannot believe to — Now, they had a two bedroom and one room downstairs and a very big kitchen-diner and they let us to have a bedroom and a room downstairs and they, two of them with the son, lived in that kitchen and the son had put a small sort of, like a settee-bed, so he slept in this kitchen. At that time, it didn’t mean anything to me, but when I think now, how those people was helping us, I just can’t believe — I’ve got quite a big house for me and I live here alone and a lot of people are coming to this country and there is [unclear] to take them, as you know.
SC: Yeah.
WS: Would I do anything like that? You know, it’s terrible how the church — How the world change. Anyhow, then we had to move. So every airman who was de-mobbed, got a suit and a raincoat, something like that for the civil life and fifty pound. Well fifty pound was lots and lots of money, because my husband had three more friends and they all put this fifty pounds together. For two hundred pounds and paid deposit for a house. 120 Blue Bell Hill Road in the district here in Nottingham and they lived — And they all moved. We had a three-bedroomed house. Three bedrooms. So. We lived in a small bedroom with a child and then in one big bedroom, two gentlemen and one attic bedroom, one room. And they lived — And the agreement was, at that time, I’m telling you, accommodation and food for one week was two pound. Two pounds. [laughs] Best we stop and sell up. So they agreed that instead of — They were paying me. Asked one pound a week. And I should, they should live there and I should cook and feed them for one pound and that another pound, a cheaper way. So after a year, they get their fifty pound back. That was all agreed. Well to earn a little bit more money, instead of them taking, the kitchen was very small, there was no washing machine, like it is now. Then they were taking to the laundry, good money to small house like that, and they had the socks to, to darn, so I darned each hole for tuppence and I used to say, ‘I will wash for you. And dry and press.’ And they’d be, instead of paying to the laundry, taking, that’s what I earned the money to keep this going. And that was our life. Then my daughters went to school, I had two daughters, Jadwiga and Alicja, and they went to school in that very poor district and what happened, at that school, they got the lice. You know what the lice are? In their hair and I just couldn’t, I just couldn’t believe it because we had these lice in Russia and everywhere. And that was terrible. So I used to sort of save money as I could. I can cook very well. Not like my sister, like his mother. As, very good. I cook sort of very cheaply and I fed those people, those men. They didn’t mind because two — For whatever we went through, anything was good enough. A little bit better, it was something. And I managed to send them to private school. It was two pound. I think it was two pound a month, two pound a week. I forgot. Something to this private school, because of these lice. I couldn’t bear any more lice, what they went through in Russia, things like that. And, but that is, that is my story. There is nothing more to say because life in England was completely different. We got the job [unclear]. When I wanted the job, somebody advised me, ‘Go to the factory where they make clothes.’ And there was this small factory. A private — And Mr Davis ran this factory and I came to this factory but of course there wasn’t like this you have so much weeks to learn. You had to know. And I said to this manageress who gave me a job, that I can machine. Never never seen an electric machine in my life but I knew how to — [laughs] I knew how to use the lockstitch machine but that was probably with the treadle and things like that. So when I put my foot on this treadle on the electric machine, even if it was moving, I would be miles away [laughs] really, but again, in a factory, the girls was marvellous. They help. You know. Especially when they see there is a foreign girl, they help. In no time, I was earning quite a good money. Piecework. Everything was piecework, which I agree, piecework absolutely. And, at the end of the day, I worked there thirty-three years, so, at the end of the day —
SC: What’s the name of the factory?
WS: Davisella. And it’s still building there, on the, Davisella Ltd. Mr Davis was the owner. That was a small place. We didn’t have more than about two hundred people. And we had all department. We had the design room, samples and machine room, finishing room, dispatch and all this they used. An absolutely marvellous business man, I must say. The only thing is, he didn’t have the private pension scheme and at the beginning I didn’t know why, but then I found out that the private pension scheme run like this, if I declare that I want to put two pound a week for my private pension scheme, the firm had to put the same amount of money and he was such a — He didn’t want to do this private thing because he didn’t want to pay the money. Which of course. I don’t know how else could have done. Anyhow, at the end of this, my career there, I was the factory manager and Head of Production and the funny thing is, we had a manager before me, Mr Fiat. He was well-educated, he was also Jewish. Speak very nice. And the girls on the floor, they understand me better although my English probably weren’t. And I remember Mr Fiat said, ‘Girls, if you’ve got a surplus of shuttles, give them back to Wanda because you should allow, only have six, no more.’ When he spoke, ‘Wanda, what he mean surplus? What does —‘ There were some girls couldn’t — didn’t know what surplus [unclear] ‘If you’ve got too many. If you’ve got more than six.’ ‘Okay.’ They understood me better with my broken English than that man, but that was, that was very funny. You know, I loved, I loved my girls. And I’m still in touch with those girls after we finished work. How many years ago?
Other 1: Twenty.
WS: Yes. And I — On the telephone. And sometimes we meet here. We are trying to meet here again, that I cannot manage very well, so here is my nephew. They can help me, you know, and bring something to give [unclear] or something like that. [laughs]
SC: Right.
WS: So, because I’m not, as you know, I’m ninety-two, be ninety-three in January, so for me it’s a bit difficult, you know, to get running around. I think I have told you everything. At the end of the day.
SC: You’ve certainly taught me a lot. You’re a very, very good communicator.
WS: I don’t know what else to say. That’s all.
SC: Did you go back to Poland very often?
WS: Oh yes. I went to Poland, I — We couldn’t go, we couldn’t go to Poland because Poland wasn’t a free country after the war finished, without an agreement in 1943, Poland was — that was Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, they sold Poland. Yes. To Stalin. Churchill believed Stalin, whatever Stalin said, he believed Stalin. He never found out what Stalin was anyhow. So, to go back to Poland, you have to take the British Nationality. And, I took it, of course we had to pay for it. I took the British passport and I went to Poland first time with my daughter, it was in 1962, I believe.
Other 1: Two daughters.
WS: Pardon? With my two daughters. 1962. I had some problem on the border. They didn’t like us who lives abroad. They didn’t like us. On the board things. Polish part. And say, ‘Why did you come from, to Poland?’ So I said, ‘I came to show my daughters beautiful country, my part of the country.’ And then I done something, I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. Oh, I went in car and I — We had to buy the vouchers for petrol, and I didn’t know anything about it and I, I run out of the petrol and stood near the petrol where people were very good — they go, brought me some petrol, so I get to Vrotslav. And then I bought a lot of, enough vouchers to last me for this petrol. And when I’m leaving Poland, they stopped me because I had too many vouchers and I say, ‘Oh you wouldn’t believe it.’ I said, ‘Well I — why I’d done it. I cannot take it.’ I say, ‘Well then I will rip it.’ ‘You cannot rip it.’ And I say, ‘What do you do?’ ‘You shouldn’t have them.’ He wrote a — Silly question. And I, I was thinking, ‘What am I going to do with them? How am I going to do it?’ So I just, I remember the bribe, yes, bribe you say. I just had some dollars and as I put some dollars inside this voucher and I say, ‘Well you get rid of it.’ And so he see there are dollars and he took this. And he said something to me. ‘Didn’t your government advise you of everything, that when you go to Poland, how you have to behave, what you have to do? ‘ And I remember, I was so, it was terrible, I was absolutely — I say, ‘You mean my government, no, my, British government, because my government should be here, free government in Poland.’ I don’t know, but they didn’t arrest me because what do they want with the women? I mean they — the men didn’t go to Poland for a long time. They were frightened because one of very good pilot of 303 Squadron, of the Battle of Britain, Skalski, Stanisław Skalski, he is famous. He is everywhere in things like that about this fighter. And he went to Poland for his mother’s funeral and he was arrested and he was kept for six years in prison because he flew here, for the Battle of Britain. Oh there is, there is books about it, I mean he is famous. So, but I was so mad, but they didn’t do anything wrong to women. They didn’t want a woman to keep in the prison. What women are. And that’s what I, going to Poland, to Krynica [?], I’ve got a lot of family in Poland, about, all together about thirty-three people. But I’m forgetting now all the younger, but I’m still in touch with my cousins in Krynica [?] and in Nowy Sącz.
SC: Whereabouts in Poland is that? North?
WS: Krynica, [?] Górska, is in a Polish mountain. Right on the east, er, south of Poland. Krynica [?].
SC: Okay. South-east.
WS: It’s very famous. At the moment something is going on there. And then Nowy Sącz is not very far from there but — and very close, there is a Polish, there is a salt mine in Poland, that is, the salt mine is on the register of UNESCO. Yes, I’m saying right thing?
Other 2: Yes.
WS: I must say this one. Now. One King of Poland married the Hungarian Princess. And her name was Kinga and when she came to Poland, she, she bought to Poland her dowry. Her dowry was, so she took her ring and wrote to the mine and say, ‘I bought you a salt. Dig there and you’ll have a salt.’ And that is the salt which you which you dig and you have got to think, ‘I’ve got even [unclear]’ [speaks in Polish] And salt. And what happened, when my great-granddaughter was born, that I have got four picture there, I have only one great-granddaughter, and when she, when my granddaughter told her husband, he’s German, and my granddaughter is living in Germany, she’s — she said, ‘What name?’ And she was telling her husband this little story about Kinga giving Poland this salt mine, this village [unclear] and my granddaughter’s husband says, ‘Kinga. We name her Kinga.’ And I was over the moon. You know, that he just brought this name from the little — is it a story or, sort of, I don’t know how you call. You know I’m forgetting some. I don’t —
[Wanda speaks with other people]
WS: So, you see that’s a little, again what I’m adding to my life. My life is —
SC: Yes.
WS: So full and I’m working and I’ve got a lot of medals and a lot of things like that, because I work in social, in every organisation, Scouts and whatever it is, you know. Always doing something. Is there anything else? I think I told you everything.
SC: So you’re working in lots of organisations now.
WS: Oh yes, I mean there is — you see, again, we had a lot of organisation. By being taken to Russian prison, coming and being together, service being together. We like to be together. So when we came to the civil life and started, we got all, and we started to have organisation. There was Scouts, there was all the military, there was Polish Air Force Association, there was Combat — you know, Combat Association. There was a lot of — and we’d be always together. But what happened, our children never join us. Now they could be two story. We didn’t encourage our children to opt to join us because we were full of spirit, we are doing everything, but I think we started from nothing and we’d been about twenty-five, thirty, and we manage. Or even forty, sixty. We managed to get together. I don’t know why our children cannot do it. I’m doing everything in my power to sort of say, ‘Join us. Join us. And see what we’re doing.’ But I’m afraid, the life is everybody is very well-off. They can manage to go for a holidays. They can have car, caravans. They can they can go all over the place. Even my grandson, he goes to, first, three weeks to America. We didn’t. We didn’t have any money. So we were happy to be together. We build a Centre. We bought two very good house to share with the [unclear] and we didn’t get any help. We build a church from all our money. And we’ve been very — for instance, I can give you [unclear]. We built the church, and I was earning that time, twenty pound a week. I give hundred pound to build a church. So that was my five weeks’ wages. Can you imagine anybody who earned at least two hundred and fifty pound a week, that is approximate, can you imagine anybody giving one thousand two hundred and fifty pound for any donation. Nobody. They’d rather go for a holiday. You see this is the difference. And nothing can be done about this so we haven’t got any organisation at all. There is only Scouts and Girl Guides, but also not, we had a very, very, very big jamboree about four weeks ago. There was five hundred and forty-seven Scouts and Girl Guides there. And believe me or not, but I was the only one there with this generation.
SC: Gosh.
WS: I managed to get a lady who had the children there and I said, ‘Look, I give you so much money, take me there and bring me back.’ And she did. And it was unforgivable. Unforgivable to see those people, young people there in uniform, marching and things like that. And about a thousand visitors came here, so we had fifteen hundred people in that place, near Northampton. I forgot the place. That was a British Legion place. They rent it us for three weeks for this camp. So I go everywhere. And I’m going to be in Faldingworth next weekend. And then Air Bridge. Saturday Faldingworth, Sunday Air Bridge.
SC: Yep.
WS: In York.
SC: And in October, you’re definitely coming to the —
WS: Yes. At the end of October, we also have a ceremony in York cemetery. There is a Polish war cemetery in York, as you know. And I’m going everywhere, wherever I can. And even if I have to pay, I save somewhere else. But even if I have to pay the full money for somebody to take me there. Sometimes it could be fifty pound.
SC: Yep.
WS: Sometimes they say, ‘I take you for thirty pounds.’
SC: Yeah.
WS: Some say, some more, then I get somebody else or something like that. I have to pay a lot of money. I can’t have a car. They took my car away. They took my licence away. And —
Other 2: Last year.
WS: Pardon?
Other 1: Only last year.
Other 2: Last year. She has —
WS: I mean, went to hospital —
SC: Let’s not go there. Right.
WS: Nothing happened. They told me that my heart condition doesn’t let me to drive and I feel the same. As you know. Am I different since last year?
Other 1: No, but you can’t see it. It’s there, but you can’t see it.
WS: Oh, I, I —
Other 1: It’s an aneurysm.
WS: I, still it’s a year and I still — I cannot. I cannot forget it. I haven’t got a car. Since I had a car, since 1956. And now suddenly I haven’t got a car.
Other 1: It was before ’56.
WS: No I think I bought it —
Other 1: Oh no, no. Pascha was eighteen months. Yes, ’56.
WS: I bought my car in 1956 and I remember it very, very well.
SC: It was when I was born.
Other 1: 375 Consul. Black.
WS: Yes.
Other 1: I remember it well.
WS: Yes. That was my first car.
Other 1: Red seats. Bench seats. Column change. Yeah. I was four. I was five.
WS: I don’t know, but since then, but that was something to have a car over — but since then, I had a Morris 1,000. I had a Mini. I never had —
Other 1: A Morris 1,000 Convertible.
WS: Convertible.
Other 1: They went to Poland in it. Two, three women.
WS: Oh yes.
SC: Wow.
Other 1: In 1963.
WS: The, the, the boot was open and I had some cushions there and my youngest daughter was lying there keeping her legs on my, on our seats. Older daughter was — Oh what have you been doing? And some boys, little boys going on the pavement and we’re going, ‘Daddy. Are they going to build like that in Poland?’ You know, there was something for everyone. [laughs] Alicja was sitting there with her legs up on our seat.
Other 2: You had a Volkswagen.
WS: I also had a Volkswagen. Everybody said Volkswagen is a very good car. I went to Poland in my Convertible. I didn’t think if I went in Mini, I can’t remember.
SC: No.
WS: I go to Poland. And my Convertible, Morris 1,000 Convertible, was alright. Everybody —
Other 1: 558RMU
WS: Yep.
SC: Gosh.
WS: And milkman is coming. Milkman is coming. And say, ‘Have a nice holiday. Where are you going?’ I say, ‘To Poland.’ ‘With this thing? Aren’t you frightened? My goodness.’ I don’t know. We went to Holland and they say, ‘Welcome to Holland. Where are you going to stay?’ ‘We’re going to Poland.’ With this, you know, they called it because it was Morris 1,000 Convertible. And you know, we went there and came back and nothing happened. We were going to Poland in my Volkswagen 1,300. And my, what do you call, [Polish word]?
Other 1: J563011
WS: Oh [speaks in Polish]. So. I managed to get to Poland, to Vrotslav and I say, ‘Can you repair this?’ And they say, ‘Yes.’ But I knew how much it cost because I asked somebody there. But they didn’t charge me. Only about, how they charge Polish people. They charged me the same as I would pay here in England. And I say, ‘Why?’ And I quoted the name of the gentleman who has got the same thing. And he said, ‘Now look. If you went to the hotel and you waste of two days’ holiday and it cost you much more. So if that happened in England, you pay this hundred pounds so you have to pay hundred pounds.’ And they will say, ‘We’re going to work all night to get it ready for you, so tomorrow morning, and you can sleep in our house and tomorrow morning you have a car ready.’ And it was ready. When I came back, even you told me that they’d done a very good job.
Other 1: They re-wound it.
WS: They re-wound it.
Other 1: Completely.
WS: They done a very better job than [unclear]. So you see there’s such a lot, a lot of things. Oh.
Other 1: It — No, you had the Morris 1,000, then you had the grey Mini C567BR8, ‘cause I had it afterwards. Right. Then you had the Volkswagen. Then you had the blue Mini. But I don’t remember the registration.
WS: [laughs] The funny thing is my daughter from Germany say, I say, ‘I’ve got a new car.’ ‘What car?’ I say, ‘Blue. Blue.’ And Jadwiga, again. ‘I want to know what car.’ ‘I told you I’ve got a blue car.’ And she said, ‘Mama. I never believed that you could say silly things.’ And I say, ‘Ah, I got it blue because I wear blue suits.’ I was talking about everything I wear. Always hat. Blue hat, blue car and that’s nice.
Other 1: All she wanted was the name.
WS: She wanted — and I didn’t, I didn’t think it matters, as long as it’s a blue car. [laughs]
SC: Blue. Yes. These, these journeys must have been easy compared to the journey you’d made from Poland that you’d described all the way through to Iran and —
WS: Yes, that was a pleasure journey where I was going. I mean I enjoyed every minute. Even something gone wrong, I never was — I never even worry when something gone wrong. I remember, in East Germany, there was still East Germany, Communist, and my car gone, that was a Volkswagen. And I stopped. ‘You can’t stop here.’ I say, ‘Well I can’t go, I haven’t got — My car doesn’t go. Something wrong.’ And this soldier. German soldier. ‘You can’t stop here.’ And I say, ‘Well what can I do? I just, just had a drink of water and I can’t move.’ So, because I had a rack, roof-rack, yes, because that was not very, not very big thing. So. I was thinking, ‘My goodness. Somebody can come and steal something.’ But no. I had about three or four soldiers round the car. All mad. Standing there and I never been so safe in my life, in East Germany because they thought I may be a spy.
SC: Gosh.
WS: So they guarded me. And that was good for me. I say. [laughs] You know it’s such a — and I never was frightened of anything at all. I don’t know how I got through it. I just don’t know.
SC: You have some inspirational stories and you’re obviously very resilient and resourceful.
WS: I never thought anything can happen to me, you know.
Other 2: I don’t think you do when you’re younger.
SC: No.
Other 2: You don’t have any fear really. As you get older you see things. Dangers.
SC: Yes.
WS: Yes and you know, I don’t know how it’s going now. I don’t think it’s the same. For instance, my nephew. You know, since he was about fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, he knew everything about, about motorbike, Lambretta. How to put it together. How to take all — into the pieces. A lot of round here and I sometimes looked at him and say, ‘How do you know where to put them?’ And he knew everything. You know. He knew better when he was younger than he knows now, I think. [laughs]
SC: Yes.
WS: Wasn’t it like that?
Other 1: [laughs] Yes.
SC: I’ll stop the machine now.
WS: Okay.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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ASzuwalskaW150910, PSzuwalskaW1510
Title
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Interview with Wanda Szuwalska
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.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:48:43 audio recording
Creator
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Steve Cooke
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-10
Description
An account of the resource
Wanda Szuwalska was sixteen years old when Germany invaded Poland. The family was deported to Siberia by the Russian army. They travelled for several weeks to the Arkhangelsk region where Wanda then worked as a logger. When war intensified between Russia and Germany, they were freed and she went to Uzbekistan where General Anders was forming a Polish Army. She joined up and travelled to Pahlavi, Persia, now Iran, and then on to Tehran where she trained in an Army camp. She then joined the Royal Air Force, came to England and was allocated to 300 Squadron where she served as a clerk, directing aircraft on the ground and was a driver. Wanda married Jan Gawel who was also in the Royal Air Force and they had a family. After the war, she worked in a clothing factory in Nottingham. After her husband died, she married again. She is a member of the Polish Air Force Association and has been awarded medals and honours for her involvement in Scouts, Girl Guides and social organisations.
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
Polskie Siły Powietrzne
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1942
1943
Contributor
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Cathy Brearley
Carolyn Emery
300 Squadron
dispersal
displaced person
ground personnel
love and romance
RAF Faldingworth
round-up
service vehicle
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/347/3515/PWatsonPHC1701.2.jpg
1a6dd5111450a588dbfdd0228f3bae68
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/347/3515/AWatsonPHC170123.1.mp3
73879fdb831b3fe83b9751209444c0e4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Watson, Peter
Peter Henry Clifford Watson
Peter H C Watson
P H C Watson
P Watson
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Peter Henry Clifford Watson (182029 Royal Air Force), his log book and a photograph. He flew operations as an air gunner with 101 and 115 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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
2017-01-23
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Watson, PHC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JM: OK [pause] OK, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jean MacCartney and the interviewee is Peter Watson. The interview is taking place at Mr Watson’s home in Clontarf, New South Wales on the 23rd of January 2017. Peter, you mentioned you were born in 1924 but I don’t know quite where. Where was it?
PW: I was born in South Wales, a very — in a little village near Cardiff.
JM: Right, and did you do all your education in Wales?
PW: I did part of it in Wales and then I went to King’s School, Worcester for four years. That’s a cathedral school in Worcester.
JM: Right and does that mean you were part of the choir there?
PW: I was. Well, yes, a little bit. I was what? I used to sing in the choir.
JM: Right, right and was that the, the latter part of your education?
PW: Er, well actually when the war started they evacuated the whole school to North Wales for one year and then they brought us back to Worcester, and then I finished my, er, matriculation in 1941, and left the school there and then started a training to become an engineer until I was old enough to fly.
JM: Right, OK, and so that was until 1943?
PW: ’43.
JM: When you enlisted?
PW: Yes.
JM: And whereabouts did you do your enlistment?
PW: We did it in London.
JM: Ah, the London Recruitment Centre?
PW: Yes.
JM: Right, OK.
PW: There were about a hundred of us in the, in the one intake and, er, I might mention every one of us wanted to be a pilot. We all wanted to fly Spitfires and shoot down Germans, and get Victoria Crosses, and then end up with a romance with the group captain’s daughter but it didn’t happen that way [slight laugh]. And after a couple days we were told, whether we liked it or not, we had to be trained as air gunners because there was a surplus of pilots and a shortage of air gunners, and that was the last thing we wanted, but we volunteered to do what we were told and that’s what we did.
JM: Yes, indeed and where did you do that? After you, you had your recruitment in London and then after that where did you go?
PW: Yes. We went to, I went to Bridlington in Yorkshire, just for ground training then flying training started at Stormy Down at South Wales for several weeks. And then we went to a thing called an OTU, um, Operating Training Unit, in Tilsbury [?] near Sal— , near Sal— near, er, oh dear, North Wales anyhow. And then we crewed-up and then finally went to a four — four-engine — you were trained on two-engine aircraft, then you finally became a crew member and a seven member crew was formed at the, er, four-engine training centre in Lincolnshire.
JM: Right.
PW: And then because we — when we were sent to our first squadron, er, it was known as a special duties squadron because we carried an eighth member of a crew. Instead or seven, we had eight. The eighth member being a German-speaking person, who had radio equipment, who was carried on board our planes to interfere with the German night fighter system.
JM: Right, so this is 101 Squadron?
PW: 101 Squadron.
JM: And this is in February ’44.
PW: Yes. Ludford Magna.
JM: Yes, yes and because that had the ABC equipment, um, is that right?
PW: Airborne Cigar.
JM: Yes, so that was, um, so you, you were in part of those flights there then?
PW: Yes, I did, I did I think it was thirteen or fourteen flights from Ludford Magna and then we were selected to go and form a new squadron, essentially with Polish airmen, at a place called Faldingworth, about twelve miles away, and we finished the rest of our tour with 300 Squadron.
PM: Right, so, um, how long, how — in the 300, 300 Squadron is the Polish Squadron is it?
PW: Yes.
PM: So how long were you in that squadron for?
PW: I think, I think it was about three months between the time that we’d — I think we’d done, I’m not sure, about fourteen or fifteen at Ludford Magna before we went to Faldingworth and we ended up doing the balance of thirty three trips with, with 300 Squadron.
PM: Right, OK. And so that took you through then to 1945?
PW: Well after, after we had finished our tour we had to be grounded for six months and I was selected for some reason or other to, to go to 460 Australian Squadron at Binbrook, in a non- non-operational unit, because they were doing a special — they were trying to introduce radar operated rear turrets in Lancasters and Halifaxes and’ um, I was part of that study to introduce that and it was called Operation Village Inn. But after that, after six months, I got orders to go back on operations so I went down to Number 3 Group in, in, um, Cambridge, and I forget the county’s name of Cambridge but it was Cambridge, and I did two daylight trips with, with 115 Squadron and then the war ended and then we went on to, er, taking food to Holland and then bringing back prisoners of war from France and Italy.
JM: Right, so that was all part of 115?
PW: Yes.
JM: Yes, right. So 115 was probably what? From about May, May ’45 was it?
PW: Yes, yes, 115, September ’45 until, er, September ’46.
JM: Right.
PW: And then, um, funnily enough I went to Leconfield for a two-week training course where your, your father was but by then it was just a post-war training and they were doing training for gunnery leaders, and then I was promoted to gunnery leader of Number 15 Squadron at Wyton. And that’s where I stayed until I was demobbed but I was a flight lieutenant by then. But then at the end, as a post-war economy measure, every war-time officer was reduced in rank from flight lieutenant to flying officer [slight laugh] so I was finally discharged as a flying officer.
JM: Mm, OK. So that was a little thumbnail sketch of, of your service there.
PW: Yes.
JM: Perhaps we’ll go back and, um, just take a look at each of those three sort of postings. What? You said you had about fifteen missions in 101, um, was that more over Ger— over Germany particularly or —
PW: Yes, essentially Germany and then —
JM: And was your, was your plane dropping bombs as well as jamming or —
PW: Oh yes. We were essentially a bomber but we just carried this extra man and we were honour bound never to talk to him about his job, even though he ate and slept with us, we were honour bound not to because of the secrecy but the aircraft were very obviously — you could tell which aircraft they were because they had big aerials forward of the mid-upper turret and, you know, they could pick us off easily and what we didn’t know at the time was that the Germans were able to hone in on our equipment. We didn’t know this until after the war. They were able to hone in on our equipment and pick us off and, er, hence our losses at 101 were much higher than the average. In fact, I think it was Nuremburg, which was the worst of all the night flights, when we lost 108 aircraft, 96 over Germany and I think twelve over England afterwards and, er, it was, it was a dreadful night but there we are. But yes, that was it.
JM: So, um, that meant, obviously, you were going into some pretty densely populated areas I presume?
PW: Yes, yes, yes. Places like Nuremburg, Munich, Augsburg, Schweinfurt, Brunswick, Berlin. I didn’t do Berlin but Berlin was one of the very populous, very common areas. Hamburg in particular, Kiel canal, where, incidentally we went to bomb the martialling yards but, er, accidentally dropped our bombs a little bit away and it, it landed on the German battleship the Admiral Von Scheer and sunk it. So, I mean how lucky were we? And when I say ‘we’ — the squadron. One of the planes from the squadron dropped its bombs in the wrong spot and sank the Von Scheer.
JM: It wasn’t your actual plane?
PW: No.
JM: Right, OK, well so instead of getting a bit of a bollocking they would — there was a bit of a cheer I suspect.
PW: Yes. Yes.
OK. Yes. Yes. So, um, OK. Then when you moved from 101 to 300 did your whole crew move together?
PW: Yes, yes.
JM: So your whole seven stayed together.
PW: The eighth member stayed at 101.
JM: Eight. OK and was your crew, were all of those eight people, er, English or did you have any other —
PW: We had one Canadian.
JM: One Canadian.
PW: Yes and our special operator later on was, was an Aussie, yes, called Beutel, B E U T E L, Graham Buetel. Yes.
JM: Aha and then in your — you had a number of missions in the Polish Squadron? What sort of — was the emphasis — was there any particular action?
PW: We were just, we were just part of the main force but we didn’t leave 101 Squadron at Ludford Magna until two weeks after D-Day, and D-Day was a particularly interesting project for us because we, we were put onto a special flight to try and imitate a naval fleet going from Dover to Calais to try and make the Germans think that that was where the invasion was going to take place, and we went round in, in sort of square circles for about six or eight hours to try to imitate — dropping window stuff to make the Germans think that that might have been where the invasion was taking place. Whether it succeeded we never found out.
JM: So that was still part of 101?
PW: No, er, that was part of 101 and it was the last but one I think before we left, yes.
JM: Right OK and then in, um, Polish Squadron just normal —
PW: Just normal.
JM: Normal routine flights there. Day and night or just —
PW: No, all night stuff and we took a lot of Polish people as extras on flights prior to them taking over the — on their own flights. You see, the Ger— the Polish airmen were complete for one air— for a particular aircraft. It would all be Polish, but before they did that we used to take them as second dickies and things like that, to get them trained and also to control them because they were a very uncontrollable lot, in the sense that their, their hatred for Germany was so great that there were rumours, and I think it happened, that after bombing in Germany they would go down at ground level and try and shoot at all the searchlights with the rear gunners but that was the sort of emotion that existed on that station and it was very prevalent.
JM: Yes so —
PW: But mostly I think of my flying is with 101 because that’s when the dramas started and I did have a couple of dramas.
JM: As in?
PW: Well, I was extremely lucky. In the first flight that we made we got attacked by a Focke-Wulf 190 over the, over the target, and we got hit a little bit and we hit him a little bit and he came back for a second attack on us. We fired at him again and we saw him — well, we saw him going past at the side of us after he flew to one side and another aircraft watching from the other side, flying parallel with us, saw the pilot bail out, so we were unofficially given the credit of having destroyed him, and it was a particularly nasty experience because we also got, we were hit in many places but none of us were personally hurt and we, we thought after that flight we wouldn’t last more than two or three more flights because it was so horrendous, you know. But then the second night, that was at a place called Schweinfurt. And we went to bomb Schweinfurt because they had a lot of production of ball bearings at factories which they needed for the for U-boats, and the U-boats were giving curry in the Atlantic at the time, and they thought if we could bomb the ball bearing factories the U-boats couldn’t go to sea and they couldn’t sink our ships. That was the sort of theory. But the second night was a night where I’ll always remember because over the target we were coned by searchlights. There would have been fifty of them at least and, er, an explosive, a shell, blew, blew us underneath us whilst we were on our bombing run and it completely destroyed all our hydraulics, and also we were hit with another bomb dropping from an aircraft above and we had about six feet of our wing tip broken off. And luckily our pilot, who was wonderful, managed to keep us stable and fortunately all our engines were OK, but we ended up with our bomb doors open with, with some incendiaries that we couldn’t release and, and we couldn’t come back and land normally. We had to come back and belly land because we had no wheels to put down, we had no flaps and we didn’t know even whether we’d make it because we, when we hit the ground we had all these incendiaries on board, but fortunately they dropped off and went off like fireworks while we skidded on the ground for about half a mile and then finally came to a stop, but we, we never thought that we would survive that night but we did. And, do you know, one of the first people to turn up afterwards while we waited for a crew wagon to pick us up was the Salvation Army canteen and they offered us cups of tea and cigarettes. Oh, they were wonderful and, er, but the emotional part of that is that I had to go into hospital for a short while and while I was there my crew went off with another gunner in my place and they never came back. Well they came back but they crash landed and were all killed so there was I, on my own, and the thing that, I suppose emotionally, and I never forget and it’s still with me, er, we shared a Nissan hut with two crews, our crew and another crew, so after my crew disappeared I was the only the one there with the other eight members of another crew. Two days later they disappeared so I was one, one person in a room of sixteen, in the middle of winter with nothing else to do, and the emotion, and knowing that all your crew were dead. And, er, you didn’t have group therapists in those days. You just had to put up with it and that’s sort of stuck with me ever since [sniff] mm.
JM: Goodness me and, and then they expected you to go off and just happily join a new crew and get on with it.
PW: Well, once, once you were — you were seen as a jinx. If you were a survivor of a dead crew nobody wanted you, er, but there were so many times when crews needed other people that I was eventually put with another crew and within a few days we were all good mates and I, we spent the rest of our tour as a crew very happily. Yes.
JM: And is that the crew — and that crew was also all —
PW: They were all English.
JM: English. Which crew was it that the —
PW: Well the pilot of my first crew was a Sergeant Roy Dixon and, er, I didn’t know until later that the night that he died his commission came through as a pilot officer. He was just a sergeant before and he also got the Distinguished Flying Medal. And I have a photograph here of our aircraft when it landed I could give to you if you like.
JM: That would be very interesting to see that.
PW: Incidentally, in the photograph because of security reasons they ob— obliterated the two aerials.
JM: Of course yes, yes.
PW: Yes. That was, er, that was life but it was tough because our losses and, in fact, at Nuremburg we lost five aircraft. That’s a lot of aircraft in one squadron.
JM: That’s a lot. That’s a huge amount, yes. At least from all those subse— those first two missions were the first two that really —
PW: Blooded us.
JM: Yes, well and truly, and then from there on in you, you and your crew stayed intact for the rest of the course of the — all your other subsequent missions, which is so pleasing given such a horrendous, horrendous start for you. Yes indeed. And, um, and then on that basis I guess nothing compared with those early experiences from 300 and 115 really?
PW: No, no, no, they were much easier. I mean, you couldn’t go on and you couldn’t get away with what we got away with there more than once I’m sure, but, er, and luckily by the time we landed from the flight, because we were flying with our bomb doors open and no flaps and so forth we landed when, after everyone else had gone, had landed. Sometimes, or very often, when you got back to your aerodrome there were twenty other aircraft waiting to land and you hung around for perhaps an hour before it was your turn to land but by the time we got home we were about an hour late —
JM: You were a straggler.
PW: And we went straight in but we weren’t allowed to land on the runway. We had to land on the grass which really was good because it was wet and soaking and —
JW: Made it slippery [unclear]
JM: And flame-wise it was good and we didn’t — we anticipated we might blow up because of the bombs we still had on board but they dropped off instantly, fortunately, and by the time we came to a halt — and I don’t think there was much left in the petrol tanks [slight laugh]. But on our first trip I might have mentioned that the — when we were attacked he hit one of our fuel tanks and set it on fire but we were able to extinguish it with an extinguisher system that they had in the aircraft, which is wonderful. And one of the big, one of the big loss reasons — there were two reasons we lost a lot of aircraft, one was collisions, because when you had seven or eight hundred aircraft all going within half an hour of bombing a place you had to be more, more careful than ever of bumping into anyone else and the only times you could see them was when it was moonlight. Other times, all you could see was the red, red exhausts. The exhausts of the Merlin engines are red hot and the only thing, that’s the only thing you could see on a flying, plane flying alongside you, but you had the rear gunner, the mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator and the bomb aimer all looking because they didn’t have anything else to do until they got to the targets, you see. I mean, the bombers would — the air gunners were looking for fighters but the others were also looking for fighters but as well to make sure you weren’t bumping into any aircraft and we had a couple of near misses. But that was the way things were.
JM: That’s right. Right and with, with this crew, um, you stayed together right through in 300 and 115. Did you stay together for the post-war stuff as well?
PW: Yes. Yes. The war finished in, well in May and then in August we were going to go out of the Far East because Japan was still, still active in the Far East but then in August of that year the war ended in Japan, so we never went but we were kept as a squadron. The Air Force kept a fairly strong force of Lancasters and Halifaxes for at least two years and one of the reasons, probably never written in history, but England was frightened of Russia coming west and we, I think the Government, decided we’d better stay powerful, so I didn’t get de-mobbed for two years after the war had finished. But by then of course I was a gunnery leader in 15 Squadron but we had very, very little to do and very boring in the end.
JM: Yes, so you were actually doing what? Training flights or —
PW: Training flights and things like that. And, er, when the immediate war finished in Europe though we were quite busy. We would fly to France and pick up released prisoners of war. The Americans flew them from wherever in Germany, and Italy, and around there to France and then the Royal Air Force used the Lancs and Halifaxes to fly them back to England. And I, I think we had seventy thousand prisoners we managed to get back. Then after that we flew out to Italy to bring similar prisoners of war who’d been stuck in Italy. We flew them back to England. And we loved those trips because we’d never been abroad and it was the first time we’d flown into a place where it was really hot weather and we could buy apricots and peaches. [laugh]
JM: Because again you were flying in, in spring summer sort of by this stage so —
PW: Yes and really the gunners were really only like only flight lieutenants, yes.
JM: Because you actually had no —
PW: Nothing to do except being sort of stewards for the people and of course it was very uncomfortable where they could sit down in the aircraft wherever they could find a spot.
JM: Well that’s right because I presume they tried to put as many people as possible onto those flights to maximise the, the value of each trip so to speak.
PW: Yes. That’s right. It took about five or six hours to get from Italy back to England and that’s a long time for people not in very good condition.
JM: Well because a lot of them would have had injuries, um, sickness and being in prisoner of war camps they would have been in pretty poor shape generally I would assume.
PW: And, er, quite a lot of them had been originally before the war out in India and they were on their way back to Europe in 1940, ‘41 I guess, and they got caught in North Africa and from there they were taken prisoner by the Germans and sent to Italy, so some of them hadn’t seen England since 1935.
JM: Goodness me.
PW: Yes and there was one, there was one old tough old fella there and we put him up in the nose so he could see the white cliffs of Dover and we flew — he started crying. He couldn’t, couldn’t resist. It was very emotional.
JM: He couldn’t not [emphasis].
PW: No.
JM: Goodness me. When you went did you — was it like a day trip for you in as much in that you went straight back in, loaded the servicemen, and then flew straight back out again or did you fly in and have a day off?
PW: Oh we always had a day off.
JM: Day off, right, OK. So you actually got to see the immediate surrounds of the airfields where you flew in then?
PW: Yes, yes.
JM: What memories do you — any particular experiences that stand out there?
PW: [laugh] Funnily enough, funnily enough, um, the first time we went in it was a place called Pomigliano and it was very much a basic aerodrome, and on the end of the runway was a local road, and when we went in the first time we saw a horse and cart [slight laugh] going across just as we were going in and we missed him fortunately. That’s one thing I remember. The other thing was that, you know, being young and, and flippant, we were only what? 19 or 20 years old. We all liked to smile at the local girls but they all had to be chaperoned and, er, they would always have a mother or father or a brother with them so we had to be very careful there. The other thing is that the fruit that we had never seen before, oh it was beautiful and, er, also, you wouldn’t believe it, but even then the, the Italians were flogging watches, you know, wrist watches, and we’d never seen, we’d never seen this sort of post-war stuff that the Italians were doing and, er, funnily enough, and I suppose it’s OK to say this, but our navigator had a girlfriend and he bought her a watch, and because of customs finding out, he put the watch inside a condom and then put it inside an oil filter in the aircraft until we’d got back to base. So whether, whether he got oil in the watch I don’t know but that was one of the funny things that happened. You were asking for unusual memories and that was one of them [slight laugh]
JM: Yes, gosh that’s — it would have been interesting to know whether he got it out in one piece or not undamaged. Yes and so you had those flights and then subsequent to that you had the Manna flights as well?
PW: Yes.
JM: And how many runs would you have done?
PW: I think we only did only about three.
JM: Right.
PW: Yes, and the first time we went over we had to come back because the airfield or the — I think it was a sports ground, where it had been arranged that we should go and drop, it was full of people and we realised that we would, we’d be bombing people with tins of flour and potatoes and things like that, so we came back and waited until the Germans cleared the thing and then we went in and dropped the food. We weren’t very accurate because we’d never been trained and one lot went into the greenhouses. That didn’t appeal to them very much. But you saw people on, on the roof tops waving sheets and clothes and things just to welcome us because we had to go in at ground level. And one thing that I remember one of the last trips we made was on the VE, er, VE night when there was to be a big celebration in the, in the mess, have a party to celebrate the end of the war, and we had flown so low that we evidently hit the branch of a tree because when we got back we found our bomb door, when we opened it, had a big scar in it and it was a piece of tree in it and so our ground crew were very upset because they were going to miss the party because they had to repair it overnight [slight laugh]. Isn’t it funny how you remember these little things.
JM: Yes, absolutely. And so were your trips there all to the same place in — when you were doing these drops?
PW: Yes.
JM: Which was where?
PW: It was Juvincourt in France and Pomigliano which is virtually I think Naples, in Italy. Yeah, they were was the only two places we went.
JM: The Manna drops I’m talking about.
PW: Oh, the Manna drops. No, I think, I think two were to The Hague. I think one was Amsterdam or Rotterdam. It’s very vague now, yes. I have a photograph of, of stuff being dropped whilst we were doing training in England. We did train for a few days to know how to do it and I’ve got a photograph if it’s any use to you.
JM: Yes, we’ll have a look at that afterwards. Thank you. That would be very interesting. And so then, um, with 115 I believe there were a couple of notable planes in that squadron. Were you ever, um, did you ever hear, were you ever close to any of those pl— notable planes or just —
PW: Well, it was an unusual squadron, um, because with the development of radar we were able to, we were able to go and bomb and have the bombs released from a ground station instead of ourselves and we were able then — I think our last trip, I think it was to Hamburg or somewhere and we were able to bomb half a mile from the front line British troops, and there was a bridge or something they wanted bombed and, and, er, I can tell you now. Can you just pause for a second? [pause] To The Hague and one to Rotterdam. That is food dropping. Then we went to Juvincourt to pick up prisoners, ex-prisoners or war, two trips there, and the last was to Brussels and then we went to Eng— to Europe after, to Italy, Operation Dodge it was called. We went to — oh, Bari but it was actually I think it was Pomigliano. Bari is, is the capital of — it’s on the Adriatic side of Italy. And, er, after that that was the end of our really useful work.
JM: But you were saying about [unclear] the, um, with the bombing with the — from the ground the — that’s using the G coordinates is it?
PW: It was called, um, it was called G2 I think. We flew in formation of three and, er, only one of the aircraft had the equipment on board and as soon as he dropped his bombs we, we dropped visually on his bombs. We saw his going. We knew they were due to go and as soon as he felt his go he pressed a button and we would release ours.
JM: Right and which —
PW: Hamburg I think it was.
JM: Hamburg. [background noise of pages turning] I’m trying to think back. ’45.
PW: Yes. 115. Just April ’45. Just one month before the end of the war. ‘Intense accurate heavy flak,’ I notice here. So that was at Bremen, not Hamburg, I beg your pardon.
JM: Right.
PW: Bremen and we were damaged by flak. It was very, very accurate. But sometimes, you know, you’d feel a bump then — well we didn’t knew where it came from but when you got back home you might find a few holes in your fuselage and, er, on one occasion, it’s rather amusing, the only bloke who got damaged was our bomb aimer and he got, he got damaged. He got a piece of shrapnel into his bottom [slight laugh], not seriously, but he was the only one who was hurt. But frostbite was a problem for the gunners and that was what put me into hospital, um, when they went off with another gunner. It was at Ludford Magna. I’d got a lot pain. It wasn’t severe but it was enough to stop me because you had to be one hundred per cent fit before they’d allow you to fly. If there was anything slightly wrong with you they used one of the spares to take your place. Particularly important was the breathing because, you see, up at above ten thousand feet you had to go onto oxygen, and one of the reasons why the losses were so great with rear gunners was it took so long to get out of a turret, if you had to get out quickly, because if he was on oxygen he’d have to disconnect, then find a bottle of, a bottle of portable oxygen, connect that up then [emphasis] get out of his — and what? He had four pairs of gloves on and, and trying to get out was hopeless. I would say two or three minutes at the earliest he could need to try to get out a rear turret and in the meantime, of course, by then it could be too late. And on that trip to Augsburg that I mentioned we got hit, as well as damaging our hydraulics, er, the bottom floor of the aircraft was blown out and the rear door, which we used for getting in and out of it, was blown out as well so how we, how we got back I don’t know to this day. And he, and Sergeant Roy Dixon, our pilot, he was all of twenty years old. You know, when you think of it —
JM: Amazing, amazing.
PW: So I, so I have a lucky star.
JM: You have indeed and were you a mid-upper gunner most of the time?
PW: Most of the time I was mid upper, on a few trips I was rear gunner. Most of the time I was mid- upper, yes, yes.
JM: So you would have been able to —
PW: Oh that’s an easier place to get in and out of. It doesn’t quite get so bitterly cold because you got a little bit of heat coming back. The people at the front were warmed by the engines. They had a warming system and so forth but the, the rear gunner was the coldest of all.
JM: That’s right.
PW: And I might mention one of the big losses was that the Germans introduced a very clever idea, instead of firing from wing guns, they put a forty millimetre cannon into the fuselage pointing upwards, forty-five degrees, and they would come up underneath and fire at us, and a forty mill— cannon you only need a few things to set the petrol on fire and that would be the end of the aircraft but, you see, we couldn’t see them because we couldn’t look down. The Americans had a belly gunner but we didn’t. We had nothing. We were blind. That’s right.
JM: So that’s why quite a lot of losses were due to that experience.
PW: Yes.
JM: Yes and with, um, your crew after the war did you maintain contact?
PW: No, no. Well you see we came out to Australia two years after I retired from the — well I was demobbed from the RAF and, er, they were all scattered all over the place. We sent Christmas cards but they eventually disappeared. I never kept up after I left, left England in May ’49.
JM: May ’49.
PW: With a three month old baby.
JM: Right. OK.
PW: And when we got on board, on board the migrant ship, the people at the top of the gangway they said, ‘OK Mr Watson you go down that end of the ship and Mrs Watson and the baby you go up that end.’ So three weeks of the trip we were separated. Of course we met during the day but at night — but of course instead of two people in the cabin we had four because they were — anyway we were very lucky to have got that migrant ship, very lucky.
JM: And that was May ’49, so coming, stepping back a little bit, so you were demobbed in, um, ’47 so between, er, from the time you were demobbed did you work or —
PW: Yes, I went back to the company that was training me as an engineer.
JM: Where was that?
PW: In Cardiff.
JM: Cardiff right.
PW: Yes and [slight laugh] I was earning, I was earning five shillings a week, would you believe it. It’s one of those things, like an apprenticeship. I think they called it an articled pupillage? Anyhow, my boss was a wonderful man because in the meantime I had fallen in love with a lovely girl and wanted to get married but on going back to getting back to getting fifteen shillings a week or five shillings a week I couldn’t do that and he smiled at me and said, ‘Look, you get married and I’ll see that you’re alright.’ And he did [slight laugh] and I was with that girl for fifty-eight years and she died in 2004.
JM: Right, right.
PW: Yes and her best friend had lost her husband, and she and her late husband, and Audrey my wife and I had been friends for forty years, and when Audrey died Ruth, the other, the widow, and I got together and we’re together now. And it’s been twelve very happy years.
JM: Very good.
PW: And that’s her there.
JW: That’s her there. That’s right. And so you got married and then made the decision to come to Australia. What prompted that decision?
PW: Er, well first of all I had developed asthma. I’d had a little bit of it as a kid but it came, it came back as a post-war thing I think and somebody said, ‘Why don’t you go to a warm climate?’ Not, not only that I was in an industry that was going to be nationalised, and everyone was very depressed, and even in 1949 rationing was still on. You still had to ration petrol and that sort of thing. And Audrey, my wife, had an uncle, who was very prominent in Australia, and he came to London on a conference and while he was there he came down to see his sister, who was my — was Audrey’s mother, and said, ‘Look if you come to Australia I can assure you we can get you a job and we need new migrants.’ That’s how it all started and never looked back.
JM: Never looked back. No, so obviously —
PW: And our three-month old baby is now sixty-seven and we produced as Aussie but she died in a car accident when she was sixteen. It’s one of those awful things that you have to put up with. So that’s my story as an air gunner.
JM: Yes and that’s — and when you came, when you migrated did you come here to Sidney?
PW: No, sorry, we migrated to Perth.
JM: Perth right.
PW: Yes. We were there for seven years and then I got a job with Caltex Oil as an engineer and I was there for thirty-two years. Not in Perth but a couple of years after I joined them, er, they promoted me to a manager of an installation in Adelaide, and so we moved to Adelaide and we were there for ten years, and after penny died ( she was killed in Adelaide) the company said, ‘Why don’t you come to Sidney and start again.’ And my wife was a very plucky mother and she was fretting terribly and though she resisted coming she knew it was the best thing to do, so we did it, and that was 1967 and we’ve been here ever since.
JM: And did you come here to Contagh or — straight away?
PW: No we were three months in — the company had a flat in Martin Place, Martin, no not Martin. Oh I forget the name of it. Anyhow, Win—
JM: Oh, OK.
PW: And we were there —
JM: Market Street.
PW: Market Street. That’s it, yes. Right opposite the park.
JM: A brilliant park there.
PW: Yes and whilst we were there Audrey was looking for a place. She was the searcher for a place to come and live and she was offered this place and it had been on the market for five months because, as you can appreciate, young people can’t afford to live here and old people don’t want it because it’s so steep but at the time you buy you never think you’re going to get old, do you? So anyhow we bought this place for, would you believe, thirty-five thousand dollars [laugh] but that’s how things were.
JM: That’s how things were back then. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right, yes. So right and as I say — well you just stayed with Caltex through to, until you finished?
PW: Well, I was sort of given a package. When computers came in and they wanted to get rid of numbers and all the oldies, I was fifty-nine by then, they said, ‘Would you please go.’ Sort of thing.
PW: So I retired from there and I started a business of my own which I’m still running.
JM: Oh OK, right. Oh very good, very good, and that’s just a sort of consultancy business I presume?
PW: Yes, yes. It’s to do with finance broking, yes, but for twelve years, the first twelve years after I retired, I actually had a pump agency for an American company and I eventually sold that and with the proceeds I started a broking company ,which I’m still running.
JM: Still running. Goodness me. And going right back to the very beginning when you enlisted, way back in ’43, what was the decision, was there any decision in particular that directed you to Air Force rather than Navy or Army?
PW: Yes, yes. I’d always, you know, wanted to fly and so you vol— put your name down as a volunteer and I guess they kept your name on until you were old enough to be called up. And, and they said, ‘Are you still keen?’ And I said, ‘yes’ and I went up to Birmingham for a test, a medical test, and back to Cardiff and they said, ‘You’re fit enough. We’ll call you up next week.’ And they did [laugh]. It was a great disappointed when we were told we had no choice.
JM: To be an air gunner.
PW: Nobody wanted to be an air gunner. They called it the lowest form of animal life in air crew. But still there we are.
JM: And what — you said you’d always wanted to fly. What was the attraction, of just being —
PW: Well I think, um, the Battle of Britain and the success of our, of our planes then inspired young people like myself and, you know, you were going through the romantic age of what do you want to be when you know you’ve got to go? And Air Force was more appealing than the Army or the Navy. Yes, my sister went into the Navy. Ruth, my partner, she was a WREN. Yes, so we were all in it. And, er, actually we were, before that, in 1941, it’s the only time that Cardiff ever got bombed badly. A few times, I remember there was one bad raid and I was stuck in Cardiff while the raid was on but it was OK. But then I had to walk back to my little village, which was seven miles away, in the dark because the power, all the power had gone off. When I got there I found all the windows and doors of my house had been blown in and what had happened was that a stray bomb, because I mean who would want to bomb a little village, a stray bomb the Germans had dropped about a hundred yards on the other side of the road, on the golf course that we faced, and it had blew it all in but my family had gone to the back of the house into an air raid shelter that they had there and they survived. But we had to evac— evacuate our house because it was unliveable until it was repaired. So we went down to a place called Llanelli, which is about fifty or hundred miles west of there, put up with some friends and eventually got back into our house.
JM: Right. And your family had built the air raid shelter in the garden?
PW: They actually converted the back veranda with steel and stuff and, you know, and when the raid was on it as only my mum and my sister. I was in Cardiff, and my eldest sister, and my elder sister sorry, and my two sisters and my mother and another cousin, who was expecting a baby, but she lived in London and came back to Cardiff, came down to Cardiff to have her baby because she thought it was safer and she ran into — but they survived.
PM: Yes, yes but even in Cardiff though and out, and I appreciate that you’re saying your village was seven miles out of Cardiff, but even then the, um, the normal procedure was to build some sort of — at that time was to build an air — some sort of shelter?
PW: Something safe. I think the main thing was with those sort of things was that falling beams from your house or your roof. You know, I mean, you hear of people hiding under the dining room table because that was protected but, um, and some people put an air raid shelter in their, in their garden, and the Government provided a galvanised iron sort of thing. It was a very easy thing to do but it was the safe, the safest thing you could do.
JM: Mm, yes. So that would have — that was just another sort of —
PW: And it was the only bomb that had ever dropped in the village. Because, you know, I would imagine the like, having the experience later on, you sometimes had the odd bomb that didn’t drop off and you went and released it and it didn’t matter where it fell so long as you got rid of it. So I think that’s probably what happened. But of course the local press said that they were after the, you know, they put all the experienced people have said, ‘Oh yes, well they knew something we didn’t.’ It was wonderful.
JM: Oh dear yes, yes, but as you say that was the only time that Cardiff was actually —
PW: Heavily, severely bombed as a city. Other times it had bits and pieces blown, er, thrown at it but this was the Baedeker [?] raid but it wasn’t successful in the sense that it wasn’t concentrated, it was spread out, but what had happened was that they — it had effected the power supply and everything was in dark and, you know, in January that’s really dark and when I had to walk home seven miles in complete darkness —
JM: And that was January ’43 was it or ‘42?
PW: ’43,
JM: ’43, yes.
PW: Sorry no, ’41, yeah, two years before I went — I was only a school boy.
JM: Right, right, so ’41. Mm, gosh. So that was a very, much of a little bit of a taste of what London was experiencing and all the other cities in England , so —
PW: Yes, yes. I think what had happened was that they stopped bombing London. I think they thought they couldn’t do any more with London and I think they were going to concentrate on shipping ports to try and starve England. That was — they really wanted to starve us into submission, you see, with their U-boats and they were very successful and very close to succeeding I think at times. But anyhow Cardiff is a port, you see. Cardiff is very much like Newport, our Newport here. They produce steel, they produce coal and about the same size but there you are.
JM: Yes, yes. That’s right. Yes, and in terms — you mentioned you didn’t maintain any contacts, er, long term ongoing contacts with your former crew members.
PW: No.
JM: Did you, were you aware of any associations, um, to link up with, you know, in Australia here at any time? Did you became a member of RSL or join in and then subsequently — about the only other organisation would have been the Odd Bods Association because you came here to Sidney in ‘67 I think so —
PW: Oh I’d been in the RSL right from day one and of course I joined 460 Squadron old boys here because although I didn’t operate from 460 I was sent to the Squadron and we used their aircraft for training on this thing called Village Inn. Yes, and actually for me it was six months of very easy living because I didn’t have to fly on operations. By then I was an officer and you were in — and Binbrook was a peacetime built ‘drome so the facilities were very, very good.
JM: Yes, so that was sort of a, a far more peaceful, less stressful, sort of period of time for you rather than the stress of the tour?
PW: Oh there was no stress at all whatsoever. In fact it was very easy living. That was the intention to try and defuse you and, you know, so — by the way my second pilot, who I joined after the raid when Roy Dixon was killed, we kept an association afterwards and he, he left Bomber Command and went into the Fleet Air Arm, and finally he was retired, and he came to my wedding in 1946, er, and but then he went out to North Africa doing something with the shipping company. We kept on for a little while but we’ve lost — I’d have liked to have kept — I regret now that I didn’t.
JM: But communication back then is not what it is today.
PW: No, I think that’s right.
JM: I mean between — only being able to post letters that took weeks to, to get anywhere and you couldn’t make phone calls back then because they cost so much money between Australia and, and the UK and, er, not everyone had a phone back then you know so —
PW: But I always felt though I’d like to have kept in touch with Roy Dixon’s family, you know, but, um, I mean I was — although I was in hospital I wasn’t serious in hospital but I was just not fit enough for flying because of this frostbite thing but, um, when Roy was killed in Norfolk he was able to be buried back in his home, near Doncaster I think it was, and but they wouldn’t allow me to go to his funeral because of the, ‘Oh, why you? Why are you alive and my son is dead?’ Sort of thing. I can understand that and of course you also had the problem with people who couldn’t take, couldn’t take it and they refused to fly after their first two or three missions. Their nerves went. And they were very, very severley treated by the Air Force. They were branded LMF, called lack of moral fibre, and they were sent off nasty jobs and got rid of.
JM: Very difficult times.
PW: Oh very difficult. I think fear, fear kept you together and, and doing the right thing by your mates, you know, kept you together.
JM: And I think, from what I understand, that’s what they used that glue to keep those crews together to, to ensure that moral support within the crew all the time.
PW: Well, one of the things that I haven’t mentioned but it is significant is, how do you choose your crew? And the simple answer is that, er, when you were, when you were — during training and you’d finished, everyone was ready to be put together as a crew, they put you all into a hangar one afternoon and there was probably hundreds of us, after we’d finished our training, the pilots, navigators, bomb aimers and so on and they said, ‘Listen boys you’ve got to form yourself into crews. Go and have a yarn with each other and see if you can match up friendships.’ And that’s all it was and it was the most successful system the Air Force had ever used because you were then with people who’d picked you or you picked them and, you mean, you might see one bloke and say, ‘I like that bloke. I wonder if he needs an air gunner.’ Or a pilot might say, ‘Have you got a crew yet?’ If he liked the look of you and I said, ‘No’ or ‘Yes’ and that’s how it went, and you ended up with seven crew, seven members of the crew. One or two of them might have been officers but it didn’t matter. You were all crew together.
JM: Yes, that’s an interesting approach to the way —
PW: Some didn’t like it. It was a very sensible thing to do.
JM: Yes, well I guess it was from the point of view that they knew they were going to keep the crews together so it was important for the crews to each like each other.
PW: Yes, exactly, yeah. And that also built a camaraderie I suppose so you never let your crew down. You were always aware that without you they could be in trouble and each one, perhaps less with wireless operators and bomb aimers, but with pilots and navigators — well, if they didn’t have a good navigator you were in trouble because you’d get picked off. If you didn’t have a good air gunners who picked up enemy aircraft when you should be shooting at him, you know, you realise how important each job was. And, er, and also I found that we were attacked many times but if they find out that you, if you fired at them quickly they would leave you alone because it was awful for them to come in from behind with — you’ve got four guns in the rear turret and two in the mid-upper and you’re firing bout twelve rounds a minute and he’s got to fly into that to shoot at you so he never came in behind you, he came in on a curve. Now, if, if you saw him coming in on a curve and you timed it right and then you turned the same way as he was going he couldn’t get around to shoot you, so if you, if you kept your nerve and did the corkscrew at the right time he’d never get you. Interesting.
JM: Very interesting.
PW: But of course doing a corkscrew when you’re in several hundred aircraft, right?
JM: It was a little bit difficult.
PW: Collision was awful.
JM: Yes. Again comes back to the skill of the pilot and to the lesser extent the navigator.
PW: And more often as not he still had his load on board, his bombs. Never mind. I don’t know how many tons, I suppose four or five tons. I’ve no idea but it was a very heavy load.
JM: It was a very heavy load to take but Lancasters and Hallies were all carrying at that time.
PW: Your husband would be on Hallies I would think?
JM: Not my husband, my father.
PW: Pardon.
JM: My father.
PW: Your father rather.
JM: On Hallies yes. So, yes. So that’s some amazing memories that you’ve shared with me now. I really appreciate your time and, um, your thoughts.
PW: Well, thank you very much.
JM: But there’s probably time to wrap up at this stage. I presume there’s nothing else that you, no particular thoughts that you want to mention. Any other things that you — you mention you do speeches for Probus Clubs so was there anything from those speeches we haven’t covered or —
PW: No I think what we’ve covered is what, what formed my thing. A lot of people ask questions because they had parents or uncles or brothers who said, ‘Did you know Sergeant Jones, so and so.’ You know. But it was a big force, the bomber force, we didn’t — but there we are. I’ve had a very lucky life, very lucky, and lucky in that sense, you know, but and also I was one of the luckiest — we’re not recording now are we?
PM: Yes.
PW: Oh. Well it doesn’t matter but, er, one of the fortunate things was that during the depression of 1935 to ‘38, ‘39 my father retained his job, which was pretty good in those days, which enabled me to be given a decent education and that’s held me in good stead all my life. And that’s why I, one felt that with the education that I had, to have to be an air gunner was a bit degrading because, you know, we were all pipe-dreaming at the time about it. As I said before we wanted to fly Spitfires, the glamour of that, being shot at [laugh].
JM: Yes, indeed, indeed.
PW: But we made wonderful friendships and some of the bravery of some of those fellas was quite incredible. You’ve probably read about it all.
JM: Did any of the — your pilot wasn’t awarded any, um, given any award for bringing that plane home in the way he did?
PW: Yes. He was awarded the DFM but he didn’t know it until he died, you know, when he died it was the same day that his commission came through. So he got the DFM not the DFC. DFM is for non-commissioned, DFC was for commissioned. I got a Polish, Polish award. I forget what it was called now, something, er, but I never bothered with it but it was just some sort of service medal, you know, but there you are.
JM: Very good. Aright well I think we’ll wrap it up if you’re happy with that?
PW: Yes. What’s the time?
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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AWatsonPHC170123, PWatsonPHC1701
Title
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Interview with Peter Watson
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:05:04 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Jean Macartney
Date
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2017-01-23
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Watson was born in South Wales and joined the Royal Air Force in 1943. He wanted to be a pilot but there was a surplus of pilots so he became an air gunner. He crewed-up and flew with 101 Squadron initially, a special duties squadron, and he explains they took an extra crew member who had radio equipment, Airborne Cigar, to interfere with German systems. He describes the first two flights being memorable; on the first night his aircraft was shot by a Focke-Wulf. On the second night, during a bombing trip to Schweinfurt the aircraft was coned by searchlights and was badly damaged by a shell and bomb being dropped from above. He also describes the squadron’s role in D-Day. He later transferred to 300 squadron, a Polish Squadron, to help train the Polish crews. He completed 33 operations. He describes the Operation Manna drops and Operation Exodus, picking up prisoners of war. He was eventually de-mobbed in 1947, by which time he was a Flight Lieutenant gunnery leader. He talks about the discomforts of flying but also the camaraderie of the crews and his distress at losing a crew. They didn’t return when they went on a flight without him. After being de-mobbed Peter returned to a job in engineering but emigrated to Australia in 1949 with his wife and baby.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Kiel Canal
Italy
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Temporal Coverage
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1944
Contributor
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Christine Kavanagh
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
101 Squadron
115 Squadron
15 Squadron
300 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb struck
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
crewing up
fear
Fw 190
Gee
grief
military ethos
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
radar
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Wyton
searchlight
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/953/9531/PLeeJLO1801.2.jpg
6a3515a588aa3dbaca5704aa50ce5c1d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/953/9531/ALeeJLO180911.1.mp3
7207e5a6f1027c84ab2e997b3d6ba125
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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Lee, John
John Lionel Owen Lee
J L O Lee
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with John Lee (b. 1923, 1584484 Royal Air Force). He served as a ground gunner.
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
2018-09-11
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
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Lee, JLO
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DH: And again, right it’s working. I apologise. It’s working now. I can’t see, I couldn’t see the numbers going around. Ok. I’ve got to do my introduction again. I apologise. Very sorry. Ok. Sorry. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Dawn Hughes. The interviewee is Mr John Lee. The interview is taking place at Mr Lee’s home in Shrewsbury, Shropshire on the 11th of September 2018. Thank you, John for agreeing to talk to me today. Also present at the interview is Mr Andrew Lee, son of Mr Lee. Right. Ok. Sorry about that I only just noticed that the numbers weren’t going around. So, can you tell me again, I apologise for, how you came to join the RAF? You were saying that, about the war starting.
JL: I was working as an apprentice decorator in Shrewsbury, and everybody had to register between the age of eighteen and thirty five when war broke out, and I didn’t want to go into the Navy and I didn’t want to go in to the Army. I was a member of the ATC so I enlisted in the Air Force and I was put on the Reserve for a few weeks and I was called, I think it’s May 1942. I went to, reported to Cardington in, to the recruitment place there. Spent a few days there or a week, and went to do my square bashing, initial square bashing at Redcar. From Redcar I was transferred to Locking, Weston Super Mare, and I spent another six or seven weeks there on various courses. And from there I went, as far as I recall I was posted to an airfield at Rednall outside Shrewsbury, and I was only there for a very short time and I was posted to the Isle of Man on a course. I was thinking I was going back to Rednall, but I didn’t go back to Rednall. I was posted to the south end of England. An airfield outside Ilford, and that was a fighter station and I went to night school for about six or seven weeks to learn maths and English, and then they transferred me, or recommended me to join aircrew. Unfortunately, I failed my flying test at high altitude.
DH: What did that test consist —
JL: Sorry?
DH: How did they do that test?
JL: Well, they, they put you in to a big room and I mean, do you know anything about Mercury?
DH: Not a lot. No.
JL: Well, Mercury is something like, that you, they put it in a tube and you have to blow this Mercury and Mercury is very heavy and it registers your heartbeat at different heights.
DH: Yeah.
JL: And obviously they couldn’t understand it because after doing that, because I’d already passed the examination and the interview so they sent me to see a psychiatrist.
DH: Oh.
JL: Because they couldn’t understand it. How I would be unable to breathe at —
DH: Yeah.
JL: Ten thousand feet.
DH: So, what did the psychiatrist say?
JL: So, on my notes there it said, “Not required for aircrew.” So that was, the guy said to me when I went back to the flight he said, ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to finish the war on the ground.’ And then we were posted to, sort of Faldingworth and I was there from ’43 to ’44.
DH: So, what trade did they get you doing then?
JL: Well, we were defending the airfield. Just defending the airfield there and then doing various manoeuvres at the same time around the countryside. You do two days of guarding the airfield and then you would, there were, what they were doing they were this RAF Regiment. They were building it up. I mean obviously it was, we didn’t know anything about it but probably they were, the invasion was under way and they were planning all these things, and of course, you see the RAF Regiment it was classed as a fighting unit but on the ground. They had a Rifle Corps. They had ack ack guns. And they had a various headquarters but it was self-contained.
DH: Before we started talking, before we started recording it you were telling me about how the RAF Regiment came to be formed. Can you explain that again for me?
JL: Well, as far as I know reading the various paper and reading that book it was designed to defend the aircraft. And what it was is when we invaded Germany we would follow the people over there to take any airfields and hold it until it was established as an airfield for us to fly from to continue bombing Germany.
DH: And initially you explained how when the RAF Regiment was formed you were to replace soldiers that were looking after the airfield. Can you explain that again?
JL: I presume that’s what it was.
DH: Yeah.
JL: But, and I was there for the whole of that time. I mean, unfortunately there were some terrible things. Two Halifaxes came in one night in the fog and they crashed about two and a half miles away from the airfield. To carry sixteen bodies out of there, and never even been on a bombing crew.
DH: Terrible.
JL: And I know that because we were the Guard of Honour when they went out of the gates in the hearses. Those were the things that are never published.
DH: No. So, your job was mainly on the anti-aircraft guns.
JL: Yes. We were the defence of Bomber Command.
DH: Ok. So where did you have your training for operating these?
JL: Well, as I say I did a signal course in Compton Bassett for six weeks on aldis lamp and wireless. I did a gunnery course in the Isle of Man. And then later on from Faldingworth we were sent down to Aldershot for a course with the Army because if you can, these traversing on these ack ack guns, they were forty millimetres. They weren’t quick enough to meet these V-1s that they were flying to, over London so we went on another course to Butlin’s Holiday Camp. All these guns were based in the swimming pools that used to be by, at Filey, and you did a lot of gun training there and they adapted the fast traversing gear on them so that instead of them going like that you just turn it a thou and it would go a mile.
DH: Wow.
JL: Because of the speed of these flying bombs.
DH: So, before that you were, obviously they can’t see on the tape but you’re turning.
JL: That’s right.
DH: You’re turning around.
JL: Whenever you went you did two hundred mile. It, it’s complicated to describe to anybody.
DH: Yeah.
JL: But as an NCO you see I was in charge of the gun crew. And in addition to these guns they were also done with electric generators so that you coupled up the gun to an electric generator and it removed some of the men so that you only needed three men to do it. And then you had a big projector which was about two metres square on a tripod, and you fed the range in to that and I, as a number one picked up the flight of the aircraft or the, whatever it is. And you put the information on it yourself and, and then you told them when to fire. And that was all done with automatic. We were trained to do that and then as I say we went down to Kent, and I spent from the second week in June ‘44 to October on the flight path in Kent. And there’s a photograph in that book there which will give you, which my other son got off the internet of how many flying bombs fell in Kent that never reached London.
DH: Wow. Can I take you back to operating the anti-aircraft gun? You know, when, because you were number one and you worked out the height, the altitude of the bomb. Did you do that by eye or was, was that part of the machinery?
JL: Yes.
DH: Did that do it for you?
JL: You know, you estimated. You see, in addition to that we went, there was so much that’s not put down on my sheet there because we were, we went down to Aberaeron, in South Wales for a firing course for ten days. And I mean you were there on the top of the headlands and you were firing live ammunition at a drogue pulled by an aircraft. Target practice. Suicide blokes by this.
DH: Yes. Oh dear. Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, should I?
JL: No. It is. It’s perfectly true. But, you see they’ve not recorded that on my, my sheet.
DH: Right.
JL: I mean that’s when everything was so secretive and —
DH: I bet he used a long rope, didn’t he?
[recording paused]
JL: Somebody says to me that’s a photograph of me but I don’t think it is.
DH: Oh, right [pause – pages rustling] Two, four, five, six, seven. So, at that point in time there was seven to operate it.
JL: Well, there was one on the generator as well. There was a chap in charge of the generator.
DH: So once you cut down to three people operating it what was, what was the jobs of three people?
JL: Well, you had a layer that did the horizontal, and then you had another layer on the other side just to do the elevation. Then you had a man standing on the platform which loaded all the shells in.
DH: Was that automatic or was somebody stood there doing it?
JL: No. No. The spare people used to get the ammunition out of the boxes and pass it, and he used to load it up because it was all automatic. You know, pressed the button and then you were —
DH: And then to fire it was it, was it a lever?
JL: Yeah.
DH: A button?
JL: Well, you pressed a plunger above. That was on a forty millimetre, but I also had training you see as well prior to that on my early aegis like, I mean I’ve done practicing on Lewis guns, on Vickers guns, on Browning guns.
DH: I know the Browning is a hand held but are the others?
JL: Yeah. But you see when you, when you’re on aircrew a Browning gun in the tail end of a Lancaster or a Halifax you’ve got four guns and those were automatic. You press a button on that and you’re getting eleven hundred and fifty rounds a minute. You wait until see the white of the eyes and you press that button and four guns are firing at the same time. And then you get, you get one in the top and you get one in the nose. But —
DH: On the ack ack guns was there much of a kick back?
JL: Sorry?
DH: Was there much of a kick back on the guns?
JL: Well, yes. You see there’s only, you had to learn to change the barrels after you fired so many rounds because you got red hot.
DH: Oh.
JL: And then to do that you had two blokes. The same two blokes. They got they got off the platform and you put a clamper on the front, and then you had a thing like a, there were two people on the back of that so you got three people changing a barrel, and you had to change that barrel in a matter of four minutes, because the one was red hot firing the guns.
DH: How long would it take until you could reuse that one?
JL: Well, we used to do them in under five minutes. It’s, it was quite an experience really, and there was so much you forgot about. You remember some of it bit but there’s an awful lot of it, because you see when we were based in tents on the south coast we spent six, seven months in tents. And because of the blast from the flying bombs it took everything level. So instead of having the gun on the top of the field, you dug out a plot as big as this room all by hand and you put the gun in the bottom of that space. You also dug a hole as well in the field and you put your tents in there so that when they dropped these flying bombs, or they were knocked out and they hit the deck they exploded and it took everything. Blast would flatten everything. So, if it blasted the top there all it would take was the top of the tent. It wouldn’t take the bottom. And these gun pits that we had on this field, you know these kids they go to the coast and they put a hole in the side of the sand. Make that. Well, we did. We dug the sand, the earth out of those, we put the ammunition in there so then we didn’t have to get out of the plot to.
DH: That was a lot of digging.
JL: It was. Yeah. Well, you got in between training we’d got nothing else to do.
DH: Wow.
JL: I mean I’ve seen days, and I’ve not been undressed for three weeks. But I’m not quite sure where that squadron is. It’s 207.
DH: Was that your, was that your squadron?
JL: 2797 Squadron.
DH: Right.
JL: And then we transferred to 20, 207 Squadron when the war was coming to an end.
DH: So, when the guns went more automated and you went from [unclear] people to three people. What, what jobs got lost? What jobs didn’t, were automated?
JL: Well, those people were resting.
JL: You used to do twenty four hours on and twenty four hours off. It was a very complicated issue because you see it was all done with electric. Listen, If the generator packed up you had to revert back to manual.
DH: So, you needed, the generator was for the automated system.
JL: Yeah.
DH: Right.
JL: There is an awful lot to tell really about it. But you see in 1944 August we lost one of our gunners. He got killed with shrapnel. I was twenty one. I had my twenty first birthday there. I was twenty one and one month, and I had the job of bringing the coffin from New Romney up to Shrewsbury by train. It was taken off the train at Shrewsbury and put on the Craven Arms. It was taken from Shrewsbury to Craven Arms. The undertaker met me at Craven Arms. It was taken to this church in Clunbury and put in a churchyard, you know in the crypt in there and a Union Jack on it. And the next day I had to conduct a military funeral at the side of the grave with six riflemen they’d sent up from Hereford, and I had a volley of rifle bullets as he was getting buried. I was twenty one years of age at the time, and the most difficult thing was when his wife said to me, ‘How did he die?’ He was an only son. How do you tell a mother that? ‘Did he suffer?’ A piece of shrapnel went in to his arm and come out of his heart. He died on the way to hospital in the ambulance. That was just one case.
DH: Yeah. When you were protecting the airfields how many anti-aircraft guns would there be?
JL: Pardon?
DH: How many anti-aircraft gun emplacements would there be around one airfield?
JL: Well, there were four of, four of ours. You see normally north, south, east and west.
DH: And could it turn three hundred and sixty degrees?
JL: Well, I presume so. I mean there was so much happened that you were only concerned about yourself and your crew.
DH: Before we started talking you mentioned moving to Brize Norton, and you were the 6th Airborne. You talked about Brize Norton and the 6th Airborne.
JL: Yes.
DH: Can you tell me about that because you told me about them going up on training flights and then that final day when they went up for the 5th of June. Can you explain that for me so it can go on the tape please?
JL: Well, all we did was be there to protect the 6th Airborne Division if paratroopers landed or they started to bomb it. So, we did nothing for three weeks. We sat there.
DH: Yeah.
JL: Ate. Did our training. We used to do various exercises. Gun training. I used to use the spire of a church at Witney to harmonise the guns on. So that, if you know perhaps first thing in the morning to make sure that the guns were harmonised properly I used to use the spire of Witney Church two mile away. Standing up in the air. Then you would put a thing through the end of the muzzle and you had to line it up on the cross with the, to harmonise the guns. But it was, we were doing nothing there until we got moved.
DH: What did you see the 6th Airborne doing?
JL: Well, all we saw them doing was travelling from the camp across to the airfield, getting in the planes and the planes being towed off, and then I understand that they were practicing landing on Salisbury plain.
DH: Was that the gliders though going over?
JL: That was a fortnight before D-Day.
DH: Yeah.
JL: But you see everything was, you see, you didn’t, you didn’t know anything. You were, I mean I, I didn’t know one half of what was on that paper. That my son did that on the interview. On the [pause] that’s a lot of bombs that fell.
DH: It is.
JL: And in the centre of that, the nose of that flying bomb it’s filled with two hundred and twenty tons of TNT and when it drops that explodes.
DH: That’s a lot [pause] You mentioned before we started taping that on that final day with the 6th Airborne you noticed that they hadn’t gone training. Can you, can you tell me about that again.
JL: Sorry?
DH: You said before, before we started taping, you said about the final day when the 6th Airborne didn’t come out for training and then off they went and you, now know it was the 5th of June. Can you, can you tell me that story again, please?
JL: Well, they used to go up every day practicing.
DH: Yeah.
JL: I don’t know where they went. It was only what I was told that they used to land on Salisbury plain. I suppose it was a very intensive landing, trying to pinpoint it. And the one day that they didn’t go up at all they were there all day but they left the camp at about half past three or 4 o’clock in the afternoon and there was a lot of activity going on then. I suppose they’d have a meal and what have you not, and we saw, you know you’d just got nothing to do. You were bored stiff and you could see what was going on. You were a long way away. Probably about half a mile, a mile. You could just see because we were there and the airfield was slightly down in the dip. We were just above them, and we saw them take off at night and we, we know when they came back. Because, my thing that when I went in to breakfast at about half past eight the following morning a man rolled up, a sergeant and a corporal and he’d got a man cuffed to him, and rumour had it that he’d lay across the dropping zone and he wouldn’t drop over the target. It’s only hearsay. I don’t know. But he was charged with treason. Cowardice in the face of the enemy. He’d already accepted his money for jumping and he wouldn’t get out, because what they did in a Albemarle you get so many people who are called danglers. They’re paratroopers, and they’re in the one that’s there but in addition to that they’re towing a glider which has got about twenty people, thirty people in it. Those are Airborne troops and they disconnect the tow rope and that glider glides in to where they’re going to land irrespective of, hopefully they land in one piece. But there were an awful lot of people that got killed because they had accidentally hit trees and they crashed, and that was the end of the [unclear] But this particular chap his nerve went, so I believe and he got five years I believe. I’m not sure what it was. It was the fact that they had brought him back under handcuff because he refused to drop through the, he lay on the D zone, and he wouldn’t move. What they should have done with him was pushed him out through the, or shot him and pushed him out because the sergeant would have, been, because I mean that crew went down, dropped without it’s, it’s, I mean each of the blokes went down but they didn’t take their Bren gun section down with it because he was lying across it and they couldn’t get down and the pilot I believe he couldn’t go around. He’d been round once and he couldn’t go around again because he was in the flight path of a thousand bombers coming through to bomb. He had to come back and bring him back. Bring him back to Brize Norton. And then they brought him back to the 6th Airborne Division. I don’t know what happened. The rumour was he was taken away. He’s supposed to have got five years. Cowardice in the face of the enemy.
DH: And the 6th Airborne were American.
JL: They were. Yeah.
DH: Yeah.
JL: But I mean, we, we didn’t know. That was only a rumour that was going on but he didn’t drop in D-Day so he was what they called, or what we called a live coward. Better than a dead hero. He saved his own life. But [pause] —
DH: When we talked before you mentioned that you shot down a V-1.
JL: Sorry?
DH: You shot down a V-1.
JL: Oh yes. That was the night of my birthday. But my crew did. All we knew is we hit him and he went. He dived. And of course, as soon as these flying bombs, they’re filled with fuel, enough sufficient fuel to reach London but if there’s not sufficient fuel, because it, it will travel so far and there’s about a ten foot flame coming out of the end of it as it’s going across the sky, and when that flame goes out you know that the engine’s not firing and it starts to glide then. It doesn’t drop straight down like that because of aerodynamics. It glides like that and it’s falling all the time. It might go a mile. It might go two mile before it hits the deck. But once it hits the deck it explodes and anything in the way it takes with it the blast. I don’t know much about the blast of it but it, it blasts everything because at the back of us there was a, well we were under canvas there was a big artillery barrage Army artillery barrage. And this is how this chap of ours got killed, because they used to open up at a QE of eight degrees which was almost horizontal, and of course we were in a little dip below them like that. And if it had been possible theoretically for the number four to put his arm up in the air, and he could slow the shells down from these artillery people. He could have caught it, because it was just over the top of your head like that, because they could pick it up at a longer range than what we, ours was a shorter range and it was, it was an experience. And of course, there was so much shrapnel from various things. I mean some people say that it was a blow back from one of the guns and the shrapnel that was flying about. You see the shell left there you see, you only needed a spot of rain to touch one of these shell and it would explode. They were so finely adapted. But they were travelling so fast as well and this, all we know is that this chap was taken away and it was from the crew above us. He was taken away because the shrapnel. I mean I can remember waking up one morning and there were that many holes in the tent from shrapnel [pause] there was bits of shrapnel flying around me, and you’re not even in the front line. You’re in England.
DH: So, could they not, could they not send these off when it was raining then?
JL: Sorry?
DH: You said if a drop of rain fell on it.
JL: Well, you see that would cause a, when a shell leaves the, and a spot of, a spot of rain, it would trigger that and it would ignite it. They’re finely tuned. Whatever it hits, that’s it.
DH: So, how could, how could they be fired when it was raining?
JL: Well, that was just the luck of the draw.
DH: Right.
JL: It’s the luck of the draw. They’re moving so quickly.
DH: So, I know you said you ended up in the Army.
JL: Yes, I went —
DH: How did that happen?
JL: Well, at the end of 1945 the war in Germany finished. Well, we were pulled out of the line then for a rest period. So, we packed our tents up, and we were transferred to an airfield camp at Maidstone for a rest period, and then we stopped there for probably a couple of months. And there was a guy said to me, he said, because I had a weekend off and he said, ‘You’re in the Army from next week.’ I said to him, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You’re in the Army. There’s a, there’s a posting on orders.’ I was coming back to camp, and he said, ‘We’re being transferred to the Army.’ The whole squadron. And of course, I went back to camp, and on the Monday we were all told we were going to be transferred to the Army. We had no option and we were sent by coach up to Weeton, outside Blackpool. There we were issued with Army uniform and it was given to us, and you went in to this hut, and there was a guard with a rifleman on the front of it. You went in through this door and there was a table there. Shall we say there was a table there, and you were discharged from the Air Force and you were marched through the building to the end. There was another table there with two or three blokes round and you were enlisted in to the Army. And then there was another guard on the door that meant in case anybody ran away. And you handed, you went back to the camp and you handed all your stuff in. Grey coat, all your uniform and you, the next minute you were in the Army. And we were there for about four or five days and we were told to get on the parade ground and we were going off to train. Nobody knew where. You couldn’t ask anybody where. So, we went to the station. We got on the train in the station, and we boarded these trains, and you see during the war there were no signposts anywhere. They were all taken down, and there was no sign posts as you went through a station. Unless anybody knew the area, I mean one or two of the blokes said, ‘Well, I don’t know where we’re going,’ he said, ‘But I think we’re going north.’ So, they stopped at a station there and they, they gave us some rations. A mug of tea and a couple of sandwiches to take back into the coach to eat. And we went on again and we ended, we landed up in Scotland at a place called Greenock. We got in the station there and we were put on to coaches and we went to the docks, and as every man got off the train he was given a little piece of cardboard. What they call a boarding card. And what do you think was on the boarding card? Iceland.
DH: No.
JL: So, we were all put on this troop carrier, and we were issued with hammocks. And it’s the biggest pantomime I’ve ever seen in my life trying to hook these pantomimes up. These on the hooks in the boat because people were and of course they were trying to get in there. Got to take your sheet above the dining room. All your sleeping accommodation is above the dining room so you get on the table to get in to your hammock and it’s swinging from hooks. You see these blokes falling. They couldn’t get in there. Anyway, I thought to myself well because it was, it was really late in the evening and anyway I eventually I got in to this hammock. I went for a walk around the deck. I thought well this is it. No goodbye. So, I went around there and I must have slept like a log, because I woke up and it was daylight and the boat wasn’t, it hadn’t moved at all. It was stationery. And I said to this bloke, I said, ‘Where the — ’ I said, ‘Good God,’ I said, ‘Fancy having to sleep up here for the night.’ And anyway, we had a note to go down and get some food, and we had to take these damned things down and do you know where we were? We’d sailed in the night and we’d landed in Ireland. On the coast of Ireland. We’d travelled during the night. Apparently, we had an escort of two destroyers because it was a big troopship. And we went and we landed in Ireland. Out at the docks there and that was the Iceland on the cardboard. Just confusing you see. And we got on a train there and off the train into coaches and we landed up in a place called Warrenpoint on the Irish border at the foot of the mountains of Mourne for two months battle inoculations. That means, you see we were all fit men. All A1 but we’d never done any actual fighting so, they sent us over there to train to go to Burma to sort the Japs out. The war in Europe was coming to an end. And I got injured in Northern Ireland. I was in a military hospital there. All the ligaments and cartilage on my right leg were torn. We were, I must have fell on a rock, over a rock or fell on something. Fell in a hole as we were running back from the beach up to the mountain. But I finished up I was in the hospital and I was there for six weeks and they couldn’t do anything with me and they sent me to a convalescent home. And I was there for five, five months. Couldn’t get it right and they shuffled me from there. I get a military pension.
DH: So, did you go to Burma in the end?
JL: Sorry?
DH: Did you go to Burma in the end?
JL: No. No. The war finished. They dropped the bomb when we were in, the war finished when I was in the hospital, in Europe. And when I was in a convalescent home they dropped the two bombs on Japan and Japan capitulated. And I came back to England. And they sent me back because I couldn’t get out. You see, when I, they give you a number. When that number comes up that’s you can be released. I mean whether it was forty six million or forty six thousand I don’t know but my service number was forty six, and I got out in 1947. I mean, I came out in 1947, and because I’d had various tests and I couldn’t do anything with this leg I could do a job as a clerk, or I could do something like that in the stores. I went on a driving course up to Market Harborough and I failed that because I slipped on some ice because when we were there the war was over but somebody came and stole an Austin QL vehicle which was worth about twenty thousand. Took it out of the car park one night. It’s an eight wheel vehicle, and they stole it, and after they stole this vehicle they decided to put a guard on the car park. So, everybody who was on the course had to do one night on guard and it was February and I was on guard with another chap, and in those days when you brought the vehicle in at night if you had been driving, you had to drain the block and drain the engine because there was no anti-freeze and then fill it up again the next morning. Anyway, the car park was like that, and as you drained the vehicles the water fell on the floor and flowed into a gulley away. But you know what black ice is? Well, can you imagine walking up and down in the night? And I slipped on this black ice and I had to go sick the next morning and the bloke like, the medical officer said, ‘Oh, it’s only lectures you’re doing,’ he said. ‘You can have medicine on duty.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said, ‘I’ll put you a splint on your leg. Alright. I’ll put you a splint.’ About this long. So he put a splint on my leg. We had a lecture the next morning, in the afternoon. They sent the class outside. ‘Join a vehicle.’ So, there was about four or five in to, on the vehicle. The sergeant, instructor and then you. Your big Austin QLs. Big things like that and there’s three seats in the front. A driver and an NCO with him and they say, ‘Right you’re off.’ We were around Peterborough and Market Harborough. I didn’t know what was happening so they sent a [pause] going along the road there. The bloke stepped out from a lay by and put his hand up. He was an officer with a tiny [unclear] and the chap that was driving he was told to get out and sit in the middle. When the sergeant was to go and sit the back of the van. And this officer gets in and he sits there and he said, ‘Right, take off.’ So, I put the vehicle in to go on again and he said, ‘I shall give you a tap on the front of the vehicle like that — ’ And he said, ‘I want you to stop.’ Anyway, I was doing about twenty five, thirty mile an hour in this big van and he knocks this thing. We’ve got to stop. Well, if you got your leg in a splint and the vehicle like that, their clutch and their brake. You see in those days you had to double de clutch to change gear.
DH: Yeah.
JL: And the brake pedal on that what’s the name is about that high off the floor. Well, normally anybody with any sense they would have lifted their foot and banged it down on them both. So, my officer swears at me and he says, ‘You killed the bloody woman.’ And there’s me looking for this woman. Well, he gave me an emergency stop. What he said to me, ‘There’s a little old woman crossing the road.’ There was no woman at all. He was just telling me to stop. So, there’s me looking where the woman was.
DH: Dear.
JL: He called the sergeant, he said ‘Take this bloke and the vehicle back to the Centre.’ He said, ‘He’s off the course. Driving as a danger to the public.’ I never touched a vehicle for twenty two years.
DH: Oh, my word.
JL: Before I started to drive again. With a wonky leg.
DH: So, when did you leave the forces then?
JL: I left the forces in, when I had this examination after this medical. We came from the driving school down to a place in Wiltshire to another board and it was an assessment board to see what they could do because I couldn’t get out. My time wasn’t up. Emergencies were still on so I was sent there for a review. I went to see an officer in a room, and he was quite a young officer and he’d only had about twelve months in the Service. He was on what they called educational [supplier?] I suppose, because he’d got one little chevron on his sleeve. Not meant, a red chevron. That meant he’d got one year in the service and he was interviewing me and he said, ‘Well, you can’t go out to civilian life,’ he said, ‘Because your number hasn’t come up.’ He said, ‘What would you like to do, Mr Lee?’ I said, ‘Can I speak honestly, sir? He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I want my ticket out. The war’s over.’ I said, ‘If I’d have wanted to join the Army I’d have joined the Army.’ I said, ‘I was shanghaied into the Army.’ I said not the Army, not the, shanghaied in I said, ‘I volunteered to go in the Air Force. So —’ I said, ‘I want out.’ Well, he went mad. He said, ‘Send the next man in.’ Anyway, [pause] the next day the man said to me, he said, ‘You’re lucky,’ he said, ‘You’re going home.’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘It’s on orders,’ he said, ‘The posting’s off.’ The last thing. And I went over there to read it and there were all these names, and of course my name is only three letters. L E E. I couldn’t see it so I went down again. Took my pay book out and went down it like that and there was my name in the middle of the sheet. “Private Lee, you are posted to the 46th Company, the Royal Army Pay Corps, Whitehall, Monkmoor Road, Shewsbury.” So, I was in the Pay Corps in Shrewsbury for a year, and I got demobbed in January 1947.
DH: Very good.
JL: Five of my years gone [paper rustling] Now that’s, these are my wife’s I kept. That was taken in nineteen, on the back of it is a date.
DH: 1944.
JL: That’s right. And when we were under canvas, listen, you’ll laugh at this. I took cards in one day from my wife. You can read the back. Nobody knew where you were. Just despatched by the [unclear] I was in New Romney, outside New, the post goes to new Romney and is collected in New Romney and is brought out to the field. But read the front of it. I like the one with the seeds.
DH: Yeah. Isn’t that lovely?
JL: I mean unfortunately that’s the only two things that I saved. The rest of it because my dear wife she was only fifteen when I met her. I was seventeen. And that’s my only, where’s that [pause – rustling] That’s my, there’s my release book. Another story. That was when I was released.
[pause]
JL: That was my —
DH: Ahh.
JL: For two years she wrote to me every day.
DH: Yeah.
JL: And I believe it was about 1958/59. I kept all those letters, and decided one day, she sent my one son up in to the loft, they were in my kit bag, and she burned the lot in the back garden. She said, ‘Those letters were written to you,’ she said, ‘Not for somebody else to read.’ She burned the lot. But she didn’t burn those because I’d got those in a book as markers. But she went with her sister to Blackpool or to New Brighton for the day, and I suppose she bought those cards when she was there. We were two years short of seventy years of marriage.
DH: Right. That’s quite some achievement.
JL: Hmmn?
DH: That’s quite some achievement. Yeah.
JL: And this is one of the products.
DH: He’s been well, very well behaved I think, hasn’t he?
JL: Sorry?
DH: He’s being well behaved.
JL: Well, it was the way his mum had brought him up. Wouldn’t like to move.
DH: How do you think the war affected you?
JL: Sorry?
DH: How do you think the war affected you? Did it affect you?
JL: No. I don’t think so really. It was an experience. As I say, I mean I, I’ll tell you the same as I tell so many people, I was very lucky. There must have been somebody here up there that was looking after me.
DH: Yeah.
JL: I mean you’re young at the time, and you see the life span of an air gunner was one in six.
DH: Oh.
JL: So, I mean, I wasn’t, it wasn’t to be. And I saw many guys like myself never ever come back.
DH: Yeah. Before we finish John is there, is there anything else that you remember from your time in the RAF that you think, oh I haven’t said that and you’d like to share?
JL: Not really. I mean, I mean as I say the crash that we saw. I mean the engine of that Halifax bomber, the one engine was found a mile and a half way in a field. And of course, you get all these sightseers, and trying to get souvenirs and that’s how we, we [unclear] We were on my squadron, my squadron itself was on the crash of that double aircraft that crashed. To stop anybody, souvenirs, taking anything. That’s the sort of thing you would be sent off to do. To guard. But there’s also a lot of other things that you, you would see happening. I mean with Faldingworth, it was a conversion place but sometimes a plane would land there because he hadn’t got enough fuel to land somewhere else and there were things like that. I mean so many crews flew on bombing missions and a, a tour of a bomber crew was thirty. Thirty ops. But the, eighty five percent of the time they had new air gunners every time they went because the air gunners were the people that guarded the plane. And I mean the German fighters they were attacked on a bomber raid. The object of the exercise was to put the air gunners out of action. Then they could attack the plane but [pause] So, I mean, I mean I was lucky in a lot of ways. So very lucky. And this is why I suppose, I’m not a Christian by a long way but I was brought up as a Christian but sometimes I think, well there must have been somebody up there.
DH: Looked out for you.
JL: Looking after you. But I’m sure there are more, far more people about that had a far more risky job than I ever did. I was just of many thousands.
DH: But as I said at the start your part in it is valuable. It’s very valuable. Right.
JL: Did you find my squadron in there?
AL: Yeah.
JL: Eh?
AL: Yeah.
DH: We’re going to finish the interview. Ok. On, on this tape. So, I’ll say thank you very much. Ok.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with John Lee
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dawn Hughes
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
2018-09-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ALeeJLO180911, PLeeJLO1801
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:57:14 audio recording
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Description
An account of the resource
John Lee from Shrewsbury volunteered for the RAF hoping to be accepted as aircrew. However, he failed the altitude test and was posted to the RAF Regiment where he guarded crashed aircraft, protected the airfield and manned an anti-aircraft gun. He witnessed the fatal collision of two Halifaxes and was involved in recovering the bodies from the site. One man from his unit was killed by shrapnel and John had to accompany the coffin home and preside over the military funeral. As the 6th Airborne set off on their mission for D-Day John witnessed a man brought back in handcuffs for failing to take to make the jump. John and his unit also worked to shoot down flying bombs. He was unwillingly transferred to the Army until he was finally demobbed.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-05
1944-08
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
crash
ground personnel
Halifax
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Faldingworth
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/866/11107/AHeathRB180313.2.mp3
8617314bcb769f3762451755cf09698a
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
Heath, Richard
Richard Bingham Heath
R B Heath
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Richard Heath. He grew up near RAF Faldingworth during the war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-13
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Heath, RB
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HD: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewee is Hugh Donnelly and the interviewer is Richard Heath. The interview is taking place at Mr Heath’ s home [buzz] Hibaldstow, Lincs and on the 13th of March 2018. Present at the interview is Mr Heath’s wife. That’s it. So —
[pause]
RH: Standing in my back yard we could see the Lancaster bombers flying over the house. I can remember one moonlit night when there were high patched white clouds the black bombers seemed to be silhouetted against the clouds as they made their way east. As a young lad it seemed to take hours for them to pass and for, for the constant hum of the engines to fade into the night. I don’t remember anyone trying to count them. There just seemed to be so many coming from all the corners of the sky. They were all spread out as if nobody wanted to bump in to the others. One morning I remember we were woken early by the sound of what seemed like fireworks exploding in the fields and behind the house and down towards the wood. When we looked out of the window we could see balls of red fire shooting in to the air and we knew they were signal flares. I think my dad got dressed and went to warn the village policeman and Home Guard. He was exempt from military service because he worked on his uncle’s farm but he belonged to the Auxiliary Fire Service and was on call. By the time daylight had arrived we could see what all the fuss was about. A bomber had crash landed in the fields and by then recovery teams from the camp had arrived and were surrounding the crash site and all the crew had been taken to the camp. We did hear that none of the crew had been hurt and very quickly the plane was taken away. I do remember it left a long trench cut into the field and ploughed up a length of hedgerow before finishing up in the next field. A popular [pause] Start again. A popular occupation among the village lads was to cycle out to bomber crash sites around the area and sift through the bits that the recovery teams had left behind.
HD: Can I just interrupt for a second? This was at Faldingworth.
RH: Yeah. This was at Faldingworth.
HD: Sorry.
RH: And sift through the bits that the recovery teams had left behind. The main finds which my brother and I would take home were bullets. We would trap them in the garden pump handle then and using a pair of old pliers take out the pointed bit, pull up one or two strands of cordite, set light to them and stand back and watch the fireworks. That was until our mother caught us and put a stop to this dangerous practice. On one occasion my brother who was two years older than me had gone to a crash site and while searching through the debris had moved a piece of charred cloth and found a human hand. He was so upset by this it took all the excitement out of the game and brought home the reality of the deaths of so many of the airmen. But I don’t think we went searching again. I don’t think as young lads we had any idea what the war was about. Living in the Lincolnshire countryside it was such a long way away and it became exciting to see aeroplanes flying over and rows of soldiers passing through. Sometimes they would be in lorries or Bren gun carriers. And when the Yanks as the American servicemen were known arrived they would throw us sweets and chewing gum. As I got older I began to understand more about the Blitz and the destruction of towns and cities in Britain and the continent. That probably made things more frightening. And towards the end of the war we would sit in the kitchen and listen to Doodlebugs passing over heading for our towns and cities further west. In fact, one night we heard the spluttering of the engine which sounded like a plumber’s blow lamp suddenly stop, and we held our breath waiting for the explosion. I think it must have glided further on because the bang when it came sounded a long way off.
HD: That’s super. Ok. Yeah. 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 Richard Heath
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hugh Donnelly
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-13
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AHeathRB180313
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:05:56 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
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
Richard Heath remembers watching Lancaster aeroplanes flying in the skies above him from his back yard and listening to the sound of them fade into the night. One morning he could see red flares exploding in fields nearby where a Lancaster from nearby RAF Faldingworth had crashed. His father, an auxiliary fireman got dressed and went into the village to warn the Home Guard and policeman. The crew of the plane were safe and the plane was removed from the site. Richard and his brother would sift through any crash debris and take it home but one day while sifting through items on the ground he found a human hand. Richard and his family listened to V-1s flying over, and on one occasion the engine of one spluttered and it crashed some way off in the distance.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
childhood in wartime
civil defence
crash
home front
Home Guard
Lancaster
RAF Faldingworth
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/874/11114/PHollierM1701.2.jpg
2d2bff42122046751c24c3477c3ffe25
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/874/11114/AHollierM171016.1.mp3
1cffc294b38a22c75f045c3808219b63
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
Hollier, Marian
M Hollier
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Marian Hollier (b. 1926, Royal Air Force). She served as a wireless operator in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force at RAF Wickenby and RAf Ludford Magna.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-16
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
Hollier, M
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: Right, I think we’re ok. So, this is David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Mrs. Hollier on the 16th of October 2017. I’ll just put that down there and if I keep looking down, I’m just making sure it’s working. Yeah, we’re ok. Could I just ask you then what were you doing immediately before the war?
MH: I was in, it’s another funny thing, I was in the accounts department of the George Wimpey company who built most of the aerodromes, so of course, I knew everything about aerodromes all over the place but I did belong to the Women’s Junior Air Corps and in there I learnt Morse. And my father was a telegraphist in the First World War, so I suppose the radio bit hereditary, so I decided that I was about coming seventeen and a half I will join the RAF
DK: Did, was Morse something that came easy to you?
MH: Yes, so I, that’s what I joined the RAF, which we were sent to Wilmslow in Cheshire for the six weeks square bashing and injections and what have you and then went to Blackpool for three months on a radio course doing the Morse and then after three months we were sent to Compton Bassett in Wiltshire to finish the course. And from there I went to, oh dear, my mind’s gone
US: Ludford?
MH: Where did I go to first?
US: Ludford
MH: Ludford,
DK: Ludford Magna
MH: Ludford, sorry about that [laughs]
DK: [unclear]
MH: My mind’s gone.
DK: That’s right, we’re [unclear]
MH: But I wasn’t there at Ludford Magna all that long but one did have a scare there one night, I was busy taking a Morse message and my colleagues just dived underneath the benches there oh my god but I had to keep on doing the Morse and so finished and I said, [unclear] what’s wrong with you lot? The Germans had followed our aircraft in and strafed our headquarters.
DK: Oh, right
MH: So that was a bit of a scare
DK: So Ludford Magna then, whereabouts were you [unclear], were you in the control tower there or?
MH: No, no
DK: Right
MH: We had our headquarters in the main building
DK: Ah! Alright, ok. So, what would’ve been your role there? You are sitting there and you’re receiving messages or you’re transmitting them?
MH: Yes, receiving message for aircraft coming in and yes, and they strafed the headquarters, so that was scary and then I suppose I must have been there for about six months or so and I was transferred to Wickenby because Morse was coming to an end then so that wasn’t necessary so they put me into the wireless section, the radio section and that was doing the daily inspections on the Lancasters and that’s where I met my husband and there again we had a scare because the Germans who liked to come in after our aircraft and start bombing but this particular day some chaps said to my husband would you like to change shifts with me? So he said yes, I don’t mind because they used to have to go out, when the aircraft were coming in and going out they used to have a radar van that used to go round the airfield, so this chap said, oh, thanks, anyway the same thing happened, the Germans came in our aircraft and the bomb dump went up and this poor chap was killed, he had changed with Eric for this to go out somewhere, so that was scary.
DK: If I can just take you back to Ludford Magna, did you know anything about the squadron there, 101 Squadron?
MH: Yes
DK: Because they were special squadron, weren’t they, with radio countermeasures?
MH: Yes I don’t think I knew a lot about Ludford Magna
DK: No. They didn’t mention anything about what the squadron was doing
MH: No, no
DK: No. Ok, so, you’ve gone on to Wickenby then and you said that Morse wasn’t being used so much. You’re now transmitting by radio, is that what’s happened? You, at Wickenby
MH: Yes
DK: You are using radio now instead of Morse
MH: No, we’d be doing the daily inspections on the aircraft
DK: Ah, right, ok, right. So what would that involve then?
MH: Go onto the aircraft and testing the headphones and all the radio equipment, was it, 1154, 1155, I think they were [laughs] and
DK: So
MH: But of course, I wasn’t trained to do that so I only did menial jobs on the aircraft
DK: And that would be after the raid
MH: Yes
DK: Would these be the following morning, so you’d go out to the aircraft and then
MH: Yes, and do an inspection on them before they went off again, but I mean, they used to come in and go out and sometimes there was no chance that you could do an inspection on them
DK: And then so, what did the inspection sort of involve then? Did you take the radios out or are you inspecting?
MH: Yeah, just to see if they were working alright
DK: Yeah
MH: That sort of thing
DK: Yeah. And how long were you at Wickenby for then?
MH: From forty, I did write it down somewhere, can’t remember what I’ve done with it,
DK: [unclear]
MH: Don’t think that’s in there, I was there from about March ’44 until about September ’45 and then I got sent to Sturgate on 50 and 61 Squadron and that was just in looking after headsets and that sort of thing, nobody was interested in doing anything at the end of the war [laughs] and then, have you ever heard of Ralph Reader?
DK: I haven’t, no, no
MH: Well, he did gang shows for the forces and then at the end of the war he decided he would do a gang show involving all the people who were involved in the war, all the services, the fire people, the police, everything and it was going to be held in Royal Albert Hall and they were asking for people who lived near London if they would like to come and do it and so that we could work in the week and at weekends we could go home and that’s what happened with many because I lived in Middlesex
DK: Right
MH: So, and then we were based at Epping during the week and that went on for about three weeks so that was something interesting after the war and a lot of people don’t remember
DK: No
MH: Because if you weren’t involved you wouldn’t remember. And then I got sent to RAF [unclear] at Eastcote in Middlesex which was near my home, so we got billeted out and a friend of mine that I was at Wickenby with, she got sent to Eastcote and we were allowed to go home to my mother and father at the week, every week and they, we got billeted there
DK: Yeah. So how long were you in the Air Force for altogether?
MH: From beginning of February 1944 until November 1946, because I got married 194, September 1946, so I had to come out anyway
DK: You had to come out with, if you got married, did you?
MH: But I did enjoy my life in the RAF
DK: Just going back a little bit, you mentioned a bit earlier about the ground crew, did you see much of what the groundcrew did on, at Wickenby?
MH: No, not really, because you just stayed in your own section.
DK: Ah, right
MH: But, one thing is when I was at Wickenby, somebody came up and said to me, you’ve got to see one of the officers, so I said, what for? No, I can’t tell you, she says, you’ve gotta come with me, so I got to this office and said, [unclear] the officer, and he says, I understand your name is Taunt, T-A-U-N-T, so I said, yes, that’s right, it turned out he was a long distant cousin of mine. No, I didn’t know him, I didn’t know him at all and they owned the red bus company in Birmingham and his wife bred Bedlington terriers [laughs], that was funny. But a lot didn’t happen to me, not [unclear] exciting, did some exciting things [laughs]
DK: So what did it feel like then when you used to see the aircraft going off on the raids? How did that?
MH: Well, we all, if we were on duty we would be out there watching everything,
DK: You were, yes
MH: Yes, yes
DK: So can you recall what actually happened then as you watched the aircraft take off?
MH: No, not really, just hoping they would all come back.
DK: Did you use to wave to them?
MH: Yes, yes, yes, but when we went on this trip to Canberra, I got talking to two gentlemen there and they were looking at this aircraft so I said, you are looking very lovingly at that aircraft, yes, he said, we were on this squadron during the war, I said, oh yes, were you? Whereabouts? Oh, you wouldn’t know whereabouts, so I said, well, try me, so he said, well, we were in a place called Lincolnshire, I said, oh yes, and whereabouts in Lincolnshire? Oh, he says, that’s no good, we were only in a village, so I said, well, tell me the name of the village then, he said, Wickenby. And he was there in ’45 when I was there
DK: Yeah, And they were Australians, were they?
MH: They were Australians, yes
DK: Oh, right
MH: And he wrote a book of poems, his name is Jeff Magee and he wrote a book of poems and he sent us a book of poems and every year when we used to go back to Australia we used to meet up with him but he’s gone now
DK: Do you, can you recall what type of aircrew he was? Was he a pilot or?
MH: Oh, he was a pilot
DK: He was a pilot, yeah
MH: Yes, yes and his friend was a gunner
DK: Right
MH: And they both survived but it was amazing to go twelve thousand miles
DK: And bump into
MH: And to meet up with these two people
DK: You didn’t remember each other from Wickenby then?
MH: Sorry?
DK: You didn’t remember each other from Wickenby?
MH: Oh no, no, no, but it was funny that all this business of this chat, chat, chat to think that we were at Wickenby at the same time during the war or after the war I should say
DK: So were you actually with 626 Squadron or
MH: With 626 and 12
DK: And 12, alright, ok
MH: Yes, yes, we did both squadrons,
DK: Right
MH: The radio school did both then
DK: So the radio school there wasn’t allocated to one or either of the squadrons
MH: No
DK: You just did both squadrons on the base, yeah
MH: Both, yes
DK: So what was it like living on the base there, did you have much of a social life?
US: [unclear]
MH: I didn’t
US: I think you did, [unclear] the story you told me, I think you did
MH: [laughs] we
DK: [unclear]
MH: No, one thing that we did have was the Americans, they were, they [unclear] Scunthorpe
DK: Right
MH: And they used to send a truck down to take the WAAFs for dances
DK: Right
MH: But I didn’t go on one of them, no, I didn’t like Americans [laughs], my son-in-law is American
DK: Oh right
MH: No, they were up to no good [laughs]
DK: So did you manage to, apart from the Americans, did you manage to get off the base at all? Did you go to the pubs?
MH: Oh yes, I took my bicycle with me all over the place and it’s amazing now to think that from Wickenby or Ludford Magna to Louth was, is a long way but we used to cycle and then, when we had time off, when I was at Compton Basset, I lived, my grandmother lived in Berkshire, which is not all that far from Compton Bassett, with my mother’s home is round there, so I used to skive off and one day I did skive off and I left my bed, cause we used to have to make our bed everyday but this day I left the bed and put that bolster in the bed and skived off overnight and I got caught [laughs] and spent some days peeling potatoes in the canteen [laughs]
DK: So how, when you are on the base then and the aircraft have all gone off on their operations, did you wait for them to come back?
MH: Well, only if we are on duty because at Wickenby the WAAF section was on one side of the airfield
DK: Right
MH: So unless we were on duty, no
DK: So, the WAAF section then was quite someway
MH: Yes
DK: From the rest of the base?
MH: Yes
DK: Right
MH: Yes, cause when we see it now, you know the road that we come in, that right-hand side was where all the WAAF was
DK: Alright. That’s at Wickenby is that as you got to the control tower
MH: Yes
DK: So, you were on the right on the road there
MH: Yes, yesh
DK: Right. So how, when you did see them come back how did you feel about them as they all came back damaged aircraft and things?
MH: A bit tearful you’ve, because they, in the section we had a list of the aircraft that were going out and coming back and some of them didn’t come back, didn’t know what happened to them, dreadful. Their choice, flying
DK: So, how did you feel once it was all over then and the war came to an end?
MH: Elated, glad it was over. We, my husband and I, when he was my husband then, we skived off, got a train to Grantham, and cleared off home and came back a week later but we didn’t get any jankers for that [laughs]
DK: So there was a bit of a celebration then, was it, for the end of the war?
MH: Yes, yes
DK: Yeah. And how do you look back on your time now [unclear]?
MH: I loved it, yes, I loved being in the Air Force,
DK: And was that your main role then, just the radios?
MH: Yes, yes
DK: And can you still do the Morse now, if you [unclear]?
MH: I could do it, that’s where my Morse key that I had when I was at Ludford Magna is there
DK: Oh right, right
MH: And they hadn’t got one
DK: And it’s on display now
MH: It’s on display, yes, yes
DK: And you say you received messages then you would
MH: Yes, yes
DK: And what sort of messages were they?
MH: They were all in code
DK: Right, alright, ok
MH: Yes, but we didn’t do the code, we had to pass that on for somebody else to do
DK: So you wouldn’t really know what the message was
MH: No
DK: Right, ok, so
MH: When it was in code
DK: So it’s in code and then it’s deciphered elsewhere
MH: Yes
DK: Right. And if you transmit to them, was that in code as well?
MH: That in code
DK: So you pass the code
MH: Yes
DK: So the message you are sending out, you also [unclear]
MH: Yes, you wouldn’t know what the code was, no, no
DK: Did you sort of [unclear] that and wonder what you were saying or?
MH: No, I was young, wasn’t I? Seventeen and eighteen [laughs]
DK: So, once the Morse finished then, you were transmitting by radio? Presumably that wasn’t in code then
MH: Say that again
DK: Once Morse had finished, you said radios came in, you weren’t speaking in code then
MH: It was all in code, didn’t have anything in plain language
DK: Oh
MH: I didn’t
DK: Right
MH: No,
DK: Ok
MH: I liked the Morse code. When I came out and we moved to Horsham in West Sussex, I joined the Air Training Corps
DK: Right
MH: And taught them Morse, that happened for a little while, why I don’t know
DK: It’s not used very much now, is it? It’s not used today.
MH: No, well, they had what they called Morse lip reading and then, oh, what else did they have? There is the same as the aircraft, they change as well because they had a blister under the aircraft radar, and my husband one of the first people to go on a course for that
DK: H2S
MH: Yes, that radar
DK: Yeah, H2S
MH: At Yatesbury
DK: Right. So, he was, he worked on the radar [unclear]
MH: Yes
DK: Yeah
MH: Yes, yes
DK: OK, well, I’m happy with that if you’re ok
MH: Not very interesting.
DK: It’s very interesting, if you ask me. You’ve got a photo here. Right, this is
MH: That’s Wickenby
DK: Right, this is just for the recording then, so
MH: That is a, on the back of this, that’s the radio section
DK: Alright. So, just for the recording here, we’ve got a picture of a Lancaster with
MH: Yes
DK: Are you in this?
MH: Somewhere [laughs], I think I’ve circled where my husband and I are [laughs]
DK: Oh, ok. So this is the signal station at RAF Wickenby, June 1945. So, assuming that sort of something taken for the end of the war, was it, a sort of souvenir?
MH: Well, I suppose so
DK: Yeah
MH: I can’t remember.
DK: So, it’s got the names of everybody on here, can’t see your circle
MH: So, how old’s your dad then?
DK: Oh, he’s ninety next year, be ninety next year
MH: A bit younger than me [laughs]
DK: Yeah. He would’ve, as I say, he would’ve caught the very last year of the war [unclear] he was called up
MH: Yes
DK: He was nineteen then, as I say, failed his medical to get in the Navy and ended up in the factories. I can’t see you here, see if you can point yourself out. Ah, right, ok, so you’re third one in from the left, front row. Ah!
MH: [laughs]
DK: Oh! That’s a wonderful photo there.
MH: What a change! Thank you
DK: So, just for the recording then, I got two photos here, that’s [unclear] good so and this is your husband
MH: Yes
DK: Yeah, and what was his name? What was his?
MH: Eric
DK: Eric, Eric. Yeah. So he was signals as well then. Yeah. Just for the recording here, I say, it’s a photo of a Lancaster from the signal section RAF Wickenby June 1945 and the aircraft is coded PH0, PHO, that’s for 12 Squadron and is that the squadron leaves the field? Is that the squadron right at the bottom there?
MH: Oh, that’s the, oh no, that’s the, that’s on the badge
DK: The crest, on the crest, so that’s the 4 Squadron crest
MH: I have been down to Brookwell, that’s where my mother’s home is, I’ve been down to Brize Norton and taken over the airfield by one of the workers there and had coffee in the officer’s mess
DK: Cause 101 squadron is still going, isn’t it?
MH: Yes, yes, yes, that’ll be, that’s a hundred years
DK: Yeah, I’m not too sure about 12 Squadron though, I don’t think, is 12 Squadron still going, do you know?
MH: No, 12 Squadron is, no, only 101
DK: Nor 626 either
MH: Uh, no
DK: No, no
MH: But I noticed that 61 Squadron was mentioned the other day. I can’t remember in connection with what. Because I thought to myself, oh, I was on 61, oh, something to do with that body that they found somewhere
DK: In Holland
MH: The aircraft that got lost
DK: Yeah
MH: That was 61 Squadron
DK: That was a wreck in Holland, wasn’t it?
MH: Yes
DK: Yes
MH: That was where I was in Sturgate was on 61 Squadron
DK: Right, alright. Cause I think they found the remains of one of the crew, don’t they?
MH: Yes
DK: Yeah
MH: Yes, yes, I think it was the pilot cause he’d told all the others to jump out, didn’t he, and he didn’t.
DK: Right, right, yeah. Ok, let’s, let’s stop that there. I’ll ask the question again. Did you ever get to fly in a Lancaster?
MH: No, I didn’t [laughs]
DK: And there was a reason for that. What’s the reason?
MH: Yes, uhm
DK: You did flights to Germany?
MH: Yes, they were sending flights over Germany and I said to my husband who was my boyfriend then, I’m going on one of those, he says, if you go on one of those, I won’t marry you [laughs], so I didn’t go on one. And we were married for fifty-eight years [laughs]
DK: Did he go on one of those trips?
MH: No, I didn’t, no
DK: He didn’t either
MH: No
DK: No
MH: No [laughs]. When, going back to Brize Norton, an uncle of mine was at Brize during the war when they had the Wellingtons pulling the Horsa Gliders
DK: Oh right
MH: And apparently, they had to hold onto the back end of the glider before it took off and he held on and he fell and got killed and that was at Brize Norton.
DK: Right. Yeah. So, have you had many family members that have been in the RAF?
MH: No
DK: Right
MH: Only me.
DK: Right.
MH: My brother went into the navy, my father was in the army
DK: You mentioned your son-in-law, is it, he’s at Coningsby?
MH: My son-in-law
DK: Yeah, alright, ok
MH: With his husband
DK: Right, and he was at RAF at Coningsby?
US: No, he was in the United States Air Force
DK: Oh!
US: He served in, during the Vietnam war
DK Oh my!
US: He was in, think he was in Laos
MH: He gets teased. If anything goes wrong, he says, I’ll stay in America again, he doesn’t mind [laughs]
DK: So, what did he do in the US Air Force?
US: He was on, as far as I know, cause he doesn’t talk about it a great deal, he was on the helicopters, in the back end of the helicopters with a machine gun
DK: Oh right!
US: To, cause they used to go and pick up the downed pilots.
DK: Right
US: And he was one of the people that, you know, was protecting the people that were
DK: Going and pick’em up
US: Going to pick’em up
DK: Oh right, cause someone I know, I’ve never met him, but he’s the son of somebody who fought in, who served in RAF Bomber Command, who was a pilot but he has since gone back to America, lived there and he served in Vietnam on the helicopters doing a very similar job. Yeah. So where did you meet him then?
US: RAF Bentwaters
DK: Right. So you were
US: I was civil servant, yes.
DK: Right
US: And he was still serving time, I mean he was, he was actually military place
DK: Right. Spent time in Vietnam, interesting
US: Well, I think again, it was a case of joining the Air Force before he was
DK: Drafted in, yeah
US: Before he was drafted
DK: Drafted into the army, yeah. Ah, well, right, just for the recording again, there’s this lovely photo of your wedding
MH: Honeymoon paid for by the RAF in the Isle of Wight [laughs]
DK: Ah, that’s very nice, I’ve just come back from the Isle of Wight funnily enough, I was [unclear]
MH: Freshwater [laughs]
DK: Freshwater, yes, we went there. Very handsome chap. I like the way the flairs are in color
MH: Yes, you didn’t get things in color in those days
DK: No, no
MH: They all had to be hand done afterwards
DK: Lovely photo. And did your husband stay in the RAF?
MH: No
DK: Alright
MH: He wanted to
DK: Alright
MH: He was an architect, but I said no, I didn’t want my children to be sent to boarding school in this sort of and keep on moving here, there and everywhere so he went back and then got his degree in architecture
DK: Ah right. Did he tell you much about what he was doing cause you mentioned he was working on the radar?
MH: No
DK: Alright, so he never really talked about that
MH: No, he wasn’t very talkative about other things, was he?
DK: Alright.
MH: He would be a good friend, cause he wouldn’t tell anyone anything [laughs]
DK: But you knew he was working on the H2S radar then, yeah
US: His wing
MH: was part of the section
DK: Right, yeah, yeah
US: We were talking to a lady cause my mother got invited to one of the memorial flight
DK: Right
US: And we were talking to the curator there and she said, you know, how interesting it is talking to people after the war, how some people are quite happy to talk about it and it doesn’t bother them and other people just
DK: Just don’t
US: Just don’t want to
DK: We’ve actually found that this was part of this project there’s a lot of people now who obviously, you know, got to a great age are only now talking about it so when you ask about how many, you know, are still surviving, a lot of these people haven’t mentioned it but we identify them and then for the first time they are talking about what happened, you know, for understandable reasons they haven’t spoken about it before. Sometimes the families haven’t been interested and sometimes they just obviously found it too difficult to talk about and you know, it’s sad and understandable but you know hopefully now we are capturing some of those stories before it’s, you know obviously it’s too late. Cause some people say, well, why didn’t you start this project twenty years ago when the memories were fresher? And perhaps we should’ve done and [unclear] we would’ve done but they didn’t want to talk about it twenty years ago
MH: I’ve still got my father’s diary that he went into the army in 1916, was eighteen in 1916, and I’ve still got his diary written in pencil and still readable
DK: Yeah
MH: Of his time in the army and I’m just wondering whether records in any of the Army things might cause that’s no good to me, nobody wants them
DK: Yeah, it might, you can’t, does it mention which regiment he was with? Because there’s regimental museums, they might be interested probably
MH: Yes, oh right, I think I didn’t give it, I gave you something, didn’t I?
US: I’ve got a few bits and pieces of [unclear]
MH: I think I’ve got a
DK: Because there’s
MH: A little disk upstairs somewhere
DK: Because there’s similar projects to the Bomber Command one where if there is research into this particular regiment like us they might want to copy it, you keep the original document but they, cause now you don’t really need to hand over the original document, they just make a copy of it electronically and the family gets to keep the documents, so it might be worth looking into
MH: It’s very interesting reading and exactly as you see in these pictures with all the margin, he had, a bullet went in his neck and he lived until he was seventy-nine, but he had mustard gas
DK: My grandfather on my mother’s side, he was gassed in the First World War, he lived to be ninety-nine but he was, I think it was phosgene gas that he was wounded and he collapsed and had a label on him and he said, oh, you’ve got a blighty wound, you know, you’re going home and then my grandfather on my father’s side as well and his brother so my great grand uncles all fought in the Western Front
MH: I like hearing about people’s experiences during the war because I’ve got a friend that lives on the estate, he’s coming up ninety-three, and he was in the Red Berets
DK: Alright, yeah
MH: What are they called?
DK: The commandos
MH: Yes
DK: Yeah, yeah
MH: Yes, and he can tell me a few stories
DK: Ah, right. But once again, there might be a project where his stories are being captured, cause I know old history’s now is really a big thing really
MH: And I keep meaning to try and go to Ypres because an uncle of mine got killed in the first week of the First World War and a couple of years ago friends that live at Brize Norton they found his grave
DK: Ah, right
MH: And but I haven’t managed to get there
DK: Hopefully, you’ll get to see it
MH: So
US: Did you, did you have any Polish people on your squadron?
MH: Can’t hear you
US: Did you have any Polish people on your squadrons?
MH: Yes, no, no
DK: Oh, right, ok
MH: Oh no, not allowed, at Faldingworth, have you heard of Faldingworth?
DK: Yes, yes, yeah
MH: That was part of the number 1 Group at Faldingworth and when I got transferred from Ludford Magna to Wickenby which isn’t that far, we stopped at Faldingworth so they said you gotta stay in the van, what do you mean I gotta stay in the van? WAAF are not allowed to get out on a Polish squadron
DK: Really?
MH: The men are always after them [laughs], but you could always get lipstick and nylons and this sort of thing
DK: From the Polish
MH: And silk stockings and, yes, we swear that they used to land somewhere and pick these things up [laughs]
DK: So you have no idea where they got this stuff from then? You’ve got no idea where the Polish were getting the nylon from?
MH: No, no, no, no
DK: So you never actually met any Poles then, no?
MH: But they were always very nice [laughs]
DK: Yeah
MH: But you weren’t allowed out of the van [laughs]. But I don’t know whether there were any women on that squadron at Faldingworth, I didn’t know much about it but I know it was all Polish fliers there
DK: Yeah. So, when you were allocated to a squadron or a base, you really kept within that, did you, you didn’t really mix with people from other squadrons
MH: Well, I think so, I did because it was still Lincolnshire when I went to Gainsborough
DK: Right
MH: To Sturgate so I just stayed in and of course they used to, when you went from, you finished your course and they said, where do you want to go? Everybody put near home, well, you never ever got near home it was miles away [laughs] cause I was in Middlesex
DK: Did you manage to get home much though while you
MH: No,
DK: Served, no
MH; No, no
DK: So, you weren’t granted leave for the weekend or
MH: No, not very often, might get seven days now and again, and you would get days off, but you would just stay locally, well unless you were like me and skived down to my relatives [laughs]
DK: Ok, well, I’ll stop that there but thanks very much for your time. Put that back on again, the radiation cells, so they were all
MH: They were valves
DK: Right. So, was part
MH: Nothing electric
DK: So, was part of your role then changing the valves?
MH: Yes, yes and on the aircraft it was the same
DK: Alright. And this might sound an odd question, but did you take the whole radios out? You had to pull them out presumably.
MH: It could’ve done but I didn’t because they were too heavy
DK: Right. Right
MH: But there will be a receiver, what’s the other thing?
DK: Transmitter
US: Transmitter
DK: Yeah. And then all the valves that you had, did you use to change the valves?
MH: Yes, yes
DK: And could you tell if the valves needed changing?
MH: Can’t remember, long time ago [laughs]
DK: But it was good technology because it worked
MH: Yes
DK: Yeah
US: I mean, my dad used to build his own radios, didn’t he? Papi used to build his own radios after the war
MH: Yes
DK: Yes, yeah
US: Locked in boxes
MH: He really wanted to stay in, no, I wasn’t going to have my children taken away from me [laughs], go to boarding school
DK: It’s understandable. Ok
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Marian Hollier
Creator
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David Kavanagh
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-10-16
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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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AHollierM171016, PHollierM1701
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Pending review
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Format
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00:38:19 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
Marion Hollier served as a wireless operator in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force from February 1944 to September 1946. Before the war she worked in a construction firm, The George Wimpey Company, which built aerodromes. She learned the Morse code in the Women’s Junior Air Corps. Tells of her father who served as a telegraphist in the First World War. Later on, she joined the Air Training Corps. She was trained at RAF Wilmslow, then Blackpool on the Morse code, before moving to RAF Ludford Magna, with 101 Squadron, and from there to RAF Wickenby with 626 and 12 Squadron. At RAF Wickenby her duties included radio transmitting and carrying out inspections on aircraft. While she was stationed at RAF Ludford Magna, she witnessed enemy aircraft strafing headquarters.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945-06
101 Squadron
12 Squadron
626 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
ground personnel
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF Wickenby
training
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1187/11760/PWatsonJ1501.2.jpg
5e82adc2824b4bab6c98c732b381cc02
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1187/11760/AWatsonJR180202.1.mp3
f81235f23e0bc02c8249edb6f60394e4
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Watson, John Robert
J R Watson
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. An oral history interview with warrant Officer John 'Jack' Watson DFM (b. 1923 Royal Air Force) his log book and photographs. He flew three turs of operations as a flight engineer with 12 and 156 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Watson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-25
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Watson, JR
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: Right. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 2nd of February 2018 and we’re in Eastbourne talking with John Watson, Jack Watson DFM about his times in the RAF and before and after. So, Jack what are your earliest recollections of life?
JW: It’s quite a strange one really. I had to go to Great Ormond Street when I was about three years old to have my tonsils out. And my father was in bus work all his life. He, he was in the First World War driving an ambulance. The [pause] I forget the name of the unit now but I’ve got a picture of him somewhere with his, standing by his ambulance. And he was at this time driving for a company called Fairways. They used to drive down to Worthing from London daily. And he came to collect me and my mum in his coach and I can remember the cab was just half the, the bonnet was just outside. He sat me on the bonnet, put his arm around me and drove off [laughs] And in the back of the coach was a little pedal car he’d bought for me. And the other recollection, I can remember that quite plainly the other recollection we were living in Acton although I was born in Putney at my grandmother’s house. All the family were born there except my dad but I can remember the R101. I was out in the street in Brouncker Road in Acton.
CB: The airship.
JW: And watched the R101 go over. And I can still marvel at the size of it because it wasn’t all that high and of course it went on to crash in France didn’t it?
CB: It did. Yeah.
JW: And, but then my father was the manager, manager of a coach company running coaches from High Wycombe to Oxford Circus to High Wycombe and Guildford. And when Mandelson’s grandfather Morrison decided he would nationalise because London was full of one man buses he’d nationalise it all. In those days it was a bit cut throat but they did. They put a coach to Guildford in front of my father’s coach. One behind it. And of course customer loyalty only goes so far. They see a coach comes along. And of course they ran him off the road. But they gave my father a job as a chief inspector at Dorking. We moved down there for two years. And after that we went to, he moved, took him to a bigger garage at Guildford which is where he stayed through the war. And then while we was, it was I’d just left school and I heard about the Air Defence of Great Britain Corps which was the forerunner of the ATC and they were at Brooklands Aerodrome. And I told my father that I wanted to join it and there was, I think that he could see the fact that the war was coming on. I think the war had just started actually. Yeah. And he’d seen what went on in the war, he didn’t want his son — we had arguments galore. Eventually he relented and I used to cycle over to Brooklands, about a twelve mile run on a Sunday morning and joined the ATC , the Air Defence of Great Britain Corps. And it was very much, me a working class boy in amongst, there were a lot of well-educated young men there and I must admit I felt a little bit out of place. But anyhow I stuck it out. But then of course they formed the ATC and I was able to transfer to Guildford. And I wanted to join the Air Force badly. I wanted to fly. I mean I’ve, as I said, I wanted to do my bit and save the world but that’s a lot of nonsense. I [laughs] I wanted to fly. And I, again because I was serving an apprenticeship my father, ‘No. You’re not going to join the Air Force. You’re not going to.’ I kept nagging nagging nagging. In the finish he said, ‘If Mr Biddle,’ who was the one of three brothers who owned the printing company where I was apprenticed, ‘If he says you can break your apprenticeship I’ll agree.’ ‘Fine.’ So immediately I went and saw Mr Biddle. I said, ‘Look, my father has given me permission to break my apprenticeship but I need your authority as well.’ Well, of course I forgot that dad being in charge of transport when his buses were late he used to phone around to the different companies so that the men didn’t lose money and they’d known each for some time. Of course it came that neither of them would give me permission [laughs] So the following Saturday at the top of Guildford High Street was an RAF Recruiting Office. I walked in there and joined up and then went back and said to dad, ‘I’ve joined the Air Force.’ I think if they’d have realised it they could have but I don’t think they, I presented them with a fait accompli. Anyhow, I then got about a week later to go to Abingdon for an interview. And I walked into this office and there was a whole range of high ranking Air Force officers sitting around and in front of them was a huge table with a map on it. They asked me very, and funnily enough they said, ‘Why do you want to? Why do you want to join in the Air Force?’ I said, ‘Well, firstly I want to fly and the other thing is I want to get my own back because in Guildford although it wasn’t badly bombed there was one night a bomber went over. A German bomber and just, I think there was a searchlight at Stag Hill by the Cathedral. He got caught in that and he just dropped his bombs. They came down and one of them hit the house next door. In a terrace. One fell opposite. And I was sleeping in that room downstairs but it was the curtains had been pulled across. It was rather like a bit of a bay and the curtains were back a bit but the bomb going off of course blew all the glass and shattered it and shredded the curtains which saved me. So anyhow I, they started asking questions and then one of them said, ‘Can you find Turkey on that map?’ Well, you know it’s a big place Turkey, isn’t it? And there’s a piece of Turkey below the Dardanelles. That’s the only bit I could find. I suppose it was nerves really. And anyhow, he said, ‘Any more?’ I said, ‘No.’ Anyhow, they said, ‘We think you’ll be better off as ground crew.’ So I went out and I thought, right. Ground crew. Wireless operator. I can transfer straight to air crew. So I went in and I sat in front of this corporal and he asked me some questions. He said, ‘Do you know the Morse Code?’ I said, ‘Oh yeah.’ But the rotten so and so bent down and picked up a Morse Code key and said, ‘Right. Take this down.’ [laughs] And of course the only thing I knew about Morse Code was how to spell it. So he said, ‘I think we’ll put you in as a flight mechanic.’ So which is what I went in to and I was called up in September or August. August of ’42. Went to Blackpool. Oh, Penarth first and although you considered yourself fit they gave us your kit you never had the strength to lift it. You dragged it back to your billet, got changed, put your kit into a little suitcase with your name and address on. Sent it off home. And then we started doing the square bashing in Blackpool. Well, the first morning we all lined up and we started a run to go to from Blackpool north to Bispham. Five mile run. I met them half way back. And I thought this is ridiculous. So the next morning as we used to start off there were some steps up to some public toilets. So the next morning I’d got a penny in my hand. And they all ran and I ran up because I’d sussed this out. You stood on the lavatory seat and looked through the little window and you could see them coming back. As they came back I came down joined then on the back and then I was fit enough to do all the exercises that they were going through. And this, I got away with this morning after morning and, but I just could not see the point. I’ve never been a runner or a sportsman of any kind and I certainly wasn’t at that stage. But the little Irishman sergeant we had in charge of our squad had got his stripe, his third stripe on the strength of the way he’d turned out his previous squad. So he had something to prove and he was a bit of a martinet. But when it was raining, I don’t know whether you know Blackpool.
CB: Yeah.
JW: But there’s the three promenades. He used to take us on to one of them and he’d lecture us on women. Quite an interesting character. But he didn’t ask us to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. When we went on the, so it was Stanley Park in Blackpool on the assault courses we were all in PT kit. He was in full uniform and he went with us and he ran the whole way there and back. I forget his name now but he was a real character. We went from there. When we left there we were put on a train. We had to go to Manchester and change. We weren’t allowed to take the kit bag and all the back pack off and we were, but when we changed there we then got on another train which took us to Wendover because we were going to Halton. And when they marched us from Wendover up to the camp with a kit bag on the back it was nothing. We were that, it really got us fit. And while we were there the, there was a chap there he’d been a drummer in a band and he said, ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ve found a set of drums,’ he said ‘We can form a drum corps to march the people down to the workshops and back.’ So he said, ‘You’re excused other duties,’ like Home Guard type duties. So that was it. It was going to be a get out of that. We wouldn’t have to go out at night. So we joined up and we had a practice room in one of the cook houses. And of course you gave a load of seventeen eighteen year olds a set of drums it, it was half an hour before he could make himself heard [laughs] And anyhow, he did. He did make us into a reasonable drum, we used to play these drum tunes. March them down to the workshops. March them back at lunchtime. Of course the advantage was you were at the lead so you were the first one in the cookhouse for your meal. And we used to go to Battle of Britain weeks where they used to go around the towns with an RAF, an RAF band. We weren’t allowed to play with the band. He used to the drumming with the band but we used to do, when they had a break we’d do our bit for the raising money for Spitfires. And while I was on the course for the fitter, for the air training mechanics course suddenly a notice went up on the board they were looking for flight engineers because obviously they were trying to take people off the squadron. They didn’t want to take too many because they were depleting their ground staff but equally the ground crews were watching what was coming back and thought well I don’t want any of that. So they were, except they would lower the standards like they did it didn’t affect me in that way and I applied. Went to Euston. And the night before we went to Euston a crowd of us went out and we went to see Lou Preager at the Hammersmith Palais and we got knocking back beers and stuff. The next morning we go for a young, there was a young flight lieutenant and I stripped off, I got on the scales he said, ‘Get back on them scales.’ I was only nine stone. Then we come to the dreaded holding the mercury up and after, after the night before I was [pause] and suddenly I was halfway through. I suddenly, and he looked around whether by accident or not I don’t know so I was able to take another breath and hold it up again and ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘You’ve passed.’ And I had to go back on the fitter’s course and passed all that before going down to St Athan for the flight engineer’s course and passed that with, with I think about seventy five percent. It was quite a, I was quite pleased with that result. And then we went up to Lindholme. Oh the first thing was the, when we finished our course for a week they sent us up to Ringway. Ringway. Where they were building the Lancs. To show us what was going on. And it was incredible. They took us all to Pointon. We all got off these coaches and we were met by all these girls. We all paired off and I met a fair headed one. I’ll never forget her name. Yvonne. She taught me more in that week about the facts of life and I thought well this is better than sliced bread [laughs] And so yeah the obvious happened. And I should have kept in touch. Her father was a manager of a printing company in Manchester. But I don’t know whether it was we didn’t think it was a proposition for somebody going into aircrew to get involved in a serious relationship. But anyhow we left there and we were sent back to St Athan. Then we, from there a couple of days later we went up to Lindholme and got all our flying kit and everything and then because I was going down to Faldingworth which was south there was only me and another chap going south. The rest, all the other people. So we had to go to Faldingworth with all the kit and then make our way from there back which was a nightmare. But anyhow we had a week’s leave and got back to Faldingworth and all shoved in a big hangar because my crew had been a Wellington crew. They hadn’t been on ops at all but of course they needed a mid-upper gunner and a flight engineer. I walked in and I was just wandering aimlessly about. I hadn’t got a clue what I was looking for and this wireless operator come up and he said to me, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We’re looking for a flight engineer,’ He said, ‘What’s your name?’ I said ‘John.’ ‘Right, Jack.’ And I became Jack. All the Air Force life and all my working life. And it’s only the family that call me John. And anyhow I was introduced to the crew. And it was, it was quite a strange thing really because we all took to each other straight away. The pilot was, he was a month, he was only nineteen anyway. I mean, we was all only nineteen. He was a month younger than me. And the first thing, we got to Faldingworth was two days later he said to me, ‘We’re going up on fighter affil, on familiarisation tomorrow. Only me and you.’ So we picked up the screened pilot and walked out to the aircraft [pause] and I looked and I said, ‘I’m trained on Lancasters. This is a Halifax.’ I said, ‘Not only don’t I know anything about this it’s the first time I’ve seen one.’ I said, ‘Where’s the screened, the screened engineer?’ ‘Oh, we haven’t got one. You’ll be alright. You’ll be ok. Just the three of us.’ Well, we took off and we were flying at about four thousand feet and he said, he called me up, ‘Engineer, I want you to change the fuel tanks,’ he said, ‘Listen carefully.’ I said, ‘Well, first of all where are they? The controls.’ ‘Under one of the rest beds in the fuselage.’ Because the Lancaster and the Halifax are two totally different aircraft. So he said, ‘Under the rest bed,’ he said, ‘There’s two levers each side,’ he said, ‘Now, listen carefully. Turn off the lever on number one on the port side. Turn off the number one on the starboard side. Turn on the number two on the port side. Turn on the number two on the starboard side.’ Well, something didn’t sound right there. But anyhow I thought well I’d better follow what he says. I don’t know how the system works. So I turned off the number one. By the time I’d got across to the other side the aircraft did a nose dive. I carried on and set the tanks and then it picked it up. Well, of course he told me he should have turned off number one turned on number two. He told me the wrong way. He apologised very profusely. I said, I said, ‘Apology would have been a bit late wouldn’t it if we’d been two thousand feet lower?’ And he couldn’t, he couldn’t have been more contrite. And as I say I cut the fuel but it soon picked up. Anyhow, from then on I never ever had a screened engineer go with me. I was always on, but when we landed I went to stores and got the manual for the Halifax. And I spent the whole, I never even go for any meal. I spent all that afternoon, all night going through that manual. The next morning when we went out to the Halifax again I knew what I wanted to know about it. But it was a stupid thing he did. And I should have had a screened engineer with me. Especially being a, a —
CB: A complete rookie.
JW: Complete. Yeah. I mean to, I can’t imagine what I was thinking to even agree to go. Because in the flight of the Lancaster you sit alongside the pilot. In a Halifax you sit with your back to the pilot. So the whole thing was completely different. But anyhow we got away with it. My guardian angel was sitting on my shoulder. But we, we went from there to, we got a posting to 12 Squadron at Wickenby. And it’s only about five miles so it was a crew bus to go, and as we drove in two Lancs were on the side of the perimeter track. One screwed into the back of the other. As they were taxiing around apparently one stopped, one didn’t. But luckily nobody got hurt from it. And then they took us to our billet. And I can see it now. Walked in the billet and it was as the crew had left. The beds were unmade. Sheets just drawn. And I looked over to the bed that I’d picked and it was the pilot’s name. Sergeant Twitching. And years later a chap, you’ve heard of Currie, the pilot who wrote one of the books, he phoned me up because I’d phoned him up about something else previous and he said, ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘I’ve been asked to write something about strange happenings to people who were flying.’ And I told him how I’d joined and I said to him, I said the, I never forgot the name of that man, Sergeant Twitching. He said, ‘What an unfortunate name for a bomber boy.’ And when I went years after the war, I’m digressing a bit I went to Lincoln Cathedral and saw the volume and I asked them if they could open that book at this man’s name. I said I felt as though I needed to make some sort of tribute to him. And they were all killed. I think it was either Leipzig or Stuttgart. One of those. And anyhow we started off. Went on our first op and when we were, you were convinced that going from what the instructor’s told you that you were never going to make your first op. And it was at Brunswick on the 17th of January ’44. And we took off and as we took off nothing happened. We got our, we were going past I think Hanover and I looked down and the whole of the cloud, it was all cloud but it was all lit up with the searchlights shining through and I called up and I said, ‘Bill there’s a Lanc down on the right hand, on the starboard side there,’ I said, ‘He’s about three thousand feet below us.’ ‘Oh, that’s good,’ He said, ‘They’ll be watching him and they won’t see us.’ And I thought, cor what a man. What a pilot. You know, we’re alright here. We went to Brunswick. Got back without any problems at all. And we did, it was the next thing was on the second trip was to Berlin. An eight and a half hour trip. We called up at Wickenby on the way back when we was coming for to permission to land and they said yeah ok. We were in the circuit and there was low cloud. As we broke cloud, it’s unbelievable to think they talk about near misses, Another Lanc alongside of us on our port side broke cloud at the same time with about six feet between the wing tips. And our pilot, we went that way, he went that way. So, you know. Anyhow, we carried on and landed. And Bill called out, and he said, oh. ‘Clear of runway.’ And there was a few minutes silence and then a voice said, ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ And we had landed at Ludford Magna.
CB: Oh right.
JW: Which was an adjoining. In that sort of taking that evasive action thinking we were joining the circuit again we weren’t. Anyhow, they kept us for about four hours then before the let us fly back to, to Wickenby. And the next thing was that we did a trip to Stuttgart. And we had the most fantastic mid-upper gunner and he didn’t have a brain he had a computer. We were going in to, on the bombing run and he suddenly said , ‘Dive port, Go.’ Bill just went. And as we did I watched tracer go over the top of the aircraft. And we got, we got the, it dipped, it broke away and didn’t make another attack. We got back ok and our wireless operator said, ‘We owe our lives to Appy and Bill.’ And we, because we were so close a crew we didn’t have engineer and pilot it was Bill and Appy and Ollie. I was Watty. That’s how. But it worked for us because we all knew each other’s, as soon as we spoke we knew who it was talking. And we got back and the next thing we had was a raid, we were walking down to briefing and I was on my own and there was a spattering of [pause] this was in February, there was a spattering of snow on the ground. I was walking down to the briefing room on my own funnily enough. I don’t know why but I just, going through some trees and I suddenly stopped in my tracks. And it was the most strange feeling. I knew that if we didn’t leave Wickenby we wouldn’t survive. It was the most strange feeling. We went in and again the target was Stuttgart. And we got there and back without any problems. But two mornings later we were called into the flight commanders office and he’d got us all around standing in a row in front of him. I can see him now. He said, ‘You’ve got two options,’ he said, ‘You’re going to either volunteer for the Pathfinder force or we’ll send you.’ [laughs] Now, having experienced that strange feeling two nights previously that was the answer for me. The two navigators weren’t, the bomb aimer and the navigator weren’t all that keen but they decided to go along with it and we didn’t fly any more ops from there. We were sent down to Warboys for the Pathfinder Training Unit. And it was going to be straight, the bomb aimer was going to become the second navigator. The flight engineer was going to be the bomb aimer and also I had to learn some navigation. So we did all these necessary courses. About nine days I think we were there. Nine, ten days something like that. And we went in to see the navigation officer and he said to me, ‘Ask me some questions.’ I had to learn to take an astro shot with a sextant. I did that. And he said to me, ‘What’s the difference between a planet and a star?’ As, yeah a planet and a star. And I thought I don’t know. All I could think, going through my mind was, “Twinkle twinkle little star,” and I thought what an idiot. And I said to him, and I thought this is going to get [pause] I said, ‘A star twinkles.’ He said, ‘That’s correct. A planet is a steady light.’ And I thought it was [laughs] and I didn’t let him know that it was the nursery rhyme that got me out of trouble but it did. Anyhow, when was, we’d done all the courses we had to do the practice bombing with the triangle and the fuel and and you had to get to within about a yard of that. We did. But of course at two thousand feet having got it and hit it we then, this is, we was doing a bit of low level flying we came across a field and there was a load of sheep. Well they nearly beat us. As the aircraft suddenly came, all these sheep suddenly [unclear] from shock. But one of the instructions when, when they said after we’d finished when I was sitting chatting to one of them and he said what squadron are you going to?’ I said, ‘156.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘The rebel squadron.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘They’ll fly ‘til the cows come home but,’ he said, ‘Lectures or anything like that they can never get them in to them.’ He said, ‘As soon as there’s a stand down they’re off. And it was like that. It was like that. It was. They were all really, years later a friend of mine, I was sitting chatting to him he was, he was the same as the rear gunner. He flew with about ten different crews. One of the bravest men I knew as a rear gunner and I said to him, ‘How did you manage to do all that with all those different — ?’ He said, ‘All the crews on 156 were good.’ And they were. And the number of them who got killed because they didn’t finish when they could have done. Just went on like we did. You know. And but anyhow [pause] he said, ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘They can’t seem to do anything [unclear],’ he said, ‘But they’ll fly night and day,’ he said, ‘All week.’ But anyhow at that point they, because they’d transferred 156 from Warboys to Upwood, and Upwood which was to be a, in to a Warboys and we got to Warboys just as they changed. But we did quite a few. We never did any more Berlin trips. The first one we did from Upwood was to Essen and the next one, our thirteenth trip and it was, it was only a little sometime later that I realised this, we were flying in M-Mother. Thirteenth. That was the alphabet. Our thirteenth trip. It was Nuremberg [pause] and we noticed we were giving off contrails so we decided to lose height until we found a height where it wasn’t affecting us. But a lot of crews just carried on. I mean it’s not surprising that so many of them got caught. Some probably didn’t have a chance to, there was another crew of course Tony Hiscock was the skipper and he was, he was talking to me. He said. ‘Yeah, we had those contrails. We just, when the rear gunner told me we was leaving them,’ he said, ‘We just changed height until we realised we were stopping.’ But we never saw anything on that trip other than other than other aircraft going down which our gunners were reporting to us. But it was — oh, hello love. This is my daughter Suzanne.
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Getting out of them.
JW: Yeah. And we, we had some [pause] a couple of trips where we were, on one trip we were coned.
CB: With searchlights.
JW: Searchlights. And I was actually on the bombing run. I was, ‘Left. Left. Steady.’ And suddenly the lights caught us. But Bill never hesitated. We were at eighteen thousand feet and he just went down in a dive and of course I shot up into the front turret. I was fixed. I couldn’t move with the gravity. He pulled out at six thousand feet and I come crashing down over the bombsight again. And ten minutes but he got us out of us. He got us out of the, out of the, those searchlights. And we then finished up,. We bombed. We went around again and bombed at twelve thousand feet. But it was another one we did was to Lens, and this was the night when the flying bombs were coming over. The V-1s. We could see all these lights coming below us and hadn’t a clue what they were but it was not ‘til we got back the next day but it was, it was in France. But going down we were going down at, going through at seven thousand feet. We came on the target so quick.
[recording paused]
CB: Right.
JW: As we were going I was giving him the instructions. Suddenly —
CB: As the bomb aimer at that time.
JW: As the bomb aimer.
CB: Yeah.
JW: Suddenly realised that we got on the target before we realised it and I said to him, ‘Dummy run, Bill. Go around again.’ But it was, it was years later before I realised what had happened. Came back. Coming on to the target and I could see all these black shapes going past me in the corner of my eye. Anyhow, that time I got the target on the marker. The target markers. Dropped the bombs and when I looked I thought to myself [unclear] the operational record books, one of the sheets I’ve got and when I looked I realised he didn’t go around again he did a u-turn and we were flying into the bomber stream. And I thought strange. How did we do that? Then I looked. In that turn he lost two thousand feet. We bombed from five thousand feet. Everybody else was coming over at seven but how we flew through all that lot. All the bombs going. I don’t know. But [pause] I’m just trying to find it. As I say it was the number of times. Three times at least on the bomb aiming run I called dummy run.
CB: We’ll just stop again. Hang on.
[recording paused]
CB: You bombed at five thousand feet.
JW: Yeah.
CB: And everybody else did it at seven.
JW: Yeah.
CB: Which was what you were briefed to do.
JW: Yeah.
CB: So this is part of your lucky escape —
JW: It is. Yeah.
CB: Series, isn’t it? Extraordinary.
JW: But, as I say on at least three occasions on the German trips I called dummy run, and not once did I hear one murmur of dissent from any of the crew. You read reports from people, ‘Oh, get rid of it,’ you know. But none of our crew did that. We had complete faith and trust in each other. But, yeah on at least three occasions we did a, we did a dummy run to go around. On one occasion when we were at Wickenby and I think that this is when we came to be on Pathfinders, because Hamish Mahaddie used to go around picking crews and he must have looked at this particular order and it was this. On debriefing it said we were six minutes early so we put the flaps down and did dog legs to lose six minutes. And this was on Stuttgart. I mean [laughs] but it was, we were told to get there and our pilot he always said there was a lot of talk about some of the crews were throwing their bombs in and either banking and then so that they didn’t actually fly over the target. And I know that when that happened Bill said, ‘What the hell’s the point of going all that way without going over and doing it properly?’ But he was, he was a fantastic pilot. He was a fantastic. He was the only man I have ever known apart from people like Alex [pause] Grimshaw? What was his name? The test pilot at Ringway. He did —
CB: Oh, Henshaw.
JW: Henshaw.
CB: Yeah.
JW: Well, I think he did it. He did a rate four turn on a —
CB: On a Lancaster.
JW: On a Lancaster.
CB: Crikey.
JW: And he did it to come up, we were on fighter affiliation and we were being attacked by a Spitfire but instead of doing the normal corkscrew he did this rate four. We came up behind the Spitfire. And unbelievably —
CB: In the Lancaster.
JW: Unbelievably the Spitfire pilot complained and he called, our CO called Bill in and he said, ‘You’ve got to stick to the rules.’ And he had, I think he had a grin on his face as he was saying it. Bill said if that had been a Messerschmitt we could have shot it down. Yeah. But he, and it was the most I can see it now. You’re standing there and you are horizontal but you’re not falling. Yeah. But he was, he was, we loved him. And when, when I looked to see that I think that report as I say going around to Hamish Mahaddie I think that he read that and thought well we need crews who are going to be there on time and this is what, this is what we’ve been looking for.
CB: Yeah. Extraordinary experiences. Yes.
JW: The, but then of course when we got to, I did one spare bod trip. I got caught. I think it was the flight commander. Wing Commander Scott. He was a New Zealander. His engineer went sick and two SPs came down and saw me. Engineer. Right. I had to fly with him. It was to Stuttgart again. But on the run in did the bomb aiming, came out of the target and I looked at the inspections bit and the cookie had held up.
CB: Oh.
JW: So I said to him, ‘Skip, go around again. We’ve got the cookie.’ Well, our own pilot would have been natural enough just to go round but what he called me. He was questioning my sanity as well apart from insulting my mother and father but you didn’t take any notice of that. So I said, ‘I’ll go around and try and release it manually.’ And there used to be a little flap above the cookie that you could pull back. A little slide and release the bolt that held it. And I’d got a, made a little sort of little light there. I was just, I suddenly saw the bolt start to shudder and pulled my hand back just as this thing shot across. He pulled the toggle on the instrument panel and dropped the carrier, the lot. Didn’t look to see where we were. He just opened the bomb doors. And he started weaving as we took off and he was still weaving until we landed. Oh, he was complete nerves. And —
Other 1: Gosh.
JW: Yeah. Wing Commander Scott. He was posted shortly after that. But I made sure I didn’t do any more of those. There was one occasion when they, knew they, what they were looking for a flight engineer. So I went up in the loft and [laughs] ‘Flight Sergeant Watson here?’ ‘No. He’s gone out. He’s gone into Peterborough.’ ‘Oh alright.’ And I was up in the loft like this. I lifted it up just to listen [laughs] because we had arranged we weren’t flying. I was going out. But I wasn’t going to do another, and I’d already done halfway through my third tour so I was well away to saying no. But the other —
CB: Would you class him as a dangerous pilot then?
JW: Who?
CB: Because of his nerves.
JW: Well, I didn’t. I didn’t have any confidence in him. I wasn’t, I wasn’t frightened at all but I thought to myself, no. I didn’t like flying with a strange crew anyway. None of us did. But that’s what made me admire my friend in Southampton. He was, the number of times he went with strange crews. But we’d done that lot and I thought well half way through a third tour because we finished a second tour, we was all in the Red Lion in Ramsey, and we were all celebrating and Bill came in and it was, there were never enough seats and we were all sitting around on the floor with pints of beer. And he said, Bill said, ‘How about carrying on?’ ‘Yes.’ So the next morning he said, ‘Don’t forget,’ he said, ‘We’re going to carry on.’ ‘Oh alright.’ But we wouldn’t have let him flown with anybody else anyway. So that was the mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator, myself and Bill. As I say the two navs packed up and we had a range of rear gunners after he’d done forty one trips. And we finished the third tour and he pulled the same stroke again. So we was in a [laughs] we was on, the last trip was the master bomber trip to [pause] Munster. And it was a day like this. Really beautiful sunshine and we were just lying round and we got, this is a twenty second trip with these two Canadian navigators and there was an anti-aircraft gun. Obviously you could tell who the master bomber gunner was because brilliant daylight. Not a cloud in the sky. And the shell went off alongside of us. And I said to Bill [unclear] we went down five hundred feet and they put a shell in the same place. So when he did that we went back up. And they put one where we were. And this went on. It was [laughs] it was ridiculous really. But anyhow we got away with it but when, when we were sort of circling around doing, Bill was directing the raid one of the navigators came out from behind the curtain. He took one look. We were surrounded by shell bursts. And he said, ‘Jeez, let’s get out of here.’ And Bill said, it was the only time I ever heard him raise his voice, ‘Get back inside.’ And he scuttled back in behind the curtain. I mean, navigators never came out and if you came out like that and you see. Because it is a bit of a shock seeing those shell bursts. The first daylight we did got to the target and you could have walked on the shell bursts there was that many. And I thought we can never fly through that. But we did. Got away with it.
CB: How many times did you actually get hit by flak?
JW: About four times I think. Five times. But none of us ever got a scratch.
CB: What sort of damage did the aircraft —
JW: Holes in the bomb, in the bomb bay doors and some in the fuselage, but not enough to [pause] There was one that we did get hit and I think it took a bit out of the engine. It was on the raid Trossy St Maximin when Bazalgette got his VC. It was on that raid. It was such a heavily defended target. It was a bomb bay, V-1 bomb dump and as we went in we dropped. I think we just dropped the bombs. There was suddenly this hell of a bang. A tremendous noise and we just went into a dive and I thought we’d been hit but anyhow, I looked. We had a clear blister on the nose of our Lancs. You could put you head in and I could look through and I could see that the, both engines, all four engines were still in sync so there was obviously nothing wrong with them. So I called up and said, ‘Engines are ok. I’ll check Bill.’ I went up and he was ok as it turned out but he’d just, when that and they knew they’d got the range he just went into a dive but that took a piece out the side of one of the engines. But the engines still worked.
Other 1: Extraordinary.
JW: We didn’t even know there was anything wrong with it. But that was, going back to the Nuremberg raid when we landed we landed at Marham and on the way back as we left the target I noticed one of the oil instruments wasn’t working. Now, that could mean you’ve lost power. Anyhow, the engine, I didn’t say anything because I kept a check on it and noticed that there was no, the engine was not giving any reports of any failures so it was obviously the instrument that was at fault. So when we landed the next morning when we were going to take off again and the number of Lancs at Marham was unbelievable. It was just everywhere and it was a grass drome as well, the [pause] I said to Bill, ‘There’s no point in reporting this fault because they’ll never get anybody to —’ I said, ‘I’ll go out and check the oil to make sure there’s no lost oil.’ Because sitting on the engine that’s been going for eight hours I was covered in oil when I got back. Sitting on the engine dipping the tank. And it was, there was no loss of oil so I said to Bill, ‘No. There’s no point. We can take, we’ll never get away if we report that.’ And we took off. Got back and reported it when we got back. But the other thing was we had to take up on the flight from Upwood, we were going up on a night flying test and we were asked to take up a senior RAF [pause] I forget what rank he was now. Quite a high rank. Anyhow, suddenly one the port inners started. The starboard inner started playing up and I couldn’t control the pitch of the propellers so I said to Bill, ‘We need to feather it.’ He said, ‘Ok.’ When we landed he said, ‘What’s wrong?’ Now, I can’t tell you the name now but it was one of three things it could have been inside the nose, the hub of the propeller and there was one main one and I said, and one thing that they taught you when you went on Pathfinders, you’ve got to think quick and you’ve got to act. You can’t dither. You make a decision. Right or wrong you make a decision. And that way. And I said to Bill, oh it’s the so and so. So when we landed chiefy come around. The sergeant in charge of the ground crew and he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Why is the engine feathered, skip?’ Bill said, well because this [laughs] he named the part that was broken. And the chiefy looked at him in amazement and said, ‘With respect, sir,’ he said, ‘How do you know that?’ And I could have wanted the ground to open up. ‘Because my engineer told me.’ But luckily I was right. I got it right. And it was at [pause] we had to abort one. We got they gave us the trip because we got within fifty miles of the target. We had boost surge. We just could not cure it. And when we got back I said, ‘I think there’s something wrong with the camshaft.’ Ha ha ha — that was the laugh I got from the engineering officer. But they couldn’t find it either. So they sent the engine back to Derby and they found a cracked valve which was obviously after the cam shaft.
CB: We’ll stop there for a mo so you can have a bit of your coffee.
JW: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: On the Munster trip. Yeah.
JW: Yeah. We got —
CB: Yeah.
JW: Back from there. Landed. And we were walking back to debriefing and one of the rear gunners saw another crew came running up. He said, A signal’s come through to say that Cleland’s crew are to be taken off operations immediately and not allowed to fly on any more ops.’ We never knew why. Because we didn’t have one abortive trip. We’d always bombed the target. Everything. And yet the only thing I could think was that we’d been flying for fifteen months without any break.
CB: That’s extraordinary.
JW: And I think they thought that we were [pause] and I’ve often thought that they saved our lives. The next trip could have been.
Other 1: Easily.
JW: The one that we would have — [pause]
CB: How did you feel about that?
JW: Well, we were choked because we knew they were going to split the crew up. But we thought we might be able to carry on as a crew for a little while but within a week they posted us all off. They sent me as an instructor to a Wellington OTU. A flight engineer. They don’t fly flight engineers on Wellingtons. And that was really a case of I was there for a little while. Then they decided to post me to a Maintenance Unit. 56 MU. Except it should have been 58 MU. 58 MU was at Coventry. About twenty miles away. 56 MU was at Inverness. So I went all the way up to Inverness and I had an aircrew sergeant with me. He’d never done any ops because the war had finished as he finished training. He was going with me and he lived in Edinburgh and so he said, ‘Right. We can go to Edinburgh.’ We had three days in Edinburgh where he lived. Went off up to Inverness and we got out from the station and I can see it now. As we went through Perth and that area. Beautiful scenery because by this, it was an overnight trip. Anyhow, we found, couldn’t find what we were looking for. We couldn’t find the unit at all. We suddenly spotted an airman and I said to him, called him over and I said, ‘Tell me where — ’ ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘It’s in a garage down here.’ Which is what it was. A garage. And he said, and he said to me, ‘Watch the station warrant officer,’ he said, ‘He’s a bit of a martinet. He’ll find something for you to do.’ Anyway, we had to report to him so he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We’re closing down.’ He said, ‘I don’t know why they sent you here.’ Somebody had misread [laughs] Anyhow, he said, well he said, ‘I’ll put you in charge of the police for a week.’ Well, they had about a half dozen coppers there. RAF police. And I walked in. I said to them, ‘What are you all doing here?’ Well, they said ‘There’s nothing to do.’ So I said, ‘Right, you three have three days off. You three cover the whole lot. Three days later you go on three days leave.’ They thought I was the best thing since sliced bread [laughs] But we got back from there and as I say I got to this other MU and it was at [pause] on the mainline.
CB: Near Coventry was it?
JW: No. This was, it started with an N. Not Northampton. Anyhow, I called up. Phoned up the unit and said, ‘Is there any transport to, out to unit?’ She said, ‘Where are you?’ I said, ‘On the station.’ She said, ‘On the up or down line?’ She said, ‘Well come out,’ she wouldn’t have known that which part.’ She said, ‘Look to your left. Can you see a black building about four hundred yards?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘That’s us.’ And it was where they made the lawnmowers. They made, well it wasn’t making them then but as we used to have to go in private billets as we were going down to them their lot was coming away and it was just a track. But all on bikes of course. But yeah that was quite a, and what I had to do there it was the Queen Mary’s there. The long low loaders. And I had to work out the next week how many were going to be off and with what fault. And I thought bloody silly. How the hell can anybody work that out? But it quite surprising. It worked. The system they’d got. So that so many would be off with flat tyres. So many would be off with this. And I had all these sheets that I had to fill in with all the, one for each of the loader. A lot of them were a way out in different places on locations. But then from there they sent me to Skellingthorpe and there it was, it was ridiculous. It was as though they’d forgotten you. In fact, you were just milling around. I did take over the, they couldn’t find anybody to take the sergeant’s mess over and I knew that you can’t run a pub which was what it was and lose money. And I discovered that they were getting five pounds to go to the NAAFI at Waddington to stock up from the [pause] So I said to the, saw the officer in charge of the mess and I said to him, ‘Can I have twenty pounds?’ ‘Twenty pound. What do you want twenty pound for?’ I said, ‘Well, people want to buy toothpaste.’ I said, ‘There’s none of that in there or domestic things.’ So got in the van, went over to Waddington and I spent this money and I thought the ration was Players cigarettes and I thought no. They’re going to be Churchills. So I bought a load of Churchill fags. When I got back I said to them, I said, ‘Sorry lads. The ration’s Churchill fags but I have managed to buy some Players. But I had to pay over the odds for them.’ [laughs] I made a fortune. I came home. After a week I came home. I had managed to pay somebody to look after the mess bar for me, and I came home with a suitcase with a little attache̕ case with two bottles of whisky and two bottles of rum in it and, oh yeah I made quite a bit out of that. In fact one night one of the ground staff, he’d been in the Air Force years and years. Before the war. He came in. He’d been in to Lincoln and he was, well he’d had quite a skinful. And he coolly asked for a pint and he held it up. He said, ‘That’s off. That’s cloudy.’ So I said, ‘Oh, ok sir. I’ll get you another one out of a different barrel.’ ‘Ah that’s better.’ So when the, the officer in charge of the mess came in the next morning I said to him, it was the, he was a warrant officer ground staff and I said to him, ‘Warrant officer,’ so and so, ‘He’s complained and said that barrel’s off.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘We can’t have that, he said. We’ll write it off.’ But it was half full. I think there was about nine gallons in it. And the next night I knew there was nothing wrong with it. The same warrant officer came in. He was sober this time. Poured him a pint from the same one. Now, that’s lovely,’ he said, ‘That’s great.’ So I had nine gallons and I had three days of my demob leave on that barrel with some of the mates I’d met. Oh dear. Yes. It was, it was quite a, but because of the way it went I decided to come home on leave. I was milling around. I went and saw my governor and I said to him, ‘Can I come back to work?’ So, ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘You can come back.’ So I went back to work. And got paid for it. Not a lot but it was because it was only apprentice’s wage and, but about a fortnight one of my mates phoned up and he said, ‘Come back quick he said. They’re sending everybody home.’ So I went back, got demobbed to come home. But I had a couple of, a couple of near squeaks with the CO there. But the mess was just a hut and the bar was a cabinet which stood about that high. About that wide. And 12 o’clock at night I’m in there with a couple of other sergeants and we got bass sitting on our knees and the orderly officer walked in. ‘I said, ‘Do you want a drink, sir.’ Silly thing to say wasn’t it? I was under open arrest and in front of the CO the next morning. But I went round and managed to say, ‘You saw the bar was locked, the cupboard was all locked up, didn’t you?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ Well, because it was all locked up I got away with it. But another time I went home on I used to go on the pay parade on Thursday, special pay parade and go home. And I used to catch the quarter past ten from Lincoln because pay parade was about, no it was a bit later than that. The pay parade was at 9 o’clock. I had time to get paid because it was only a short pay parade, walk into Lincoln and get the train down to Kings Cross and then across to Waterloo and home. Now, I did this this particular week and then on this particular Thursday I’d just got in and a telegram arrived at the door. “Report back to base camp immediately.” I thought that’s funny. So I phoned up one of my mates there and I said, ‘What’s happening?’ ‘Oh, you’re in dead trouble. You were the witnessing officer at pay parade.’ He said, ‘Half the camp stayed for food that they weren’t prepared for. The other half went home and left the pay, the witnessing the officer with the money with all that money he didn’t know what to do with.’ Anyhow, I got back. I went round and I reported, saw the RTO at Guildford station. Reported to him and told him that I was allowed to go back and I’d, I said, ‘I’ve only just got home.’ This was the Friday of course. The day after. And got —
[doorbell and knocking]
[recording paused]
CB: We’re talking about the pay parade. The fact you’d gone home.
JW: Yeah. I got back. I got back on Friday night. Reported to the orderly officer and was put under open arrest. The next morning we went in to see the CO and he said, ‘You went home on Thursday, Watson.’ And he was a wing commander ground staff. Been in the Air Force about forty years. I said, ‘No sir,’ I said, ‘I went home on Friday morning.’ ‘Why did you go on the pay parade on Thursday then?’ I said, ‘Well, I knew that I wanted to get away on Friday, sir.’ He said, ‘But didn’t you read the DROs?’ Well, I knew that it was a crime not to read them but looking through the King’s Rules and Regulations the night before I discovered that it’s not a crime if you read them and forget them. So I said, ‘I did read them, sir.’ I said, ‘And it went right out of my mind.’ I said, ‘I just forgot it completely.’ And of course he went through and he said, ‘Watson, I know you went home on Thursday.’ ‘No. Sir.’ I said, ‘I left here and,’ I told him the times. ‘I caught the train down to — ’ and because I was in a billet which was just on the edge of camp, had my own room there nobody could see me leave. And I said, ‘I caught that train just after ten. I got to Guildford,’ I said, ‘And the telegram arrived as I got home,’ I said, ‘I turned straight around and came back,’ I said. ‘In fact, I reported to the — ’ Anyhow, we went on and he said, asked me another. In the finish he said, ‘Right. Watson, you stay here. Everybody else go out.’ And he said to me, ‘Watson, I know you’re lying.’ He said, ‘I know you went home on Thursday but,’ he said, ‘I can’t prove it.’ He said, ‘But you’re not going to get away with it.’ He said, ‘You’re going to do three weeks of orderly officer.’ He said, ‘If you go out of camp I will know.’ And I knew he would do as well. I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry sir but,’ I said, ‘You’re wrong. I did go home on Friday.’ [laughs] But it was complete bluff. If he’d have said to me, ‘Swear on the bible,’ I don’t know what I would have done. But, yeah. I did discover that, you know. You can read. If you can’t, if you don’t read them it’s a crime. But read —
Other 1: And forget.
JW: And forget. You can’t, you know the loss of memory, it’s [laughs] but, and I got away with it. But he never held it against me because he gave me quite a good report when I left. He signed my release book. The next —
CB: But you did have to do the orderly officer.
JW: I did, yeah. Religiously did and the funny, it was quite funny really because I went in the mess one night and they’d just had a delivery come in. I said, ‘You got any Guinness?’ They said, ‘Yeah. We got a crate in today.’ ‘Right,’ I said, ‘I’ll buy the lot.’ ‘You can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Yes I can.’ And of course as a warrant officer and he’s a sergeant he’s not going to argue is he? I bought the lot. And then a chap came in. He played football for one of the Division One teams. Blackburn Rovers was it? And he sat down. I said to him, ‘Do you want a Guinness?’ ‘Oh yes please.’ So we sat there and but he was as wide a boys as me. He had got hold of you know the Lindholme dinghies that they used to drop the crew in? They had, they had the big main dinghy and then either side you had four flotation units. Two that side. They used to drop it so that it would spread and drift down to the crews that were ditched. He’d got hold of one of these and we sold it off. We even had the dinghy. I don’t know where he got it from but he got the dinghy. But our nerve failed us when we tried to get rid of that because we didn’t realise that all the surplus was going to be sold off after the war otherwise we’d have sold that and all. But —
CB: Who were the people who wanted to buy these things?
JW: All people in the camp.
CB: Oh right.
JW: Yeah. Other sergeants and other aircrew. And there I finished up there with twenty three German prisoners of war under my charge.
CB: On the airfield.
JW: Yeah. And they were quite clever. They used to make light bulbs and put ships and, and cliffs and lights inside the bulb. I don’t know how they did it. Built it up with the cliffs and the lighthouses in there and a little ship. Fantastic. And one of them made it, I bought it off him. It was a crocodile and in front was a little bird. And as you pulled it along the crocodile opens up and came like that and as it did the bird shot forward. I should have had enough sense to realise it was a money maker. I bought it for one of my friend’s little kiddies.
Other 1: Dear.
CB: What was their role? What did they do as prisoners?
JW: Cleaning and doing odd jobs you know around the camp. The American. The, their sergeant in charge of them he’d been, spent time in America and he spoke, spoke like an American. And I shall never forget he said to me we were talking one day and he was quite an educated chap and he must have been about a year or so older than me and he said, ‘I can’t understand the swear words,’ He said, ‘You talk about using the F word. F table,’ he said, ‘You know. It’s ridiculous.’ And I said to him, ‘Yeah. I agree with you.’ You know. He was always saying about language. The way it’s used. But, but he was, he was quite educated and he spoke without any German accent at all, and he was a [pause] I know that one of them one night somebody had taken some stuff out of the mess. And I just warned them. I said, ‘I don’t know which one of you it is but you’re in dead trouble if it happens again.’ It didn’t happen again. They did, they learned their lesson. But no it’s, as I say when it came to getting demobbed I was so disillusioned with the discipline and everything else that, and I knew I’d got an apprenticeship when we were on the, at Faldingworth taxiing round. Because aircraft were going off the end Faldingworth was a mud bath. If an aircraft went off the edge it would go down in to the mud to its axles and it would take days to get it out. So what they did they were fining crews a half a crown each which was half a day’s pay. So as we were taxiing around on the perimeter track I’m watching the wheel. I suddenly looked up and we were coming up against, it was, it turned out to be the engineering officer. He’d parked on the perimeter track and gone into one of the huts. And of course by then I said to Bill, but you can’t stop a thirty ton aircraft and the outside prop and it was one of those Hillman Tilts with the framework and the canvas and the outside was going over. It went right through all the canvas and ripped it and I thought I hope no one is in there. There wasn’t fortunately but Bill was on, he was pulled up for it. And I said to him, I said, ‘Tell them I was the one that was at fault,’ I said, ‘You couldn’t see from your side anyway and he shouldn’t have been parked there.’ ‘No.’ he said, ‘I’m the skipper. It’s my fault.’ And he got a mild reprimand. But that was the sort of bloke he was, you know. And as I say but it was [pause] we would have, well we’d have done anything for him really. We certainly wouldn’t have let him fly with anybody else if it had meant we had to carry on flying. Which is the reason we carried on. And it was years that we couldn’t find him after the war. Years later we tried to find him. And then my Appy, the mid-upper gunner phoned me up one day and he said, ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘I’ve been told that Bill lives at a place called Hilmarton near Calne in Wiltshire. So I said, ‘Well, the next time I go down to see my sister I’ll go down that way. Well, Hilmarton is, it’s, it’s a funny little place. You go through and there’s just a little turning to the church. I didn’t realise we go down that turning. There’s a school and then houses, part of the village. I went into the pub and I said, ‘Do you know anybody called Cleland?’ I said, ‘He was, he was with BOAC.’ ‘No.’ Turns out, Bill said, ‘I don’t know how they didn’t know that,’ he said, because Frances, his daughter used to go and help out in the bar.’ Anyhow, I went into the little garage on the main road and they didn’t know. But they said, ‘I’ll tell you what, he said. In the little bungalow next door but one there’s a chap there. He knows everybody in the village,’ he said, ‘He can probably tell you.’ Knocked on his door. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘He lives just around the back here. The other side of the church.’ So we drove around and I knocked on the door and Bill’s wife answered and I said, ‘Does Bill Cleland live here?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Is he in?’ She said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘I said will you tell him his flight engineer’s here.’ She went in. He was, he was going, supposed to be going out to a meeting. But he said we’ll go and have some lunch. He was so pleased. And of course from then on we kept in touch and, but he’d gone on to, he’d been seconded. In fact we were both demobbed the same day. I met up at Uxbridge. And he’d been seconded to BOAC. He’d actually, he got the King’s, yeah the Kings Commendation while he was with, or the Queen I can’t remember which one it was. He got it for his efforts in flying. Because I know he said to me, he said, ‘You just sit there. Press the button. It takes you to that point. Press another button it takes you to the next point. ‘He said. Oh that’s when he told me he met the wing commander that I flew with as he was. He met him in Canada. He said, ‘We were both going through,’ He said, ‘I know that he recognised me. ‘He said he was a, he wasn’t a nice bloke at all. When they were on the squadron when you looked to see in 156 there was a little number of people who were doing all the master bomber trips. Who had been the master bombers and the, we eventually got on to them but, and Bill went in one day and he said they were all pilots because you had a room each of pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, engineers, wireless operators, air gunners and he said to this wing commander, he said ‘Is it fair that Cocky’s doing all the master bombing?’ He said, ‘Can somebody else take a turn?’ And I think he thought Bill was saying he ought to do it. He wasn’t. He was saying look, you know, some of the others can do it because it’s amazing that the same few were doing them and a lot of them were on dodgy mostly French trips. And anyhow he said, ‘Everybody out.’ He said, ‘Bill, not you.’ He said, ‘I’ll decide who does the master bombers, and their deputies not you.’ and Bill, ‘I wasn’t suggesting that.’ ‘Shut up. Get out.’ He said, ‘I know he recognised me but,’ he said, ‘He completely ignored me.’ And he didn’t do any master bombers himself because it wasn’t a very nice job to do. You know. You’re putting yourself, sticking your head over the parapet. But if you were briefed to do it. We did a couple of deputies and I know one of them we was doing it was on Frankfurt, we was the deputy master bomber. Daylight raid. And our mid-upper gunner suddenly spotted an aircraft in trouble above us. He called up to our skipper and we went up alongside of him. It used to be, it turned out to be one of our own. And they’d been hit by flak in the bomb bay and the engineer’s leg was hanging off and [unclear] hole in the bottom of the fuselage. The mid-upper gunner got out of his turret and stepped straight through the hole. They found his parachute, handed it in when they landed back so obviously, he was, he was obviously killed. The mid-upper err the engineer had been a medical orderly in the previous so he was able to show them to put morphine into him to stop the pain. He got the CGM for that. And after the war another one of the, of our Association lives in Southampton his father was killed on 156 but he collided with another aircraft. And he went, this pilot was in a home alongside them and they came in, knew him. They went to see him and he mentioned that and he said, ‘Yeah. I remember that when he came up alongside of us.’ He mentioned the fact that our, we went up alongside of him. We were the master, deputy master bombers.
CB: Could you describe what, how the master bomber, what his role is and how it works please?
JW: He, he was very often either he or the deputy would do the marking. They’d decide that first. Usually the master bomber would do the, he had a special like we did. You had an eight man crew if you were a deputy or a master. He would then go and mark the target having originally, you would have supporters dropping flares to illuminate the target providing of course down to the weather. And then that would light up, the master bomber would then go in low and find out the target, mark the target and then he’d circle around and he’d watch the way the bombs were falling. And if they were falling short he’d tell them to overshoot the markers and he’d call in the deputy visual centrerers which were following through the raid to keep those markers backed up. And we had backers up and visual centrerers, and he’d call them up and tell them where to drop the, if his markers were a bit off and then he’d direct the raid and tell main force. He called main force up, overshoot to the markers by two seconds to stop the creep back because you always got creep back. People always dropped their bombs short. As one, as Bill used to say, ‘If you’re going over for God’s sake do it properly.’ And you were there the whole of the raid.
[doorbell and knocking]
CB: Just stopping a mo.
[recording paused]
JW: He could, the bomb aimers were pretty good at it and the bombsight we had was really good. And he would then call up [pause] We had backers up, visual centrerers, backers up that would drop flares too because obviously they would gradually go out.
Other 1: Yes.
JW: You know, so he’d call up these people. Their bomb aimers were also good and they would be then bombing on, dropping their flares on the original flares. But if they were slightly off the master bomber would then tell main force. Sometimes they’d put a dummy one up about ten miles away but he’d tell them to ignore that and then he would call them up and say, ‘Overshoot by two seconds,’ to stop as I said the creep back. You always got the creep back. The newer crews used to be at the back of the [unclear] through the raid.
CB: Of the stream. The back of the stream.
JW: Always dropped their bombs short and you could see. You could see that by the way they were falling. So he would tell and they would adjust that and keep the raid going. When we went to the one at Munster, when we got there they was bombing and Bill really called it up and really coated the life out of them. Called them all sorts of things. Concentrate on where the bombers were going and brought the raid back to make it a successful raid.
CB: Why was there bombing creep?
JW: Probably inexperience of the bomb aimers. Nervousness. Perhaps when they were coming along they suddenly, I think it was a natural reaction that they dropped. They got the bombsight coming up to the target and if they think that it’s there but you had to get that, it was a [pause] The gradual was like a red cross on plastic about four inches by two inches that looked.
CB: On the bomb sight.
JW: On the bomb sight as you looked through that and that arrow had to go straight the way through and if it was, this was why sometimes you get thrown off course by slipstream or different things and if, if that happened I used to call dummy run. And then go around the target and come back again. As I say I think that happened about three times and this was on German raids but it was so concentrated and you were oblivious of everything that was going.
Other 1: Yes.
JW: It was quite incredible really. You know. But if you’re not concentrating that much it’s easy enough to press the bomb tit.
CB: So as the bomb aimer you effectively are in control in the last how long? Two minutes or —
JW: Yeah.
CB: Something like that.
JW: Yeah.
CB: And the master bomber you said goes down to make his mark.
JW: Sometimes they would go down. Sometimes they would bomb from the same height.
CB: Right. But then to control the raid.
JW: They’d fly around.
CB: They’d fly above it, would they?
JW: Yeah.
CB: Fly over above everybody else.
JW: They’d fly, they’re coming back at the same height, and they’re usually on the edge of the target and circling around.
CB: Right.
JW: And I mean it was a pretty dangerous job because there was quite a lot of master bombers got shot down because obviously they could pick them up on radar. They’ve got one aircraft going around and around and around.
Other 1: Yes.
CB: Now the master bomber marked in red did he?
JW: It depended. Mainly in red.
CB: And the follow ups would mark in green.
JW: Green. Yeah.
CB: Any other colours?
JW: Yeah. The reds and greens. Sometimes red and greens. Reds. But I don’t think there was any other colours.
CB: So how far back would the green be for doing the marking because this was for the re-energising of the marking wasn’t it?
JW: Well, the master bomber would call that up when he see the, if he sees his flares beginning to fade.
CB: Yeah.
JW: He’d call up and some of them were briefed to go in anyway.
CB: Yeah.
JW: But he would, he would control it from that.
CB: Now, when you did call dummy run what was the actual procedure for getting out and then rejoining the bomber stream?
JW: You just went. We just carried on. Bill, Bill would pull the, close the bomb bay doors. Go on, circle around and come back and join the bomber stream and then do another run on the —
CB: Would it be a standard procedure? You’d always turn left or always turn right or what would it be?
JW: I don’t know. I think we always turn left.
CB: Right. And you’d go out how far because the bomber stream’s quite wide?
JW: I couldn’t tell you that. I don’t know. That would be up to the pilot.
CB: I’m thinking on seconds. So, a minute or — to get out of the stream.
JW: Well, it’s difficult to measure or think about the time. We’d just do it until we get back in.
CB: Yeah.
JW: I don’t think it took that long.
CB: Because you can’t see the other aircraft.
JW: Oh no. occasionally you would see them if you come up. On one occasion I I looked out. I was down in the nose of the aircraft looking and I suddenly see this face in front of me. And I was looking at the rear gunner of another Lancaster. I called Bill up and we were so close to him it was, I could see him. See his face.
CB: What was his reaction?
JW: I don’t know.
CB: He didn’t wave?
JW: No [laughs]
CB: Hello mum.
JW: I think he was clenching his buttocks [laughs]
CB: Can we just go back to, because you’re a flight engineer but you’re effectively changed to do bombing.
JW: Yes.
CB: Because you’re trained as supplementary.
JW: Yeah.
CB: To a bomber, bomb aimer. Your lying prone and you’ve got your head straight down effectively with the bomb sight and the the —
JW: You’re oblivious to everything else.
CB: Yes. And you’ve got the blister that you’re lying in effectively. You’ve got your head in.
JW: Yeah. No. You only put that in afterwards.
CB: Right. So what is, what’s the pattern and what are you seeing and how do you react to what you see because you’re looking at the inferno?
JW: Yeah. You’re looking at, you’re looking at the marker, the indicators, target indicators.
CB: Right.
JW: And you’re getting your cross going through that, those markers and you’re concentrating on that, ‘Left. Left. Steady. Steady. Right. Steady,’ until you get that cross on there and then you press the button. Bombs gone.
CB: So, on your run in you’ve got two minutes effectively when you’re as it were in charge. The navigator is giving you the drift is he? How do you, how do you —
JW: It’s purely and simply, you either, the way the aircraft’s flying. The pilot is just keeping it if he knows you’re steady he’s going to keep that line.
CB: He knows what the drift is.
JW: Yeah.
CB: So —
JW: But you’re telling him that.
CB: Right.
JW: But when we went to, we went and did a raid on Nantes in France we did five. Five dummy runs.
CB: Did you really?
JW: Yeah. Because it was so difficult to see with cloud and everything else. And I think that’s in there.
CB: Is this daylight? Or —
JW: Night flight. Night.
CB: Night. Yeah.
JW: It would be.
CB: What I was trying to get at was there’s the, what you might call the professional aspect of this, of lining up and then calling, ‘Bombs gone.’
JW: Yeah.
CB: But what’s your feeling as you look down into this. Are you busy concentrating on the markers —
JW: You’re oblivious of everything else. I used to be concentrating so much that I didn’t even realise what was going on outside.
CB: So in practical terms there’s a huge barrage of flak bursting all around. Above, below and the side. You’re oblivious to that are you?
JW: Yeah. Yeah. If you’re doing your job properly. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
JW: Yes. And this is my, perhaps the feedback if suddenly a shell bursts near somebody and get rid of the bombs but —
CB: Because the navigators are actually sitting in a cubicle with a blanket hanging down so they can’t see anything.
JW: No.
CB: That’s what you meant earlier isn’t it?
JW: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So it’s a bit of a shock to them to see what’s happening around them.
JW: Our other two navigators never came out. And it was the last trip that we were fated to do although we didn’t know it at the time when this, this Canadian navigator came out. I mean it’s a bit of a shock if you’ve not seen anything and then you see the shell bursts around you and know that one of those too close is curtains. I suppose yeah it did shake you.
CB: What was the main difference between flying daylight and flying in the night?
JW: Well, flying at night you couldn’t see other aircraft normally. Daylight you can see what’s going on. You can see the shell bursts. You can see fighters coming in. I know that my friend in, on his, it was on his last raid at Hamburg and he watched one of our aircraft go down. Funnily enough his brother lives in, when he’d seen that picture in the paper he got in touch with the paper and said, ‘My brother was on 156.’
CB: Really?
JW: ‘Can you give me that man’s name?’
CB: Yeah.
JW: They said no. They gave me his number. But he watched him go down and they were then attacked by a German jet fighter. And he said he watched it come in. He’d never seen anything move so quick in all his life. He was, the jet fighter opened up with cannons, It shot bits of the tailplane off and never touched Rupert.
CB: That’s the tail gunner.
JW: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Extraordinary. So you had a huge variety of raids that you went on. The normal standard was thirty ops and then when you get on to Pathfinders what is the, what is a tour?
JW: When you went on Pathfinders, because of the extended training that you’d had you had to do two tours straight off.
CB: Right.
JW: And because on main force it was thirty trips then you had six months rest and sometimes they called you back sometimes they didn’t. You did another twenty. But on Pathfinders you had to do forty five. But like all of it they were the goalposts. You see I did fifty [pause] fifty two I think to do my two tours because they suddenly brought in a points system. You got five points for a German trip, three points for a French trip and then you had to do [pause] you had to get a hundred and fifty points to finish your first tour. So if it was all French trips it would be more than if it was all French err all German trips. But the, yeah it was, I know there was joke going around about it. If you get shot down over France is it only three fifths dead? Which is, some wag came out with that.
CB: In your case you got the DFM. When did you get that?
JW: It was first promulgated I think in November ’44. I got it in February. 1st of February when I was first noticed it, first notified.
CB: Yeah. ’45. And what about the rest of the crew? What did they get?
JW: The pilot got the DSO and the DFC.
CB: The DSO. At the same time?
JW: No. Different times. DSO, DFC. The two navigators both got the DFC. [pause] The mid-upper gunner got the DFM and the Belgian Croix de Guerre.
CB: Yeah.
JW: I got the DFM and the Croix de Guerre err the Legion of Honour.
CB: Did you get the Croix de Guerre as well?
JW: No.
CB: Oh, right.
JW: And, and of course the Pathfinder award. We all got the Pathfinder award.
CB: Yes. When did that come out?
JW: After you had, when we finished on the squadron.
CB: Right. And as well as getting the scroll what did you get as far as the medal part? There is, there is a, you get a separate badge for Pathfinder.
JW: Yeah. You got that. When you’d done six marker trips you got the temporary award of the Pathfinder badge. You were allowed to wear it on your, you weren’t allowed to wear it on your battledress.
CB: No.
JW: Because if you got shot down and they could see even the holes where [pause] that was your lot.
CB: Yeah.
JW: So, but that’s, as I say that’s the Pathfinder badge. That’s, after the war people were wearing it and some of the jumped up people in the offices said in the higher ranks, ‘You can’t wear that. You can’t wear that anymore.’ But Bennett was a lot cleverer than they thought because when he promulgated it it was promulgated as an award. Not as a badge. It’s an actual award. So they couldn’t stop them wearing it.
CB: This is Air Marshall Bennett.
JW: Yeah.
CB: The CO CNC Pathfinders.
JW: Yeah.
CB: Did you meet him many times?
JW: I never met him. You met him if you went, if you applied for a commission. Then you met him. But I wasn’t interested in a commission. A, it meant a drop in pay for six months and I didn’t fancy that [laughs]
CB: And then you changed messes.
JW: Yeah.
CB: You had to change messes.
JW: Yeah.
CB: We’ve talked a lot about the action but what about in the time off? What did you do then? Did you, did you go out as a crew?
JW: With the —
CB: Socially.
JW: The mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator, myself from the time we met we used to go. We were never out of each other’s company. We even arranged our leave passes. They lived in Newcastle. I lived in Guildford. But we managed to get our leave passes that worked when you, when you looked at it it went from Burradon which was just outside Newcastle to Guildford. So we’d get, when we had leave every six weeks we’d go to Newcastle for three days. We’d get out at Newcastle and say, ‘Oh, we’re going on to Burradon later.’ So you kept your ticket. When we got to, going back there after three days we’d go back to Guildford. We’d get down to Kings Cross and of course you’ve got, you’ve got to go over to Waterloo to get to Guildford. But we used to buy a ticket from Waterloo. It was only about a shilling. Something like that. And so we used to be able to go three days in one place. Three days in the other and —
CB: Overnight travel.
JW: Yeah [laughs] it was, but we used to, all used to go and so our leave was together. Going out we’d be out as a crew. We’d usually meet girls as well. So the only time we were apart is when you were in one corner they were in another [laughs] But we used to go out. We used to go out and drink. You never used, sometimes you did get a bit tipsy. You never went out to get drunk which is what seems to be the norm today. But you went out, you got drunk but because of what you were drinking. You didn’t sit there swilling it to get as much down you as you could.
CB: No. But was the social aspect of life on a squadron partly an antidote to the experiences of raids?
JW: Well, it’s, it’s like I say you used to go out every night you could. We were getting around about seven guineas a week I think at that time which was a lot of money. Beer at a penny err a shilling a pint you know. And —
Other 1: Chris.
CB: Right. We’ll turn off a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Seven guineas a week.
JW: Yeah. That’s what I was getting then.
CB: And beer was a shilling a pint.
JW: A shilling a pint. Yeah. But it was, some days you’d have do in the mess. Perhaps a dance or something like that but mainly we used to go out if we could. I know when I spoke about the discipline on 156, they decided, they had a group captain Airey there who was a station commander and he’d lost three court martials in a row. So that meant he had to be posted but they put in charge a man for discip. A disciplinarian. A man called Menaul. Menaul. And group captain Airey, he was an elderly man but he used to go out on ops occasionally and, but Menaul, I don’t think he ever did. One thing he did do I found out afterwards was when they were bringing prisoners of war back he’d do those trips all right. But on one occasion there was the mid-upper, Bert, Appy, Bert and myself and the rear gunner of another squadron, another crew. A chap called Ron Smith and we going up to Ramsey. To the camp. To the aerodrome. The first entrance you got to was the officer’s entrance what went past the station commanders house. And then you went on another couple of hundred yards to come to the main gate. But this particular night we’d been down, we weren’t drunk we’d been and had a couple of pints each. We decided to go in through the officer’s entrance and we were quite a way along it and suddenly a car pulled up behind us and a voice yelled out, ‘Airmen.’ We knew at once who it was so we scarpered. I went over a fence. The other, I don’t know where the other two went. And then the car, he was looking around. He couldn’t see anybody because it was dark. And the car drove off and then I heard a voice say, ‘Where the bloody hell has he gone to?’ And of course I was on the other side of the fence and walked up and frightened the life out of them. But then we carried on walking and we had to go past the airmen’s billets because this was a peacetime ‘drome so it was all brick buildings. But every time a car came in the main gate we were in open ground. So we had to go down on the flat. We knew what was going to happen. The next morning he had all the squadron into this room and bearing in mind his, his war record was I think one tour as a fighter pilot towards the end of the war and he insulted, he called us all the names under the sun. Now, at this time we’d got something like sixty trips in between each. Appy was fuming. But everybody on the unit knew who the people were except him. Even the adjutant knew. And two of Appy’s mates are sitting on either side of him holding him down. And if we’d have owned up God knows what he would have done. But he couldn’t do the whole squadron so, but do you know what? After the war that man, somebody was writing a book about [pause] I’ve not been able to find a copy of it. I had a copy but I leant it to somebody and I never had it back. It was, they were talking about the airfields in Lincolnshire and round in Cambridgeshire and he had, they’d, they’d interviewed him and he said in there that on that occasion we had gone up to his front door, frightened his wife, urinated against his front door. I wanted the book back because I was going to take the author something about, for libel. Slander. Whatever it is. But anyhow I never got the book back so I could never see it. But they’d actually quoted him verbatim in there. Saying that we’d frightened the wife, his wife and daughter and urinated against his front door. Now, what idiot could do that sort of thing? But that’s in the book. So if he had known who we were, this was written after the war our names would have been there.
CB: Extraordinary.
JW: But funnily enough a friend of mine who was on the squadron with me he lived in Brighton and he lived near Hamish Mahaddie and he went to see Hamish and he was talking about Menaul to Hamish. ‘Don’t talk to me about that — ’ so and so, he said. So he was not only liked, disliked by the rank and file he was utterly disliked by his peers.
CB: There are occasions when very, when senior officers, group captains did fly.
JW: Yeah.
CB: And that’s how they got them in the prison camps.
JW: Yeah.
CB: In some cases. So under what circumstances would they do it, and what would they do?
JW: It was up to them. They decided what they’d do, where they’d go and what they —
CB: And would they be the pilot, the captain or would they just be there for the ride?
JW: If they took over the crew they were the captain. But if they went as the supernumery the pilot is always the captain.
CB: Yes.
JW: Even if he’s a sergeant and he’s got flight lieutenants in his crew he is still the captain.
CB: Yeah. So these people would be flying as the pilot normally would they? The group captains.
JW: No. Not necessarily. They’d go along, you know.
CB: Just to get the experience.
JW: Yeah. Just to get to [pause] but I know that Group Captain Airey went on at least two or three. They weren’t supposed to so it was done surreptitiously.
CB: Might have been a good defence in the court martial.
JW: Yeah [laughs]
CB: What would you say was your most memorable recollection of being in the RAF in the war?
JW: Just the odd occasion when, to get away with as many trips as we did you had to fly a lot of trips where there was nothing happening. There was no, you know, you got away with it. You dropped your bombs you got back, and [pause] But of the probably eight or nine instances when we were attacked by fighters or got hit by flak [unclear] [pause] Probably the time when I looked up and see that bloody aircraft above us with his bomb doors open.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. You talked about the Nuremberg raid a lot of which was in bright moonlight. What did you see in terms of aircraft exploding?
JW: Well, we were, it was our second trip on the Pathfinder squadron so we were acting as supporters, which meant we were right at the front of the — with the master bomber.
CB: Right.
JW: And we were following three Mosquitoes that were doing a spoof raid up to Hamburg I think. Somewhere up there. And we were right behind them so we think we got that through before they realised where the raid was going to go. So what was happening was behind us. I mean the gunners were calling out and saying that they could see aircraft going down but where we were we, we thought it was dangerous because I think the last two hundred miles was a straight leg, straight down to Nuremberg and there were searchlights nearly all the way down there, but so, from our point of view being at the front of the wave of bombers meant that the fighters only took off when they were behind us before they realised where we were going.
CB: Yeah.
JW: And when we got down to come back, lower down in Germany by that time they were down on the floor refuelling. So probably that’s the reason why we got through again.
CB: What was your understanding of the term scarecrow?
JW: Well, they said they were sending up these huge it was like a big dustbin if you like coming up, and they were explaining but in actual fact what they never told us was though they must have known about it was upward firing, the up firing guns and we didn’t know about them. they weren’t, we weren’t told about it.
CB: The Schrage Musik.
JW: Yeah. It was [pause] I know on one occasion on, it was, I think it was on the Nuremberg raid, our mid-upper gunner told me this there was a, the wireless operator had Fishpond. What was called Fishpond. It was an offshoot of H2S and it would pick up fighters.
CB: Trailing behind you.
JW: But the fighter, the fighter disappeared when it got within a hundred and fifty feet, and the wireless operator and the mid-upper gunner were, he was telling him where it was. That he could see it. And then suddenly it disappeared and then Appy said that as we were flying along another Lanc alongside of us, and it used to go over about that sort of speed as you were going over. As it got underneath us it suddenly blew up. And what we think was that that fighter was beneath us firing at us and this other Lanc came in underneath and got blown up instead of us. That’s what, that’s what our mid-upper was thinking, you know. That’s what he thought. He said, it was the fact it disappeared from the Fishpond meant it was within a closer range to come off where it wasn’t showing up and he said this other Lanc, it was, it used to be ok, you used to see it going very slowly underneath you but as it did, as it went underneath suddenly it went up.
CB: Did you feel the blast?
JW: No. No. I don’t know what sort of, you know, I didn’t see the aircraft going under us.
CB: No.
JW: But him being the mid-upper gunner he was, he was up at the top. He could see quite a lot.
CB: You talked about the wing commander who flew in a weave. To what extent were you aware of LMF?
JW: I don’t know of anybody who was accused of it. All I know is that any aircrew never condemned anybody as LMF. It was only some little jumped up merchant in an office sitting behind a desk who’d never even seen a gun let along had one fired who decided this. But I can understand at the top stating it, because they said that if it was easy enough to just pack up the threat of LMF was [pause] but the way they treated them when they were. I mean people had done two or three trips. But not everybody’s the same, and some people just couldn’t. You know, it’s quite, it was quite terrifying really at times. Obviously. I don’t know what we’d have done if it, we were lucky enough not to get hit but, but even so you were quite aware of the fact that you could easily get killed if, you know. You put it out of your mind but you knew really deep down that that was, that was an option. You’ll have to excuse me.
CB: Yeah. We’ll stop for a mo.
[recording paused]
JW: Well —
CB: Now, you you also relied on the ground crew and you talked about the chiefy earlier. What was the relationship between the aircrew and the groundcrew?
JW: Well, that was, well funnily enough I don’t know any of their names. because we had [pages turning]
CB: The ground crew would often look after two aircraft.
JW: That is in, that picture is in quite a few places. And that’s the ground crew. I tried to find out the names of them and I couldn’t. I hoped somebody would be able to find them by publishing it but they couldn’t.
CB: And how did the, how did you get on or did you not talk to them much?
JW: Oh you, we didn’t socialise with them. As I said we didn’t socialise with anybody except our own crew.
CB: Quite.
JW: And it was only the three of us.
CB: Who did it. Yes. But the officers would tend to socialise separately from the airmen wouldn’t they?
JW: Yeah.
CB: Anyway.
JW: Anyhow, there’s [pause] When we were getting dressed we’d get our flying kit on.
CB: Yeah.
JW: We used to sing [pause] it was, I forget the artist who sing it. “My mother done told me when I was in knee pants.” [laughs] We used to sing that as we were getting ready.
CB: And then when you got to the aircraft what rituals were there there? Like watering the rear wheel.
JW: No. We never did that. I don’t think there were any. We used to, I know that with all the checks that we used to have to make, about seventy checks but all the ones outside I never used to let the ground crew see me doing them because I always thought they would think I wasn’t trusting them. So I used to walk round and you could, you could check them yourself without which let them see that you trusted them to do their checks as well. The ones inside the aircraft of course were ok.
Other 1: Was there a very close relationship between the ground crew and the flying crew?
JW: Not as close as you would think.
Other 1: Because there’s a huge amount of reliance or —
JW: Oh yeah. You trusted them completely.
Other 1: You’d have to.
JW: Yeah. I’ll tell you what though. One thing that was happening when we, we were going. A we were taking, got around, suddenly Bill said, ‘We’ve got no brake pressure.’ So he said, ‘Do we need it in the air?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well we can carry on then.’ I said, ‘Yeah’ You don’t use your brakes in the air do you? So the only thing we had to be careful of was taxiing around behind other aircraft. And we took off and when was it that [pause] it meant that when we got back they wouldn’t let us land there. They sent us over to Woodbridge. But on another occasion we were on the short runway and this is when I, you heard say, Bill flew the aircraft by feel as well. On the short runway and there was something wrong with the speed.
CB: Airspeed indicator. Yeah.
JW: Because it was showing a completely different reading on the, on the instrument to what was and he could feel that according to the reading you could take but he didn’t, he flew it without and by the feel and when he felt it could take off on the short runway and I knew that the airspeed cover had been taken off because I’d checked that myself.
CB: Yeah.
JW: And I said to him, ‘There might be an insect in there or something.’ Anyhow, I said, ‘Right. We’ll go through all the checks. Every check that we normally do inside.’ And one of them just in front of the door at the back was it was about that size. A rubber thing with a hole in and there used to be plugs put in that. So you had to check to make sure the plugs were out and I knew that if one was out they’d both be out. The only way I could check it was to sit with the door open and reach along the side of the fuselage and I could just reach it. I knew I could. So what I did I put my parachute on because I realised I could get sucked out. I had Bert hanging on my legs in the fuselage. Opened the door. And when I told Ed Straw who used to fly the Lanc that we’ve got now he said, ‘You bloody idiot,’ he said, ‘You could have been killed. If you’d have got sucked out,’ he said, ‘The tailplane would have hit you.’ I said, ‘I know. That’s why I — ’ Anyhow, I did try that and went on and did all the rest but I couldn’t see the other side. I said to Bill. I don’t know what I was going to do. He didn’t say anything so I thought good. But yeah it was quite funny really.
CB: And the result was?
JW: It was, it was, it was as I knew it would be. The plug wasn’t in there. But this was at ten thousand feet over Guildford.
CB: Oh right [laughs]
JW: And I thought if I fall out I could go home.
CB: Go home. Yeah. Ideal. Yeah. Did people fly with lucky charms?
JW: Yeah. I think they did. I used to have a white scarf I used to carry with me. A silk scarf. Because you couldn’t wear your tie because if you came down in the water it could shrink and choke you. But —
Other 1: Yes.
CB: And did you have any weapon on you?
JW: They issued us just after D-Day. They issued us all with revolvers.
CB: 38s.
JW: Yeah. The aircrew NCOs could only wear, they had to carry them in camp. But officers had to carry them at all times because they thought that the Germans might drop parachutists on to the aerodromes
CB: Oh.
JW: And, but the other thing that I had was a six inch bowie knife. I had them both tucked in me, in me flying boots because I always thought, it never occurred to me if we got shot down that I’d get killed. Didn’t occur to me that. And I thought, and afterwards we used to go on these three day weeks and I thought, I looked, we went out on a trip on the Rhine and I thought, you thought you were going to get across. You can’t bloody swim and you were going to get across there. What sort of daydream were you in? I mean it goes on forever. The width of it. Doesn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
Other 1: It does.
CB: When the war finished did you do any Cook’s Tours?
JW: No. No. We’d been slung off. We were taken off. In April posted away from the unit and never got near an aircraft after that. Oh. I went up. I went up once with, when I was posted, first posted to the Wellington OTU. And they wanted you to go up and they wanted somebody, you need somebody sitting in the tail of a Wellington. I said, ‘I’ll go with you.’ With the pilot and the navigator. We came down and had a look around over where I lived. But —
CB: Not in Germany.
JW: No.
CB: Where did you meet your wife?
JW: Oh, this was, we were working. Both working in the same firm. Works outing actually. We went. They took us all down for Brighton for the day. Two coaches. And we went in to, I didn’t even know she was working there, went in to lunch and suddenly this girl looked around and she had the most beautiful blue eyes. And I thought cor, you lovely blue eyes. Anyhow, I didn’t expect to ever see her again. But in those days the coaches used to go and park somewhere, then they’d come along the front, creep along very slowly and you picked your bus, your coach out and got on as it was going along. And when I got on she was sitting on the front seat. I said, ‘Anybody sitting with you?’ ‘No.’ It was a right curt. I thought I’ll sit down anyway. Got chatting and halfway back we stopped at a pub and had a drink. A couple of drinks. And we got the bottom of Waterloo Road, the factory was. We stopped outside there. We all got off the coach. And she said, ‘You’re not leaving me here on my own are you?’ I said, ‘No. Where do you live?’ She lived just around the corner from the Elephant and Castle. Anyhow, she said, ‘Come and have a cup of tea.’ So I was in there when all the family came back. They’d all been at the pub at the top of the road. Met the family. That was quite strange because when it comes time to say cheerio she went down and presented her sister and her husband had the bottom flat and they had the flat above. And I shall never forget, I said to her, ‘Can I kiss you goodnight?’ She said, ‘I’d have hit you if you hadn’t.’ [laughs] By this time although she was very curt to start with by this time we’d sort of got some rapport and I arranged to meet her again in a week. But when I got outside there was a rail strike on and so I couldn’t get back to Guildford but I was staying with my grandmother at Putney. I got outside and I thought bloody hell how the hell do I get to Putney? All I’d got in my pocket was a half a crown. And I hadn’t got a clue where I was. Anyhow, I walked up to the main road and I see a taxi. I hailed him. He said, ‘I’ve finished mate.’ I said, ‘Oh I’m in trouble, trouble here,’ I said, ‘I’m trying to get back to Putney and I don’t know where it is,’ I said, ‘I’ve only got a half — ’ ‘Get in,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you to Putney Bridge which was, I knew where I was then. And he did. And it was ever so good of him. But then we went out and then later on we decided to get married.
CB: When did you get married?
JW: In September the 1st on 1956.
CB: What was the company you were working for then?
JW: It was Cockayne and Company.
CB: Who?
JW: Cockayne’s.
CB: Oh Cockayne.
JW: C O C K A Y N E. The chap who owned it used to drive around. He used to have a chauffeur with a Rolls Royce and his chauffeur wore a peak cap, gaters, polished gaters. And occasionally he would come around. At Christmas usually he would come around and say hello to everybody. I forget his name now. But they had a factory in Eastleigh in Southampton. And we went down once to play football with them. A football match. Clever they were. Treated us all to a bloody great lunch. And then their team arrived didn’t it? We were playing football on a full stomach.
CB: Different people. Yes. Gamesmanship they call it.
JW: Yeah. Yeah. We were married for [pause] She died in 2013.
CB: Oh dear. Was she younger than you or —
JW: She was five years younger than me.
CB: Well, Jack Watson. A really interesting conversation. Thank you so much.
JW: I’m glad you enjoyed 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
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Interview with John Robert Watson
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-02-02
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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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AWatsonJR180202, PWatsonJR1501
Format
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02:04:35 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
John Robert Watson joined RAF Bomber Command in 1943, volunteering after he witnessed his next-door neighbour's house being destroyed by a bomb. Against his father's wishes, John joined Bomber Command initially as a wireless operator, before transferring to a flight engineer course. Travelling to RAF Ouston, John flew in Lancasters and Halifaxes. His first operation took place on the 17th of January 1944, which he believed he would not survive. His second operation was to Berlin and featured another close call, in which he almost crashed into another Lancaster. He remembers his crew fondly, stating that they did well throughout the war because they trusted one another so much. Joining the Pathfinders force, John travelled from RAF Wickenby to RAF Warboys, changing crews and being put through extra training. Completing over 40 operations John recalls several operations, including one over Nuremberg which featured another close call. John was then moved again and became a flight instructor for Wellingtons. He also gives information regarding his crew, being a flight instructor, his scariest moment whilst flying, the impact of lack of morale fibre, and master bombers' role. He also gives several humorous stories of his time at RAF stations and his run-ins with higher-ranking service members. During his service as a Pathfinder, John received the Distinguished Flying Medal, the Legion of Honour and the Pathfinder badge. When he was demobilized, he became disillusioned with discipline within the RAF and continued his apprenticeship, meeting and marrying his wife in 1956 and living with her until she passed away in 2013.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Northumberland
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Nuremberg
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1944-01-17
1956
Contributor
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Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
12 Squadron
156 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crash
Distinguished Flying Medal
fear
flight engineer
Halifax
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Master Bomber
mid-air collision
military ethos
Pathfinders
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Ouston
RAF Warboys
RAF Wickenby
recruitment
searchlight
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1213/11929/[1]DAVID AND THE RAF2 [2].pdf
35b5401702ea96880cafe22e9866fad0
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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Donaldson, David
David Donaldson
D Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
309 Items and a sub-collection of 51 items. Concerns Royal Air Force career of Wing Commander David Donaldson DSO and bar, DFC. A pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. Mobilized in 1939. he undertook tours on 149, 57 and 156 and 192 Squadrons. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton at RAF Mildenhall in 1941. Collection contains a large number of letters to and from family members, friends as well as Royal Air Force personnel. Also included are personal and service documents, and his logbooks. In addition, there are photographs of family, service personnel and aircraft. After the war he became a solicitor. The collection also contains an oral history interview with Frances Grundy, his daughter.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anna Frances Grundy 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
2015-06-02
2022-10-17
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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Donaldson, D
Grundy, AF
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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DAVID AND THE RAF
My brother David’s very distinguished wartime career with the RAF - two DSOs and a DFC, and promotion to Wing Commander at 28 - warrants a separate appendix to these family notes. He has kindly helped me to compile it by giving me the run of his log books, and I have supplemented them from a number of other sources.
He became interested in flying in the early 1930s. I recall him taking his small brother of 9 or 10 to an air show at Eastleigh and abandoning him while he went up as passenger in a Tiger Moth doing aerobatics. That may well have given him the incentive to join the RAF Volunteer Reserve in 1934 as a weekend pilot. He did much of his training at Hamble, on the Solent. When war broke out in September 1939 he was called up immediately and had to abandon his legal training. He spent the “phoney war” towing target drogues at a bombing and gunnery school at Evanton in Scotland. His log books show him rated as an “average” pilot.
At the end of April 1940, just before the Germans attacked in the West, he went to Brize Norton for intermediate training (earning an “above-average” rating) and then to Harwell for operational training on Wellingtons, the main twin-engined heavy bomber of the early war years. On 20th September, just as the Battle of Britain was ending, he was posted to his first operational squadron, No 149, part of No 3 Group, at the big pre-war air station at Mildenhall. His first operational sortie was over Calais towards the end of September, no doubt to attack the invasion barges.
Over the following five months he took part in some 31 night raids. The German defence at this time was relatively feeble by comparison with what was to follow, and so the tour was correspondingly tolerable; however bitter experience had shown that day bombing was much too costly, and the night bombing techniques were very inaccurate. His first raid on Berlin, at the end of October, was particularly eventful; they got hopelessly lost on their return, came in over Bristol, and ended up over Clacton as dawn was breaking with very little fuel left. There both the Army and the Navy opened up on them, and even the Home Guard succeeded in putting a bullet through the wing. They eventually made a forced crash landing at St Osyth. The Home Guard commander, a retired general, entertained him generously and he finally got back to Mildenhall where his Group Captain forgave him for the damaged aircraft and advised him to go out and get drunk. He took the advice, and in the pub he met a WAAF whom he married eight months later (maybe that is why he remembers that particular day so well.)
The gauntlet of Friendly Fire seems to have been a not uncommon hazard to be faced. On another occasion, when he had to make three circuits returning to Mildenhall, the airfield machine gunners opened fire on him from ground level; he thought they were higher up and judged his height accordingly, and narrowly missed the radio masts which were not, as he thought, below him.
The longest raids on this tour were trips of over ten hours to Italy: to Venice, which they overflew at low level, and to the Fiat works at Turin. He described the latter raid, and the spectacular views of the Alps it afforded, in a BBC broadcast in December 1940. The commonest targets were the Ruhr and other German cities, and some raids were made at lower level on shipping in French ports. The raid which won him the DFC was on 22nd November, on Merignac aerodrome near Bordeaux, which “difficult target he attacked from a height of 1,500 feet and successfully bombed hangars, causing large fires and explosions. As a result of his efforts the task of following aircraft was made easier ......... He has at all times displayed conspicuous determination and devotion to duty.”
It was at Mildenhall that he featured in a series of propaganda photos by Cecil Beaton,
“A Day in the Life of a Bomber Pilot”; they were given a good deal of publicity and in fact David appears in one of them on the cover of the recently published video of the 1941 propaganda film “Target for Tonight”, also made with the help of 149 Squadron - though he did not take part in the film. Beaton describes the occasion at some length in his published diaries, though he has thoroughly scrambled the names and personalities, and he “demoted“ David from captain to co-pilot in his scenario.
On completion of this tour, early in March 1941, David was detached on secondment to the Air Ministry to assist with buying aircraft in North America, and later to ferry aircraft within North America and across the Atlantic - he flew the Atlantic at least twice in Hudsons, taking 12 hours or more.
The “chop rate” in Bomber Command increased substantially during the first half of 1941. [Footnote: The average sortie life of aircrew in the Command was never higher than 9.2 and at one time was as low as eight, and during the dark days of 1941-1943 the average survival chances of anyone starting a 30-sortie tour was consistently under 40% and sometimes under 30%. In one disastrous raid, on Nuremburg in March 1944, 795 planes set out, 94 were shot down and another 12 crashed in Britain. During the war as a whole, out of some 125,000 aircrew who served with Bomber Command, 55,500 died.] This coupled with increasing doubts about the value of the results obtained led to a serious decline in aircrew morale. During the summer of 1941 the Germans had considerable success with intruders - fighter aircraft attacking the bombers as they took off or landed at their own bases. At the end of September David returned to No 3 Group and joined No 57 Squadron at Feltwell, still with Wellingtons. His third raid, over Dusseldorf on October 13th, was particularly difficult; they were badly shot up and with their hydraulics out of action they crash landed at Marham on their return. After two more raids the strain finally proved too much and he was admitted to hospital just before Christmas 1941; for the next two months he was there or on sick leave. From then until mid-July he was Group Tactical Officer at HQ No 3 Group, and not directly involved in operations. In July 1942 he was posted to No 15 Operational Training Unit, at Harwell and Hampstead Norris, where he spent six months as a flight commander flying Ansons and Wellingtons, though he did participate in one raid on Dusseldorf while he was there.
In spite of the appointment of Harris early in 1942 and the introduction of the Gee radio navigational aid, results were still considered disappointing, particularly over the Ruhr, and serious questions were raised about the future of Bomber Command. To improve matters, in August 1942 the elite Pathfinder Force was set up under Don Bennett, albeit in the face of considerable opposition from most of the group commanders who were reluctant to lose their best crews to it. At least initially, all the crews joining it had to be volunteers, and to be ready to undertake extended tours. Their task was to fly ahead of the Main Force in four waves: the Supporters, mainly less experienced crew carrying HE bombs, who were to saturate the defences and draw the flak; the Illuminators, who lit up the aiming point with flares; and the Primary Markers and Backers Up who marked the aiming point with indicators. Their methods became more and more refined as the war went on. The increased accuracy required of them, and their position at the head of the bomber stream, inevitably exposed them to greater danger and a higher casualty rate than those of the Main Force.
No 156 Squadron was one of the original units in the Force; it operated from the wartime airfield of Warboys with Wellingtons until the end of 1942 and thereafter with 4-engined Lancasters, the very successful heavy bomber which was the mainstay of Bomber Command in the later years. The squadron flew a total of 4,584 sorties with the loss of 143 aircraft - a ratio of 3.12%. David joined it in January 1943, again as a flight commander. In the following four months he carried out a further 23 raids (all but one as a pathfinder) in Lancasters. The log books note occasional problems - “coned”, “shot up on way in”, “slight flak damage”, and so on. [Footnote: "Coned" = caught in a cone of converging searchlights, an experience which he says put him off hunting for life.] Much of the period became known as the Battle of the Ruhr, though other targets were also being attacked. He told me once that the raid he was really proud to have been on was the one where instead of marking the targeted town (I think Dortmund) they marked in error a nearby wood, which the main force behind them duly obliterated; only after the war did the Germans express their admiration for the British Intelligence which had identified the highly secret installation hidden in the wood.........
One of the pages in his log book has a cutting from the Times inserted, evidently dated some years later, recalling how in April 1943 the spring came very early and the hedges were billowing with white hawthorn blossom. This puzzled me until I read in a book on 156 Squadron how that blossom had come to have the same significance for them as the Flanders poppies of the 1914-1918 war.
David was promoted to Wing Commander half way through the tour (pathfinders rated one rank above the comparable level elsewhere), and awarded the DSO towards the end of it. The recommendation for this said that he had “at all times pressed home his attacks with the utmost determination and courage in the face of heavy ground defences and fighters. As a pilot he shows powers of leadership and airmanship which have set an outstanding example to the rest of the squadron” - and Bennett himself added, noting that David had just flown four operational sorties in the last five days, “he has provided an example of determination and devotion to duty which it would be difficult to equal.”
On the end of this tour in June 1943, he was sent to command No 1667 Conversion Unit at Lindholme and later Faldingworth. In December 1943 he transferred to a staff appointment at the headquarters of the newly formed 100 (SD) Group at West Raynham and later Bylaugh Hall. At this stage in the war the methods of attack and defence were growing increasingly complex, and this group was formed as a Bomber Support Group, including nightfighters, deceptive measures, and radio countermeasures (RCM). In June 1944, just after D-Day, he was given command of No 192 (SD) Squadron based at Foulsham, another wartime airfield. This squadron had been formed in January 1943 as a specialist RCM unit, and it pioneered this type of operation in Bomber Command; it flew more sorties and suffered more losses (19 aircraft) than any other RCM squadron. While RCM and electronic intelligence were its primary purpose, its aircraft often carried bombs and dropped them on the Main Force targets. RCM took a number of forms - swamping enemy radar and jamming it with “window” tinfoil, looking for new radar types and gaps in its coverage, deceptive R/T transmissions to nightfighters, and so on - and one of the attractions of the work was the considerable measure of autonomy, and the freedom to plan their own operations. These extended to tasks such as searching for V2 launch sites (recorded as “whizzers” in David’s log book) and trying to identify the radio signals associated with them, and supporting the invasion of Walcheren in September. The squadron was equipped with Wellingtons (phased out at the end of 1944), Halifaxes and Mosquitoes, plus a detachment of USAAF Lightnings.
This role was the climax of his career, and lasted until the end of the war and after. It involved him in 25 operational sorties, all in Halifax IIIs, the much improved version of this initially disappointing 4-engined heavy bomber. They carried special electronic equipment and an extra crew member known as the Special Operator. The record of these sorties in the log books, for the most part so formal and statistical up to this point, becomes a little more anecdotal: “rubber-necking on beach” (when he took two senior officers to see the breaching of the dykes at Walcheren), “Munster shambles”, “Lanc blew up and made small hole in aircraft [but only] 4 lost out of 1200!” The furthest east he went was to Gdynia in Poland; on returning from there he had the privilege of becoming the first heavy aircraft to land at Foulsham using the FIDO fog dispersal system. “Finger Finger Fido” was the cryptic comment in the log book.
A number of these sorties were daytime; on one of them, on September 13th, he was chased home by two ME109s which made six attacks on him. One of them opened fire but thanks to violent evasive action his aircraft was undamaged: his own gunners never got a chance to fire. No doubt it was skill of this sort, as well as his survival record, which gave his crew great faith in David’s ability to get them home safely. An encounter on December 29th 1944, on a Window patrol over the Ruhr, was not quite so satisfying; they claimed to have damaged a Ju88 which subsequently proved to be an unhurt Mosquito X from Swannington - and the Mosquito had identified them as a Lancaster. The log entry concludes “Oh dear. FIDO landing, flew into ground. What a day.”
He was awarded a bar to his DSO in July 1945. The recommendation, made in March, recorded that “since being posted to his present squadron he has carried out every one of his sorties in the same exemplary fashion and has set his crews an extremely high standard of devotion to duty and bravery. This standard has had a direct influence on the whole specialist work of the squadron.
“He has been personally responsible for the planning of all the sorties carried out by his special duty unit and by his brilliant understanding and quick appreciation of the everchanging nature of the investigational role of his squadron, much of the success of the investigations performed by his aircraft can be attributed to him. He has shown himself to be fearless and cool in the face of danger, and towards the end of his tour made a point of putting himself on the most arduous and difficult operations.
“Both on the ground and in the air he has been untiring and has not spared himself in his efforts to get his squadron up to the high standard which it has now reached.”
The squadron was disbanded in September, by which time David had completed 501 hours of operations against the enemy in 86 sorties, the great majority of them as captain of his aircraft. He had no ambition to make a permanent career in the RAF; he has commented to Richard that this fact gave him a degree of independence in his dealing with his superiors that he thinks they appreciated and valued. He was demobilised in November and returned to his interrupted law studies.
* * * * * * * * * *
I showed these notes to David, who thought them well written but suggested that they gave a twisted view of the reality - a reaction that I can understand. Since then, however, I have managed to contact one man who flew with David: H B (Hank) Cooper DSO DFC, who first met David in 149 Squadron which he joined in January 1941 as a wireless operator / air gunner for his first tour, and later did two tours as a Special Operator in 192 Squadron, the second of them under David's command. On two occasions he flew as a member of David's crew.
He has written of David that "he was always completely fearless and outstandingly brave and pressed home his attacks to the uttermost. As the Squadron's CO he generated loyalty and warmth, he was an outstanding model to follow. He spent much trouble and time encouraging his junior air crews as well as helping and seeing to the needs of the ground technicians who serviced the aircraft, generally in cold and difficult conditions. He was completely non-boastful, in fact he belittled his own actions (which were always of the highest order) when discussing air operations. [That rings very true!] He was an outstanding squadron commander in all respects, much liked and completely respected by all his air crews and ground crews."
G N D
March 2002
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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David and the RAF
Description
An account of the resource
Account of Wing Commander David Donaldson's RAF career from his early interest in flying and joining the Royal Air Force volunteer reserve in 1934, call up in 1939 and operational tours on 149 Squadron, 57 Squadron, flight commander 156 Squadron pathfinders and commanding 192 (special duties) squadron. Includes training, descriptions of notable operations and incidents, postings between tours to headquarters and training units, pathfinder techniques, radio countermeasures and award of two Distinguished Service Orders and a Distinguished Flying Cross.
Creator
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G N Donaldson
Date
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2002-03
Format
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Four page printed document
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BDonaldsonGNDonaldsonDWv1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Hampshire
England--Hamble-le-Rice
England--Eastleigh
England--Oxfordshire
England--Norfolk
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
Scotland--Evanton
England--Suffolk
England--Huntingdonshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Bristol
England--Essex
England--Clacton-on-Sea
Italy
Italy--Venice
Italy--Turin
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dortmund
Netherlands
Netherlands--Walcheren
England--Berkshire
France
France--Bordeaux Region (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
Poland
Poland--Gdynia
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Gloucestershire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1934
1939
1940-04
1940-09-20
1940-10
1940-12
1941-10-22
1941
1941-04
1942
1942-07
1942-08
1943
1943-01
1943-04
1943-06
1944
1944-06
1944-09-13
1944-12-29
1945
1945-07
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Frances Grundy
100 Group
149 Squadron
15 OTU
156 Squadron
1667 HCU
192 Squadron
3 Group
57 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Order
FIDO
forced landing
Gee
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hudson
Ju 88
Lancaster
Me 109
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
P-38
Pathfinders
pilot
propaganda
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Evanton
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Feltwell
RAF Foulsham
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Warboys
RAF West Raynham
target indicator
training
Wellington
Window
-
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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
Donaldson, David
David Donaldson
D Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
309 Items and a sub-collection of 51 items. Concerns Royal Air Force career of Wing Commander David Donaldson DSO and bar, DFC. A pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. Mobilized in 1939. he undertook tours on 149, 57 and 156 and 192 Squadrons. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton at RAF Mildenhall in 1941. Collection contains a large number of letters to and from family members, friends as well as Royal Air Force personnel. Also included are personal and service documents, and his logbooks. In addition, there are photographs of family, service personnel and aircraft. After the war he became a solicitor. The collection also contains an oral history interview with Frances Grundy, his daughter.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anna Frances Grundy and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-02
2022-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Donaldson, D
Grundy, AF
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
XMAS CARD
[Stamps]
WING/COM D.W.DONALDSON D.S.O. D F C .
[deleted] R.A.F FALDINGWORTH
LINCOLN[\deleted]
DANESHILL FARMHOUSE
OXSHOTT
SURREY
ENGLAND
[page break]
Written in ….. ENGLISH
(No......15/032
Sender's(Rank...F/O
(Name...DONALDSON
[page break]
Dear Willy
This is to wish you, Joyce and Anna a happy Christmas and all the rest of it. I hope you manage to get some leave for the occasion. You can tell your wife that this [pointer to drawing of Indian couple in bottom left hand corner of document] is just like India except that the poor woman usually has her family hung all round her as well & there are usually at least four
[printed] CHRISTMAS 1943 /printed] P.T.O.
[page break]
women to each Indian, - so she had better not come out here. But I was forgetting that she is much travelled & knows all these things.
We continue to live a peculiar life and have recently become expert in ceremonial drill, our chief diversion in life being the time honoured sport [character deleted] of driving the permanent staff mad. We have only scored one complete success so far but several more have every appearance of being on the verge.
How is your distinguished daughter. Let me know sometime, what are her latest accomplishments; I'm sure Joyce can invent some, even if she hasn't any new ones. Also what are you doing yourself. I'm afraid Lincolnshire must be a cheerless place by now?
The prospects here are very obscure and range from asst adj down to WOP/AG as far as I can see, in fact almost anything that I know nothing about. Still the shines [?] & bananas are cheap, even if nothing else is, so I don't lose much sleep, (except when wakened by drunken Canadians trying to bathe in the water tank, or Indians gargling in the small hours, or other tropical noises.
Have a nice Christmas
Love and kisses
Ian
I am eagerly awaiting the day when Norman appears in Bombay in a topee. But I suppose it's too much to hope for.
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
Letter to David Donaldson from his brother Ian
Description
An account of the resource
Christmas card with seasons greetings and writes of life in India including sports and drill. Catches up with family news.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Donaldson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-12-16
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two page handwritten letter with cartoon decoration and envelope
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Artwork
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EDonaldsonIDonaldsonDW431216
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
India
Great Britain
England--Surrey
England--Oxshott
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-12
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Frances Grundy
RAF Faldingworth
-
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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
Donaldson, David
David Donaldson
D Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
309 Items and a sub-collection of 51 items. Concerns Royal Air Force career of Wing Commander David Donaldson DSO and bar, DFC. A pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. Mobilized in 1939. he undertook tours on 149, 57 and 156 and 192 Squadrons. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton at RAF Mildenhall in 1941. Collection contains a large number of letters to and from family members, friends as well as Royal Air Force personnel. Also included are personal and service documents, and his logbooks. In addition, there are photographs of family, service personnel and aircraft. After the war he became a solicitor. The collection also contains an oral history interview with Frances Grundy, his daughter.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anna Frances Grundy and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-02
2022-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Donaldson, D
Grundy, AF
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
19
70185 A/W/Cdr. D.W. Donaldson, RAFVR.
192 Squadron,
R.A.F. Station,
Foulsham,
Nr. Dereham,
Norfolk.
To:- Officer Commanding, R.A.F. Station,
Foulsham, Nr. Dereham, Norfolk.
Date:- 31st March, 1945.
Subject:- [underlined] APPLICATION FOR A TEMPORARY RELEASE. [/underlined]
Sir,
I have the honour to apply for a temporary release from the R.A.F. for a period of from six to nine months. This is to enable me to work and sit for the Solicitor's Final Examination.
When mobilised at the outbreak of war in September 1939, I was a Solicitor's Articled Clerk. I had completed my articles and was working for and was about to take the Final examination in November of that year.
This release would only commence on the completion of my third and present tour of operations, and subject to my then not being required by the R.A.F. for the above period of six to nine months.
Attached are details of my service career since September 1939. My demobilisation Group is No.22.
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your Obedient Servant,
D.W.D
Wing Commander,
[underlined] Commanding 192 Squadron. [/underlined]
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
Application for temporary release
Description
An account of the resource
Letter from David Donaldson to station commander at RAF Foulsham requesting temporary release for a period of six to nine months in order to study and sit solicitor's, final examinations. Enclosed document listing his service since September 1939 which includes target towing, training, operational tours on 149, 57, 156 and 192 Squadrons, tours at 3 and 100 Group and Atlantic ferrying.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
D Donaldson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-03-31
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EDonaldsonDWOCRAFFoulsham450331
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
Civilian
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
Scotland--Ross and Cromarty
England--Oxfordshire
England--Berkshire
England--Suffolk
England--Hertfordshire
England--Lincoln
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-03-31
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One-page typewritten letter and one page typewritten document
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Frances Grundy
100 Group
149 Squadron
156 Squadron
192 Squadron
3 Group
57 Squadron
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hudson
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Evanton
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Feltwell
RAF Foulsham
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Warboys
RAF West Raynham
training
Wellington
-
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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
Donaldson, David
David Donaldson
D Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
309 Items and a sub-collection of 51 items. Concerns Royal Air Force career of Wing Commander David Donaldson DSO and bar, DFC. A pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1934. Mobilized in 1939. he undertook tours on 149, 57 and 156 and 192 Squadrons. He was photographed by Cecil Beaton at RAF Mildenhall in 1941. Collection contains a large number of letters to and from family members, friends as well as Royal Air Force personnel. Also included are personal and service documents, and his logbooks. In addition, there are photographs of family, service personnel and aircraft. After the war he became a solicitor. The collection also contains an oral history interview with Frances Grundy, his daughter.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Anna Frances Grundy and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-06-02
2022-10-17
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Donaldson, D
Grundy, AF
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
53, LIMERSTON STREET,
LONDON, SW10 0BL
01-352 4460.
D.W.D.
D.S.O & Bar Awarded 14.5.43 and 17.7.45
D.F.C Awarded 7 February 1941
1939/45 Star
Air Crew Europe Star (With France & Germany clasp)
Defence Medal
War Medal 1939/45
Air Efficiency Award
(DSO, Bar & DFC have year of award engraved on back)
(Air Efficiency Award has name & [indecipherable word] on rim)
J.D. War Medal 1939/45
[page break]
RAF Service
53, LIMERSTON STREET,
LONDON, SW10 0BL
01-352 4460.
D.W.D.
RAFO (A.A OD) 13.8.34 – 31.1.37 ASTLd Hamble etc
RAFVR 1.2.38 – 2.9.39 Avro Cadet, BE2.A.
RAF EVANTON (Scotland) 3.9.39 – 26.4.40. Hanley. (Target Training).
RAF BRIZE NORTON (2 SFTS) 27.4.40 – 9.8.40 Oxford, Flying Training
No15. OUT RAF HARWELL 10.8.40 – 19.9.40 Wellington Training
No149 (B)Sqd RAF MILDENHALL 20.12.40 – 7.3.40[sic] Wellington. 31. Ops
Detailed to Air Ministry & British [indecipherable words] NEW YORK and ATFERO for Ferrying Duties USA Canada Iceland & UK. 8.3.41 – 28.9.41. Hudson and Wellington.
No 57(B) Sqdn. Feltwell & [indecipherable word] 26.9.41 – 20.x11.41 Wellingtons. 5 Ops.
RAF Hospitals Ely and Littleport & Sick leave 20.x11.42[sic] 9.3.42
H.Q 3 Group RAF EXNING 9.3.42 14.7.42 Staff-Group Tactics Offices
No.18. OUT RAF HARWELL & HAMPSTEAD NORRIS 15.3.42 18.1.43 Instructor 1, Op. Wellingtons
RAF WARBOYS (Pathfinders) 18.1.43 21.6.43. Flight Commander (WgCom) Pathfinders 23, Ops.
P.T.O.
[page break]
No 1667 Heavy Conversion Unit. RAF LINDHOLME & FALDINGWORTH. 21.6.43 – 14.12.43 Chief Instructor Lancasters.
HQ 100 Group RAF West Raynham & BYLAUGH Hall 15.12.44[sic] 12.6.44 Staff Air 1 & D.S.A.S.O 2 Ops.
RAF FOULSHAM, No 192 Sqdr. (Spec Duties) 12.6.44 – 6.9.45. CO Air [indecipherable word] & Signals Investigation Halifax. 21, Ops.
H.Q 100 Group RAF BYLAUGH HALL 6.9.45 1.10.45. (W/C. Ops).
Demob [indecipherable word] 1.10.45 – 25.x1.45.
[underlined] JD. [/underlined]
WAAF October 1939 – Feb 1940 Initial Training
RAF Bentley Priory H.Q. Fighter Command Feb 1940 – June 1940 Filter Plotter
Code & Cypher Training at OXFORD June 1940 – August 1940 ASO Code & Cypher Training ASO
RAF MILDENHALL Bomber Command August 1940 – Late Summer 1941 C&C Offices
RAF WYTON Bomber Command Section Offices Summer 1941 – Dec 1941 C&C Offices
H.Q Flying Training [indecipherable word] RAF CAVERSHAM Dec 1941 – April 1941[sic] C&C Duties
April 1941[sic] – [indecipherable word]
([indecipherable words])
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
Summary of medals and Royal Air Force Service for David and Joyce Donaldson
Description
An account of the resource
List medals for David Donaldson including Distinguished Service order and bar, Distinguished Flying Cross. Medal for Joyce Donaldson, War Medal 1939-45. Lists RAF Service for David Donaldson from 1934 to demob in November 1945. Lists Joyce Donaldson's wartime service in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force from October 1939 to April 1941.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Donaldson
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Three page handwritten document
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Hampshire
England--Hamble-le-Rice
Scotland--Easter Ross
England--Oxfordshire
England--Berkshire
England--Suffolk
England--Norfolk
England--Exning
England--Ely
England--Huntingdonshire
England--London
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1934
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MDonaldsonDW70185-150610-07
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steve Baldwin
100 Group
149 Squadron
15 OTU
1667 HCU
18 OTU
192 Squadron
3 Group
57 Squadron
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Order
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Hudson
Lancaster
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
RAF Bentley Priory
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Evanton
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Feltwell
RAF Foulsham
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Lindholme
RAF Methwold
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Warboys
RAF West Raynham
RAF Wyton
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
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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
Cahir, Francis Shamus. Letters and photographs
Description
An account of the resource
32 items. The collection contains correspondence and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jim Cahir and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-09
2016-06-08
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
Cahir, FS
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[postmark]
[postage stamp]
[missing letter] US419417
P/O D. ALEXANDRATOS
R.A.A.F.
c/- Officers Mess
1667 Con Unit
R.A.F. Station [sic]
FOLDINgworth [sic]
Lincs
SgT [sic] CAHIR. FS.
AUS 419441
1652 C.U.
Marston Moor.
York.
Mon. 20.9.43.
Dear Spike
I received your letter about about [sic] ten minutes ago my Aunt sent it on to me, its a bit late to send a telegram now as you said you would be on leave actually I have only been in England about ten days and am only beginning to get my land legs after a very nice trip taking three whole months. I spent a week at Brighton and have been moved up here to be crewed up, small things as a refresher course or an O.T.U. don’t count here. I have crewed up with an Australian crew and will be moving over to 466 within the next ten days; like you I am a mid-upper and don’t mind it in the slightest, by the way Lance Kemp is with me over here also Laurie Shultry. I won’t tell you any more of the news until I see you, the nearest town here is York if you happen to be near it anytime let me know & I will meet you there. Well Spike old Boy! I will be expecting to hear from you as soon as you get back off leave and maybe able to meet [inserted] you [/inserted] somewhere, I have not had any leave yet & from rumours I don’t think we will get any.
Your old pal
Jim.
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
Letter to Spike from Jim Cahir
Description
An account of the resource
A letter to Spike Alexandratos from Jim. He describes what he has been doing since arriving in England.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jim Cahir
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-09-20
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One handwritten letter
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ECahirFSAlexandratosD430920
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Brighton
England--Sussex
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-09-20
1652 HCU
1667 HCU
466 Squadron
aircrew
Heavy Conversion Unit
Operational Training Unit
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Marston Moor
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1376/23939/MFordTA1585520-170411-050001.2.jpg
f1e652f70ae895a3d9b1358ced9ce1bf
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1376/23939/MFordTA1585520-170411-050002.2.jpg
95c2f7861babde9765a43f0ed947eed9
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
Ford, Terry
Ford, T
Description
An account of the resource
135 items. The collection concerns Terry Ford. He flew operations as a pilot with 75 Squadron. It contains photographs, his log book, operational maps, letters home during training, and documents including emergency drills. There are two albums of photographs, one of navigation logs, and another of target photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Julia Burke 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
2017-03-13
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ford, T
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
Westkapelle, October 3, 1944
Description
An account of the resource
A battle order for the attack on Westkapelle, Vlissingen. It covers the fighter support, Pathfinders and the bomber squadrons and bases involved.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-10-03
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two typewritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MFordTA1585520-170411-050001,
MFordTA1585520-170411-050002
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Fighter Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Netherlands
Netherlands--Vlissingen
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.
1944-10-03
1 Group
100 Squadron
101 Squadron
103 Squadron
105 Squadron
109 Squadron
115 Squadron
12 Squadron
149 Squadron
15 Squadron
166 Squadron
218 Squadron
3 Group
300 Squadron
460 Squadron
514 Squadron
550 Squadron
576 Squadron
582 Squadron
617 Squadron
622 Squadron
625 Squadron
626 Squadron
75 Squadron
90 Squadron
bombing
Lancaster
Mosquito
Pathfinders
RAF Binbrook
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Grimsby
RAF Kelstern
RAF Kirmington
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF Mepal
RAF Methwold
RAF Mildenhall
RAF North Killingholme
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Wickenby
RAF Witchford
RAF Woodhall Spa
Spitfire
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1524/30245/MBaxterPD52604-160712-28.2.jpg
705abeb3c555dc9c2c7ee00d84130d46
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
Baxter, Peter Dennis
P D Baxter
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-12
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
Baxter, PD
Description
An account of the resource
63 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Peter Baxter (b. 1922, 52604 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, photographs and documents. He was trained as an airframe apprentice at RAF Halton and served as ground crew before volunteering to become air crew. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 12 and 153 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Michael Baxter and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HALTON
1 S of T.T. HALTON 8 Months
2 S of T.T. COSFORD 1 1/2 Years
9 A.O.S. PENRHOS 2 1/2 Years
4 S of T.T. ST.ATHAN 3 Months
12 Squadron WICKENBY 10 Months
1667 H.C.U.FALDINGWORTH 3Months
1 L.F.S. HEMSWELL 9 Months
153 Sqdn. SCAMPTON 1 Year
50 Sqdn. STURGATE 4 Months
50 Sqdn. WADDINGTON 7 Months
TOTAL 8 Years 8 Months.
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
Units Peter Baxter served at
Description
An account of the resource
Typwritten list of the units and the length of time that he was stationed there.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Peter Baxter
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One typewritten sheet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MBaxterPD52604-160712-28
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Staffordshire
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jan Waller
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.
12 Squadron
153 Squadron
1667 HCU
50 Squadron
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster Finishing School
RAF Cosford
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Halton
RAF Hemswell
RAF Penrhos
RAF Scampton
RAF St Athan
RAF Sturgate
RAF Waddington
RAF Wickenby
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1524/30282/BBaxterPDBaxterPDv1.1.pdf
577eb11ecf5974b8a0c61795657b59c5
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
Baxter, Peter Dennis
P D Baxter
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-12
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
Baxter, PD
Description
An account of the resource
63 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Peter Baxter (b. 1922, 52604 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, photographs and documents. He was trained as an airframe apprentice at RAF Halton and served as ground crew before volunteering to become air crew. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 12 and 153 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Michael Baxter and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
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
I Flew with Nine Wing Commanders
Description
An account of the resource
The detailed and wide ranging story of Peter Baxter's service in the RAF from an Airframe Apprentice to Flight Engineer Leader.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Peter Baxter
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Book in .pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Memoir
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BBaxterPDBaxterPDv1
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.
England--Lincolnshire
England--Buckinghamshire
Wales--Glamorgan
England--Staffordshire
Wales--Gwynedd
Germany--Berlin
Italy--Milan
France--La Rochelle
Europe--Frisian Islands
Germany--Essen
Germany--Düsseldorf
Italy--Turin
France--Lorient
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Nuremberg
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Mülheim an der Ruhr
Germany--Wuppertal
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Bonn
Germany--Paderborn
Italy
Great Britain
Germany
France
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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.
12 Squadron
153 Squadron
50 Squadron
aerial photograph
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
Battle
Beaufighter
Blenheim
bombing
Cook’s tour
coping mechanism
crash
crewing up
debriefing
dispersal
Distinguished Flying Medal
Do 217
entertainment
final resting place
fitter airframe
fitter engine
flight engineer
fuelling
ground crew
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 3
He 111
Heavy Conversion Unit
incendiary device
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Lancaster Mk 1
Lancaster Mk 3
Lincoln
mess
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
Nissen hut
nose art
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
pilot
promotion
RAF Cosford
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Halton
RAF Hemswell
RAF Kirmington
RAF Llandwrog
RAF Scampton
RAF St Athan
RAF Sturgate
RAF Tilstock
RAF Waddington
RAF Wickenby
recruitment
target photograph
training
Whitley
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/165/30582/LAndersonWG1501026v1.1.pdf
b67576fb45e434d714031f6ffd315627
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
Wright, Jim
J R Wright
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wright, J
Description
An account of the resource
93 items. The collection contains two oral history interviews with Jim Wright, letters, cuttings and photographs. It concerns James Roy Wright’s research into his father, Sergeant Arthur Charles Wright (1911 - 1943, 1149750 Royal Air Force) and an operation to Turin 12/13 July 1943 which caused 100 aircraft to violate Swiss airspace. Two aircraft were shot down or crashed in Switzerland. There are many photographs and details of the activities that night including reports by the Swiss authorities. The crews are identified with photographs and there are several photographs of the funerals at Vevey. Additional material includes aerial photograph of bomb damage in Germany and the logbook and airman's pay book of W G Anderson. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jim Wright and catalogued by Nigel Huckins, with descriptions of official Swiss documents provided Gilvray Williams. <br /><br />Additional information on Arthur Charles Wright is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/126015/">IBCC Losses Database</a>. This collection also contains items concerning Hugh Burke Bolger and his crew. Additional information on Hugh Burke Bolger is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/102186/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
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
W G Anderson's observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
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
LAndersonWG1501026v1
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
W.G.Anderson’s wireless operator’s flying log book covering the period from 1 March 1943 to 28 April 1944. Detailing his flying training and operations flown as wireless operator. He was stationed at RAF Yatesbury (2 RS), RAF Millom (2 OAFU), RAF Finningley (18 OTU), RAF Faldingworth (1667 HCU), RAF Hemswell and Binbrook (1 LFS) and RAF Ludford Magna (101 Squadron).
Aircraft flown in were Dominie, Proctor, Anson, Wellington, Halifax and Lancaster. Targets were Paris, Aulnoye, Rouen, Cologne, Brunswick, Munich, Essen and Friedrichshaven. He flew eight night operations with 101 Squadron and was killed in action Friedrichshaven 28 Apr 1944. His pilot on operations was Warrant Officer Noble.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Terry Hancock
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
England--Cumbria
England--Lincolnshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Paris
France--Rouen
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Munich
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1944-04-09
1944-04-10
1944-04-11
1944-04-18
1944-04-19
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
101 Squadron
1667 HCU
18 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
Dominie
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
killed in action
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
missing in action
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Binbrook
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Finningley
RAF Hemswell
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF Millom
RAF Yatesbury
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1187/31549/LWatsonJR1605406v1.2.pdf
501f3aa015650de589fa38da68a1c63d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Watson, John Robert
J R Watson
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. An oral history interview with warrant Officer John 'Jack' Watson DFM (b. 1923 Royal Air Force) his log book and photographs. He flew three turs of operations as a flight engineer with 12 and 156 Squadrons.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Watson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Watson, JR
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 Robert Watson’s observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LWatsonJR1605406v1
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book for J R Watson, flight engineer, covering the period from 2 November 1943 to 30 March 1945. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Faldingworth, RAF Wickenby, RAF Warboys, RAF Upwood and RAF Husbands Bosworth. Aircraft flown in were Halifax, Lancaster. Oxford and Wellington. He flew a total of 77 operations, 12 with 12 Squadron and 66 with 156 Squadron. Targets were Brunswick, Berlin, Magdeburg, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Schweinfurt, Augsburg, Essen, Nuremburg, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Karlsruhe, Friedrichshafen, Somain, Montdidier, Nantes, Boulogne, Duisburg, Dortmund, Aachen, Calais, Longues, Foret-de-Cerisy, Fougeres. Lens, Middlestraete, Oisemont-Neuville, Donges, Hamburg, Cassan, Trossy, Abbeville, Caen, Lille, Russelsheim, Kiel, Connantre, Moerdijk, Saarbrucken, Wilhelmshaven, Heinbach, Opladen, Hannover, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Politz, Bohlen, Wesel, Worms, Chemnitz, Hanau, Hildesheim, Harpenerweg and Munster. His pilots on operations were Flight Lieutenant Cleland and Wing Commander Scott.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
France--Abbeville
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
France--Caen
France--Calais
France--Donges
France--Fougères (Ille-et-Vilaine)
France--Lens
France--Lille
France--Longues-sur-Mer
France--Montdidier (Hauts-de-France)
France--Nantes
France--Neuville-aux-Bois
France--Normandy
France--Paris Region
France--Sézanne
France--Somain
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Augsburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dortmund Region
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Euskirchen Region
Germany--Friedrichshafen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hanau
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Hildesheim
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Leipzig Region
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Nordhausen (Thuringia)
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Rüsselsheim
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Wilhelmshaven
Germany--Worms
Netherlands--Rotterdam Region
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
France--Creil
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944-01-14
1944-01-20
1944-01-21
1944-01-22
1944-01-27
1944-01-28
1944-01-29
1944-01-30
1944-02-19
1944-02-20
1944-02-21
1944-02-24
1944-02-25
1944-02-26
1944-03-01
1944-03-26
1944-03-27
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-04-20
1944-04-21
1944-04-22
1944-04-23
1944-04-24
1944-04-25
1944-04-26
1944-04-27
1944-04-28
1944-04-30
1944-05-01
1944-05-03
1944-05-04
1944-05-07
1944-05-19
1944-05-20
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-05-23
1944-05-24
1944-05-25
1944-06-03
1944-06-05
1944-06-07
1944-06-08
1944-06-09
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-24
1944-06-27
1944-07-02
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-08-03
1944-08-04
1944-08-05
1944-08-07
1944-08-08
1944-08-09
1944-08-10
1944-08-12
1944-08-13
1944-08-16
1944-08-17
1944-08-18
1944-08-19
1944-08-25
1944-08-26
1944-08-27
1944-09-12
1944-09-13
1944-09-15
1944-09-16
1944-09-17
1944-09-20
1944-10-05
1944-10-06
1944-10-14
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Mike Connock
12 Squadron
156 Squadron
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aircrew
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
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Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
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tactical support for Normandy troops
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Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1791/32503/BWierTWierTv1.2.pdf
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Wier, Tadeusz
T Wier
Tadeusz Wierzbowski
T Wierzbowski
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-01-22
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Wier, T
Description
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24 items. The collection concerns Tadeusz Wier (b.1920) and contains his log books, memoirs, photographs and documents. He flew operations as a pilot with 300 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Michael Wier-Wierzbowski and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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Tadeusz Wierzbowski grew up on a farm near Zgierz, Poland. He learned to fly at the training school at Deblin and escaped from the Nazi and Russian invasions in 1939. He travelled through Romania to the Black Sea, and was in France when the Nazis invaded. He eventually arrived in Liverpool on the Andura Star in June 1940.
He flew as an instructor, training others to fly for three years, before he was posted into combat with 300 Squadron. He flew 25 operations as a Lancaster pilot from RAF Faldingworth including bombing Hitler’s Eagle’s nest at Berchtesgaden.
Tadeusz was a test pilot after the war and shortened his name to Wier to make it easier for air traffic control officers. Over his career, he flew over 40 different aircraft types from Polish RWD 8 trainers to Vampire jets.
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FLASHBACKS – 0 to 4
SQN. LDR. T. WIER, A.F.C., R.A.F. (Retd.)
[page break]
[underlined] 0 FLASHBACKS 0 [/underlined]
Most of my family are of the opinion that I ought to write something about my childhood. I guess they are right because I came and eventually settled in this country over half a century ago and with the exception of my wife and my son, Michael, no other member of my immediate family have seen or heard much about the part of Poland where I come from.
I must confess that up till now I did not think that the times of my youth were particularly interesting but, having lived all these years I have come to the conclusion that one should leave something in black and white for the children and succeeding generations.
I can even cite a personal example why one should do so. I have never met or known my grandparents because I was born quite a few years after their death. Therefore, the only good and reliable source of information about them would have been my own parents but, due to the way my life has been fashioned by world events, I could not talk to them about it, simply, because I was not able to see them in my later years. I saw the family for the last time during the Christmas holidays in 1938 when I was already in military uniform and spending the few days of my leave at home between recruit training with the infantry and posting to the Officers' Flying Training School in Deblin, Poland.
My father died less than a year later and I was not able to visit my mother after the war because the communist regime would not allow Polish citizens any social contacts with the people living in the Western countries. Actually, I received a letter from by brother about my mother's death six months after her demise while I was serving in Singapore. She died on the 1st of May, 1960, age 77 years. The next person to die in my family was my eldest brother, Wacek, and I got the news of that event again half way round the world while I was serving in Belize, British Honduras, in the early seventies.
It is obvious that I should start writing my story from as far back as it is possible. And, as all the beginnings come from our ancestors, then it must be in order to mention them at this stage.
Every time when I go to Poland, I set aside a few hours to visit the Parish Cemetery in ZGIERZ where a lot of my dead relations are now buried. It is not in any way a depressing experience because I usually find people there tending the graves, bringing flowers, clearing the footpaths or just simply walking about. There are permanent flower stalls outside the cemetery gates and they are open every day of the year. I still remember All Saints' Day celebrated on the 1st of November each year when there is a real flood of people who turn out in the evening to light the candles on the graves of their family departed. Some persons travel long distances, even scores of miles, to visit on that day their parents or other relatives graves
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and also to meet old colleagues and friends. Most of the graves will have dozens of candles flickering in the wind, others a few and there may be the odd one unattended. Very likely it will have a candle lit by a neighbour. The glow of thousands of candles is visible a long way off even on a darkest night, no matter what the weather. It is a real social occasion and one not to be missed lightly.
Last year, when I went to the cemetery, I made a note of the inscriptions on the gravestones of my grandparents and my parents.
Here are the names and dates I have noted: -
My mothers' parents: -
WAWRZYNIEC i MALGOZATA (z PABIANCZYKOW) WIERZBOWSCY
ZYL LAT 39, ZM. 4.10.1904 (Born 1582)
ZYLA LAT 67, ZM. 28.11.1917 (Born 1850)
My fathers' parents:-
BRONISLAWA i MARCEL WIERZBOWSCY
ZYLA 44 LAT, ZM. 3.1.1904 (Born 1860)
ZYL 56 LAT, ZM. 20.1.1906 (Born 1850)
My mother: -
ELEONARA WIERZBOWSKA
UR. 22.11.1882, ZM. 1.5.1960 (Lived 77 years)
My father: -
JOZEF WIERZBOWSKI
UR. 19.3.1883, ZM. 1.10.1939 (Lived 56 years)
Some explanatory notes: -
ZYL, ZYLA means Lived
LAT means Years
ZM. (Zmarl, a) means Died
UR. (Urodzony, a) means Born
WIERZBOWSCY is a collective name of the family.
It seems that in the nineteenth century Poland people did not live too long – old age being an exception rather than the rule.
As I said before, I never saw my grandparents and now I very much regret that I did not talk closely to my parents about the life of our ancestors. Were my mother and father
[page break]
3
alive today, I would have hundreds of questions to ask them but, unfortunately, it is too late and I have only odd bits of information which remained in my memory.
Somehow, I don’t think there was an opportune time, urge or sufficient will to delve deeply into my parents’ past. Neither do I know if the lives of my grandparents were particularly happy or joyous. None of them lived in a free country because Poland was then partitioned amongst our age-old enemies of Russia, Germany and Austria. It is certain that they were not benevolent as masters.
By a curious coincidence my mother’s parents had the same surname as my father. I queried that fact once or twice with my mother but she assured me that there was no blood relationship between her and my father. Apparently, her family came from a small settlement 25-30 miles to the west of KROGULEC which was the name of the village where we lived. I suppose, the chances are that some Wierzbowski strayed in one direction or another long, long ago and started a new branch of the family. However, my maternal grandparents must have lived not too far away because they are buried in our cemetery.
I only vaguely remember being told that my father’s parents lived in a neighbouring village and raised altogether twelve children, my father being the eldest of the five brothers. My mother had two brothers and two sisters, making five children in all on that side of the family. When I went back to Poland for the first time after my retirement in 1976, my brother, Ryszard, and I sat down and made a list of our first cousins. There were over sixty of them and some were already dead. One was killed as a soldier during the Polish campaign and another was murdered by the Gestapo during the occupation.
I think that my paternal grandfather was a small farmer because I remember that the parts of the land which were inherited by my father and belonged to our farm were really in the next village where the grandparents lived.
There is not much more that I can write about my grandparents so I will now say something about my parents, my brothers and my only sister.
My mother was married twice, my father being her second husband. Her first husband’s name was KOSTECKI so that my two elder brothers and the sister had that surname. Her name was GENOWEFA, I think she was born in 1900 or 01 which made her the eldest of the children. Unfortunately, she died in 1936 with lung disease – her trade was tailoring. Next was my brother WACLAW who served as an officer in the Polish Army (Armoured Brigade) and he was followed by HENRYK who trained at an Agricultural College and became a farmer. I believe their father died just before the First World War at a fairly young age.
I was born on the 2nd of January 1920 as the first of three brothers, the other being RYSZARD born in February 1921 and ZENON born January 1927. Ryszard became a chemical
[page break]
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engineer and Zenek studied Agriculture and eventually took over our farm. There is only Ryszard left now of all of my family and we are in a kind of a race for the second place with the undertaker. I think our chances are fairly even.
Something about my father. As far as I can figure out, our part of Poland was under Russian occupation because my father was called up or conscripted into the Russian army. I still have a photograph of him in a Russian army uniform which was taken somewhere in Moscow. (There is an inscription on it to that effect). He was eventually taken prisoner by the Germans during the First World War and spent sometime in a Prisoners of War camp in Germany. I want to mention one legacy of those times which remained with him for the rest of his life – he had a somewhat choleric temperament and when he got mad he could swear fluently in three languages – Russian, German and Polish!
He returned home after the war and married my mother who was then a widow. I suppose one of the factors which helped in the marriage was the fact that my father's land was adjoining my mother's. The plots were divided only by the village road so it made economic sense to combine the two properties together. As a matter of fact, this made our farm one of the largest in the neighbourhood.
I was really born in a thatched cottage. It was very ancient, rather small and built on my mother's part of the property. A few years after my birth my parents must have decided that a larger dwelling was necessary. A new house was built of bricks and roofed over with tiles simply on the outside of the old cottage so that we had somewhere to live while the building was going up and the new roof covered the lot. I was then 4 to 5 years old.
One incident from that period of time remained in my memory and it concerns the actual new building. Well, the external walls were built of red-fired bricks but, I think, that in order to save expense, the chimney which was located in the centre of the house, was built of dried but unfired clay bricks. It was an important structure in the house because it contained near its base a kind of bakery for making our bread every week. I guess it was an accepted practice to use unfired bricks in that situation because, when the fire was lit in the bakery stove, it produced a lot of heat and would, obviously, further dry and harden the bricks. The chimney was partly built and then one night it came crashing down. There must have been some damage but, fortunately, no one was hurt. Next morning the builders inspected the havoc and looked for the cause of the disaster and eventually said that it must have been one of our dogs which peed against the corner of the chimney and thus weakened the structure. Some explanation! In point of fact I now think (with hindsight!) that the mortar they used which was lime and sand only might have been too wet and thus soaked the unfired bricks so they eventually gave way. Anyway, I believe they stuck to their story but had to rebuild the chimney where it stayed until recent years.
[page break]
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One of the earliest memories which I have is that of our orchard. This happened while we still lived in the cottage and when I was very young. I was sick with measles and on top of that I caught a cold or some other infection, became very seriously ill and remained in bed for good few weeks. I remember when I was eventually allowed outside I saw the orchard in full bloom. We had a lot of fruit trees; - apples, pears, plum and cherry trees, damsons and also lots of fruiting shrubs. The time must have been in May or so because all the trees were covered in blossom. They looked beautiful to me and after being cooped up inside all those weeks, seeing the sun and the blue sky, and feeling the warm spring air, was as good as heaven to me, or at least a kind of paradise. I have never forgotten the experience.
I was my father's oldest child and he must have been quite fond of me because I was often with him and sometimes he led me around the farm by the hand. Life slows down in winter on the farm, the days get shorter so on most evenings my father would sit me on his knee and read aloud books to me. They were mostly fairy tales and, of course, I was fascinated by the wonderful stories. When my father read to me he also used a pointer showing me the words and letters as he pronounced them. Somehow or other I very quickly learned to read myself and from then on I was always in love with the written words and the treasures and wisdom to be found in books. Later on, when I was at school, I belonged and used three different libraries so that I would always have an unread book at hand. To illustrate my commitment to reading I will quote my uncle who seeing me for the first time during my return visit to Poland in 1976 said:- “Last time I saw you before the war you were reading a book and now almost forty years later on you still have a book in front of you.” Another uncle used to say to his children:- “Why aren't you like Tadek and read books?!” Those cousins reminded me of that many years later. I must have been a real pain in the behind to them.
The school starting age in Poland is seven years, although now they have a kind of preparatory classes from the age of six. My father knew the local village Schoolmaster fairly well and he arranged for me to start school before I was even six years old. It was a very small school, one classroom, one teacher and the kids up to the age of twelve or fourteen. I was probably a little shrimp of a lad amongst the other village boys and girls but I could read, while my contemporaries were beginning to learn the alphabet. Life was real easy for me then.
I don't really remember too much about that school except that I busted my collar-bone during one playtime period and was off school for two or three weeks. It was a peculiar kind of a game called “Snake” where about a dozen boys and girls would join hands in a line, usually according to size and then run. The 'heavy' end of the Snake would turn and the whole line would act like a whip. I was the sucker at the end of the line and went flying as if I were shot out of a catapult. Result, damaged and painful arm.
[page break]
I left the village school at the age of ten to attend a large school in town. From there to the Gimnasium still in Zgierz where I matriculated in 1938.
A few lines of information about our farm. It was situated 2 1/2 miles or so west of Zgierz which was our nearest town. I think we had over 25 acres of land and were mostly self-sufficient in food. 2 or 3 horses to work on the farm. 6 to 8 cows, some pigs, chickens, geese and turkeys. The farm produce included mainly rye grain, oats, barley, potatoes and plenty of fruit in the season. We had to go occasionally to town to get such things as sugar, coffee, tea and again fish which was usually salted or fresh herrings.
While I was at home, that is to say between the wars, we always had a hired man and woman living in; the woman helping mother in the house (laundry, baking) and working outside on jobs like milking cows and feeding poultry and pigs. The man would work mainly in the fields with my father. Of course, at harvest time everybody was on the go including us when we were off school. When the cherries were in season and there was no panic about work I would often hide in a tree with a book and stuff myself with fresh fruit. Now and again mother would chase us around to pick the cherries or plums as they could be sold in town without any trouble. They were sure great times!
I do not wish to create the impression that we were particularly well-off. Far from it! There was never too much money about and regular taxes to pay. It was the time of the Great Depression and there certainly weren't any farm subsidies to collect. It was more or less a hand to mouth existence and people would work for next to nothing, very often for their keep and a small reward. For instance, I never heard of the idea of pocket money for kids until I came to this country. I guess it would be very difficult to starve on a farm but we certainly never had any luxuries. Nevertheless, it was a healthy kind of life and the sun always seemed to be shining. Youth is such a wonderful time but one only learns to appreciate it in later years!
January 1992 T. Wier
N.B. One of my Aunts' first name was NEPOMUCENA. How about that?!
[page break]
[underlined] FLASHBACKS 1 [/underlined]
I still remember our first bombing raid. Not necessarily because it was the first but because it did not go exactly according to plan.
I was posted with the crew just after Christmas 1944 to No 300 Bomber Squadron at Faldingworth, near Lincoln. It was snowing heavily at the time - fortunately the journey was not too long, about 30 miles from Blyton, near Gainsborough, where we had finished our training on four-engined Halifaxes and Lancasters.
I think I ought to write something about my experiences in England up to that time because it is likely that they are different from those of my colleagues.
I started flying in England in May 1941 about 10 months after the collapse of France. I had one week on aircraft type Magister at Hucknall, near Nottingham and after that to Montrose in Scotland (NO 8 SFTS) for training on Masters and Hurricanes. From September until the end of that year I was in the south of England flying Henleys and Lysanders at Weston Zoyland [sic], Somerset. January and February 1942 Flying Instructors Course at Church Lawford, near Rugby and then a posting to No 25 (P) EFTS at Hucknall, Nottingham for duties as a Pilot Instructor. I must have been one of the youngest instructors there – a new, 22 year old Pilot Officer serving in “C” Flight with Capt. Tanski as Flight Commander.
The next two years felt like a constant roundabout. Each instructor had, normally four pupils every eight weeks and the first ten hours flying (average) with a pupil is mostly all talk in the air and often lots of explanations on the ground. So much talk that often one’s throat would get sore. And the pupil listened and learned to fly, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. What amazes me now is the fact that they learned so much in such a short time – first solo, spinning, aerobatics, instrument flying, cross-country flights and even night flying. I remember one poor soul made 23 approaches before finally landing without mishap. I must admit that landing was difficult that particular night because the wind was from the wrong direction. The Flight Commander and the instructors heaved a sigh of relief – somebody wanted to bring anti-aircraft artillery!
At Hucknall there was also another problem.
Practically each and every one of the instructors wanted to join an operational Squadron. Of course, the result was that there was a regulated list of such volunteers and one had to wait for one’s turn to be released from flying instructor’s duties. I must have been way down the list because my turn did not come until June 1944. Moreover, I only got in because someone ahead of me declined this privilege.
I received an allocation to a bomber Squadron and a posting to Finningley, near Doncaster for training on twin-engined Wellingtons. I was very pleased that my instructor would be Janek Dziedzic and Flight Commander Jozek Nowak – both of them my colleagues from the Flying School, Deblin, in Poland.
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At Finningley, apart from flying training the aircrew personnel were formed into individual aircraft crews, that is to say the crew would consist of pilot, navigator, bomb-aimer, radio-operator and two gunners. The flight-engineer would join the crew later for training on four-engined aircraft.
I was very lucky with my crew. They approached me as a gathered and complete group – all good lads – I had a lot of flying hours under my belt, maybe that helped. They were all N.C.O.s, younger than I was with the exception of the bomb-aimer a year or so older. The youngest was the rear-gunner, only nineteen!
Flight Sergeant Hieronim Stawicki, our Flight Engineer, became eventually “The Father” of the crew. I think he was 27 years old at the time and started flying with us in November 1944.
I return now to our arrival at Faldingworth. The end of December, winter, frost. There were not too many people as the older crews were finishing their tours of duty and some of the others simply were not returning from the raids. In spite of the fact that the Germans were retreating on all fronts, the Squadron was still losing crews. One aircraft lost meant seven aircrew, leaving a large hole in the Unit. Even during the last raid of the war on the 25th of April 1945 while bombing Berchtesgaden, one of Squadron aircraft was so badly damaged that the pilot was forced to crash-land in France. Luckily, the whole crew escaped without too many injuries. The bomb-aimer in that crew was my school-friend, Flying Officer, Roman Piaskowski.
A few weeks after our arrival, reporting to all our Commanders and some training flights we found ourselves on the 2nd of February 1945 at the briefing with all other aircrews for our first raid on Germany. Target – WIESBADEN. A night flight, but not too bad because most of the route was over France. The flight duration was about six hours.
As far as I remember the weather was fairly good. From time to time we could see the other aircraft in the stream. The only problem which we discovered on route to the target was strong head wind, much stronger than forecast – the navigator was complaining that we should be late over the target. I was not sure what to do about it – we increased the speed slightly, but this was not necessary as we discovered after our return to base. The correct procedure was to continue as per flight plan following the principle that the same wind was affecting all the other aircraft. I guess we must have been in good time over Wiesbaden.
There was quite a bit of anti-aircraft fire on the approach and over the target. Not much time to worry about it because one has to fly accurately following bomb-aimer's instructions. After a while the aircraft jumps up, “Bombs gone!”, bomb doors close and the aircraft shoots forward without the load.
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14,000 pounds went down – a great relief for the aeroplane and all crew members.
The return flight is always easier. The aircraft is very light and after crossing of the Channel everyone feels fairly safe. We were returning to Faldingworth from the south. When the navigator said that we were getting near the airfield I noticed the lights and received clearance to join the circuit and to land over the R/T. Normal circuit, approach and landing without much trouble.
Then our problems began. After clearing the runway and taxying [sic] to dispersal we stopped the engines and started to leave the aircraft. To my surprise we had landed at FISKERTON, an airfield few miles south of Faldingworth which also had Lancasters probably taking part in the same raid.
The worst trouble was that we were not allowed to take off again and return to Faldingworth because we had one or two hung-up bombs in the bomb bay which we were unable to jettison earlier. And naturally, the Armament Officer in charge of such operations decided that it would be more sensible to tackle a job like that in daylight rather than in the middle of the night. We, of course, had to sit and wait there, returning eventually to Faldingworth eight or nine hours later.
What had happened? Well, there were quite a number of Bomber Command airfields in Lincolnshire (I can list 10 of them within 12-15 mile radius of Faldingworth) and they were very much alike. That is to say, their lighting was similar, the runways more or less in the same direction and of nearly standard length. One thing which distinguished one airfield from another were the recognition letters placed in, what was called “The Outer Circle” of airfield lights. Nearly always they consisted of two letters – the first and the last letter of the airfield's name. Thus Faldingworth had FH and Fiskerton FN. I did see the letters when I was doing the circuit, but unfortunately, I did not know or realize that there was an airfield with similar letters so close to ours. As a matter of fact, I thought that the installation of the lights was slightly damaged and the centre bar of the letter H had dropped at one end and was simply leaning over. I fully intended to report the matter on the ground after landing.
This is my explanation of the incident. It ended without mishap, but now I realize that we really avoided trouble. A simple oversight on my part, but talking to our own air Traffic Control and landing at another airfield was neither a sensible nor a safe occupation.
I stopped flying as a pilot in the Royal Air Force towards the end of 1959. Sometime later I read the following short article (I do not know the author and I decided that it would be appropriate to place it on the last unused page of my Pilot's Flying Log Book:-
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[underlined] “I WANT TO BE A PILOT” [/underlined]
[underlined] by a 10- year old Schoolboy [/underlined]
“....I want to be a pilot when I grow up ….because it's a fun job and easy to do. That's why there are so many pilots flying today. Pilots don't need much school, they just have to learn to read numbers so they can read instruments. I guess they should be able to read road maps so they won't get lost. Pilots should be brave so they won't be scared if it's foggy and they can't see, or if a wing or motor falls off, they would stay calm so they will know what to do. Pilots have to have good eyes to see through clouds and they can't be afraid of lightning or thunder because they are closer to them than we are. The salary pilots make is another thing I like. They have more money than they can spend. This is because most people think plane flying is dangerous except pilots don't because they know how easy it is. There isn't much I don't like except girls like pilots and all the stewardesses want to marry pilots so they always have to chase them away so they don't bother them. I hope I don't get air sick because I get car sick and if I get air sick I couldn't be a pilot and then I would have to go to work....”
I guess this is the right way to finish this part of my recollections.
June 1991
T. Wier
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[underlined] FLASHBACKS 2 [/underlined]
There must be lots of reasons which influence and help young people in the choice of their career. I was already interested in flying in Primary School – I read what I could find about the subject, made flying models of gliders and aeroplanes and when I was in Gimnasium (Grammar School) I attended several lectures given by a glider instructor. At fifteen or sixteen I received a brochure describing conditions of Service in the Polish Air Force and in the Officers Flying Training School situated at that time in Deblin forty or fifty miles south of Warsaw. There were a number of photographs in the book and the one that impressed me a lot was a photograph of a pilot with the rank of a colonel in the Polish Air Force. He looked very smart at at 36 was about to retire. Fantastic! Of course the profession was somewhat risky and there was always a possibility of a fatal accident but the pilot then had a very impressive funeral and a propeller over his grave!
One of the books which I read was by Captain Janusz Meissner and the title of it was “School of Young Eagles”. Beautifully written and the contents were really inspiring – kind of an answer to the dreams of all would-be young Flyers. As it happened we met Captain Meissner later while we were interned in Romania and where he was our Unit Commander for a while. A very imposing and kind officer – he looked after us like a father. Very much like “Captain Grey” - the character in the book I mentioned.
While considering my future career I received some advice from my older colleague. Takek Walczak matriculated from the same school in ZGIERZ one year ahead of me and joined the Polish Air Force in 1937. He was actually then at the Flying School and I met him while he was on leave all resplendent n his uniform and the “walking out” dagger at his side. My original intention was to apply for admission to the Technical Officers School but he soon convinced me that life as a “plumber” would be very dull and that of a pilot much more interesting.
I must now admit that he was absolutely right. I can not now imagine the 22 years of my life from 1938 to 1960 in a profession other than as a military pilot. I feel certain that I have lived during the “golden age” of aviation. When I started flying the aeroplanes were “string, wires and canvas” (at least the first ones I trained on were!) and by 1948 I was flying the early jet aircraft. In 1957 the SPUTNIK was circling the globe and in 1969 NEIL ARMSTRONG walked on the surface of the moon. What progress!
Soon after my matriculation in 1938 I received a notification to attend a course on gliders in Ustianowa, South-East Poland. Two weeks earned my category “B” on glider type “Wrona”. Week or two later another course in Ustianowa but this time for selection to the Officers Flying Training School. Gliders “Czajka” and “Salamander” ending with the award of category “C”.
2
After all these valiant efforts the authorities still managed to get hold of me and sent me to a Labour camp in Southern Poland. The work involved building a road and was kind of obligatory for all students who have completed secondary education. I think the attachment was for a month or so. However, the Camp Commandant realized that I have done my stint of service for the Government and sent me home after three or four days. Just in time for the harvest! Father was very pleased – great help on the farm.
End of September 1938 found me in a khaki uniform with a very short haircut in the barracks of 31st Infantry Brigade in Lodz for my course of Recruit Training. Lots of drill, marching, weapon training, instructions in field tactics, rifle and machine-gun range firing and, thank God, after Christmas posting to Flying School in Deblin. Much, much better there! Fitted uniforms, modern barracks, mattresses instead of straw pallets. (Easy to remake the bed after duty N.C.O.s' failed inspection). About an hour of drill a day and an awful lot of lectures. I think that we had about seven hours – one had to have a brain like a sponge to assimilate it all – somehow a lot stayed in. We started lectures about six or seven in the morning then one break and a small snack at eleven. Lunch was well after two in the afternoon. And one hour of drill after that!
Spring 1939. The weather was kind because I remember that we finished initial flying training on aircraft RWD 8 fairly quickly. We used a small grass satellite airfield called Zajezierze on the west side of the river Vistula. I ought to add that the main airfield at Deblin, the other satellite airfields and the nearby town Irena were all on the right, east bank of the river.
Before the first solo we had a dual flight and carried out spinning on aircraft type PWS 26 (our initial RWD 8 was non-aerobatic and not stressed for practice of spinning) and after that a free fall parachute jump out of a large three-engined Fokker aircraft. There were six of us in each group to carry out the jump and I was the first to be pushed out of the aeroplane. I do not know if I was the lightest or the heaviest in the group but I fell down fairly fast. 3 seconds later I pulled the ripcord and the parachute opened without any trouble. One had to hang on to the handle of the ripcord because it’s loss meant a small fine and every penny of our meagre pay soon got used up. What actually frightened me most was the fact that I seemed to be heading straight for a huge metal wind indicator which was situated in the corner of the airfield not too far from the Officers’ Mess. However, my Guardian Angel looked after me and I managed to land several yards away from this obstruction. There would not be much fun having an argument with such a heap of iron and one could certainly do oneself an awful lot of painful injury by landing on it.
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I do not remember now the exact date but early in June we found ourselves at another satellite airfield called Borowina. I still had my original instructor on the next type of aircraft which was a biplane PWS 26. I think now that my instructor was near enough a saint – he never got angry and had infinite patience. Only once, I remember, he told me after an hour’s instrument flying under the hood that he could not have lasted much longer. I don’t know if it was my flying or some other reason that caused the remark.
I recollect a couple of incidents from that part of my flying career. I was very impressed with the speed with which our Technical Branch dealt with a problem which was discovered in our aircraft following a near-fatal accident. It happened that one of our lads, Stasiek Litak, was carrying out an exercise in spinning. This required starting the spin, two or three turns and then recovery. Fairly simple exercise – one needed some height, a clear bit of sky, speed reduced to minimum and then the stick fully back, rudder pedal hard over to one side and the machine goes round. for the recovery exactly opposite action of the flying controls, that is to say, the stick fully forward and the rudder pedal hard over to the other side. I must add that Stasiek Litak was a big chap and wore very large size boots. (This has no connection with the incident but he was a brilliant player on the accordion). What I heard eventually was that Stasiek started the spin OK but while doing so his foot slipped of [sic] the rudder and got jammed by the side of the fuselage and the bar itself. In spite of great efforts he was unable to pull his foot out and apply the opposite rudder. And so the aeroplane continued spinning although at a slower rate all the way down. I believe Stasiek was injured but, fortunately, still able to explain what had happened.
Few days later all the PWS 26 aircraft were modified – special wooden guards were fitted to prevent the foot getting jammed. Very simple and effective.
We had a very comprehensive program of flying exercises to carry out. Towards the end of the course one of them involved live air to ground firing – fixed machine gun firing through the propeller into a target on the ground. The target was a large rectangle of cleared ground and covered with smoothed-out sand so that every bullet hitting it would show a trace. We had a prescribed number of rounds loaded for each pilot to fire and it was thus fairly simple to count the hits and figure out who was a good shot.
As the target was flat on the ground, one had to dive and aim the aircraft. Furthermore, the nearer the vertical the dive and closer to the ground, the better the score. Of course, we were limited to the number of passes we could make on the target so one had to judge everything nicely – there wasn’t much time to correct any mistakes.
I guess, I must have got a pass-mark for my live firing – I certainly do not remember my score. But I remember what happened to another pilot doing the same exercise.
4
Parallel with our course we had eight or ten officers from the Bulgarian Air Force trained by Polish instructors. They were not billeted with us and we saw them only from time to time. Their senior officer was a Bulgarian captain, very strict, keen and correct. He was always trying to get top marks in every activity, no doubt to set a good example to his other officers.
Unfortunately, as I said before, one did not have much time to correct mistakes during the air firing exercise. It was necessary to stop the firing and pull out of the dive in good time to avoid crashing into the ground. Few seconds too long and the pilot was in trouble which is exactly what happened to our Captain. He must have pulled out very hard but did not quite make it and left some bits of his aeroplane on the surrounding bushes and trees. Somehow he got away without serious injury himself.
September 1939 and the German invasion of Poland. The bombing of Deblin and our own airfield was not very pleasant. Fortunately, we were a mile or so away from the airfield and nobody was injured in our Section. The bombing took place about lunchtime on the 2nd of September and that afternoon we cleared out of our barracks and continued the march for most of the night in the direction of Lublin, which was South-East of our airfield. We stopped for a couple of days near a large farming estate and from there I was detailed for my last flight in Poland. I do not know how it happened but I think that my instructor must have been confident of my flying ability because I was instructed to fly one of our training aircraft, PWS 26, in formation with my instructor in the direction of Lwow in South-East Poland. These aircraft were already dispersed from our home airfield so the take off and landing were to be on temporary landing grounds. My instructor flew ahead and I had to follow him. We were flying quite low and I simply kept close so as not to lose his aircraft – he was navigating for both of us. My attention must have wandered off temporarily because I got a real fright when a tall chimney of some brickworks or a factory suddenly appeared ahead of me. Quick yank on the stick and full throttle got me out of that predicament. I landed, eventually, behind my instructor on a field still covered with short stubble from the recent harvest. After landing, the aeroplane was pushed tail first into a nearby wood, few branches across the front completed the camouflage. I guess, the Russians found the aircraft there when they marched in, we could not fly them any further because of lack of fuel.
About 11 o'clock on Sunday, 17th of September our Commanders received a message that the Russians have invaded Poland from the East. Soon after came the order to evacuate the Unit in the direction of Rumanian border and next day we found ourselves in that country – disarmed and in a foreign land.
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It must have happened during our journey to the southern region of Rumania. Somewhere and somehow I contracted dysentery, most likely eating contaminated fruit. I spent about a week in a hospital in Tulcea and slowly recovered my health. My youth and skilled medical care helped to overcome a very unpleasant illness.
Unusual coincidence. My father, in Poland, only 56 years old at the time, also contracted this disease about the same time as I did. He died because of it on the 4th of October 1939. I received the information about his death and the cause of It well after the war ended. Life for a life?
The following recollection which touched me very deeply will always remain in my memory. It happened on the first Sunday of our internment in Rumania. A large camp of tents, Holy Mass in the open and at the end a hymn: -
O God, Who for centuries Have allowed Poland
The splendour of might and glory and Who
Protected her with the shield of Your care
From the misfortunes which had threatened.
We carry this prayer before Your altars
Bless our free Motherland, O Lord.
We sang:-
Return to us our Motherland, O Lord.
I was then nineteen....
Tadek Wier
August 1991
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[underlined] FLASHBACKS 3 [/underlined]
Rumania. Soon after my return from the hospital (first days of October, 1939) we were moved from the tented camp in Tulcea to a village in Dobrudja, somewhere near Bazargic in South-East Rumania. Bolek Uszpolewicz and I were billeted with a village family which consisted of the old farmer and wife, his married son and wife, and a younger daughter of the old farmer, about twenty years of age. Bolek was six years older than I and his family lived in Lithuania.
I must add that I am relying entirely on my memory when writing these recollections and sometimes I am not quite certain of the dates. The reason for this is that during our internment in Rumania everybody was trying to escape to the West, that is to say to France or England which were still at war, and so to continue fighting the Germans. The right way to go about it was to get rid of everything which would connect a person with the fact that he was in the Polish Forces, then acquire a civilian suit and proceed to a designated collection point given to us just before the escape. Therefore, all the photographs, documents and papers had to be destroyed or thrown away. As a result, I do not have any positive records from that period of time. I am not quite certain now that such a drastic clear-out was absolutely necessary, but when one is young and without experience of tricky matters, it is best to listen to the advice of people who are older and have the knowledge of what to do in unusual circumstances.
Our old farmer left the house practically every day to work in the fields and always took with him a full jug of wine. The jug was a fair size, three pints or so and when he returned in the evening he was in high good humour. His son invited us one day to have a look at their cellar where the wine was kept – huge barrel, about five feet in diameter – must have lasted a whole year until next grape harvest.
I am ashamed to say that I do not remember our host's name or even their religion. Rut religious they were. Each Sunday the young woman in the house would trot off to church and later join the group of young people gathered in the village square. There was a small band of musicians and men and women would dance. The dances had a definite oriental flavour – very likely the influence of Bulgaria and Turkey.
A small happening which I recollect with pleasure. Our food was no great shakes and there wasn't too much of it. The winter was approaching fast, November, snow, frost and often howling wind – a hungry person feels such discomforts quite a lot. Bolek and I decided that it would be nice to have a real feast for once. We managed to save some money and then bought a goose from a neighbour's wife. This lady, very kindly has agreed to cook or roast the goose for us. The cooked bird was truly delicious – stuffed with sauerkraut and paprika. These two ingredients seemed to a perfect flavouring for the goose meat, I would recommend this method of preparing it to any cook or chef.
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Sometime at the beginning of December we got our, sort of, civilian outfits, some extra money for the journey and one early morning caught a train which eventually took us to Balcic on the coast of the Black Sea and very close to the Bulgarian frontier. We waited there a couple of weeks or so for the boat and for our travel documents. These, of course, were forged and our senior officers had a lot of work inventing new names for all of us. I don't think they had much trouble finding one for me – Tadeusz Eugeniusz Wierzbowski disappeared and Maciej Gruszka showed up in his place. I guess I ought to add that there is a common Polish proverb which says that the good times will come when willow trees will start growing pears. And wierzba means willow in Polish – gruszka is a pear!
A few days before Christmas a boat called “Patris” showed up in the harbour. There must have been several hundreds of us and all eager to get away. We eventually found out that our destination was Beirut in, as it was then Syria. The boat must have been fairly small and rather unstable because when we were passing one of the islands and most of the passengers on top moved to one side to get a better view, the boat listed quite a few degrees towards the island.
We landed in Beirut two or three days before Christmas and spent the next three weeks in a military camp just to the north of the city. With French hospitality we were treated at Christmas to a choice meal and half a bottle of champagne. Once or twice we wandered into the city – very busy, lots of money changers and cafes – sweet, thick coffee and cakes when one could afford it! What surprised me a lot was the sight of fruiting orange trees (January!) and the cheepness [sic] of oranges – one could buy a dozen for next to nothing.
About the middle of January we embarked on a large passenger ship and after leaving Beirut spent few pleasant days on the journey to Marseille [sic]. They were pleasant because the weather was quite good and when we sailed through the Straits of Messina (between Sicily and Calabria – Italy was then still neutral) we had a good view of Mount Etna and sometime later the island and volcano of Stromboli.
The ship docked in Marseille on the 20th of January, 1940. Hard winter there - frost, some snow and a short stop-over in a camp just outside the town. Very primitive, I think we inherited it after the refugees from the Spanish Civil War. Eventually we were transported to a camp near a village of Sept Fonds, not far from Caussade in South-West France. Lovely countryside, but the camp not so good, very much like the one in Marseille.
The situation improved a lot when we were moved to Lyon in March, 1940. We stayed in Lyon-Foire, a large building which housed some sort of Exhibition a year or so before. It was located on the edge of the city and right on the bank of the River Rhone. Nearby was a nice park – I still remember a flock of peacocks which was kept there – they would strut around and display their dazzling tail feathers.
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The city itself was very impressive – lovely buildings, bridges over the Rhone, spring and early summer – about the best time of the year to get to know the place and to learn French which was most important for further service in the Air force there.
It did not last long. The German offensive started on 10th of May, 1940. We had an early raid by German bombers directed mainly against nearby airfield of Lyon-Bron used by our training Units. There were casualties, killed and wounded. One of the young officers in the air at the time attacked the formation of bombers but was himself shot down by them and killed – death of a hero!
The 18th of June, 1940 was a sad day in Lyon. The end of the fighting in France and the armistice. Also the tears of the women who wept as they watched us marching from Lyon-Foire to the railway station. Overnight journey and we found ourselves the next day somewhere near Montpelier on the Mediterranean coast of France. We waited there nearly two days because our Commanders expected a boat or a ship to transport us to North Africa or to England. Unfortunately, nothing turned up and we were loaded on to a train again and transported in the direction of the West coast of France. The train stopped for several hours in Toulouse on a siding and alongside a goods train. I mention this because someone discovered that one of the wagons of the goods train was loaded with boxes of fresh peaches. I do remember that we were very hungry, so in no time at all quite a few of the boxes found their way on board or our train. Soon there was no trace of the peaches and the empty boxes disappeared also. Since then, I have noticed, that I had become very indifferent to the sight or taste of fresh peaches.
After our stop in Toulouse the train headed southwards towards the Spanish frontier through Bayonne and halted eventually in St Jean de Luz. I think we spent the night there and the next day started boarding a British ship which was anchored about half a mile from the shore. The ship was called “Andora Star”.
The following letter from a reader appeared in the “Sunday Times” on the 13th of October, 1991:-
LAST TO LEAVE: The account of Sir James Goldsmith's escape from France in 1940, News Review last week stated that his family left from Bayonne in the last ship to leave for England. On Monday, June 24 1940, we (my family) overtook a German advance military unit just north of Bordeaux and raced on to Bayonne to find the British Consul had moved to St Jean de Luz. It was there that we boarded the Arandora Star, together with the remnants of the Polish air force. The ship sailed at 17.30 on June 24 with 4000 on board and reached Liverpool on June 27. That was the last sailing from the Atlantic coast of France to England.
I remember it well – I was there. - R.S. Bendall, Exeter.
I was there as well among the others....
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I also have a Post Scriptum about the ship “Arandora Star”. It happened that the journey from St Jean de Luz to Liverpool was the last that the ship completed successfully. The next sailing from Liverpool to Canada on the 1st of July 1940 ended tragically when the ship was torpedoed soon after passing Ireland by a U-boat whose Captain was the renowned Gunther Prien of Scapa Flow fame. The Arandora Star went down in half an hour with the loss of 800 lives.
My Guardian Angel was still taking care of me.
Tadek Wier.
October 1991.
[underlined] FLASHBACKS 4 [/underlined]
I ought to explain how it came about that I changed my surname from WIERZBOWSKI to WIER.
During the second half of 1948 I received my appointment to a Short Service Commission in the General Duties Branch of the Royal Air Force. This was a very welcome news because, before that, I spent my time in the Polish Resettlement Corps on detachments to various R.A.F. Units where I was employed on administrative duties and later, just over four months of 1948, on a training course in Millom, Cumberland, learning the trade of turner and metal-worker. I enjoyed that course quite a lot because I was always interested in technical matters. The theory and practice of turning and metal work came in very handy when I retired from the Royal Air Force in 1975 and managed to do one year's training in watch and clock repair under the auspices of the Training Opportunities Scheme (TOPS) which was then available for ex-service personnel.
It was great to get back to flying. I shall always be grateful to the members of the R.A.F. Selection Board for allowing me to continue my career of the military pilot which was my original choice when I left school in Poland in 1938. My flying stopped when I left 300 Polish Bomber Squadron a few months before the Squadron was finally disbanded on the 11th of October 1946.
Actually, I did a fair amount of flying with the 300 Squadron from the end of the war until 7th of June 1946 – my last flight there recorded in my Pilot's Flying Log Book.
My final wartime bombing raid was on Berchtesgaden, Hitler's residence in the Alps, on the 25th of April 1945. Three days later, on the 28th of April we were off again to Europe, but this time on, a kind of, rescue mission, that is to say, repatriating former British Prisoners of War from one of the Allied forward airfields which I think was somewhere in Belgium. We were scheduled to carry back 20 men from Belgium to an airfield just north-west of London. We were taking with us 20 extra Mae Wests (life jackets!) for our passengers. I mention this fact because the flight did not start very well as one of our engines caught fire few seconds after take off. To close the throttle, feather the propeller, turn off fuel and press the fire extinguisher took less than a minute and we were back again on the ground in 12 minutes-flat landing on 3 engines.
While we were carrying out our circuit and landing, Wing Commander Jarkowski, our Squadron Commander, did some very smart, fast footwork and organised a replacement aircraft, so that after landing all we had to do was to transfer our own flying gear and the extra 20 Mae Wests to the other aircraft which was waiting for us with engines warming up. We were slightly behind the rest of our chaps but at least we got on the way without further problems and well in time to collect our 20 passengers who, otherwise, would have been cruelly disappointed.
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About one and a half hours after take off from Belgium we were landing in England. There was a very touching moment when we were coasting in somewhere near Dover and my crew brought the passengers forward in small batches to see The Cliffs when we were approaching the coast. There were some tears – quite a few of the men have been in captivity since 1940.
Few days later starting on the 2nd of May we carried food supplies to Holland which was then still under German Occupation. The drop was made from a very low altitude to prevent scattering of the load. These supplies were desperately needed because the people in Holland were near starvation and the drops must have been a success because we flew again on identical missions on the 5th and 7th of May, 1945.
The war in Europe ended on the 8th of May 1945. From then on we were busy carrying supplies to Europe and on the return journey bringing back former Prisoners of War. One or two flights were to and from temporary forward airfields surfaced with PSP (Pierced Steel Planking) making it a bit of tight squeeze to land a four-engined Lancaster on an airfield used only by our Spitfires or other light aeroplanes.
These operations ceased towards the end of June 1945 and we were then able to relax and fly over Germany on sightseeing trips. I have two such sorties listed in my Log Book – the first with my crew only to see the damage caused to targets which we bombed and to observe the results of the bombing from a comfortable height of 2000 or 3000 feet. Appropriately, this flight was named “Post Mortem”. The second flight was made for the benefit of our ground crew personnel who worked all hours of day and night throughout the war years to keep our aeroplanes in the air. No doubt, they understood that without their contribution, it might have been German airmen looking at such sights over England.
In September 1945 we started flying to Italy to transport mainly army personnel back to United Kingdom for their leave. Again 20 men at a time were back in England in about seven hours. The route for the outbound and return flight was via the South of France, near Northern Corsica, then Elba, with landing at Pomigliano, close to Naples which was our pick up point. On one occasion, when we were approaching Naples, I made a wide circuit over the Vesuvius and Pompei and actually had a look from above inside the cone of the volcano. It looked like a funnel of ashes – that’s all.
We usually spent one night in Naples and then back home the next day with the passengers. I remember that on one of my trips when we were delayed, I managed to get a ticket and see a splendid performance of the opera “Aida” at the Royal Opera House in Naples. Beautiful singing, music of the orchestra, costumes and scenery – quite an experience, I must say.
As a Flight Commander, it fell to me on one return journey to carry 20 nurses – all females; and all delivered safely back to England.
3
Some of the flights were not very pleasant because, as the autumn progressed, we had to fly sometime through severe storms which seemed particularly vicious at that time of the year in the Bay of Genoa and on our route. For the comfort of the passengers and safety we had to maintain heights of about 5000 to 8000 feet and these are pretty nasty heights to fly through a thunderstorm. Fortunately, such bad flying conditions do not last for very long and twenty to thirty minutes was enough to get through the worst turbulence, hail rain, lightning or what there was about. Nevertheless, we were unlucky in losing one aircraft and the crew somewhere over the Mediterranean. I do not remember now if they had any passengers on board or not.
On the 4th of November, 1945, my crew and I flew to Gatow airfield, Berlin, for an overnight stay and to have a look at the capital of Germany which was then still mostly in ruins. A short wander around the City, a walk through the parts of Reich Chancellery which were accessible and a flight back to UK. I guess, we used the same corridor route as the aircraft which were to fly in the supplies during the Berlin Airlift a couple of years later.
I had 2000 flying hours flown on various types of aircraft when I left the Squadron in 1946. I suppose this flying experience helped me to be selected for service in the Royal Air Force and to be employed on flying duties as a pilot.
Because I haven't done any flying for over two years I had to complete a 3-week Pilot Refresher Flying Course at R.A.F. Finningley and then I was posted to No 4 Ferry Pool which at that time was located at R.A.F. Hawarden, near Chester. I also spent further 3 weeks at R.A.F. Aston Down, near Stroud, converting to other types of aircraft, as well as jets.
I found the task of ferrying aeroplanes very rewarding and interesting for two main reasons. The first was the fact that I visited just about all the airfields in use in the United Kingdom at the time, delivering or collecting aircraft. The flights were carried out normally in fairly good weather but, inevitably, one encountered all sorts of conditions on longer trips and sometimes diversions were necessary. Great experience for getting acquainted with the geography of the country as we operated the length and breath [sic] of Great Britain, from the very North of Scotland to the Channel coast in the South and from the North Sea in the East to all of Northern Ireland in the west. Later on we also flew on some of the ferrying duties between UK and our Units in the British Zone of Germany.
The second interesting point was the variety of the aircraft which we ferried about. I was lucky because I qualified on all the categories which were then currently in use. All the single-engined, twin, four-engined and jets. Such was the variety that flying three different types and categories in one day was routine.
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Looking through my Log Book and monthly summaries I have the following: -
January 1949 - 9 types
May 1949 - 10 types
June/July 1949 - 12 types
June 1951 – 13 types
With such a collection of aeroplanes, one would learn peculiarities of each type and remember the differences – Pilot’s Notes were always handy to refresh one’s memory. Fortunately, flying itself is always standard; forward fast or slow, left or right, and up or down!
As I mentioned before, ferrying of aircraft meant landing and taking off from a lot of different airfields. Visiting 20, 25 locations in one month was again routine. Normally, the flight details would be passed to these airfields by phone from our Operations Room first thing in the morning and, similarly, that information updated would be phoned through between the airfields concerned as the day progressed.
One of the items of information phoned through would be the aircraft captain’s name and, of course, a name like Wierzbowski with eleven letters in it offered innumerable permutations for misspelling to the Air Traffic Control clerks who would copy out the name on the Movements Board for use by the Controllers.
A pilot would usually visit or contact the Air Traffic Control after arrival or before departure to check on the weather or other flight information of the destination aerodrome. Nearly every time during my visits I would see my name misspelled in a variety of ways. Then, after a few weeks with the Unit even our operations people got tired of spelling-out such a long name and started using a shortened form of the first four letters of it, that is to say, WIER.
I suppose, it was lucky that we had no other pilot with a name like WEIR because that is how my name sometime still appeared. And still does!
I guess what really convinced me that it would be right to change my name formally was the incident which occurred when my daughter, Elizabeth, started attending the Primary School in Ellesmere Port where we lived from 1949 onwards. I do not remember the exact date when this happened but Libby was then about eight years old and, one day, her teacher asked Elizabeth to write her full name on the blackboard for all the children in the class to see. No doubt, the teacher meant well but was somewhat insensitive to Libby’s embarrassment at being so different from all the other Smiths, Jones, Mills or what have you. I believe, Libby cried and refused to obey the teacher’s request and had to suffer painful consequences as a result.
I changed my surname by Statutory Declaration soon after to WIER. Even after that, my name was still somewhat
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unusual because of the strange spelling and until my retirement from the Service in 1975 was the only one so written in the Official Air Force List.
My son, Michael, was born in February 1952, a couple of years after the change of my surname and was duly registered as Michael Richard WIER. Sometime in his teens he decided that he was deprived of his Polish heritage to a certain degree and so after his eighteenth birthday he added the full name of Wierzbowski to his own. This was all done legally and at his own expense. I must say, I was quite touched by his determined action and, of course, very proud of the fact that he wanted to acknowledge his paternal ancestry and descent.
I imagine all this sounds like a very long-winded explanation of a simple happening but I have to point out that the situation and conditions 40-45 years ago were very different from the present. Life is much simpler now – we have Singhs, Patels, Wongs or Muhammads, one hears names like Gorbachev or Yeltsin and nobody bats an eyelid at the sound of them. It sure is a very welcome progress!
Talking of progress; I had a good example of it when Michael was about 3 years old. I will mention it now because at the time it made me realize that the world is developing much faster than we think or are aware of.
We lived in Whitby, Wirral, not very far from R.A.F. Station, Hooton Park, which was then used by an Auxiliary Squadron equipped with jet aircraft. These were flying around quite a lot and on occasions fairly low so that Michael was very familiar with the shape and sound of these aeroplanes. Well, one day, we were waiting at the traffic lights on the road passing the end of the runway at Hawarden near Chester, where I was actually stationed. As it happened, and old ANSON (twin-engined, propeller driven aircraft), was coming in to land and passed in front of us very low, throttled back and with the propellers turning slowly. I still remember the remark which, greatly astonished Michael made :- “Look, Daddy, an aeroplane with windmills on!”
June 1992.
T. Wier.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Flashbacks 0 to 4
Description
An account of the resource
Starts with commentary on family in Poland and names recorded on visits to Poland. Continues with account of early life, school and life in Poland before the war.
Flashback 1. Mentions first operation on 300 Squadron at RAF Faldingworth. Continues with account of training in England at Hucknall, Montrose and Western Zoyland. He then trained as an instructor and was posted as a flying instructor. He volunteered for operational duties and eventually was allocated to a bomber squadron at RAF Finningley training on Wellington where he crewed up before posting to RAF Faldingworth, Continues with description of first operation to Wiesbaden and mistakenly landing at RAF Fiskerton on return. Concludes with a 10 year old schoolboy's wish to be a pilot.
Flashback 2. Account of Tadeusz joining the Polish Air Force including the reasons for his ambition, early experience of gliding, labour camp and military training. Continues with account of flying training with various incidents. Describes events during German invasion and escape to Romania.
Flashback 3. Continues with events after arriving in Romania and then travelling onwards by boat to Beirut then onwards to Marseille, Lyon. Gives account of German invasion of France in May 1940 and his escape via Toulouse, Bayonne and St Jean de Luz and then by British ship to Liverpool.
Flashback 4. Writes of changing his name and of his career in the RAF after the war including continuing flying with 300 Squadron and his final operation to Berchtesgaden as well as prisoner of war repatriation flights and food drops in Holland. Continues with account of flying troops back from Italy and a visit to Berlin. He was posted to ferry aircraft of many different types.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
T Wier
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1992-01
1991-06
1991-10
1992-06
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Poland
Poland--Zgierz
Poland--Dęblin (Warsaw)
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Hucknall
Scotland--Angus
Scotland--Montrose
England--Somerset
England--Warwickshire
England--Rugby
England--Yorkshire
Germany
Germany--Wiesbaden
Romania
Lebanon
Lebanon--Beirut
France
France--Marseille
France--Lyon
France--Toulouse
France--Bayonne
France--Saint-Jean-de-Luz
England--Lancashire
England--Liverpool
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Belgium
Italy
Italy--Genoa
Germany--Berlin
England--Bridgwater
Romania
Romania--Tulcea
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1944-12
1941-05
1944-06
1944-10
1945-02-02
1939
1939-09-17
1940-05-10
Format
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Twenty-five page printed document
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BWierTWierTv1
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Contributor
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Jan Waller
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
300 Squadron
aircrew
crewing up
Halifax
Hurricane
Lancaster
Lysander
Magister
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
pilot
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Finningley
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Weston Zoyland
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1791/32504/BWierTWierTv2.1.pdf
f0e6428e65135d636a2fba38be8f4cde
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
Wier, Tadeusz
T Wier
Tadeusz Wierzbowski
T Wierzbowski
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
2017-01-22
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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Wier, T
Description
An account of the resource
24 items. The collection concerns Tadeusz Wier (b.1920) and contains his log books, memoirs, photographs and documents. He flew operations as a pilot with 300 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Michael Wier-Wierzbowski and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
Tadeusz Wierzbowski grew up on a farm near Zgierz, Poland. He learned to fly at the training school at Deblin and escaped from the Nazi and Russian invasions in 1939. He travelled through Romania to the Black Sea, and was in France when the Nazis invaded. He eventually arrived in Liverpool on the Andura Star in June 1940.
He flew as an instructor, training others to fly for three years, before he was posted into combat with 300 Squadron. He flew 25 operations as a Lancaster pilot from RAF Faldingworth including bombing Hitler’s Eagle’s nest at Berchtesgaden.
Tadeusz was a test pilot after the war and shortened his name to Wier to make it easier for air traffic control officers. Over his career, he flew over 40 different aircraft types from Polish RWD 8 trainers to Vampire jets.
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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[underlined] Some Days In The Life of a Production Test Pilot [/underlined]
It is usual for the memory to become somewhat vague with the advancing yeas. Certain facts are definitely well remembered, although dates when things happened will not be precise unless recorded in an official document.
I am using my Pilots Flying Log Book to confirm some dates or periods of my Service as well as locations when odd problems occurred during my days of flying as a Production Test Pilot. To be accurate, I have six log books, five completed and bound in one volume and the sixth almost filled in and ending with my last flight as captain of the aircraft when I flew in an Anson on the 25 September 1959, from Aldergrove to Ballykelly and returning to Aldergrove, Northern Ireland.
My flying career started in Poland in 1938 with glider pilot courses, then service in the Polish Air Force and flying training in Deblin, home of the Officer Cadets Flying Training School. After the Polish September Campaign, I, like most of the Polish Air Force personnel, passed through Rumania, Syria, France, eventually landing in Liverpool, England, at the end of June 1940.
My Pilots Flying Log Book starts with a refresher course at Hucknall, Notts, the first flight taking place on the 12 May 1941 in a Magister aircraft. After a week, posting to No 8 SFTS, Montrose, Scotland. Very soon after obtaining my "Pilots Wings" I became a Pilot Instructor first in Weston Zoyland, Somerset, and then serving with 25 (P)EFTS in Hucknall where I stayed until July 1944.
There is no doubt that I was very lucky to get the next posting to No 18 Operational Training Unit to fly Wellington aircraft, followed by Heavy Conversion Unit to four-engined Halifaxes and Lancasters with final posting to No 300 Polish Bomber Squadron at Faldingworth in Lincolnshire for Christmas 1944 and the last few months of the war.
[page break]
2.
My last flight there took place on the 7 June 1946 in a Lancaster practicing formation flying. When I left Faldingworth I had 1992 hours flown on 12 types of aircraft in England as well as the hours flown in Poland on RWD 8 and PWS 26.
I spent the next two years on administrative duties and then in October 1948 I had the good fortune to be granted Commission in the Royal Air Force, General Duties Branch with the rank of Flight Lieutenant. Again Pilots Refresher Flying Course in Finningley flying Oxford and Wellington aircraft. Two months of further training at Aston Down, and then a posting to No 4 Ferry Pool, Hawarden, near Chester where I stayed for over three years. While with No 4 Ferry Pool, I was qualified to fly on all types of aircraft, that is to say, single, twin, four-engined and also all the jet aircraft then in service. This experience gave me an opportunity to fly a couple of first delivery aeroplanes and I have in mind the Canberra and the Shackleton aircraft. I flew the first Canberra B2 from English Electric airfield at Warton, Lancashire, to RAF Binbrook, Lincolnshire on the 1 August 1951. No brass band or flowers at Binbrook, but the Station Commander came out to meet and have a look at the aircraft. I have flown the Shackleton for the first time at Woodford, near Manchester, (home of A.V. Roe Aircraft Company) on the 27 March 1951 and delivered the aircraft to the Maintenance Unit at Llandow few days later. As a matter of fact, about a year later, I attended a Canberra Conversion Course organized at 231 OCU Bassingbourn and on checking my Log Book-the Instructor discovered that I had more hours flown on the type than he had.
RAF Hawarden where I was stationed was fairly busy with few lodger Units and a branch of De Havilland factory in one corner of the airfield. One of the Units was No 48 Maintenance Unit to which I was eventually transferred in September 1952 for duties as a Unit Test Pilot.
[page break]
3.
I would like to add that No 4 Ferry Pool and No 48 Maintenance Unit belonged to No 41 Group of Maintenance Command, which were operating at RAF Andover. The Ferry Pool had Royal Air Force pilots, navigators and flight engineers, but the care of the Unit aircraft was carried out entirely by civilian personnel. Similarly, No 48 M.U. had a few Royal Air Force Officers such as the Commanding Officer, Chief Technical Officer, Equipment and Supply Officer and the Unit Test Pilot. Most of the senior technical posts were manned by civilian ex-service Officers. This applied to all the Maintenance Units with which I was involved as a Ferry Pilot and later as a Test Pilot. Most of them were lodger Units on large RAF stations and situated as a rule in the west of the country. They usually received aircraft straight from the manufacturers for checks and modifications and some from operating Units for major servicing. The aircraft, after testing, were then ferried to the Squadrons for operational use or disposal as directed by the Air Ministry.
The Test Pilot would usually have a Flight Test Schedule for each type of aircraft which involved a complete sequence such as all ground and pre-flight checks, take off and in the case of jet aircraft, maximum power climb to top altitude (45,000, 48,000 feet), high speed run to the limiting Mach Number and in the case of transsonic [sic] aeroplanes dive through the sound barrier (Swift and Javelin). After descent to lower altitude stalling, feathering and restarting or stopping and relighting of engines on multi-engined aircraft, checks of controls, instruments and special installations such as anti-G, auto-pilot and so on.
One of the checks on fighter aircraft was inverted flight to confirm that the fuel negative-G trap worked as long as was prescribed in Pilots Notes for the type, that the seat (or ejection seat) and harness were secure and to check that there were no loose articles in the cockpit.
[page break]
4.
To keep the cockpit clean, a very powerful industrial vacuum cleaner was used before the test flight so that, normally, the aircraft were quite clean. However, occasionally, bits and pieces would be dislodged in inverted flight and sometimes even a lost "ownerless" tool. It was easy to spot items like that because they would collect on the inside of the canopy and could be retrieved without any problem. In September 1953 I was testing a Venom aircraft at Shawbury and when carrying out the inverted flight check I would fly at about 5,000 feet and airspeed 300 knots. On this occasion I was just north of Wellington and few seconds after turning the Venom over I heard a loud bang and then a lot of wind noise. Nearly all of double-skinned Perspex canopy was shattered and my immediate action was to close the throttle and roll the aircraft back to level flight. I slowed down to about 160 knots, called Air Traffic Control at Shawbury informing them that my canopy was damaged and asked for permission to land as soon as possible. I was not far from the airfield and after a normal approach landed safely. I managed to taxi to dispersal and after getting out I saw that the drogue gun of the ejection seat fired when I turned the aircraft over, deploying the drogue-chute itself which remained attached to the seat. I was glad that I landed straight away because the metal rod which is fired to pull the drogue out was flapping about the top of the elevator in flight. (The Venom was a twin-boom aircraft).
If I remember rightly, the rod was at least a foot long and over half an inch in diameter. Quite a deadly weapon!
Very shortly after getting back to my office and writing my report, I was informed of the cause of the incident. It. appeared that the slight movement of the seat along the seat ejection rail caused the drogue gun to fire because the activating cable attached to the floor did not have sufficient play. The result was that all the Venoms were grounded immediately for the necessary check to be carried out.
[page break]
5.
No 27 Maintenance Unit at Shawbury had a variety of aircraft for testing such as Devon, Hornet, Mosquito, Venom and Vampire. I have tested a few of the lighter or early marks of the Mosquito (3 & 6) but most of the ones there were the heavy types marks 35 & 36. All of the Mosquitoes required lot of attention when flying on one engine and had a fairly high critical speed, that is to say, a speed below which aircraft goes out of control at a maximum power setting of the unfeathered engine with landing gear and flaps down. For this reason, single engine landing on a Mosquito had a committal height below which it was not possible to abandon the approach and overshoot safely. It was about 600 feet, usually end of base leg on the approach. Such height was required to raise the undercarriage and flaps, (quite a slow process!) whilst maintaining control of the aeroplane for a successful climb-out.
I was actually caught out in such situation during the test of one of the Mosquito aircraft. I completed the airtest and was approaching to land when the fire warning light came on one of the engines. As I was well below committal height, I had to continue the approach and land with the engine on fire and the propeller only partly feathered. I eventually stopped on the runway where the Fire Crews managed to put out the fire. The affected engine was badly damaged, but I was lucky to survive the incident.
In contrast to the Mosquito, the de Havilland Hornet aircraft was an absolute joy to fly. It was very light in comparison with the Mosquito, very fast and had two engines with the propellers rotating in the opposite directions, the left propeller turning clockwise and the right propeller anti-clockwise. One could bang the throttles wide open, say for take off and, if there was no wind, the aircraft would be of [sic] the ground in no time. Raising of the undercarriage and flaps on the Hornet was also very quick and feathering and unfeathering of the propellers equally fast.
[page break]
6.
I mention these facts because earlier, when I was at Hawarden, I saw a very surprising bit of flying. One of the de Havilland Test Pilots flying a Hornet dived towards the airfield and passed low and nearly between the hangars with both the aircraft propellers feathered! It would be hard for me to believe that such a manoeuvre could be carried out but I definitely have seen it done with my own eyes and later met and talked to the pilot involved. When I started testing the Hornet, I realized that such a risky stunt could indeed be done if one had the nerve and a great deal of faith in the electric batteries and the rest of the aircraft gear.
Talking about derring-do deeds. Just after the war I was flying in a Lancaster at about 10,000 feet near Woodford in Cheshire when I saw another Lancaster some distance away do a nice slow roll. Ever since then I have been puzzled what the other pilot had done about the Elsan toilet near the tail of the aeroplane!
My stay at Shawbury was a kind of temporary attachment because when a vacancy occurred at Hawarden I applied for and got posted to No 48 M.U. again for Unit Test Pilot duties. My family still lived on the Wirral, near Ellesmere Port and the posting saved me having to live in the Officers Mess at Shawbury and travelling home at weekends.
Few weeks before my return to Hawarden I had-another mishap again in a Venom aircraft. Normal take off and climb in a north-westerly direction through some layered cloud. I must have been approaching Wrexham when at about 12,000 feet the engine of the Venom suddenly stopped. I slowed down to a comfortable gliding speed and turned back towards Shawbury bearing in mind that there were disused airfields between me and home base. I informed Air Traffic Control about my predicament and tried few times to relight the engine, unfortunately without success, and all the time descending through the cloud layers. I think the cloud base near the airfield was at the time about 4,000 feet.
[page break]
7.
I managed to make a reasonable approach to the runway in use at Shawbury. I delayed lowering the undercarriage and flaps so that I could reach the airfield comfortably, hoping that the hydraulic pressure in the accumulator would be enough to carry out this task. Alas, this did not happen and even though I used the hydraulic hand pump, the undercarriage remained unlocked. I decided at the last minute to crash land on the grass alongside the runway because the aircraft was heavy and near enough full of fuel. I finished well up the airfield with the aircraft on its belly and the Crash Fire Trucks and the ambulance on the scene within seconds. Fortunately, the aircraft did not catch fire and I managed to get out safely remembering even to place the ejection seat safety pin back in position. I was then bundled in the ambulance and taken to Station Sick Quarters. I seemed to have survived the crash pretty well apart from sore stomach where the buckles of the parachute and cockpit harness straps positioned more or less one on top of the other dug in during the rapid deceleration of the crashing aircraft. However, after Medical Officer's examination I was allowed to go back to the Officers Mess and have my late lunch. It must have been over an hour later when the Unit Production Officer (civilian) came in the Mess and showed me a collection of small ball bearings in a match box and said that the drive shaft of the high pressure fuel pump had sheared at the bearing and caused subsequent flame-out of the engine. These facts prevented me from relighting the engine and caused the forced landing.
I feel that I ought to explain a little more accurately how the air tests of aircraft and particularly of jets were carried out. As I said before, a Test Pilot had a schedule to adhere to which meant carrying out all the required tests as well as making notes of behaviour of the engine and noting revolutions, jet pipe temperature, oil pressure and recording any observed snags. These readings had to be
[page break]
8.
written every 5,000 feet or so and this kept the pilot very busy because, say on a Swift aircraft, one could get to 40,000 feet in about 4 minutes.
To make such notes, I had an aluminium pad with a stop watch at the top and sort of two rollers which would carry pre-printed calibrated paper and on which one could make-the necessary notes using pen attached to the pad. I would glance occasionally down in the cockpit to make such notes. One day, I remember climbing out westwards over Wales in a Venom and at over 20,000 feet I wrote something on the pad, raised my head, looked up, and there was I going nearly straight through the middle of a loose formation of about half a dozen American, four-engined B 47 bomber aircraft steaming in the opposite direction. They were the ones with very thin, swept-back, "flapping "wings, probably heading to some airfield in East Anglia. Very frightening experience! I usually kept a very good lookout when flying but this time I did not notice the approaching formation. Mind you, this happened in the very early fifties, no regional Air Traffic Control and not too many aeroplanes in-the sky, especially over Wales and high up. And the weather when the near-miss happened was very good.
I usually tried to fly test the aircraft when the weather was reasonable because one never knew what to expect Sometimes it was necessary to come down fairly quickly or when the radio failed, a hole in the cloud was always handy to be used in an emergency. When I was checked out for my "Master Green" Instrument Rating which allowed me to fly in any weather and authorize my own flights, the examiner, a certain "Taff" Jones (Welsh!) said to me:- 'Tad, you are getting this rating not because you know how to fly using only instruments, but that you are certain to know when not to fly!". As if I would ever compete with the birds who were walking because of bad weather!
[page break]
9.
I must recount another incident to support my cautious approach to flight testing. The incident gave me a rather unnerving experience and I will try and explain why this was so. Actually, nothing really dangerous happened because it occurred when the weather was very good.
I was flying an elderly edition of Vampire jet aircraft on which the gyroscopic flight instruments were driven by a suction pump, a common and nearly universal system in those days. To be precise, the instrument gyroscopes were driven by a jet of air entering the evacuated casing and impinging on the shaped rim of the gyro. When the gyroscopes reached their full operating speed of, if I remember rightly, 8,000 -10,000 RPM, the flight instruments such as Direction Indicator, Artificial Horizon and the Turn Indicator worked very well. but not so when the suction failed completely which it did in the case I am describing.
To show that there was a useful suction, a small gauge was installed in the cockpit, usually tucked away and not very noticeable. Now, when the suction fails completely, the gyros continue spinning but are slowing down very, very slowly and eventually settle down to a kind of zero position and the instruments affected do not show any aircraft turns or changes of position in relation to the horizon. It would actually seem that you were flying straight and level even if the aircraft was in a dive, upside down, turning or whatever. And, because slowing down of gyros takes a very long time, the calamity, sort of, creeps up on you and the pilot may not be aware that anything is amiss unless he notices that the suction indicator is showing zero and realizes that the gyro instruments may be giving wrong information. The pilot would still have the pressure instruments working properly but they show only airspeed, height and whether the aircraft is climbing or descending. Naturally, the situation I am describing would occur if the aircraft was completely in cloud and the flight was conducted with sole reference to flight instruments. Not a very happy situation to be in!
[page break]
10.
I remember on Lancasters we had two suction pumps, one for each side of the aircraft, and a selection cock so that if you lost the operating engine on one side, one could change over to the other working side. There would be no such help on single engine aircraft. I guess this type of fault would also explain some fatal bad weather crashes which happened occasionally in those far off days.
Anyway, this kind of fault was overcome very soon after by introduction on newer aeroplanes of electrically driven gyros operating flight instruments. These were extremely reliable and I have not experienced any such problems in my later flying.
I think that I ought to mention the fact that I was awarded the Air Force Cross in 1955 New Years Honours List and received the decoration from the hands of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, during an Investiture at the Buckingham Palace in February of that year. Unforgettable experience! I felt that lot of that honour belonged also to people on the ground who prepared and serviced the aircraft as well as the Commanding officer and Unit Officers of No 48 MU who were always most supporting.
I remained with no 48 MU until July 1956 when I was posted to No 23 Maintenance Unit at Aldergrove in Northern Ireland. Again, 23 MU was a lodger Unit on the station with Coastal Command and Weather Reporting Squadrons. Fairly busy airfield and with a variety of aircraft to test, such as Anson, Lincoln, York, Shackleton, Swift, Canberra and Javelin. Whilst listing the aircraft, I would like to add that I put down types only and they include most of the marks of the particular type. For instance, if one takes Meteor aircraft, there would be Mark 3 & 4 Fighters, Mark 7 Trainer, Mark 8 Fighter with ejection seat, Mark 9 Phot.Rec. Mk 11 Night Fighter and so on. Each slightly different, but they were all Meteors. Similarly with Canberras;- B2 Bomb., PR3 Ph.Rec., 4 Trainer, B6 Bomb., 7 Ph.Rec., B(I)8 Interdict, - few differences but basically the same Canberras.
[page break]
11.
The new marks of aircraft would sometimes have more powerful engines, ejection seats, or other improvements such as, for instance, on Shackleton Mk 3, nose wheel, wing tip tanks, toe pedal brakes and sound-proofed cabin.
As a matter of fact, the new aircraft types were much more reliable because of improved methods of construction necessary for the higher performance required, better and stronger materials used for durability and wear - everything much safer altogether. Very occasionally some problem or mishap would arise but they were very few and could usually be attributed to a single component that failed its task.
The oldest type of aircraft at 23 MU were the Ansons, the design dated from early 1930s and still used for aircrew training or carrying of passengers. I remember testing one when the exhaust manifold came nearly loose of the engine with consequent racket from the cylinders and then the other engine started losing the revolutions and power. I was on the other side of Lough Neagh from Aldergrove, but eventually I made it back to the airfield and dispersal. When later the cowling was taken off of the underpowered engine, a large split was discovered in one of the cylinder heads. I think, I was fortunate that the affected engine did not catch fire or I might have been faced with flopping on the water or maybe even a long swim.
I had no special problems with the Canberras or Javelins A funny thing happened when we started getting the B(I)8 Canberras because some were to be modified at Aldergrove for a special task. I remember being shown a "Top Secret" signal by the Commanding Officer and Chief Technical Officer on the matter of "toss bombing" and I was asked if I knew anything about it. I do not remember exactly what was in the signal, but I was able to tell them that I read a very comprehensive article on the subject of "toss bombing" a week or two ago in the periodical "Discovery" freely available in the Officers Mess. And that was that.
[page break]
12.
One or two happenings with Swift aircraft. While on an initial test with one I was climbing to 48,000 feet with everything working fine, when just over 42,000 feet, very suddenly, the cabin pressure normally maintained at 27,000 feet at high altitudes, dropped with the needle of the cabin altimeter steadily going up past the height I was flying at and approaching 55-56,000 feet. My reaction was to close the throttle and more or less dive straight down to a more comfortable height. It did not take long to reach lower altitude and I now think that the overshoot of the cabin altimeter might have been caused by the inertia of the indicator needle going past the actual height of the aircraft or just the sudden rush of air out of the cabin reducing the pressure further. As the air pressure above 35,000 feet is only a fifth of that at ground level or as little as one tenth at over 50,000 feet, it was sensible to come down quickly.
Again on the Swift, on another occasion the canopy just blew off when I was climbing out and at about 4-5,000 feet over Lough Neagh. I was glad in a way, that it happened over the water because it was a large and very heavy lump of metal and perspex which would have caused serious damage if it had hit anything on the ground.
The flying controls on the Swift were power-operated, that is to say hydraulic pump supplied the power to move the ailerons and the elevator. (The rudder was manually operated). The aircraft could actually be flown with power switched off and this was achieved by a couple of levers, one for the ailerons and one for the elevator, the procedure tested during the initial test of the aircraft. There was also a warning-horn which sounded if the hydraulic pressure failed. I would like to add that the Swift was a strongly built aircraft and heavy overall, but because of power controls quite manoeuvrable with a very fast rate of roll.
[page break]
13.
Should the hydraulic power supply to the flying controls fail, one had to be pretty quick and disengage the operating levers, otherwise the system would jam up and the aeroplane become unflyable. I did have a case of hydraulic failure on one occasion but I managed to cope with the rest of the flight in manual. Naturally enough, when in manual, the controls are very hard to operate and I think it took me nearly half the County of Antrim to carry out a circuit and landing. Just one of those things.
Looking back over the years now, I must admit that most of the test flying which I carried out gave me a lot of satisfaction. Sometimes you would see wonderful sights when flying, at other times the aircraft behaved very well even when damaged for some reason, thus saving my skin on quite a few occasions. I always had the best support from my Commanding Officers and all the Unit personnel and received lot of kindness from the Group and Command authorities.
I remember one occasion when I was testing a Venom aircraft from No 48 MU at Hawarden. Beautiful, clear day and when I was about 40,000 feet over Liverpool, the time of the day nearly midday, and looking south I could see all of England and the south coast because the sun was reflecting of the sea water in the Channel. I could distinctly see Portland Bill which, when I calculated the distance later, was 3 degrees of latitude south or over 200 miles away. It doesn't seem much these days but in early nineteen fifties there wouldn't have been many people to have seen such a sight. It was a fantastic life?
Reflecting again on some of the happenings during my life in those days, I feel it is pertinent to mention the following brief incident.
My son was born in February 1952 while I was stationed at Hawarden, near Chester. At the time we lived in Whitby, near Ellesmere Port, Wirral. Our house wasn't very far from the RAF Station, Hooton Park, which was then used by an Auxiliary Air Squadron equipped with Meteor jet aircraft. These machines were flying around quite a lot and sometime [sic]
[page break]
14.
fairly low so that Michael became very familiar with the sight and sound of these aeroplanes when he was 2 or 3 years old. Well, one day, we were waiting at the traffic lights on the road passing the end of the runway at Hawarden where I was actually stationed. As it happened, an old Anson (twin-engined, propeller driven aircraft), was coming in to land and passed in front of us very low, throttled back and with the propellers turning slowly. I still remember the remark, which greatly astonished Michael made:- “Look Daddy, an aeroplane with windmills on!".
This happened just over fifty years since Wilbur and Orville Wright first left the ground in a flying machine!
I guess that is all.
List of types of aircraft which I have flown as a pilot:-
Training in Poland:- RWD 8, PWS 26 & 16.
In the Royal Air Force:-
Single-engined (piston);
Auster, Balliol, Chipmunk, Harvard, Henley, Hurricane, Lysander, Magister, Martinet, Master, Prentice, Proctor, Spitfire, Tempest, Tiger Moth, Tutor.
Twin-engined (piston);
Anson, Beaufighter, Brigand, Dakota, Devon, Dominie, Hornet, Mosquito, Oxford, Valetta, Varsity, Wellington.
Four-engined (piston);
Halifax, Hastings, Lancaster, Lincoln, Shackleton, York.
Jet aircraft;
Swift, Vampire, Venom (single)
Canberra, Javelin, Meteor (twin)
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
Some days in the life of a production test pilot
Description
An account of the resource
Mentions that he has six log books to cover his flying career. Gives a brief outline of career starting in Poland and then in United Kingdom starting in 1940. After training he became an instructor until volunteering for operations and posting to 300 Squadron at RAF Faldingworth. In 1948 he was granted a commission in the RAF and after retraining as pilot he was posted to No 4 ferry pool at Hawarden near Chester where he was qualified to fly many types. Describes the set up of ferry unit and flying Shackleton and Canberra on delivery flights. Continues with account as unit test pilot on 48 Maintenance Unit and describes many incidents and experiences. He goes on to 27 Maintenance unit at RAF Shawbury and describes incidents with Mosquito aircraft and other incidents including on a variety of jet aircraft. Eventually moves to No 23 Maintenance Unit at RAF Aldergrove in Northern Ireland again flying a variety of jet aircraft.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Poland
Great Britain
England--Nottingham
Scotland--Angus
Scotland--Montrose
England--Hucknall
England--Somerset
England--Bridgwater
Poland--Dęblin (Warsaw)
Wales--Flintshire
England--Shropshire
Great Britain
England--Nottinghamshire
Northern Ireland--Antrim (County)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
T Wier
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Fourteen page printed document
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
BWierTWierTv2
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-06
1944-07
1946-06-07
1948-10
1951-03-27
1953-09
1956-07
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Bradbury
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
18 OTU
300 Squadron
aircrew
Flying Training School
Halifax
Lancaster
Magister
Meteor
Mosquito
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Finningley
RAF Hawarden
RAF Shawbury
Shackleton
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1791/32516/PWierT1707.2.jpg
d93c94358a3116efecec7289b7044a65
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
Wier, Tadeusz
T Wier
Tadeusz Wierzbowski
T Wierzbowski
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
2017-01-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wier, T
Description
An account of the resource
24 items. The collection concerns Tadeusz Wier (b.1920) and contains his log books, memoirs, photographs and documents. He flew operations as a pilot with 300 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Michael Wier-Wierzbowski and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
Tadeusz Wierzbowski grew up on a farm near Zgierz, Poland. He learned to fly at the training school at Deblin and escaped from the Nazi and Russian invasions in 1939. He travelled through Romania to the Black Sea, and was in France when the Nazis invaded. He eventually arrived in Liverpool on the Andura Star in June 1940.
He flew as an instructor, training others to fly for three years, before he was posted into combat with 300 Squadron. He flew 25 operations as a Lancaster pilot from RAF Faldingworth including bombing Hitler’s Eagle’s nest at Berchtesgaden.
Tadeusz was a test pilot after the war and shortened his name to Wier to make it easier for air traffic control officers. Over his career, he flew over 40 different aircraft types from Polish RWD 8 trainers to Vampire jets.
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
Lancaster
Description
An account of the resource
View of starboard side of a parked Lancaster letters 'BH' registration 'NG265'. Submitted with caption 'Lancaster BH-V na lotnisku Faldingworth, maj 1945 r. W okresie tym latała na nim regularnie załoga por. pil. Tadeusza Wierzbowskiego'.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PWierT1707
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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-05
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-05
Language
A language of the resource
pol
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
300 Squadron
Lancaster
RAF Faldingworth
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2072/34205/LBabbageG1613415v1.1.pdf
f14ffb7085b2bf98bec5144b8f54c979
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
Babbage, Gordon
Babbage, G
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. The collection concerns Gordon Babbage (b. 1922, 1613415 Royal Air Force) and contains his log book, Pathfinder awards and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 100 Squadron from RAF Grimsby and 156 Squadron from RAF Upwood.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Lesley Morley and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-08-31
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
Babbage, G
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
Gordon Babbage's navigator's air bomber's and air gunner's flying log book
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
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
LBabbageG1613415v1
Description
An account of the resource
Navigator’s, air gunner’s and air bomber’s flying log book for G Babbage, air gunner, covering the period from 15 December 1942 to 8 April 1945. Detailing his flying training and operations flown. He was stationed at RAF Stormey Down, RAF Riccall, RAF Pocklington, RAF Rufforth, RAF Faldingworth, RAF Sandtoft, RAF Driffield, RAF Grimsby, RAF Warboys and RAF Upwood. Aircraft flown in were Defiant, Whitley, Halifax, and Lancaster. He flew a total of 51 operations, 26 with 102 Squadron, 2 with 100 Squadron and 23 with 156 Squadron. Targets were St Nazaire, Essen, Kiel, Frankfurt, Duisburg, Dortmund, Bochum, Dusseldorf, Le Cruseot, Gelsenkirchen, Montbelliard, Hamburg, Nurnberg, Berlin, Kassel, Cannes, Neuss, Bonn, Opladen, Cologne, Osterfeld, Munich, Goch, Politz, Dresden, Pforzheim, Homburg, Misburg, Hanau, Heide and Harburg. His pilots on operations were Flight Lieutenant Carey, Warrant Officer Brooks, Flying Officer Parkinson and Flying Officer Edge.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943-03-28
1943-03-29
1943-04-03
1943-04-04
1943-04-05
1943-04-10
1943-04-11
1943-04-27
1943-04-28
1943-04-29
1943-04-30
1943-05-01
1943-05-04
1943-05-05
1943-05-12
1943-05-13
1943-05-14
1943-05-23
1943-05-24
1943-05-25
1943-05-26
1943-05-27
1943-05-28
1943-06-11
1943-06-12
1943-06-13
1943-06-19
1943-06-20
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-15
1943-07-16
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-27
1943-07-28
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-10-03
1943-10-04
1943-10-05
1943-11-03
1943-11-04
1943-11-11
1943-11-12
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1944-10-25
1944-11-27
1944-11-28
1944-11-29
1944-11-30
1944-12-01
1944-12-12
1944-12-13
1944-12-21
1944-12-22
1944-12-27
1944-12-28
1944-12-30
1944-12-31
1945-01-01
1945-01-07
1945-01-08
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-02-23
1945-02-24
1945-03-11
1945-03-14
1945-03-15
1945-03-16
1945-03-17
1945-03-18
1945-03-19
1945-03-20
1945-03-21
1945-03-31
1945-04-04
1945-04-05
1945-04-08
1945-04-09
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Cannes
France--Le Creusot
France--Montbéliard
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Bonn
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Goch
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hanau
Germany--Hannover Region
Germany--Harburg (Landkreis)
Germany--Heide (Schleswig-Holstein)
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Munich
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Osterfeld
Germany--Pforzheim
Poland--Police (Województwo Zachodniopomorskie)
Wales--Bridgend
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
100 Squadron
102 Squadron
156 Squadron
1658 HCU
1667 HCU
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Defiant
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
mine laying
Pathfinders
RAF Driffield
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Grimsby
RAF Pocklington
RAF Riccall
RAF Rufforth
RAF Sandtoft
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Upwood
RAF Warboys
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1561/34783/SRAFIngham19410620v040001-Audio.2.mp3
beecb77e5ba24652eef7ada82bd88855
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
RAF Ingham Heritage Group
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RAF Ingham
Description
An account of the resource
25 items in six collections. The collection concerns RAF Ingham and contains interviews photographs and documents concerning:
Andrzej Jeziorski - Pilot 304 Squadron
Arthur Hydes - Boy in Ingham
Brian Llewellyn -ATC
Jan Black - Rear Gunner 300 Squadron
Lech Gierak - Armourer 303 Squadron
Marion Clarke - MT Driver RAF Ingham
Mieczyslaw Maryszczak - Armourer
Stanislaw Jozefiak - Air Ops 304 Squadron - Pilot on Spitfires
Wanda Szuwalska - Admin 300 Squadron Faldingworth
Zosia Kowalska - Cook RAF Ingham
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by the RAF Ingham Heritage Group and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GB: On record now, right. Right. Hopefully, the intention is obviously, when we get, we’ll get a professional company to edit the whole tape to make it into, you know, for presentation, so it doesn’t matter if we have kind of little kind of funny laughs and things like this, because it will obviously kind of, hopefully the tape will look, you know, quite good when it’s all finished and put together so it doesn’t matter a bit of explaining.
JB: Yes. In style.
GB: Indeed yes, indeed. I mean really obviously the intention today is just to talk to you about your life, before the war, and obviously kind of little bit about your family. Obviously your time in the Polish Air Force before you left Poland and then obviously your, your kind of trip or your route into, all around and into.
JB: I will tell you completely different route, my route, you know, how I came here, yes.
GB: Okay. And then obviously once you came to Britain, obviously about joining up with the Polish Air Force in the RAF.
JB: Yes, yes.
GB: And then really talking a little bit more perhaps in depth about when you were at RAF Ingham. If you’d like to talk about, obviously, the missions that you were on and in particular the one where your aircraft crashed, then we don’t mind but if you prefer not to talk about that for personal reasons, then we fully understand.
JB: No, I think is good to mention how it happened, and because it will be, you know what I mean, the real story, you know what I mean. It’s no good to leave something important what happen in my life, not to mention it, yes.
GB: Well the nice thing is this will be a lasting memory, unfortunately after you have passed on and probably after we have passed on as well, the Heritage it’s almost the Heritage Centre will be for future generations, yes.
JB: That’s what I was thinking. What now you see Minister of Education try to bring the Second War into the children, into the history, because you see somehow after the war you know what that generation went through, for such a suffering and sacrifice which in giving their life, what was quickly forgotten, you know what I mean. GB:Because that was worst history than Napoleonic days, because Napoleonic War, it was gentlemen war, but that, in a Second World War, that was almost unbelievable what in twentieth century you know, such a barbarous could be committed, crime on the people. So you see new generation came, and the authority, you know, completely forgot about the suffering, what we went through it, you know what I mean. And to listen now what they said when they asking children at school about history of Battle of Britain, some of them even don’t know, because there is so much newcomers to this country. But all right, they newcomers, but they should learn the history of this country, you know, what was happening here, and I think now what they’s trying to um, recover the lost time you see, after so many years, you see, because that was probably one of the most, I would say, desperate effort, that Second War what we win, because if the Germans would succeed, what they almost did, I mean we probably would be for thousand years under their domination. That’s what they had idea, you know what I mean.
GB: I think so.
JB: That’s what they kept it, the rest of the world for so long.
GB: Yes.
JB: Because they had the system what, you know, that they would manage under their sort of strict rules you see, and I’m glad what you now try to recover some of the history so the young generation after us, you see, will probably know what we had to go through it, you know what I mean. Yes. It’s important what they still try to save something you know it would be a good idea. Look at Margaret Thatcher. I used to remember, I used to go to her shop, when father, on the corner, had that shop.
GB: Yes. In Grantham.
JB: Because I used to get cigarettes some time, but when I used to go to that little shop, early in morning, I had to look left, and right, if nobody already in the shop or if somebody been in the shop, I was waiting till they come out, and then I would walk to the shop and ask for some cigarettes because I didn’t want cigarettes only for myself. I wanted for myself and for my friends. So when nobody been in the shop, I was alone, so I used to get one or two packets extra! [Laugh] You see, that’s how the things were you see, those days! I mean people today have no idea. If you, in morning, you see, yesterday your friend went to get cigarettes, but the next day was your turn. So you see we used to do in turns, we used to get up early in the morning!
GB: Just to get the cigarettes.
JB: To get cigarettes and go from shop to shop! Terrific. [Laugh] We come for holiday to London, come to holiday, and sometime we come in afternoon, all hotels booked up because all the people who have forty eight hours, military people, come to London. If you come late, outside hotel: ‘No Room, No Room’ you see. So you didn’t have even to go and ask, because they used to leave the sign: No Vacancy. So we used to sleep in Serpentine, you know, they had the deck chair, [indecipherable] we put some deck chair. In morning we go wash ourself in Serpentine, shave because we won’t be served in our gas mask, you know what I mean and waiting for pubs to open, you know what I mean. [Laugh] So first we had to order ourself rooms early in morning, because that was only time, but many times we slept in, in the Park, you know what I mean, because we been happy, and living from day to day. If you went to bar on your own - I’m just telling you this story what I went through.
GB: Yes, yes.
JB: And some time you make appointment with your friends, so we meet you in Fifty Two Piccadilly – that was well known pub - and sometime you got to the Park and your friends still been delayed, so you would be standing on your own. You will not be standing for long because people come and talk to you, you know, straight away, you see, because you could not stand on the corner and drink alone, the people be friendly, you know what I mean.
GB: When you were on the forty eight hour pass did you have to go in uniform?
JB: Oh yes, yes, uniform.
GB: Always in uniform.
JB: Yes, uniform, because if you been in civvie you always been suspected what you some, probably you know person undesirable, you know what I mean, yes. And I mean pubs were packed [emphasis] during the winter, I mean during the war, because people just been living uncertain life, you know what I mean. And they been so happy you know. You came and the cinemas were playing, the bombs were dropping, shows were going on, you know what I mean, people just got, in the end you know, they got used to bombing, you know. Sometimes they were falling closer, sometimes they been, the Germans used to bomb East London, dock side you know what I mean. Somehow they didn’t do much in the centre of the London, you know, but the East London was receiving the most hit, yeah.
GB: Did you always come to London for your forty eight hour passes? Was that the best place?
JB: No, some time, some time I go to Scotland, because you see when you come some time to London, and you know you have lots of disturbed nights, you know what I mean, then some time you will go, and Blackpool.
GB: And Blackpool. Because that was the Polish Depot, wasn’t it.
JB: Blackpool. That was our depot you see. We had such friendly relations there because we used to, sometime when you been doing, you did half tour, used to get two weeks little rest you see to Blackpool, and we nearly always went and stayed same small boarding hotels, you see, and it was beautiful place, Blackpool. Oh, I still think Blackpool is one of the nicest part in England, you know what I mean. That beach, long, you know, sandy beach and the Blackpool Tower, you know, dancing, you know, phoar! [Laugh] Manchester public house on the corner on the Promenade, you know what I mean. Blackpool was lovely place, and so much in holiday, in those days, so much excitement.
GB: Was, in those days, was Blackpool like little Poland, because of the sheer number of Polish airmen that were being trained there?
JB: Yes, yes. You see, I’ll tell you why we left good respect, but after the war, when war ended, from Germany, from lots of those concentration camps, came lots of different people what they call themselves what they were Polish, but they were not, they were all different, some even Germans been disguised telling them they could speak Polish, that they were Polish, so they spoiled us reputation. But when Polish Air Force only stay in Blackpool, when we used to enter to the small hotel on the Promenade, we made our own rules. Some time was landlady the owner of the hotel because her husband was Captain in the Far East serving for four, five years, and in the hotels was the rules what you can bring girlfriend to sitting room for cup of tea or coffee, but nowhere else. And we had our rules and anybody brought girlfriend sometime, because every hotel had sitting room, you could invite her to sitting room, you can treat her with cup of tea or coffee or cake.
GB:: That was it.
JB: Gentlemen, If you wanted anything else you have to look outside but not in! And we had those rules and you know the landladies would go to sleep during the night and they didn’t have to worry because they knew what anybody who came inside to the hotel, she was sure what there would be not be any bad reputation on her. And we kept that, you know what I mean, and that was good. [Laugh]
GB:: Jan, what’s your full name? Cause I wasn’t sure. I spoke to Danny and he wasn’t sure.
JB: Yes, I tell you. I’m glad you asked. You see, when I met my wife, in London, my wife managed private club [sniff]. And I, so we went to one pub in London and we met English, erm, English, erm, he was, PO, Pilot Officer and he came and talked to us, asked us from which squadron we on. We told him we came from Lincolnshire and spending holiday and the pubs was closing because they open from eleven till three, after, open five till eleven, so he said - and we been seven of us - he said and what you doing now and we said probably have to go to cinema, wait till pub to open again! He said to us, listen I am member in one of the club, would you like to come with me? Well we said, oh thee, In those days if you could go to private club it was almost big, you know, satisfaction you know what I mean, because so we say you know that would be almost unbelievable what you. Oh yes he said, I’m member and I can take you but you not allowed to buy drinks; I will treat you to drink. So we went with him and he introduced us to the person who owned the club, and he said they are Polish aircrews from Lincolnshire and I like to introduce them to the club so they can have a drink with me. So the young lady said very nice, thank you. So we had one drink, second, and the people in those days they all were shop owners, solicitors, engineers, come for lunch during, because they were active in their own profession you see, but members of the club. They invite us in evening again because you see the club had also hours opened in afternoon and after in the evening. So we went in the evening and we behaved properly and the lady who owned the club, after second day, she said to us, listen you bunch, I will make you members. But when she said she will make us members we got stiff, frightened, because we thought she would ask us to pay the membership! And in those days membership, you know! [laugh]
GB: Was some money, yes!
JB: So she said but don’t you worry, she said, you don’t have to pay. I know you come from time to time and my members, her members mentioned that she should make us members you see, so she give us little book with the rules, how we have to obey the membership. So if we have friend to bring to the club we must treat them with the drink, not allow them to buy the drinks and be sure what the people we guarantee their membership you see, so that was fine. We went one night, second night, on third night, when our lady was closing the club, our navigator, he was our banker because we used to give him all our money to him, and he used to pay the expenses: hotel, restaurants, drinks [laugh] and we only stayed on holiday till kitty was lasted. When kitty was empty we returning back to the station, some time before the holiday finished, depends on the kitty.
GB: How much time, yeah how much money.
JB: Anyway, to come to the point, you see we had yes, and the lady was closing the club and you had to finish the drinks on time because in those days the police rules were strict. If they caught you some time half an hour late delay the club was fined, heavily, you know, for not obeying the rules. So anyway we had to finish drink quickly and we said to the lady who owned the club, and what you going to do now? She said I’m going home. So we quickly said, we suggest to her, we want to take her to dinner. So we said what about if we take you for quick dinner? You been so kind to us, make us members, and we like to reimburse you something what we can. Well she said, I have to take dog for walk. [Laughter] [Indecipherable] when she finish. So we take her by taxi, we wait in taxi outside, she take that dog for walk quickly, come with us, we got to Soho, to little Italian restaurant and we give her nice dinner you see, and we finish almost two weeks, nearly every night we went to that club because we’ve got so many nice members there and we just been waiting for night to go up there you know, to have, meet the people. Then she said to us, look, if you have any friends, you come again to London, you give them my club address and tell them you are friends of your crew and I will make them members. Because there were Canadians coming, New Zealands, you know, all the military. Our second crew, what we recommended, we say you go to London, you will be able to go to club where lovely ladies come, you know, and you will, it is different from the pubs you know, because in those days it was big different between club and the bar. So we went there and the lady said what happened to that crew, first lot? They said, oh they were all killed, only one survive. She said and this one survive, where’s he? Is on the station and not come to London, they said to her, no he is in hospital. Oh, I see, and he still alive. Yes, he is badly burned. Which hospital is he? Oh he is outside London, in East Grinstead, Sussex. Oh I see, yes, that’s a big hospital for Royal Air Force, you know what I mean. So she made note and the one Saturday afternoon, sister, ward from hospital, come and she said, Jan, you have somebody come to visit you. I said sister, I don’t expect. Oh yes, somebody know your name, yes. So I said bring her in. She come and I was all in bandages. And she said you laying here and you never even phoned me, to tell me what you are here, and I said I don’t know where is my telephone numbers; I lost everything, I said that’s all what I own: my bandages! She said never mind, I’m glad what you are here. And I was so proud, because that’s on Saturday, listen, lots of my English colleagues had father, mother, brother or sister come, and I was on my own and knew, been feeling very, you know, lonely. She used to come and see me you know. Because when my English colleagues bring her, they said to their father oh that’s the Polish airman. So they will come, treat me with cigarettes, have a joke and talk, but I knew it was not the same, you know what I mean, but when that lady came especially to see me, I honest, I was important, really was. [Laugh] So that sister, and afterwards she spent a few hours, that sister brought tea, cup of tea, cakes, you know, because that how was treating the visitors. And I said how you came here. She I came by train because I have car but I have no petrol. So I call taxi and there was about one mile to the station. Took her to the station, I thank her for her visit, and she said if you ever passing through London, you come and see me. I said to her I will be going to station to collect certain thing, so I said I come for quick drink. She said you do that and afterwards she came few times to see me in hospital because I spent in that hospital six months, and it was just friendship, she was so kind to me. I said to her, I used to call her by her name, I say Evelyn, listen you coming to see me, you have so much business to do. She said listen, I come to see you, you don’t know why? I said no. Well, she said look, your friend, this one, has father and mother she said, somewhere they have, and you are on your own she said, and that’s why I come and see you. And you know this touched me, you know what I mean, what I felt I had somebody still. I was so happy afterwards because you know, I used to talk to my friends – you had visitor but I had visitor too, you know what I mean. And you know that develop afterwards that I became friendly and I married her. I married her for fifty years.
GB: What was the date of your marriage?
JB: 19 10 46. Yes, I remember that date. I was married in Lincolnshire: Great Eastern Hotel. That’s a railway hotel.
GB: Was that in the middle of Lincoln, was it?
JB: Yes, yes.
GB: Great Eastern.
JB: Listen, nearly all the staff got sack because I got married in Registry, [sigh] but reception was, you know, in a, and I booked myself in the Great Eastern with my wife for couple nights and nearly half of my station turn up and the rest of the hotel could not sleep! So they said the next day, the next manager had all the waiters, waitresses, everybody, what there was so much noise all the people could not sleep! But there was no disturbance, no problem except lots of people turn up. And they made kitty and they been ordering the drinks, you know what I mean, people in corridors, everywhere, but in the end you know, he accepted what that was special wedding, only one what he would remember you see, and there was some of them had caution you know what I mean, but that about all you see, and that was also lovely wedding because I wanted, you see, I even show you, you see here, here, if you have glasses.
GB: Permission to Marry.
JB: That Permission to Marry. In those days our commanding officer would not let crew, aircrew, to get married, girl, if he doesn’t see girl first. Because a lot of them go on holiday, get drunk, meet any girl, get engaged and get married and some of that marriage didn’t last long. And afterwards it, rules was what any aircrew member who want to get married must bring his girlfriend first, commanding officer had to accept and if she was suitable and you see I had from the commanding, when my wife saw him, you know what he said to me, he said I will, because she used to come and stay in the White Hart Hotel.
GB: In Lincoln
JB: On top, you know.
GB: On the top, near the Castle, yeah.
JB: That’s right. So he would, he sent her taxi back to the hotel, you know, she almost had it from beginning he was asking her question, afterwards she was asking him! [Laugh]
GB: That’s very good!
JB: And you see I got married.
GB: This has answered the question. You know, my first question to you was what was your original name, your Polish name. It was Stangrycuik.
JB: Stangrycuik I tell you why: my wife, you see my wife was named Evelyn Black and she was born in Derbyshire, but her father had lots of land, big land and she was as a young, studying economic and working on the land. She had two brothers. After when father died, two brothers left on the, on that big farm, and on that farm they had pub, so on Saturday and Sunday, local farmers come with their children, discuss what crops they should have in different parts, because the weather is the most suitable for such a crop and children would play in the garden, have orange juice and the father and mother would discuss in the bar you see, their life. But when she finished study economic she didn’t wanted to return and work on the farm because it was hard work. Hard work. She decided to work for big London company, hotel and restaurants, as er, erm, she was, you know, qualified accountant. She was kept all the, from the restaurants, all the expenses, statements. People used to come, have table, waiters used to serve them with the drinks, whatever food and used to bring to the office expenses of those. And in those days Royal Family, Café Royal off Regent Street she was working, and that was syndicate. They had hotels in Maidenhead and different expensive hotels in London. When they had extension nights, sometime, they applied to the police for extension because it will be till two o’clock in morning, you know, special function, and she would get that extension for the later night. So my wife used to, the manager ask her if she work overtime because is very busy gala night you know, when also from royal family members come, so they used to pay her double time. And she worked few years there and not one time, and when used to have gala night big function, they used to invite the manager from brewery, Watney Brewery on Piccadilly, Victoria, sorry, Victoria, that was brewery in Victoria, and in the end they were asking if they lower their drinks because in the end they said we give you so much business you must lower the drink. So I will make the story quickly, and when is that gala night, he, that big manager come from Watney Brewery come with his wife and often talk to my, in the end wife, who was in the reception, accountant. He said listen I don’t think I will be coming much often here, so my wife then as the secretary of that Café Royal, said why not? I had terrific bust up with your syndicate and I think we breaking our relation business, no longer. She said, no not really. Yes, yes, they try to bring me, so down in prices what I can’t lower them no more, you know, to supply with the drink. And he said to her then, to my wife, he said and you working here so few years, they not treating you so generous. Well she said but I’m still happy, I pay my rooms and I said, he said you know that business better than owners, you should have your own business. Because she was already annoyed with the syndicate company what you see he was breaking the business after all those years, he said you should have your own business, you know that business better than the owners. She said yeah, but you must have money to have that. He said surely you must have some money! Well, she said, my brothers sold the estate in Derby and gave they me little because I would not work with them so they gave me a small compensation One went to Australia and one brother went to went to Canada; they had bust up between them so they went far from each other, you know, but they, you know, share whatever. She said but I have no money to start. Don’t you worry, you tell me how much you have, brewery will give you, find you place but you have to buy drinks, in exchange for little concession what I help you, and you should have your own business, he said, because you will make better business because you know that business better than the owners of that syndicate, hotel in Maidenhead and Café Royal and the [indecipherable] in London and he put her that fix into her head what she should own private club, and for seventeen years she owned that, during the war, and that’s when I met my wife you see. I was little airmen gone to club and land myself with the lady who own the business you see.
GB: Can you remember when you actually met her when you went down to London that first time?
JB: Yes, that English pilot officer took us in, and he was the member you see.
GB: Do you remember what year that was?
JB: Yes! In, end of ’41 you see, and my wife was ten year older than me, but she was, after I show you photographs, everything. Anyway I married her and she was, some time when we go to our reunion, because I show you some, you see that’s where I go to my Guinea Pig Reunion, yeah.
GB: Did, when you got married, did Evelyn take your name or did you change straight over to Black?
JB: Yeah, I was, you see is already war finished and my wife knew I not going back to Poland you see. Because there was so much communists and the communists didn’t like the people from the aircrews because you see all people, aircrew, we knew all the sickness of this country and so on, and they used to suspect us what we will be spying against the communists, and we been always, those who weren’t, been always followed by the KGB you know what I mean. So I, my wife knew I was not going back to Poland and she said look Jan, calling me by my name, I have business and for me to change all the administration is lots of extra expense and she said I want to keep on the same and she said I want to naturalise you British, because you not going where so many communists there, you went enough with the Germans and she said now you have another you see, people to follow you. And I love my wife so much I didn’t care what I, and you see, and of course my doctor from East Grinstead, Sir Archibald McIndoe, that big plastic surgeon - he used to call me Polski you know – and when he used to meet us in East Grinstead in the Whitehall bar, that’s hotel bar, when he's not operating on people, his chauffeur bring him in Rolls Royce and wait for him outside and he will come to that bar and when we had operation finished, so we can work we used to go in evening to East Grinstead to have a drink or to cinema and return to hospital for next operation, and sometimes he will meet us in Whitehall Bar and have a drink with us. He was like our friend; our advisor, our surgeon and all the doctors in those days were so friendly, you know, with the airmen. When they had some time in the evening they used to, we meet in certain places and have a little drink or chat, yes, and he was also advisor to us. And when I had demob, I went to see him and I said Sir Archibald, I said, I have letters sent for my demob. So he look at me, he said listen, he said I would not advise you to sign for the Regular. Because in those days when you were young still, you didn’t have to take demob but you had to sign for the Regular, for seven years or fourteen years contract. He said when you take demob now, you will be entitled to your pension and he said if you have problem we find you job and you’re sure. He said you sign new contract, suppose you get discharged for some reason, what you didn’t obey the rules or something, he said you lose all your entitlements. So he said I advise you, you take your demob you see, and I had to listen to him, you know what I mean, because he was, he was to us like our doctor, advisor and so on. And I took my, and I had two jobs after the war. Och, I tell what job I did. I did twenty years in rubber factory. You know why I did in rubber factory? Because owners of the rubber factory were members of my wife club. Listen, my wife said you are mad going. I said Evelyn, you have business, but I want to be independent; I cannot work with you because I say I will ruin your business. She said why? I said listen, your members come to the club, they will buy me drink, I have to reimburse them drink. I said I have to feel I’m the same like them and I said your business will go bust! I don’t want nothing to do with your business, you keep your business, and you see the sister of the owners of that big rubber factory was her friend. They used to, went to school together and she used to come to my wife club. And she said to me listen, I take you to my brothers and I tell them they have to give you job. So I said Sonny, I don’t know if I would be able to do the job. Don’t you worry, I tell them what they have to do with you: they have to teach you. I in one year I was supervisor, I could sell rubber, anything, rubber tyres, whatever rubber you see, because they train me as a supervisor because their old fellow was leaving the job after sixty years. That was big rubber factory and I start I thought I just work year or two, I get enough money to get some deposit on some house, because my wife always paid flats, you know. She was renting in Albemarle Street that’s near Ritz Hotel, almost, where our Margaret Thatcher, poor thing, died yesterday, and she said because she wanted to rent near the club because she always walked from business from hotel, to her flat and she paid lots of money. I say Evelyn, I said you work so hard and I said half your money is going for the, she said in this district you have to pay you see. So I said don’t you worry, I make enough money. So I bought old house, with the leaking roof in Holland Park because during the war all the houses in London were so much dilapidated because you get no paint, no wood, nothing, and I like the house. And the roof was leaking, stair was broken, I said to my wife, never mind, don’t you worry, I want this house. She said you’re mad! So I paid the flat one month, I moved myself with the dog [laugh] to the house; four storey house. In those days it was two thousand five hundred pound, but to earn two thousand five hundred pound in those days was like almost fifty yesterday, but every month I did something, a bit, you know and in the end you know, that dilapidated house you know, start going up and up in prices, you know, and when recently you know, the property went, you know, sky high, I would, in the end when my wife finished the club business and we rented up flats in Holland Park with her because even club was too much in the end because that’s a big responsibility. When she was young she was. Boys I must give you drink coffee, cake listen I have special cake made for you.
GB: Shall we take a little break for a moment then, we can switch the filming off and talk about some photographs.
JB: Listen quickly.
GB: I think you probably need a break more than we do, you’ve talked for about a whole hour! If you press the red button again the word record should come off the screen. [Beep]
JB: That’s right, plenty sugar.
GB: I’ll just er, leave that running anyway, might be some other bits that are worth, oh yes please, thank you.
JB: That’s why I don’t worry! [Crockery sounds] Long as your stomach enjoy it! [Laughter] [Pause] Well I’m so glad you came all the way from Lincolnshire to see me because you see we spent so many years in that part. I used to love Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, because the countryside in summer beautiful, you know, yes. Lincolnshire, I used to go with my friends in Lincoln, when they had racing in those days. You know that was first race in the spring what used to start.
GB: The horse racing in Lincoln, yes, yeah.
JB: Nowadays that’s went to Doncaster.
GB: But the old grandstand is still there.
JB: Still there, yes.
GB: And the racetrack is there, for the horses, but nobody races any more.
JB: Yes I know.
GB: Still run at Market Rasen.
JB: Yes, oh yes, that’s right. Yes, Lincoln was lovely – that Cathedral, every time we used to coming to land we always had to joke and be careful captain don’t touch the thing! [Laugh]
GB: Well we’re delighted to come down to see you and we’re looking forward to when you can come in May, not just because of the time at Faldingworth for you, but also hopefully the next morning on Sunday, and I’ll speak to Daniel, to come and visit us, to see how the renovation is going up on the site. Cause we’ve got the old airmens’ mess where the Junior Ranks, but we can walk round the corner to the old sergeants’ mess, the big long building, that’s still there: the farmer keeps chickens in there now.
JB: Oh boy!
GB: But, and there are one or two other buildings that are still there, including the old control tower, but that’s been changed now; the present owner has turned it into a gymnasium I think. There’s one or two things on the old airfield, and if the weather is good for us as well we can drive you round and stop at different places around the airfield and you can tell us if you remember certain things. Many of the old buildings have gone now, just because the farmers, they’ve either fallen down or the farmers have knocked them down to make a bit more room for the fields.
JB: You know last time when I went and I saw, saw that overgrown airfield, I thought to myself, every time we shall return, we thought that was our home, you know that. Yes. You know you, when you came out from the plane, you thought I am at home.
GB: I’m at home.
JB: You see the trouble was, when you used to miss your friends and you went to dining room and you saw that table empty, and that table empty and you think to myself I wonder when this table will be empty? Because we always used to sit together at the same table, the crew.
GB: I was going to ask you did the crews sit at set tables, you had your own crew table.
JB: Yes, we had our own chart, and at one time [sigh] my crew, my squadron, had quite bit of bad luck, you know, we lost five crews in short time and Bomber Harris came, paid us unexpected visit. So in evening, we didn’t have flight then, the adjutant said we will be meeting special guest in one of the hangar. So have a, all good shave and wash and after tea get yourself into the hangar. Because this guest come, we thought who it would be? Maybe King you know or, who, and he came with the car and he had little talk with us. He said, boys I came to see you because you look bit depressed, and I know why you feel depressed. But he said, that’s what happen in, during the war: some time we going to happy day, sometime we going to depressing days, but he said I tell you what I want to tell you - I’m exactly telling the words what he explain. He said our friend Germans always had ideas to start the war, because he said, by starting the wars they used to make good gains. They invade other people homes, destroy their homes, rob their homes and bring the loot back to their own country. And he said people in their country never saw the destruction and suffering. But he said, I came to tell you, with this war, we going to take destruction and suffering into their [emphasis] countries, so the Germans will know what war brings, and memories. So he said for the first time we’re doing that, and by doing that we’re having those depressing days left in our memory, but he said this will not last for ever. Sooner or later the rest of the world will start to be happy. But he said is getting very near when that success we achieve, but success is in front of you, so don’t you worry; it will not last forever, you know. And that we give him because we knew that he was under pressure to do that you see, because not only he, the Russians press him, because you know what the Russians knew, the Russians say if you not going to help us, the Hitler will, he had planned to, was the destruction of Dresden, because the Germans had very big concentration troops there and they wanted to contra attack Russian’s advance and Stalin said if you not helping me they going to chase me back to Stalingrad and the war may completely change still in the last phase of the war. And that’s why destruction went to Dresden because they were preparing lot of last Germans, you know, contra attack on Russian’s advance you see, because the Russians was pressing with all their strength because they didn’t give Germans chance to recuperate, you know what I mean, and by doing so they were gaining the successes. But they knew they wouldn’t be able to do it for much longer. That’s why the destruction went on Dresden, because, to completely wipe out the Dresden. We had such heavy losses in Bomber Command you see, because Bomber Command support the Russians, and support our troops. Our troops. Our invasion on Normandy coast, without Bomber Command going and smashing fortification from Baltic to Atlantic, none of our troops would landed on Normandy coast. The Bomber Command helped them you see, to bridge it, just because they had so fortified, you know what I mean. They, they were, Germans nasty, nasty people. But Bomber Command, paid the price and achieved the result in the end. More cake boys? Yes!
GB: I’m all right thank you.
JB: Now listen!
GB: That’s not good; that’s on tape now. My wife will know I’ve eaten cake! [Laugh]
JB: That thing is red.
GB: Is that the warning? I think it is.
GB: Yes. Is the red thing on?
GB: Yeah, it’s flashing and it’s got green, it’s not got the pause. It’s just the battery usually. Is it on the screen is it? Does it say red?
GB: Just record on it.
GB: How many hours left does it say?
GB: Nine hours thirty six. If I can read without my glasses.
GB: It should be quite a lot because it had had about four years worth of recording on there, everything from when Hayley used to swim. I cleared all that off last weekend. My camera when we bought it about three or four years ago, probably little bit longer than that now, we just recorded everything from family holidays to everything, it’s got quite a big memory on there so this last weekend I wiped all of it off, well saved it onto my computer so that we knew we would be chatting for quite a while today, so you know, we’ve left it on so.
JB: It’s nicely set I think for our height, you know, so.
GB: It captures you just here nicely, with us out of the screen.
JB: More coffee? Listen, I’m not going to charge you no more because not hot. I make you hot. [Steps] [Pause] We have a hot coffee this time!
GB: Oh! Okay, thank you.
JB: {Banging] Listen, next time you come to [indecipherable] we won’t be strangers you see because you’re our friend from Lincoln, Yorkshire. Yes.
GB: Well next time you’re coming to be our guest, aren’t you, in May, you’ll come and see us.
JB: You see, which way round, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, Bomber Command. Here in [indecipherable] they want fighters, you know, and most Bomber Command boys lived there because they had friends and so on, so they remain there.
GB: In Lincolnshire everything is all about the Lancaster and they forget about the Wellington. So because Ingham was purely Wellington squadrons, this is it, we go Lancasters, Wellingtons.
GB: Line them up!
JB: Wellingtons give us the start, yes, yes, they give us the start.
GB: Never heard anything back from Malcom.
GB: Malcolm?
GB: Everett from Nottingham. His uncle. Polish. He was in Fighter, he’s a Fighter. He’s over in Canada. [Indecipherable]
GB: Colin did say that quite a few of the Polish WAAFs are coming to the Faldingworth thing, and [emphasis] the Nottingham Polish scouts.
JB: This time you have the good coffee!
GB: Oh right. We have the rubbish coffee first! [Laughter]
JB: Yes that was it!
GB: I thought you were just seeing how the visitors were going before you give us the good coffee maybe!
JB: You came long way you know, to see me, and sugar, help yourself to sugar. That’s right.
GB: I’ll move that back. There we go. [Sounds of movement] I’ll come and sit this back here a little bit just so that it faces more the front.
JB: Thank you. Yeh, you see, the trouble was, not many people remember the history, but I tell you what I want to tell you. In the old days Poland was country surrounded by three very big power: Russia, Germany and Austria. At one time, many years ago, Poland was the strongest nation in Europe. We stop Turks’ invasion on Europe, but our history start change, you know what I mean, like every country, you know, in future. And then at one time Poland went under occupation of three big power: Russia, Austria and Germany, and we stay under their occupation for hundred twenty years. When the First War started, after hundred twenty years we regain independence, and we’d been destroyed completely, left like that because the biggest battlefield went on the Polish land, you know, between those three superpowers, Russia, Germany and Austria. But when we got independence, for twenty years, England and France was only our far neighbours what we could depend. The rest we still been surrounded by er, not friendly nations, like Germany, Russia, and even Austria and then there was Czechs, Lithuanians, I mean those country, encouraged by the Russians, by the Germans, to cause Czechs against Poland. They knew what that new country, after fifty years to gain independence, was very weak nation. But we had only two countries what we thought we could depend little on friendship: England and France, and we kept it. But in the end we knew in Europe what the Second World War is brewing. But one thing what I have respect for England till my dying days, what England had the guts to stand up against the Germans. No other nation in the world in those days. They all were frightened of the Germans. When the Olympics started in 1930-
GB: Six, yeah.
JB: The Hitler show well his superior power, you know what I mean. And when that Olympic finish, everybody were in fear of the Germans’ superiority. But England, always they were big Empire in those days, they knew what the Germans to them also are big danger, you know, because they knew what the Germans always were creating to regain their superiority in the world. When 1939 came, England only had the guts to stand up. Even French was hesitating in the end. They, you know, were not hundred percent sure, but in the end they had just to do it, but they didn’t do it with heart, no, you see, and the French being senseful were truly bluffing in the end, what it ended that way, you know what I mean. What in the end the Americans got themself involved, because the America didn’t want to it come to the war, and we had very, but in the end who stood up only? England and Poles on this island; everybody was running away. I remember, I work in London, in some parts, in Willesden, where lots of Jewish community live. Rich community, nice houses, and it was at night. I took girlfriend I met in the dance, it was very dark and she promise me she stay with me if I take her home because she was frightened afterwards when dance finished. I said I take you home. I took her home and I was walking back to the Paddington station, I had small room there where I working, and I walk through Willesden, where was half dead. Houses, windows were boarded in, everybody, lots of Jewish community fled to Canada, or somewhere, because they thought the Germans inevitably coming here. And when I walked through that empty park, I thought to myself, will it really happen, you know, what everybody so frightened you see, but that how it was in London. Certain parts in London they were almost deserted too, you know what. I don’t know where people gone, if they gone to different parts of the country but some of them went abroad. So you see, the world, because I went through the beginning of the war till the end, what this country, with Mr Churchill in the end, as the warmonger, I think maybe he was wrong sometimes, [laugh] he didn’t know what he was doing!
GB: We needed a strong leader.
JB: He kept going, you know what I mean! He started in the First War, in didn’t go according to plan everything, but when the Second War came he was about one of the best, you know what I mean, what could come at that time. And he took bluff, he bluff many times and he was biding for the time, because that was only hope what something will happen. And yes, we may don’t like the Japs, but good job what they attack Pearl Harbour, you know what I mean, and they made Americans to come into the war.
GB: Big mistake for them.
JB: Because otherwise I remember the war how every day I was studying the events from day to day and only when Americans go to war you could see the laughs on the people’s faces you know, because we knew now we are not alone and that happened like that, yeah. But from beginning it was hard going but in England with Mr Chamberlain, he was, he believed Hitler from beginning. The trouble was with him, every time he go meet Hitler, he come back, step on Croydon airport: ‘There will be no war, I have signature in my hand.’ But Hitler did not have honour to tell the truth: he was just playing for time, you know what I mean and in the end he knew what he made blunder because he believed him, he believed him, and that’s why he had to resign and coalition became, you see.
GB: Don’t forget your coffee.
JB: That’s right, and you see by bluffing that time, when Mr Churchill came, what Americans got themselves involved, and that, he made also mistake, attack Russia, too late, because he wanted you know, for his stand place petrol and he had not petrol, petrol running out. Every time he had any reserves somewhere we used to bomb there, you know what I mean, and he could hide no longer and he was desperate. He started in North Africa, yes, he won Alamein but it was already with Americans help, yes, okay, you see. Because Rommel, you see he got himself involved in Russia, could not help Rommel in North Africa. Of course, Montgomery beat Rommel you see, but they prepared themselves, up to here Germans you see, when they started but they made lots of mistakes and we gained it. [Laugh] You see that’s how war go. Sometimes you see, you almost have victory but mistake costs and to put mistake right Is very costly. [Laugh]
GB: Can I ask you Jan, about?
JB: Ask me anything.
GB: Can we talk about your, when you came to, when you first came to Britain and joined the RAF, as a Polish airman, can you tell us which, did you fly in or did you come by boat and where did you come to? Tell us a little bit about about Blackpool because I think that was your first- the Polish Depot.
JB: I think you touch one of the most important ones. My father was soldier in the First War and we, when the Russians, the Germans were defeated, Austria collapsed, Poland start re-emerging independence, my father was in Polish erm, in Polish Army. When the Germans collapsed, you know, in 11 11, the Russian wanted to invade, under the Bolshevism, the rest of Europe, because Europe was so tired of the war. The France was almost collapsed; England was very bad unrest, because suffering for five years in the First War and the Russians people who starved, they were hungry of food because the big pressures was on Russians’ Front too you see, and we beat the Russian’s invasion on the Vistula river, in Poland. Because how we beat the Russians then, when they wanted to invade the rest of Europe – Bolsheviks. Because the communists was breeding, wanted to overthrow the monarchies, in Germany, in Austria out, out. England sent small reinforcement because the English Royal Family were linked with the Russian Royal Family and as you know, in the First War, Russia, and England and France and very strongly united.
GB: [Beep] Carry on. Right we’re back on again.
GB: [Indecipherable] battery at the same time.
GB: So were you going to tell us a little bit about how you actually came to England.
JB: Alright. Before war started, my father knew the Second War would always begin sooner or later, and he was fighting against the Bolshevism in the First War. When the Russians had very big defeat and they were always warning what, you know, they will return. That was the, always sign. And he saw, he saw the First War destruction and he said to my mother what he don’t like to see Second War. He had the idea what the war will come and would be same thing what happened in the First War, so he sold his possession in Poland and in those days was very big emigration going to Canada, America, South America, Brazil, Argentine, and my father went, decided to go to Argentine, to start plantation there. We went on the boat from Poland. When I was passing near Dover Strait, I saw the white chalk of Dover, I thought to myself, I had been at school having so many lessons about England, what the democratic system in this country, how near. I could see it but I cannot be in, on that coast to see it. You know how it’s in sight you see, because England was always in Poland very important lectures done you see, how it is leading modern nation in the world. Anyway, my ship continue through the English Channel, stop in Spain, stop in Portugal, stop in North Africa, Casablanca, Dakar, then cross to Brazil, off Brazil went to Argentina, BA. My father you see had already planned where we went to settle down in Argentine. We went there, bought lots of land. I thought to myself what he's going to do, forest? He said we will start plantation: plant lots of oranges, bananas, all different type of wine grapes. I went to school in Argentine to learn Spanish. I was already fifteen year old, where you, during break play football, so some of those Argentinian he said you cannot play football. Then, you know, I shoot goal. No, you didn’t score that goal, you bloody fool! I said what did you say? I already knew how to ask him what this he say. He says something again, I punch him in the face. He will go to teacher, report what I misbehave at school. The teacher report to my father, your son not behaving properly at school. My father said listen, you going to school to learn Spanish and learn the Spanish history. I say father I’m learning but I said, I’m not happy. I said they not going to call me what I don’t want you to call me. [Laugh] He said but you don’t have to fight with them I say sometime you have to. [Chuckle] Anyway, I continue to listen to father. War started; I was already nineteen. English Embassy, French embassy, Polish Embassy calling for volunteers. You don’t know how many volunteers came from South America to this country, from Brazil, from Argentine. They were all different nation joining, against Germans. We had three English ship, the Royal Mail had, big English company Royal Mail, going continuously because English had so much investment in Argentine, they were building railways in that huge country. All the meat factory, because Argentine is one of the biggest meat producer in the world after United States. Frederice Angelo, the factory, when the trains come with the, all the stock from the, those huge provinces with the, to the factories, whole train, you could see those cows inside in the train going from beginning of the factory when slaughter start, in the end of the factory, all ready, ships taking all the meat frozen to different parts of the world. England had lot [emphasis] of money tied up in Argentine, lot; big companies, big companies. And when war started lots of volunteers, English, French, Polish start, because Embassy put, advertise, need people. We start, we been put in the hotels in BA, never know what time we going to leave because the German submarine was all over waiting and all those big boats what were going from Argentine with meat supply to England, and volunteers, we used to sleep on the hammock; we had no beds. All the time you have the salvage tied up in case the boat is torpedoed so you jump into the water to save yourself and we had at night a turn we had to watch with binoculars for German submarines somewhere, and our boat – huge! Royal Mail had three: Highland Moorland, Highland Chief, Highland Princess: four big boats. Continuously they used to cross each other, one coming already from England, second come and they used to hoot each other when they pass each other, crossing the Atlantic. And they used to never come to Southampton, the far as they come to Belfast. Unload in Belfast and go back. Belfast then go back. I came to Belfast and first I felt bombing [laugh] and what a souvenir, imagine! And from Belfast they shipped us to Scotland, you know, at night. And from there to Blackpool and from Blackpool to Evanton in Scotland on the train and we be start training day and night, in hurry because the war was in hurry, you know what I mean, to train. We had sometime few hours sleep, you know what I mean. In Scotland we were living in huts. Those round huts, you know.
GB: Nissen huts.
JB: In the middle we had coal fires, chimney. In morning cold, we had, river was passing near our hut and the wooden boats was from the river, we had to wash ourselves, shave ourselves, quickly before the you know, our duties start. And coming in Argentine during that time was summer there, we came here it was winter. In Scotland dark [emphasis] at night in winter time, cold. First I had to go climatise myself to Scottish weather [chuckle] and start training there. When we got first training then we been shipped to Midland, that was better, you know, better. Then when we finished training in Midland, we then joined to the squadrons you see, and in squadrons was much better, you know, much better life. Yes. So you see I start my way, come from Argentine, was seven hundred of us on that boat coming, on Highland Chieftain, big boat, twenty two thousand ton, and we, German submarine all over South Atlantic, with that Graf Spey what they could not catch, that big German er, battleship what you know eventually they caught him near Montevideo, what they, being sunk you see; we start training. Then, you see, when I was start to fly I done few ops from my OTU. First we been doing lots of leaflets, throwing over France. ‘Don’t you worry, we beating Germans in three months, war finished!’, to give to the French people! [Laugh]
GB: So they were your training runs.
JB: Thousands! Then afterwards they send us bit more deeper in Germany to drop few bombs, you see. And then I, we had our accident and I came out on my own from my crew, because my plane got broken, Wellington. I lost consciousness during the accident and when I woke up, I recover my memory what we had crash and I saw everything in fire. [Pause] I, I was squeezing myself; I’d been trying to get my pilot out of, out of his seat, but I think he was still tied up with his, and I couldn’t get him out and in the end I was running out of breath because I could not see, I could not feel, and I start to crawl back and when I crawl back the plane was broken in half, so I had to exit where I got myself out. When I got myself out, my uniform was burning on me, because some parts, some parts I think got wet with petrol, so those parts when was wet, or when I touch maybe, when was trying to squeeze myself from the plane were fire, and we crash near farm, and the people run out from that farm and er, [pause] they tear my clothes from me you see, but I was, I lost my helmet because during that, er, er, during the crash, you know what I’m, impact, I was you know, I was somehow thrown, my helmet was thrown, so I already burn my hair and good job what they torn my flying [indecipherable] out because otherwise I would got probably burn you see with my uniform. We crash near farm somewhere, very near.
GB: Was that in England?
IJB: In England, yeah.
GB: And your aircraft at that time, was that a Wellington or a Lancaster?
JB: Wellington, yes. And I land myself in Cosford hospital, Royal, RAF hospital, that’s where we crash near, and they soon give me, I was in such a pain, but before we crash, the pilot notify flying control what we are in trouble you see. You see during that time our plane not been serviced properly, we’d be in such a hurry training, training, training, and our plane not been hundred percent sometime, maybe, fit to fly, but if you too often put what there were certain problem, you’re gonna some time maybe you don’t, just don’t want to fly, you know what I mean, so you had to do it. Now if something not working In the old days You see now sorry.
GB: Can’t fly.
JB: But in the old days small problem you just have to -
GB: So your crash happened when you were on the OCU then?
JB: Yes, you see, that plane was continuously refilling it up, refilling it up, you see. They had not enough time to service properly. Anyway, I don’t know what was problem but the pilot signal what we are, you know, going down you see. Then I land myself in hospital, but with pilot notified, he give a signal, we going to crash land, you see. It was at night time and when those people took me inside to their house, I couldn’t see them because everything was red in my eyes because my eyes was also burnt you see, from the flame, so everything was red, and he give us, the pilot give directions to the plane control exact place where we been heading to, to crash, and the ambulance came in about half an hour, but I was in such a pain, such a pain. I still remember that today what, and those people were offering me cup of tea, something I couldn’t touch, nothing, because my hands was, but they were talking to me. And I land myself in Cosford, RAF hospital and they start giving me injections to lower the pain, and in the end, in the end when I woke up, that was somewhere I think in afternoon and we crash in evening, so it was long time, and I just look at my, everything, I was embalmed, but I still could see very little through my, one eye I could see ward, what everything was when I look on my hands was full of bandages and the doctors start came and slowly they start talk to me what to get better, you know, start tell you and I spent there three weeks. And Sir Archibald McIndoe, that the big plastic surgeon from East Grinstead, he used to go visit different hospitals in England, also see different cases, the Air Force fellow who burn, in different locations, and he was surgeon and asked them to be to transferred to his hospital in East Grinstead. So he came and spoke to me. He said you, do you know me? I look at him. I said no. I am big plastic surgeon from East Grinstead Hospital. In those days I didn’t know East Grinstead! I said where, he said East Grinstead near London. Oh yes I said, yes, I know. He said that’s where you come to, I’m taking you there! He shout at me! I say when? He said tomorrow you will come. I said thank you, and you see they transfer me with the ambulance to that hospital, and that was proper hospital there because there was modern facilities, good staff, beautiful hospital. Every time when I pass near I always go visit there, you know what I mean. And the people there, in East Grinstead, they so kind, because some of the boys so badly burned, if you would saw some cases you will close your eyes. Their faces, eyes, ears, no hair: completely [emphasis] new faces, you know what I mean. They had to repeat, because fire is a shocking thing, because fire damage. I was in my life couple of times drowning because I was swimming and in the end I got in some very steep, deep hole what I couldn’t get to the edge of it you see, I was drowning, in the sea, but the fire is the worse enemy. The water is bad but the fire is even worse, you know what I mean. You see I spent there six months and the hospital was every night new cases come, at night. People shouting at night. They bring them on the trollies with pain, from different accidents; tell they could have done with the injection, with the pills you see. So as they, they bathe you little. They keep sending you to diff, to units, because hospital could not cope with so much overloading. Then you do certain time and they recall you back for to continue. So they sent me doing instructing in the gunnery school you see, because I already had few ops behind me, they used to call me, I was capable to do that job what they been so desperately need. So I used to go with those gunner, Lysander used to have that air bag and we going in [indecipherable], that’s a twin engine plane with the two, when the gunners in turn go and shoot him. They sometimes shooting bag, shooting the pilot [laugh], pilot shouting on the intercom [laugh] stop you bloody thing you know what you doing! The bullets flying over my head! [Laughter] Because you see the student you have to tell gently, you know, he somehow press on the trigger you see that turret moving fast you see, so you get him out, you see, you put another one, you say listen when you turn it you must turn gently not so sharp! I said once you pointing on the airbag, once you pointing at pilot head! [Laugh] I said you shoot down the pilot you get into trouble, you get me to trouble you understand! What you doing! So I kept it for six months then I went back as I told you, back to my squadron, then I start to feel to be like home, you know what I mean. Yeah. Because there was, you did your job, and there was no shouting at you, you had more respect, you know what I mean. On this gunnery school I mean I was already instructor but still you had to stand up as a, you know what the discipline, to show them what they must be, you know, example to be, know what I mean.
GB: What rank were you at the gunnery school?
JB: I was Warrant Officer.
GB: Oh Warrant Officer. And was it just Polish.
JB: I had Warrant badge.
GB: The students you were teaching, were they English or just the Polish?
JB: Mixed. There was Australian, there was Canadians, you see, there was Poles. Some of the Canadians been coming already trained, some of them been finish here you see. In the end my squadron sometime, because we always had about eighteen crews operational, from my squadron. So some time when we had replacement we had to have backup from the Royal Air Force because we had, our crews were still due to be, er to come, so we had some spare crews coming, flights. A Flights or C Flights you see, English Section, because we always sent about eighteen planes you know, on the op.
GB: On op.
JB: That was big, big, lovely aerodrome for headquarter, new build by Wimpey, beautiful there.
GB: What, you obviously can remember the date, what was the date of your crash?
JB: My crash, yes, 1943, about three weeks before Christmas.
GB: So yeah, beginning of December ’43.
JB: Yes, somewhere, because Christmas, I tell you, I never forget that Christmas till my dying days. We had Christmas tree, beautiful tree, and you know, first when you badly burned, every day they take you to have a bath. They take your pyjama out: top, bottom, beautiful two WAAFs, nurses, WAAF officers will come and take your dressing gown from your hands, face, because that dressing is with oil, so the oil doesn’t stick to you. And they have to keep changing those dressing gowns till skin heals, you know what I mean. So they have to keep clean every day you must have a bath, they run bath full of water, imagine, from beginning, young man, you go to bath and two beautiful nurses you know, take your dressing gown, afterwards you get used to, but from beginning you almost, you shy to look them. They used to because they already been doing that, but you from beginning. And that Christmas, Bing Crosby sang White Christmas. Anyway, before midnight there was nice atmospheres, nurses were singing, the lights weren’t on and afterwards we had spare room so they turned the lights down and I had radio, and Bing Crosby sang ‘White Christmas’,’ and that touch you, you know what I mean. And I was then in the little room, lights very dimly lit up and I thought, if it is Christmas, that special day, what it touch you so much, you know what I mean, with that song, and every time when I ever heard him singing that song, you know, it remind me that day I was in that hospital you know what I mean. Because that Christmas was such a thing, once you land yourself in hospital and you knew, when in the past you always mix with crowd of people, and this time you was on your own, was very, very sentimental, yes. You know even now, you say, I’m sorry I’m probably bore you talking, but I want to tell you my exactly life.
GB: Oh no!
JB: Even when I go now, during Battle of Britain, when we have all big crowd here - I don’t know if you ever been here, by the monument?
GB: Yes, last September we came.
JB: I’m glad. I hope you come this September.
GB: Every year. We will come every year.
JB: You to us you are very valuable because you going to live lots of, you help us lots of history what we, you know, want to leave behind, because the war’s it is remain, all the history should be known. Yeah. So every time I go to that and when I see those face, my men, who, I’m telling you exactly what I, what to tell you from my heart. I think to myself why didn’t I die with them, you know what I mean, when I say their name because you think they gone and I left behind why should be? I should be there with them but it just happen like that. But some time you, you think you would be better off if you would died with them, you know what I mean, yes. You see friendship, you see, you probably will remember, when you facing, facing, death, and we are three of us together, [pause] is the biggest friendship, the biggest brotherhood you share together. Because you know you depend on each other. You see the same thing would have been in crew, seven, you knew defend each other life and when you miss one of them is probably more than your own brother, you know what I mean. The sort of friendship, you sort of develop friendship. If I see my English crews like I, before [crashing sound].
GB: It’s all right. I’ll get it.
JB: Oh sorry, I’m sorry to give you problem. Oh thank you.
GB: That’s all right. Gone everywhere.
JB: I have lots of more memory, I lost lots of my different records, but I’m still holding [paper shuffling], oh, yes, yes. That’s all right. [Paper shuffling] I thank you, you’re friend.
GB: I’ll move those on to there.
JB: Yes. That’s lovely. [paper shuffling] Look, before we have our statue erected, few years ago Daily Mail was, I miss some daily, because that was every day different added story, I thought why don’t we have our recognition? Even Churchill betrayed them; the nation turn its back. So should we still feel duty, you know what I mean, and in the end we got this monument because every time I see them I was the same like them and I felt what the people forgot us. But you know why? When war ended, the Germans call what was that’s biggest barbaric system done on Dresden, but so many and Mr Churchill slightly turn us back, to give the most recognition to Fighter Command. But we never forgive him because who were Fighter Command, they just stop, delay invasion, in the end Hitler said I will come back to you later, I’m not in such a hurry, but the Bomber Command, who from beginning till the end, went night after night, day after day, from beginning nobody could touch Germans, only Bomber Command did here and that’s why we pay such a big casualties.
GB: You took the fight to them.
JB: We had to go for eight hours. The fighters -
GB: Would you like to sit down.
JB: Yeah. The fighters, listen!
GB: There we go. [Paper shuffling]
JB: Thank you. Sometimes they jump in their Spitfire, they come back and the cigarette still left on ash tray, burning. When we had to go, we had to go for eight hours, over their sky, over their land and face them for eight hours, you know what I mean, then return to English Channel, that was sacrifice and you see people always talk with mistake: Battle of Britain. We only stop invasion but he still had so much power he went on Russia, because he was running out of petrol, that’s why he went in hurry to get, he start North Africa, no success, Then he said well, the other way: I go on Russia. And if he were to take Russia much early probably he would succeed, you know what I mean, but he attack them bit late and winter came and delay him, and why delay? Because Bomber Command, night after night, went over their sky, over their cities, over their whatever places what it hurt them badly, you see, and made destruction and who in the end lost the most people? Bomber Command – yeah, we paid the prices. And we should be, now we have our statue. Every time we go there, we know what only, I went there, Duke of Edinburgh pass with the Queen and I sat in the second row of chairs. So I waved to him, he turned, he said I know you from somewhere! So I turned to him, I said so you should Your Highness. He saw me from somewhere! I often talk with Duke of Edinburgh because he is our President of the Guinea Pig. When we have our dinner before, in East Grinstead and when he is not abroad or somewhere he always come to dinner with us and he eats, every time will enjoy pint of bitter in the bar and he talk with different voice. Then my English colleagues said to him, they bring him what they said that’s a Polish airmen, he stay with us. So he turned to me and said oh, so you not in Poland? I said no because I said the Russians don’t like me, so I said I’m still here. Oh so you here, where you living? I said I’m living in London, Your Highness. Oh in London! I say yes. Whereabouts in London. I said I’m your neighbour. You are my neighbour? I say of course I’m your neighbour: I live in Royal Borough, I said, I live in Holland Park. Oh, but you never come to see me, I say don’t come to see you because you have so many fellows with rifles and stuff! [Laughter] So he said but, you have to tell me, you are my friend – I said they don’t listen to me! [Laugh] And he laugh and he went andgo talk with somebody else, you know, he’s a very. People say talk to Duke of Edinburgh what he’s such a, you know, he’s just the same, and he will have same food with us and he enjoy joking and telling us some nice story. He said when I go to different meetings I have to be so careful because, he said, if I make something, they up to it and he said next morning in the press lots of things done to it. He said with you boys I can talk and it’s no paparazzi [laugh]. And he will have same pint of beer to start, and he will walk in bar and chat, you see you never can press yourself to start talking with him, but when he is brought to you, then you can have a chat with him you see, [laugh] then, yeah. So, he said so you are living in my borough? I say yes, I say I have been living before you, because I said, I know you got married after me [laughter] when you came, and the fellows who escort him laughed, you know, because I remember when he got married, and in Hyde Park we had all different groups from Colony come, and they had in Hyde Park, in the tents, accommodation, you know what I mean. So I said oh yes, you became my neighbour much after me, I say I came after the war, yeah, because, and he, he few times he came to see us and after, when dinner finish, quietly to take him through back door and back to London, yeah.
GB: Can I ask you a question? When, you said when you went on operations and you went for eight hours, can you tell us a little about what it was like? Did you spend all eight hours in your gun turret, or were you allowed to walk up and down the aircraft? Did you take a little bag with a flask of tea and sandwiches? What did they give you? Tell us a little bit if you can about an ordinary mission.
JB: Yes, I tell you what. We used to take coffee with flask; strong black coffee with drop of rum, drop of rum, and pilot will always, from time to time: Jan, you all right, how you feel? All right skipper, don’t worry, I’m watching, watching, don’t worry. Oh we just want to know, you know, he communicated with one each other ever so often, you know, so, because some time certain fellow can fall slightly sleepy, you know what I mean, so we keep in communicating from time to time, but I, you see when I went second time after my accident, and the new crew came, they were feeling what I was to them like, superior, because I already had few operation before me and I had to tell them, before we went on first op, I said listen, I can advise you one thing what you have to do. What you have to keep your eye left and right all the time, because if you going to keep that, what I’m telling you, you probably will have much more chance to, because I said the Germans come so quickly and so unexpectedly what, before you notice it’s too late, so you have to see him much before he see you you see, and I said you must keep eye on each other so you all know what you’re doing, and you keep looking. Because I said, pilot has his responsibility and you as the gunners, you have your responsibility, because you have the responsibility for the rest of crew. I say you have your guns and your guns is for defending ourselves. I said some of the members of the crew, they have no guns. Well you have the guns and you have to give that, you know. They felt, you know, like I was to them, bit more superior because I already had few ops you see.
GB: You had the experience.
JB: Yes, that’s right.
GB: How many operations did you go on all together do you think?
JB: About fourteen.
GB: Fourteen. Did you, it’s a delicate question to ask, but did you manage to shoot down any Germans?
JB: No. I had one, I had, who wanted to attack us, and I don’t know why, and he kept following us for while, but I think he knew what we saw him you see, and he was coming, was lowering himself down, from the back he was following, but never took attack you see. And I, to the mid upper I said look, look he’s on your right, on my, on my right from the back, watch him, watch him, he’s going to do something! And he follow us, I don’t know, or he had not enough guts.
GB: Maybe.
JB: Because Germans too also, not everyone was not brave, you know what I mean. And in the end when clouds came we went, because when clouds came you run into the cloud, you don’t care what happen, if you collide with something long as you get away, you know, so the most danger night it is when it’s moonlight. When we go on bombing and is full moon, is almost fifty fifty chance, you know what I mean, because the Germans could see you like in daytime, you know what I mean, and long distance but when is certain over cloud, over target, is, you see, very, very big to us, future to survive, you know what I mean. Because you don’t care when you see the fighter is attacking you, if you have near cloud you run into the cloud, you know what I mean, and he will be frightened to follow you because you know, you can collide, but you, to save yourself you don’t care.
GB: You go into the cloud.
JB: You will do it. Yes.
GB: Did you think yourself, you obviously with a rear gunner in a Wellington and then also in the Lancaster, what was it, what were the guns like, were they powerful enough do you think you could have better? Because they kept changing the different armaments that you had.
JB: No I think Lancaster had better, they were more modified, more superior, movement and erm, effectiveness than Wellington. You see every, from Wellingtons they made lots of improvement into the Lancaster and you felt the second, what you been, not two gunners, it was three of you, you know what I mean, and the Germans knew, when he would attack you from the back, he would have two gunners against him, you know what I mean, instead of one. Because Wellington is rear and front, so he know the front, he’s not bothered about the front, he only, and the German fighter, first of all, when he attacking you his first idea to kill the rear gunner, because once he point on you and he, he upset your defence, then he know he got the rest, you know, easy way. So his first idea to have eyes set on the rear gunner you know, and he will always attack from the back, very seldom from the side, because from the side is so big speed, what he cannot catch you in his gun sight, but when he follow you from the back he has distance.
GB: A still target.
JB: And he get you right in his circle and then you are, you know, almost in his mercy you see, yeah.
GB: Did you have any armour plating in the rear turret at all to protect you?
JB: No.
GB: Nothing at all.
JB: No. You just, you know, you had good visibility, but pilot had, pilot had. From beginning we had sometime two pilots; one and assistant pilot who’s doing first trip or something. But afterwards you train pilot for Lancaster four engine; it take so long what they couldn’t afford it to have two pilots so we had one, yes. Maybe some time first trip, some time, when the pilot, Commanding Officer knew, what he need to send with the second pilot, so they send him to give him one trip, what to experience, you know what I mean.
GB: When, when you came back from each operation, was there a certain time when you were able to relax? When you were still in the air, coming back from an operation, was there a certain time when you came over the British coast or was it further inland than that?
JB: You know first of all when we just been over Holland, to Belgium, even France, we felt little better, but when we came over English coast at least you know you were home, yes, [telephone] you knew what maybe some Germans here but they so scared over our land when they have no time and because sometime we will come and the Germans will be around here you know, so we had some diversion you see, yes. There were occasion we landed on American bases. That was good because we could get cigarettes you know, [chuckle] and bottle gin, and bottle of gin! And you can have a beautiful food whatever the time of the night you like, because kitchen is always open you see. So listen, next time you come back to your station all your friends after you because they knew you’d been diverted to American station! It was like you know [laughter].
GB: Are there any funny stories you can remember when you were on operations, up in the air, the funny things that happened in the aircraft? Can you remember any funny things that happened with your crew when you were up on operations?
JB: Oh yes, yes! Sometime you know there is certain job, fellow sitting, he said, listen you know what this, our skipper doing now? He turned, he completely turned his course, he sort of [indecipherable] going on Berlin, I say you’re joking! No, no he’s something, doing wrong! Listen, you don’t tell me he not so stupid to do such a thing. Only jokes, you know. But jokes is all right if is quiet, but when is sometimes hot you know what I mean, there is no joke, there is no joke, you know. After, when we get from the danger, we can joke, you know what I mean, yes.
GB: And your time when you were back on the ground, on the stations, tell us a little bit about your life on the RAF stations, if you can, in between operations. What was your normal day on the ground?
JB: I’ll tell you what we’ll do, [sigh] I was very good snooker player, and you know when I learned very good snooker? When I land myself in hospital and we had recreation room and three snooker table. So when you not in bed, you go to that canteen, have a cup of tea or coffee, and sometime play game or two just to pass the time, and I had you know, very good talent for the snooker and some time - I’m glad you ask me that because I cannot remember everything, so when you ask me certain question I sometime give you interesting answer - that Sir Archibald McIndoe, what he was such an important person in Air Ministry, if he phoned to Air Ministry and he said listen, I want twenty professional nurses: my hospital short of nurses. After two days new nurses come from Ireland, because most Ireland supply beautiful trained nurses, young girls. And they come to hospital and after one years hospital short of nurses because boys married them, you know what young boys, and they soon find themselves husbands you see, but anyway, that Sir Archibald McIndoe also liked play snooker. Sometime he will start operating from seven o’clock in morning because the more they operating those people, the more some of them they finish them in to do the service again, you know, it was like you know what I mean, conveyor belt. People coming in and going out, coming in and going out. So he would start operating early, certain cases, and lunchtime sometime, you know what he would do to me? He will call me, to my, I will be on Ward One, he will ask sister, sister call that Polski – he called me Polski – so sister say, hey Polski, your boss want to see you, So I get on the telephone. Yes Sir Archie, what can I do? Listen Jan, reserve table one o’clock today because I give you game. I give you three black start! I say thank you Sir Archie. Yes, yeah, because you have to learn little bit more about snooker! [Laugh] So he bloody come, I will already have a sandwich for them, coffee, because he will play snooker with me and have a sandwich and coffee because he, then we finish one game listen, we have a quick one, another one. So instead of one game we will have two games, we would have sometime he would not even have time to finish a sandwich and coffee, but two game he will finish, and then he will laugh. Some time I specially let him win the game because that give him satisfaction. He will go back to operating room, he said I beat that Pole, because he thought he will beat everything! But he said I told next time three blacks is not enough for him, next time, listen, so that give him satisfaction. And he loved playing snooker. When he will meet us in bar, in Whitehall, in the evening, not every night, but from time, he usually know Friday or Saturday was the best time to meet us, he would always talk snooker to you, you see, because he loved that game and he used to play with me and with other fellows you know, but he always used to like play with me because I supposed to be quite a good player what wins them, because they all knew, so he used to enjoy beat the best one. And he was really nice. Some time he will ask us, he lived in East Grinstead, New Forest, that’s a little outside town. He has beautiful big bungalow there. So sometime he few us, he ask us for glass of beer into his, because we all had cars, you know, in East Grinstead, because lots of people sold cars cheaply because petrol was so expensive, some of people had cars but no petrol so you could buy petrol for, car for twenty five pound in those days and you know on the station you always been able to get petrol.
GB: Little petrol here, little petrol there, yeah, yeah.
JB: So we go to his, that little, that nice bungalow and he will have a drink with us in his sitting room and afterwards sometime he leave us, because he said I have to get up tomorrow morning, I have to go to London and we will have a game or two in his you know, also have a drink and afterwards go back to hospital. He was really our friend; we, we, when he died we felt for him like he was our advisor, doctor and father, you know what I mean. And he had so much influence, you know whatever, because when the Queen and King came to visit, he was the right hand man, you know what I mean, and Queen and King from time to time visit that hospital because it was all the Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, you know, colonial boys too and you know Royal Family often pay visit there. He was, and he was such an influential,so. Whatever he wanted to gain you know, something, he had his voice was respected everywhere. Yes.
GB: Do you remember back to the names of the crew in your aircraft when you had your accident?
JB: Yes, I yes, that my second crew who died, I have in my book – this one.
GB: Oh, in, how do you pronounce his surname. Is it Jerzy Cink, is it Cinic? In Polish, how do you say that name there?
JB: Ah, Cink. Yes, Cink.
GB: Cink, I’m just going to use your toilet for a moment. Brendan wants to ask you a question.
JB: Just here, first on the right, go there. First on the right. Yes, just first on the right. [Cough] I’m sorry I, [cough] do too much talking, but you see I have to tell you whatever, because you came long way and if I don’t tell you I forget, you know what I mean. I find when my second crew got lost. Four hundred something. Thank you, yes, put that somewhere. [Crockery sound] Yes, thank you.
GB: I presume, this book references, I’ve seen copies.
JB: Put that, yes thank you. [Long pause] Yes, you see here, I.
GB: Page [indecipherable]. Three hundred Lancasters.
JB: Oh yeah, here you see.
GB: Oh right, marked.
GB: More heavy losses on the first raid in 1941, attack on [indecipherable] on the night 2nd of January VHJ?
JB: Yeah. That’s my crew. Konarzewski, yes.
GB: Right. That was the aircraft. VHJ.
JB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where is Konarzewski? [Pause] No. There is the car. [Footsteps] [Crockery sounds]
GB: All marked in here as well.
JB: That’s right, yeah, Jan Konarzewski, oh yeah, that’s my crew. Second one.
GB: VH-J then. EB722.
JB: Yeah. That’s my crew what I was recalled to hospital, they went and, and that fellow was instructor, and he was in Hucknall, Hucknall.
GB: Mmm. Nottingham.
JB: And afterwards he got so fed up he said, he went, he came to our squadron and pass all the training and he was made Group Captain. Because for his services, for few years he was instructing, and imagine just before war ended, went on the flight, and you know what I mean, and crew vanished, yes. I mean different from beginning of, this end like er, that fellow, er, our ace, what in the last war, before war ended, went over Belgium. One was um, my memory, my memory you see is, er, Group Captain, Group Captain who had the most bomber, the highest Victoria Cross in Bomber Command there.
GB: Polish or British? English? Do you mean Guy Gibson or Cheshire?
JB: Guy Gibson. On Mosquitos. He went just before the war ended, in last few days, over Belgium and was shot down and killed. And the second one was er, er, his wife also contribute a lot, Group Captain Guy Gibson and second one was er, he had the most, the most trips, he was the most highly decorated – Cheshire!
GB: Leonard Cheshire.
JB: Leonard Cheshire. They were, my friends, I, listen, Leonard Cheshire had gunner in Holland Park. I tell you why, I will tell you history, fact, why Leonard Cheshire did so many trips. He was the highest decorated man in the Second War, Leonard Cheshire. He was first as a Lieutenant, made first tour, and when they finished first tour they had given holiday, everyone went different directions. One live in Scotland, one in Wales, one somewhere in London. When they return from that holiday, they all been given different, afterwards, type of duty to do. But his crew came back first, day before, from his, from their holiday. He came on second day, it was on Saturday he came back, and somebody tell him, oh your crew went to the local park to have a drink because one of the fellow is having birthday. So he get in his car and go to that park, and he said why have they just spend holiday. Oh, we had lovely holiday, one was in one place and one in another! And they said so what you doing here? No he’s, Jack having holiday, birthday, so they his birthday so we have drink, skipper, we buy you drink too, what you have? So skipper he says Oh, I have a bitter. Well he said listen boys I have the news what I will be transferred to London, to Headquarters, I will do office job now, he said I don’t know what you going to do. Well skipper, we decided today, as we having that birthday drink, what we going to continue to fly till end of the war. You know they got drunk and decided they not going to take, you know, different jobs; they want to fly. So he said when did you decide to do that? Oh well, Jack had birthday and we had drink, we thought you know, it’s nice to continue. And he start to feel sorry for them they going to fly without him. So he said why didn’t you told me that before? Well we didn’t know that, but we somehow came back from holiday and we decided the best thing for us to continue. And he start to feel sorry to leave them, you know, behind. He said now I have to do, rearrange everything you know if I want to stay with you. No they say, you don’t have to, you know, you decide for yourself. So he decide to fly with them second tour, he decide to fly second and third tour you see, and that’s how his story went. When war ended, he knew what Polish Air Force contribute to the Second War. He was lovely fellow, Leonard. He went to visit Poland, with his wife, and he saw some Poles who went back, because some left their wives in Poland, you know, and when he went there and saw some of them, or some of them already by communists badly treated, badly, you know, went through different interrogation, you know, he decided to build in Poland few, to those homeless people, home, to the ex RAF who went back to Poland and he found them in such a suffering, with his wife. So the Polish government made her Baroness of Warsaw, you know, his wife.
GB: Yes, yes.
JB: Leonard Cheshire became Catholic after the war, he went to Rome and he made application to Pope what he want to become Catholic. You know why? Because he made so many trips and sometimes he said, the, his guilty conscience was hmm, touching him, maybe so many trips what he made maybe the bombing, maybe some suffering to some people and he thought maybe to ask God forgiveness, because he was half religious person, you know what I mean. Probably that’s why did so many trips know what I mean, and his wife spent half of the time in Poland when he died, you know what I mean. Because she was doing some charity job there and she was well respected you see, in Poland. That’s Leonard Cheshire. But I tell you one story about him. You see when I live in Holland Park fifty years, all people knew me – oh that’s ex Polish airman, that’s Polish Guinea Pig. Our Police Station, all Police Station knew me because two girls from the station rent the flat in my house so when they have time they will popping in for cup of coffee, when they had day off they would come and go by, oh, Mr Black, how are you, all right, we’ll pop in quick and have a coffee. I, you see I did and in one job after the war, twelve years in rubber factory and after, when I finish, I work for electric wholesaler, twenty years. Because I knew all the cities in England and my boss like me so much because he send me to Nottingham, Coventry, Birmingham. I know that city Doncaster. He send two fellows you see they couldn’t do the cover because you see they had no experience to be in that part. I work for big electric wholesaler, [telephone ringing] so I very seldom saw my boss because he send me, all my customers like me. When they ordering, want to put orders, they asking on the reception they want to talk to me. Because when they talk to me, I promise them what I will deliver them tomorrow or after tomorrow for sure. When they talk to the boss, he take the order but long as he take the order he doesn’t bother if he deliver on time! So you see all the customers got to know me. They phone for the orders, they want to talk to me, because they know, what I, and they used to give me always good orders. You respect the guy what’s ex you know RAF and so on. So my boss was jealous of me. He said I don’t know what you do with your friends, they phone me, they only want. I said because I tell you why, I said when they order with you, you take their orders but you don’t bother to deliver on time! I said when I take order I sometime don’t sleep the time that I will deliver them, that’s the difference. I said, yes, I said and you thinks, you know, because you know I do that job, so he was also ex-Army fellow, you know what I mean! But yes, you see, I was starting, where did I start, with them, yeah, so you see, I had two jobs. Second job I loved because I had independent job. I used to travel all around the cities and in the end I went to my boss and I said, listen, when I start the job you told me it will be London. Then it was London, then afterwards you said it outside London, it was outside London, [beep] I said now we spreading all over, Scotland, Wales. Ah, he said Jan, but you don't have to hurry, you can stay in hotel, boarding room when you fine to. I said listen, I have wife. I said I didn't marry my wife to stay in Scotland, or somewhere, I said I marry my wife in London! I said no, no, I said. Listen, you know we in business we some time do more, some time less. I said yes, now every year is more and more and nothing less, but in the end he said well we will be changing so, but for time being. So I had lovely job, but it was you know, responsible job, you had to do it: nothing for nothing you see. And when I come back now, what we did war days responsibility and when war ended how we had to be also, you know what I mean, doing the job, you know what, we had nothing given for nothing you see. Now people never satisfied, you know what I mean, yes, lots of changes yes, and that’s why, maybe now, we cannot afford certain things, you know what I mean, to give so much. Like now they, wanting flats in Westminster for thousand pound you know what I mean whatever, you know, weekly, because these days you see time change, yes, you know what I mean. The Chancellor, the present Chancellor, Chancellor cannot do so much, if he cannot afford it he has to do it.
GB: Looking, looking back at your time when you’re in the Polish Air Force, in the RAF, do you look back at it now, I know you have some sad memories, and some, probably memories you prefer to forget, but as a whole thing, what do you, when you look back now, what do you think of your time in the RAF, how do you view it now?
JB: RAF, you see we live, it was days when we never knew what tomorrow’s going to bring; we used to live from day to day. But every day, when you had chance, you enjoy it, because you been catching. I’m glad you ask me that. Sometime when I was stationed in beautiful parts in this country because England have such a beautiful scenery in certain parts. This country is so much, compared with different parts of the world, so nicely preserved, so nicely upkept, you know what I mean. I used to take bicycle, in spring, and sometime go quietly for nice cycle, and I would stop that bike, and see beautiful flowers, beautiful flowering trees and I think to myself: how God made this planet so beautiful. When you some time visit you never look that, you never think that, but then when I find the time and you see that beautiful thing in front of you, those birds singing, you think to yourself I wonder if tomorrow will be such a beautiful day. If I go tonight and never return, you know what I mean. You been thinking that, you know, if you survive that one. Because when you young you something like flower growing, flowering, you don’t want to die, you know what I mean, because you full of life, you know, and see all that thing beautiful round you. So you see when you’re young person you want to live, that remember, and when I used to see that beautiful thing round me, the river, and I used to drive, cycle in those quiet place, beautiful county Lincolnshire and I think that would be shame, you just want to live now [laugh] and you facing that, the worst when some time you going to take off you see, Once you’re airborne you just feel phew, you can breathe, but the take off is always a bit of, you know what you up to: start. The second time when you go on target, when you already been there before, and you know when it’s lots of German guns there, you know, when you have on the briefing, because when you come to briefing, and our briefing officer with his long stick and big map, start pointing and you think to yourself: not that bloody place again! [Laughter] You know.
GB: Were there times when you were in the big briefing room, when they told you about where you’re going to go, so you had good locations, and not so good locations, and bloody awful locations, and was there like a groan round the room and things like that when they told you? I presume the first thing you knew was in the briefing room when the senior officer stood up at the front and told you did you?
JB: Listen, when he’s telling you about that what you already been there, you want him to finish quickly [laugh] without no mentioning them, what they have somewhere back [indecipherable] because they will tell you when, before you reach that place somewhere where you will have obstacles too, you know, so you just, you please will you finish quickly, you know! [Laughter]
GB: Where would you say, remembering back, where was the one [emphasis] place you didn’t want to hear that you were going? Where was that? Was there one place or a couple of places?
JB: Yes, one, one I remember.
GB: What was that?
JB: I remember Gelsenkirchen, that’s in industrial part of Germany. At one time I thought, I thought my plane was, you know what I mean, going down. I said to skipper, I said Jan, what the hell are you doing? I said, I cannot shift in my turret! His name was Jan too, Jan Konarzewski, he was Group Captain and I was Warrant Officer. He said Jan be quiet, I’m frightened, he’s shooting at us and I have to get away, he said, don’t you bloody shout! [Laugh] Because I, feel, listen, they in front, they don’t feel that, but I, in that bloody turret, when they turn and put that [indecipherable] I fucking feel my feet is going down! I said listen, hysterical here, you know what I mean, he say hysterical here too! [Much laughter] But, you know what I mean. In the end I know he’s not doing that on purpose you know what I mean. But I said you did bloody make me nervous, I thought you know that’s it, I said I didn’t know what happened. He said what he saw those flares coming up him and he just couldn’t, wanted to avoid them or something and that’s why he turn. But some time you know, when you try to avoid the desperate moment you do so many funny things, you know, you just don’t care, you know, in those days. And some targets are, Germans, they were, oh they, I must give them that, they had terrific, you know, defence, you know, on certain. I never been over Berlin but the boys who told me once they gone on that, you know, he said they had good drink before, because they knew it was very, very strongly defended place because the Germans, specially wanted Berliners, to show them what, there was nothing to worry about. Because that Goering he told German people what there would be no any planes coming in the sky, you know, he gives them such a surety, you know what I mean, and after our plane on Hendon Museum, it said who made over hundred trips over Germany [laugh], yeah; he was giving Germans to Hitler such assurance, what they don’t you worry, I see them all you know what I mean, yeah.
GB: Have you, we’ve obviously got the Wellington in Hendon, and the one at Brooklands. Have you been inside them, at all? Have you been to see them at all?
JB: Only Lancaster, oh I take lots of people from Poland.
GB: Yes. To Hendon, the museum.
JB: To Hendon, yes, that’s the first. When I have some visitors I tell them to. Listen, I went to Argentine because my sister lived there, and er, [pause] and I went to museum and I saw were Lancasters in Argentine. In Buenos Aires there is one in the city and I thought to myself where did you beautiful things end you see, land yourself here? My sister said to me Jan, I didn’t wanted to call you back because I knew you been something so much attach. I said – my sister called Marcella – I said Marcella, I could stand on that plane and watch him and talk to him. I said what you would probably would be tired waiting for me. I said Marcella, because that plane bring me so much memory. I said for you is probably difficult to understand. I said, when some time we went on operation and it was very, [pause] very, I said, scary. And when we came back, we touch his wings, we kissed him, that’s why we been grateful what he took us there and brought us back, you know what I mean. I said Marcella, you will not understand me why I will stand outside him and I feel sorry what he so far away, yeah. I telling you this story, story from my [emphasis] life, what I felt sorry what that plane was so far away and we have only couple left now.
GB: Indeed.
JB: And those planes helped us so much to win the war. How we got rid of them, you know we been sending them on scrap and these are such historical planes - they helped us to win the war.
GB: It’s the same with the Wellingtons though, isn’t it.
JB: Wellingtons, Spitfires, look now we looking in Burma, those planes what were buried somewhere. You’ve heard that.
GB: Yes, yes.
JB: I mean what they were shipped there all that distance, and it was too expensive for them to bring them back, you know what I mean.
GB: So they buried them.
JB: So they buried them and they looking for them now, and they are somewhere because if they would be sold or something it would been known by now.
GB: They made a lot more Wellingtons than they did Lancasters during the war, and after the war they obviously sold quite a few to different countries but the rest were all scrapped, scrap metal.
JB: Scrap, yes, yes.
GB: What they would give for a flying, a Wellington that was flying now.
JB: Oh yes, oh boy, yes.
GB: Got an alarm that was all.
JB: Yes, you see, I mean those planes to us they were so I mean historical you see, what we flown in them they been to us, what they are part of us, I, when I go now to Hendon museum, you know, some, I like to go some time on my own because when I go on my own, quiet, yes.
GB: Quiet, and your own time, I understand that.
JB: And I, because I know every plane, what type of duty he was doing here and I think those planes helped us to win the war, because without those. You see Poland, what I want to tell you, we were new country after hundred twenty years occupation by those three nasty neighbours, we knew what the Second War will be, the biggest part who will play – Air Force. We train lots of people to be new country born in Eastern Europe, but we had not enough money to build the planes. But we had well trained pilots, been flying. We been producing small planes what was, we were selling to our poorest countries, for training. As the war started we had our own production plane, but very few. What came, just came to beginning of the war, but nothing compare with Great Britain like Spitfire, Hurricane or Wellington.
GB: They were very special.
JB: They were more superior. But the pilots had lots of flying hours in Poland, we train lots of people, we knew the Air Force will play big part. When that war started, you see the Germans attack us unexpectedly; we knew they would attack us sooner or later, with the Russians they made treaty together. They were friends, Hitler and Stalin together, and England said no, you see. And the Russians, when Hitler was fighting England, Stalin was helping Hitler, sending him whatever he needed because he wanted if Hitler attack Britain; he was encouraging Hitler. You’ve got France, England next. Because you know why? Because he was preparing to stab him in the back afterwards, and in the end Hitler knew that. Hitler knew that. That’s why they from beginning as the friends then in the end turned enemies you see, on each other. Well you see -
GB: Sorry, go on, no.
JB: When war ended, England, didn’t know much about the communist because they were separated for the rest of the world, they did wanted people to know how suffering they live, had bad situation because that was communist, you know what I mean, and they not never been friends of our. They became friends because we had to help them. Because we had to help them because we been frightened if we don’t help them the Germans get hold of their essentials what they need, so we had to help them, but the Russians weren’t really our friends, you know what I mean, not like during the monarchy days, like when they were our friends. We sorry what we didn’t help them because probably if we would help them in those days, we would been able to squeeze the Bolshevik, you know what I mean, because those people only went there because they were suffering with hunger, with the condition. But we, we also been so weak, after the First War, what been not able to help them, you see. But I mean the Russians, look now, they now more friendly because they have big enemy – China. Sooner or later Chinese will make move and the one move what they will make is only that big territory, what they want. They don’t want nothing else. Up to now they been doing trade with England, America; they manage to get by, but when the trade start to slow down, the Russian, the Chinese have everything now what they need, and the Russians now not making with us no more trouble, you see, living very quietly, very scared not to touch them, you see. Putin holding here.
GB: Maybe.
JB: But not for very long because people knew in Russia what they want change, because the rest of the world is living better than them you see, and the people will make a change sooner or later and Putin holding, but that empire is not the same what it was, you see, is breaking down. Look like that big part Ukraine, yeah, is broke down, the Eastern Europe what broke down, they just holding, but time come.
Let me just switch the camera off now, cause I think there’s probably not much time on there anyway
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jan Black
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
Polskie Siły Powietrzne
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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03:08:22 audio recording
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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SRAFIngham19410620v040001
Description
An account of the resource
Jan Stangrycuik (Black) was born and raised in Poland. His family emigrated for a better life in Argentina when he was a teenager, but when the British Embassy called for volunteers to join the war effort, Jan answered the call and sailed with seven hundred other volunteers to England, where he joined Bomber Command and trained as an air gunner. He was the only surviving member of his crew when, in 1943, his Wellington aircraft crashed, near RAF Cosford, escaping with severe burn injuries.
He recalls his time in the RAF, including his recuperation from his extensive burns under the care of Sir Archibald MacIndoe with whom he became friends. He became one of the founder members of the Guinea Pig Club. He talks about life away from flight operations, of his exploits whilst on leave in London where daily life went on albeit under the threat of bombardment. It was where he met his future wife, an English woman who came to see him regularly at the hospital in East Grinstead, as he made his lengthy and painful recovery back to health. Jan later returned to duty as a gunnery instructor on Lysander aircraft before returning to his squadron and resuming flying operations.
Jan talks about daily life in between flight operations; how one lived day to day, because each day was precious, how crews had their own table in the dining room and wondering if the table next to them would be empty the next day.
He also shares anecdotes about, and pays tribute to, Guy Gibson and Leonard Cheshire who he knew and considered them friends. He recalls his fondness of, and conversations with, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and, at the time, President of the Guinea Pig Club.
Jan also reflects on Polish history and the aftermath of the war. After the war he settled in Britain, working all over the country, until he retired.
This item was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive.
Creator
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Geoff Burton
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Argentina
France
Germany
Great Britain
Russia (Federation)
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Blackpool
England--London
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
Chris Cann
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1941
1943
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
crash
ground personnel
Guinea Pig Club
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
love and romance
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
military service conditions
perception of bombing war
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021)
RAF Cosford
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Hendon
RAF Ingham
Spitfire
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1561/34801/SRAFIngham19410620v050001-Audio.1.mp3
92d5b5c5d9c9fb7f27931456435273fa
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
RAF Ingham Heritage Group
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-11-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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RAF Ingham
Description
An account of the resource
25 items in six collections. The collection concerns RAF Ingham and contains interviews photographs and documents concerning:
Andrzej Jeziorski - Pilot 304 Squadron
Arthur Hydes - Boy in Ingham
Brian Llewellyn -ATC
Jan Black - Rear Gunner 300 Squadron
Lech Gierak - Armourer 303 Squadron
Marion Clarke - MT Driver RAF Ingham
Mieczyslaw Maryszczak - Armourer
Stanislaw Jozefiak - Air Ops 304 Squadron - Pilot on Spitfires
Wanda Szuwalska - Admin 300 Squadron Faldingworth
Zosia Kowalska - Cook RAF Ingham
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by the RAF Ingham Heritage Group and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
LG: They made like from July 1940 to October end, that was like ten weeks or something, called Battle of Britain, which 303 shoot down hundred forty six planes. The most, nobody else done that.
Int: The highest of any squadron, British or Polish.
LG: That’s why they were famous, you know.
Int: Are we about ready; are we ready to go, are we actually up and running? The camera is on and the recording there is on. So could, we will start with some very basic things. Could you tell us your full name and where you were born and when you were born, please Lech.
LG: Well my name is Lech Gierak and I was born in [indecipherable], Poland, which belongs now to Lithuania, you know. And my mother was schoolteacher, school mistress like, and my dad was bank manager and when the war start, my dad couldn’t, demob, you know, go to the Army and that and then there was only six weeks when Poland was beaten and my father come, and about two months after, the Russian police come and arrest him, and he got twenty five years prison for it, because 1920 he was fighting against the Russians; so he got twenty five years for it and he died there, in a Russian prison camp. Me and my mum was sent to Siberia. That was April 1940, and we were near Omsk and they put us in er, wagons like [sigh] what they called, you see the Jews put in.
Int: Cattle wagons.
LG: Cattle wagons like, cramped up like, you know. Maybe five or six families in them and they wouldn’t, the first thing they let us, when we past [indecipherable] when we stop they let us out to have wee and otherwise we used to have wee there and then, you know, inside the thing.
Int: In the carriage, yeah.
LG: They took us to this town called, near Omsk, anyway, and being I was still young they send me to school, in Russia, and er, they was all, some of them, mostly the young lads like more or less Hitlerjugend. They were like [indecipherable] and when I come there they start, because next day, where they give us shovels, kids, you know, women, to dig and they come and say, oh look at them bourgeois start working at last! You know. But they were more like Hitlerjugend, used to [indecipherable] anyway, and when the war start between Russia and Germany, they let us free and they made a Polish Army and I run, to join, from Omsk down to Tashkent, which is, er, it’s at Kazakhstan. It’s a very big country, it’s about, you can put about five, six England in it, you know. It took me from Omsk down to Tashkent about two days, on and off like, you know what I mean, and then from there we went to oh, [pause], the lorry comes and we went through the mountains from where, [sigh] on the border like, and when we come to the border the lorry stopped and we come out, and we went to the people what look what you are taking and some of them had their rings and that all, they took it off us. Not me, I had nothing but some of them, and said that’s Russian gold, you can’t take it, you know. Anyway, we come to Tehran and from Tehran we went to Iraq, and camp the night there, and from Iraq we went to, I went to the Palestine and then Egypt. They opened the schools and er, to teach us to be what they called Technical Officers, something.
Int: This was at Heliopolis was it?
LG: At Heliopolis, yes, and then I fancied to be a pilot so I volunteered to come to England. I come to Liverpool, they gave us cup of tea, twenty fags, then took us to Blackpool, and there they sort us out, whoever wants to go, you know any trade, anything. I passed for pilot school but had to wait because you know like, there were schools there already, when they finished another one comes.
Int: So you had to wait for a place.
LG: So they end me to Scotland.
Int: Where was 303 Squadron at this point, when you arrived?
LG: Pardon.
Int: When you went to 303 Squadron, where were they based at that point? Where station were they at?
LG: That was Northwood for, I should think about two months, maybe less, and then we went to Framlingham, somewhere, I forgot it, because wasn’t long there, only about six weeks or something and then send us to -
Int: Coltishall.
LG: Yeah, Coltishall.
Int: You mentioned that earlier. Can you tell us a little bit, Lech, about what an average day was like, as an armourer? What did you do? What was your accommodation like, what was your breakfast like? How a normal day went.
LG: Well, the, Coltishall was pre-war station which had a like nice barracks down the bottom, top, and er, it’s all went to, like armoury, and get a, it wasn’t like: ‘oh you got like from nine o’clock till four’, you just carry on and been, you really hate Germans, it made no difference, it didn’t, you was trying to put whatever it is so you could fight the Germans like, know what I mean.
Int: So you worked as long as you had to each day, then.
LG: It wasn’t like eight o’clock till four o’clock, you just, one day it might be ten hours, or twelve hours, or something like that. Because it was, you had to.
Int: What was your main job in the armoury? What was the main thing that you were good at, or that you had to do, for the corporal?
LG: Well we, oh we did what is, put some bullets, because that was like that, it was a cannon, one cannon and four machine guns. You fill that up and the cannon was like a pole thing and they put it in, I think it was about five, six hundred bullets in it, you know, on top, and the rest on a machine thing [cough] and that was it. Once you done it you just wait till they come back.
Int: Did all the bullets and the cannon shells, did they come loose or did you did you have to actually put them in like a chain link?
LG: It was like, yeah, they like already inside, like ball thing and put it on.
Int: Right, you didn’t have to load up the ball thing itself: it came already done.
LG: The other one was like, thing, what do you call them? Like a belt, more or less, you know. I think, don’t remember how many, but it, I think it was over two thousand bullets for each.
Int: For each belt?
LG: For each thing, you know. And then when we come to Coltishall, they put corporal and that, put us to Station Armoury when there, and when they were guns, cause every pilot and that, all the aircrew were issued the guns because from beginning they didn’t and then when they got shot down and then the Germans killed them or something like that, so they had, according to them issued a gun.
Int: Do you remember what kind of guns they had?
LG: It’s, I think it’s those, what you call it, they got a chamber and six, you know, like a cowboy’s got.
Int: Small one, like a pistol. So a revolver.
LG: Revolver, yes.
Int: Revolver.
LG: Everyone had the issue with that, so yes. When they come used to give them like, and put name down and that. Then there used to be rifles for airmen. They used to go on the shooting range and that. Then the Officers, they used to go with the guns and shooting, so I used to put a target and look and they used to write down whoever had a gun and you know, whoever it was. Then I er, they opened this school, because when I was in Heliopolis, I had a like, to go to the top in Poland you had a like gymnasium which was four years and then [indecipherable] two years. I finished the gymnasium in Heliopolis, but to have A levels had to, so I put my name down and had to send it to Faldingworth [cough]. That’s where I met a friend, he was a Warrant Officer, he had sixty eight missions. He had a DFC, DFM, because if you were sergeant, or a flight sergeant, because what it was, if you went as aircrew, the lowest rank was sergeant and if you were a sergeant or flight sergeant and you flew over and er, for bravery they given DFC. But because you were a sergeant or a flight sergeant you, all the other rank had a DFC; they had DFM, you know. So after that he had DFC and DFM because later on he was a Warrant Officer like. He made sixty eight missions and that, so. Did you know there was a, one air gunner, he made hundred twenty five missions, over Germany, and if you had done thirty missions you didn’t have to fly, that’s you, finished, most of them used to carry on. He was air gunner, most missions as air gunner of all the Air Force, [beep] I forget his name, [indecipherable] something like that, but. Then they had a dog; had two dogs: one called Warrant Officer and the other was [indecipherable] that was in 300 Squadron. This dog used to, [cough] because when they were taken by lorries, you know, the aircrew, and this dog used to jump first.
Int: Into the lorry?
LG: No, into the plane.
Int: Oh, jumped into the plane first!
LG: But that one day it didn’t and the crew didn’t come back, you know. So there was lot of -
Int: Lech, you’ve obviously just been talking about Faldingworth.
LG: Pardon?
Int: You’ve just been talking about Faldingworth and your friend who was a Warrant Officer and then he became an officer. How, when, what was the point in the war you were posted, you went to Faldingworth? Cause obviously you’d been with 303 for most of your time and then you moved on to 300 Squadron. [Cough]
LG: To finish my A Levels I went to finish the thing for my A levels to go to university.
Int: So you did that at Faldingworth.
LG: They opened the school, special, at Faldingworth, aye. So I met all the fellows, how it was, like.
Int: I think you may well be aware Faldingworth is only a few miles from RAF Ingham where we’re based and 300 Squadron were obviously at Ingham and when they changed from Wellingtons onto Lancasters, that’s when they moved to RAF Faldingworth. So they didn’t ask you to be an armourer at all at Faldingworth? You were just purely there for the school.
LG: No, I just went to school there. But there was another, there were, then they come, what’s the name, Mosquito squadron, I think it was 309, they come to Faldingworth now, and after that they just finish and they sent us to Skipton on Thwale.
Int: Yes, yes.
LG: Some of them want to go to Poland, whoever and that, you know, and I put my name for Poland and my mother wrote, said don’t come because they’ll arrest you, they used to arrest, not everybody, but arrest might be fifty percent, you know.
Int: These are Polish people who had been in the RAF?
LG: Yeah, when they went to Poland from Army, you know, Army or Air Force. So I didn’t, so they sent me to Church Fenton on a, as armourer there. It’s station, you know off there, and I was there for a bit. Used to go er, you know, like airmen with the rifles on the range, officers with the guns and everything, and then I got demobbed; come to Derby. I start working selling this and that, and the thing was that you had to, [pause] we were treated about, maybe worse than the German prisoners of war, because we had a, you had a little book with the photographs and everything, and you had to, change, if you changed address, in seventy two hours you had to report on the police station, but change, otherwise you get, you know, so, and they say like, some of the factories wouldn’t take Poles and took German prisoners, you know, because they let prisoners out! And when I got married, her father didn’t like me because he was an RAF Squadron Leader and that. He like me after, but from beginning.
Int: No.
LG: [Pause] Some of the factories took the prisoners to work better than, you know, the prisoners, German prisoners got free, so they employed German prisoners; they didn’t want Poles, you know. But I got married and I had three children, and the wife filled the form for a house because I couldn’t afford to pay and the wife went [cough] with the forms and he says is he British? She says no, then can’t have houses, so shove it, and friend of mine says well, they want miners down Stoke on Trent and there’s new houses so I went down mines and I got house in three weeks’ time and I worked for about fifteen years and then I come back to Derby.
Int: What, er, when did you marry your wife? What year was it, do you know?
LG: 1949. July
Int: 1949. A good month to get married, nice and warm and sunny.
LG: Pardon?
Int: Was it warm and sunny?
LG: Yeah. Then I have three children.
Int: Do you ever talk to your children about, about the war years and your family history?
LG: Yes! My younger son he joined ATC and that, you know, but the other, the eldest one, he was a priest, a Catholic priest and my daughter she was the [cough] shorthand typist for office working like, you know,, but after she joined, she went to hospital and on the end she was like a matron, because there was no matron, there was like something officers or something you know, they called them, and that. She lives down Congleton, comes back once in a while, three times, four times a year.
Int: Lech, if we can just go back to your time when you were an armourer, were there any funny things that happened, because in service life, and RAF life, and Polish Air Force life there must have been some funny things that happened at work? Do you, have you got any funny memories of things where people played a prank, or did daft things? Even in the war I’m sure people did play pranks on each other.
LG: Pranks?
Int: Or daft things that happened. Do you remember any things?
LG: Well, I forget now. Yeah, used to have few pranks, but you know, recall now, that long time, you know. But er, I enjoyed my life in RAF you know, and that. I was young and had, I er, I could have signed on a time. When I went on English, you know English station at, down Church Fenton and Commanding Officer called me and says do you want to join, and the smallest was five years, you know. And he says er, but going to, once you’ve joined more or less they’re going to send you overseas, I said nah, I don’t want this, I wasn’t in Poland, you know, my mother was thinking not going that far.
Int: And did you, obviously cause with Poland’s independence a good few years ago now, have you been back to visit Poland?
LHG: Yes, about twenty times. I had a caravette, I went with, I took my two granddaughters for about four weeks and used go round, go all round Poland. Had a caravette to have a cooker and a fridge and that. We used to have breakfast in the morning and dinner at, was very reasonable, cheap and that so we used to have dinner in restaurants and, but, um, you see the thing was, is, that after, I show you, after the war, when the parade was, you know, Victory Parade, then they never invite Poland, Poles, at all: that’s it. Which, I think it was very naughty of them, in a way.
Int: We’ve heard this from quite a few of the veterans that we’ve spoken to.
LG: The problem was that the Labour Party come, which they were really communists, some were, because they were in the Labour Party because the communists didn’t go through, so what they did, they joined the Labour Party but they were really communists, but the Labour Party was in power they done what they wanted like, and, then they were recognised I suppose, or whatever, we were on the same level like a prisoner of war, you know. I survived.
Int: Can you remember, I mean food is always important to all of us, but can you remember what, each day when you went to the airmen’s mess, and you would have breakfast, maybe a lunch and tea, do you remember what the food was like? Can you describe any of the food to us? The kind of things you liked, whether it was good, or bad or?
LG: Well, this being the war, the bread was more or less rationed in a way, you didn’t just have as many, maybe four slices, not that, three slices of bread and that, but otherwise I had pretty good meal like there. Well, I had eggs once a week [chuckle], meat, you know. So I think the chefs, whatever, they tried do the best they could whatever they had that like, you know. I enjoyed it.
Int: Were they English or Polish cooks, in the cookhouse?
LG: Well in 300 they were Polish, because there was whole station.
Int: Was Polish.
LG: Polish station, Polish thing but, and English, there was you know, like English station, you know, good meal, whatever, and if you’re stop, you know, like and that, at night even, they used to come and give you some meal maybe seven, eight o’clock; there was no times exactly during the war like. After the war, yeah, but not during the war like, you know.
Int: You told us earlier on before about the, when you were station armourer at Northolt and then also at um, Coltishall but they were both pre second World War stations so there was good, it wasn’t just wooden huts, it was all solid brick, brick buildings and things, so was your armoury, was that a brick building or was that just wooden buildings, or were you out on the dispersals? Could you tell us a little bit about where you were as an armourer, with 303?
LG: It was what you call, [pause] it was well, like I said, I only, [cough] when we come to Coltishall, me and the corporal, WAAF took us to the armoury thing on the station, wasn’t on a flight, you know what I mean, where the plane was, was on a building where guns was and that, and aircrew used to come, you had to write down.
Int: With the, Lech, with the Spitfires that you had, [beep] you said there were machine guns and cannons, did you, when you did your maintenance on the actual guns and the cannons, did you have to take them out of the aircraft or did you?
LG: On no, no.
Int: Could you explain a little bit about how you did the maintenance of them for us at all?
LG: Oh, you used to clean the barrels and everything like that and in the end put the things on it.
Int: Yes, a cap.
LG: Caps, that’s right, you know, otherwise just quick. They made more or less not too difficult because they want – they was flying they coming back, want, the last hundred bullets, before the last hundred bullets, there used to come about six bullets, used to tell you, white, you could see it, you know.
Int: Tracer, tracer.
LG: Tracer, yeah, so he, the pilot knew I got two hundred, two hundred bullets left, you know.
Int: Oh right. Right, so you had quite a few tracers in, before you got down to the last hundred or two hundred bullets.
LG: That’s right. You know, the belt, the last should I say oh, four hundred fifty, used to put about six tracers and they knew, he knew.
Int: He was down to last ones. [Chuckle]
LG: Had to be careful whatever it is, you know. So, but, on the end, what I heard, that the, well, the, a Spitfire, because the Spitfire only had three and a half hours flying otherwise they run out of gasoline, so they put the special tanks underneath and they start with those tanks first and used to drop ‘em. Because they, they used to guard Americans, plane, you know, and English bombers, you know with our Germans.
Int: They could get further with the bigger fuel tanks.
LG: Through there because German planes was waiting for them like, you know. But on the end, I heard they used to, I wasn’t then, but what I heard they used to have little bombs, twenty five pound bombs, I don’t know what they did with them, I couldn’t tell you, but you know, that’s what I heard. Those Spitfires, according to the books and that, there was about well, twenty nine, you know different Spitfires.
Int: Different Marks of Spitfire, different ones, yes. It’s possible.
LG: Different Marks and that.
Int: It’s possible, Brendan here would probably be a lot more of an expert on that than I am, he’s read many books on the subject.
LG: I think it’s more than twenty nine different, isn’t it?
Int: I believe so, small variations, not just the marks, but the changes in the same one.
LG: After the aircraft too, cannons and that, you know, but from beginning they had six, four machine guns on each side, but after they had like cannon and a four. [Pause] What do you call them?
Int: Sorry, Brendan do you have any questions for Lech at all?
Int: I haven’t really been thinking about it to be honest, checking the screen.
Int: I’m trying to think of something else, some other questions, that we can obviously ask you, because obviously this, the whole tape and everything will be edited, what we are talking about now, will be chopped out of the interview. But it’s really to er, look at your time with the Polish Air Force in Britain at er, Northolt, Coltishall and even the place that you were talking about near Framlington. We’ll have to have a little look and see if we can work out which station that was, and then obviously at Faldingworth. At Faldingworth, apart from doing the teaching did they actually get you doing other duties at all, being an extra airmen there on the station, or were you just purely there for the school, the school side of it?
LG: Where?
Int: At er, Faldingworth.
LG: Just the school.
Int: They didn’t get you doing any extra duties at all, of any kind? No, no, no.
LG: No, oh they, you know, [cough] school for there but then just as finish school it was -
Int: The end of the war.
LG: Well, was past the war like, but.
Int: Yes. So it was training, almost training you for after the war.
LG: I think it was, lot of them want to go back to Poland and that and then, I think it was the pressure from Polish communists, government, that er, you know, to settle down you know, because they took the planes from us and everything like, you know. There was no more flying, or nothing like that.
Int: During, during the war years did the RAF, did they give you much uniform? Did they actually give you many clothes, or did you just have perhaps one set of everything or did you, were you able to get more stuff? Did you have a friend perhaps, in the [laugh] Supply or anything like that?
LG: You just had a tunic and then a battle dress, well battle dress more or less, take it, to work like, you know, I mean. They give you the what you call.
Int: Overalls.
LG: Overalls, that thing, otherwise you had one set, one set of battle dress and another of tunic like, to go out, you know.
Int: How was the cleaning done? Did you have to clean your own clothes or was there a laundry you put your clothes in to?
LG: I had a little, a little thing where used to put your stuff in it, you know. What you call them?
Int: Washing machine? Oh, a little -
LG: No, no, no all your gear and that.
Int: A wardrobe you mean?
LG: Wardrobe like, you know what I mean. But [cough] every week, you could, whatever you want to what you call it, you had to put your name down on shirt, clothes.
Int: On all the clothes and clean them for you.
LG: Clean them for you like, used to collect them every week and that, you know. On all the stations, the same.
Int: Was there anything in the evening? What entertainment did you have in the evenings?
LG: Oh, used to have some, some of the dances used to have and that, is the special when I was in Faldingworth they used to bring the girls from everywhere for a dance, you know, and that.
Int: You didn’t meet any nice pretty girls from Faldingworth then? [Laughter]
LG: No, there was, there were WAAFs there, but they, I don’t think. Well, I wasn’t thinking I was just home to, you know. I used to go like Lincoln on the, have a dance once, once a month, or something like that.
Int: And did the RAF at Faldingworth, did they put a bus on or did you have to use the local busses to Lincoln?
LG: No, the RAF bus used to take you and used to pick us up by the station there, you know, Lincoln, station.
Int: And was there a set time that you had to be back at night for the guardroom to book you in and things, or not?
LG: No, I don’t think there was not that much bullshit [laugh] you know what I mean. We used to, they used to be what they call them, um, [pause] what’s their name, Salvation Army! They used to have a club there, or whatever, and for a, oh forget now, for two shillings you slept there and the next morning they used to give you two toast.
Int: Toast and off again!
LG: And beans on toast and cup of tea and that you know so, we used to stop.
Int: So yeah, if you missed the last bus then you could have the Salvation Army!
LG: Yeah, well, used to have a little minibus from station, used to standing there, by the railway station there, and phew, I forget now what time, eleven o’clock something like that and if you missed it – that’s it! Mind you the, I don’t know, that was about half past ten; the dancing was only ten o’clock in them days. There was no other club! [Laughter]
Int: So plenty of time to get back for the bus. Maybe. Well, is there anything else that you would like to tell us about your time in the Polish Air Force, in the RAF, during the war years, anything you’d like to.
LG: Well I enjoyed them both, Polish Air Force and when I was on the English stations, I was, you know, it was you know, happy, in it, but they, the problem was that you know, more or less to recruits, you know they come like and then they was pressing you whoever to stop, signed on like, know what I mean.
Int: There was one other question I was going to ask you and that was when the Spitfires at Coltishall in Norfolk were going up constantly all the time, was there a lot of pressure from yourselves, the team, your, the corporal and yourself in the armoury to get out, to reload them all up and then they’d fly straight off? Were there days and weeks when that seemed to be the case a lot of the time?
LG: Well I didn’t find, you know, I didn’t think it was a pressure, I was enjoying it, to do it, so they could kill the Germans, you know what I mean, had to do your thing. You know, so whatever I had to do, what hours, you know, I just enjoyed it, you know. If it was twelve hours I was happy to do it, you know, there was no thing ‘oh well it’s only four hours and that’s it,’ you know.
Int: Because it was your bit to getting back at the Germans.
LG: And cook house was flexible, they used to if you want you know, every time you come had a meal for you, they knew you was working and that, you know. But like when the war finished that was different then. But at this stage whatever station I was they were very flexible, you know. So there was nothing we have to go [chuckle].
Int: Did you play sport? Were you a good sportsman of any kind?
LG: Not really no, [laugh] no, not really. I like diving, when I was swimming I liked to go. When I was in, when we come to Blackpool [cough] and I went swimming there and I read after in the paper about it: the highest thing in Blackpool was thirty three feet. And we had this, me and my mate, chat up these two girls so we took them to the swimming. I was swimming, I was diving, was like and one, two and the top one.
Int: The highest board, yeah.
LG: Yes, and on the top one there was these two English lads [groan] their nerves, and me and my mate, was in the middle so, my mate said to me, look there, there, so I went off there, I stand there, look, and the fellow there, when they was diving, they used to whistle so that nobody would come so near. I just wanted for that, so I did come down but my legs went over a bit and the flume was. After I went again, few times, but I read it was thirty three feet up. But I used to like diving. Blackpool [beep] give me lot of memories, know that fun. I liked Blackpool, and when I got married and that, I used to take the children wife to Blackpool. [Laugh]
Int: When you were at Blackpool, I read somewhere that quite a lot of the, because it was the Polish Depot, where everybody started, that quite a lot of people were accommodated not in a big camp, but in some of the guest houses.
LG: It was, the guest house.
Int: Do you remember the name of the street or the house number you were at?
LG: I forgot it! I knew them, the street, but I think was one, Parliament, something like that? But er, I forgot now, the names. I knew I had.
Int: But it was a good time in Blackpool. You enjoyed your time in Blackpool.
LG: I was about two months there, you know, so.
Int: Was that during the summer or the winter? Can you remember what time of year it was?
LG: That was April I come, about June, April, June.
Int: Spring and early summer, that was probably a nice time to go to Blackpool. Yes.
LG: A lot of people used to come and that, even in war time, but that was the most, lot of Poles was there and Americans, I know.
Int: Do you still have a lot of contact, obviously we visited you before Christmas at the Polish church and the Polish club that’s next to it, do you have many other friends from, Polish friends that were in the RAF that are still with us today?
LG: Well I had best friend of mine who went to Australia and I lost his contact. But then I had friend Chicago, he died. He was a bit, couple years, well, about five years older than me and then, er, I had one in, he was in three hundred club, so he was a air gunner, on top; he was from Birmingham. He died and all. And then another one, all of them right, die except me, yet, so I don’t know. But they were good friends, you know, and that. But the only one beats me, I had a, the one I show you the photographs.
Int: Yes. Your friend from the [indecipherable].
LG: He went through Italy lost his leg; he went all through Italy and the week before the war finished, he lost his leg. Anyway, so he went to New Zealand because his brother was there and you know, we used to write and I went to see him in New Zealand and that. His daughter was there, and when he died, she never even wrote and said you know, my dad died. I thought, you know, because I used to phone him [cough] once every two months or something like that, I phoned and nobody answered, so I phone again and he says this phone’s not available.
Int: Not connected any more, yeah.
LG: Another thing, and a friend of mine, we was together, he died, but his wife, she rang, the same. At least, I knew him for, since 1942 like, you know, and when I went to New Zealand, his daughter was there and everything. Well, he had a son but he died, but his daughter, at least she could write and say my dad died, you know. Never. I don’t know, those young people.
INT: It’s er yeah, it’s very kind of, does seem strange but maybe to them they’re thinking of other things. It’s very, very difficult.
LG: Then I had a friend, from Russia he come out, he lived in London, he used to have a printing firm and that, and I rang his house and his daughter answered. I said where’s your dad, oh she says, he’s at the old people’s home. So I says give me the number, so she’s given me the number, so I rang, and he coming, but I think he start having dementia, and I said do you remember me? He used to be godfather to my son, you know, that, so I used to ring him few times and then I didn’t want to disturb him, so about four months after, I rang, this fellow answered and I said can I speak to so and so, Oh he’s not there. I said why, what’s up, is he dead? She said yes, and then she never even.
Int: No. Didn’t even bother to tell you.
LG: You know, didn’t say he died. I would have gone to London to his funeral, you know what I mean. But phew, that’s how they are, youngsters, I think some of them, anyway.
Int: Sometimes. Well, thank you very, very much, unless you can think of anything else Brendan, I mean that was lovely that, I mean you’ve given a bit of an insight into your life. What we’d like to do for you is, we’ll make you a disk, put it on a disc so you can have it for your family, cause obviously in years to come it will be nice for them to see you sitting here chatting about your life as well so we’ll let you have a copy of it, and you can, for future.
LG: Would you like another drink?
Int: We’re okay for a drink, I would love to, well we’d both love to see your medals.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Lech Gierak
Description
An account of the resource
Lech Gierak was born in Poland and after the death of his father made his way to England and joined the Polish Air Force. He worked as an armourer on a number of stations and after the war moved to Stoke on Trent to become a miner. Lech talks about the way of life on an RAF station at work, and at play, as well as the treatment of Poles after the war.
This item was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Polskie Siły Powietrzne
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:57:01 audio recording
Identifier
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SRAFIngham19410620v050001-Audio
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Pending OH summary
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
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Geoff Burton
Temporal Coverage
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1940
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Poland
Middle East
England--Lincolnshire
England--Blackpool
Russia (Federation)
Russia (Federation)--Omsk
Russia (Federation)--Siberia
Contributor
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Anne-Marie Watson
300 Squadron
303 Squadron
ground personnel
Lancaster
prisoner of war
RAF Faldingworth
RAF Ingham
Spitfire
Wellington