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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/152/2146/AHemsworthR150729.1.mp3
da4b01008a71d120fe27835be4e272cc
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Hemsworth, Ron
Ron Hemsworth
R Hemsworth
Description
An account of the resource
266 items. The collection consists of one oral history interview with Ron Hemsworth (1472158 Royal Air Force) and 265 photographs, mostly taken at Dulag Luft, Stalag Luft 1 and Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camps
The photographs have been organised according the initial letters of the caption.
A consists of 19 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in August 1942. They cover the non commissioned officers’ arts & crafts exhibition: some models are for display and others are for use; there are also paintings and jewellery.
B of 54 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 1 and Dulag Luft, covering sporting, theatrical, musical and model making activities. The funeral of Sergeant J C Shaw, who was shot whilst attempting to escape is covered with several photographs.
C consists of 42 photographs taken at the sports day at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in August 1942. Activities include rugby, running, high jumping, long jumping, long distance walking, shot putting, discus throwing and basketball. Betting on the events was carried on.
D consists of 42 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in 1942 and 1943. They cover theatrical, musical and model activities. The plays were written or adapted by the airmen. Some of the models seen in section A are being sailed or steamed on the camp pond.
E consists of 39 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in March and April 1943. They cover three plays written or adapted by the airmen.
F consists of 28 photographs taken at Stalag Luft 3, Stalag Luft 1 and Dulag Luft prisoner of war camps. They cover two plays written or adapted by the airmen. Also shown are views of the camp, four recaptured escapees, a sentry in his box, the NCOs rugby team and Christmas dinner 1940.
G consists of 38 photographs taken at the Flieger Jockey Club Gala Day at Stalag Luft 3 prisoner of war camp in August 1943. There are many varied fancy dress themes in addition to jockeys - an American cheerleader and an Uncle Sam, cowboys and Indians, a Welsh and a Scottish section, Indian (Asian) marching band, Maoris, Highland dancing, a lot of men dressed as women, bands, top hatted 'toffs'. Betting activities were carried out on the results of the hobby horse type races shown.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ron Hemsworth and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Hemsworth, R
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-04
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Clare Bennett. The interviewee is Mr Ron Hemsworth. The interview is taking place at Mr Hemsworth’s home near Bourne on the 29th of July 2015. Well, Ron, lets first of all talk about your early childhood if we may. You were born in Peterborough.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Ninety three years ago. Do you remember much of your early childhood?
RH: Not a lot. Not a lot. [laughs] I remember when I was about five I’d had enough of school so I climbed over the gates and went to the recreation ground and played on the swings with another boy and all the while we were there, ‘Is there anybody after us?’ [laughs] I can’t remember much but as I got older I, me and another friend started the Peterborough Model Flying Club and we, I stayed in that until even after the war so we was always mad on aircraft and where I lived at that time was close to what was called Westwood Aerodrome and the aircraft always, well, nine times out of ten landed over our house and they were so low you could see who the pilot was practically. Hawker Harts. Funnily enough a friend of mine when he had to join up that’s where he went to and another friend of mine was at the same place and I think he stayed there most of the war. He used to go up and take the met report. He had a nice cushy job. And of course we used to get all these air displays. I can’t remember the name of the most prolific one. Used to do all sorts of stupid things but we always used to go to those. We couldn’t stay away. And when it come to joining up I decided that I would volunteer for air crew which was the way that you could get in and they said if you was in a model flying club you stood a pretty good chance of being air crew. Whether there was any truth in it I don’t know but anyway we got in and I joined up on the 1st of January. I started the year right. That would have been 1941.
CB: What did your parents, your parents were around at this time.
RH: Oh yes. Oh yes.
CB: And did they, were they happy for you to join up?
RH: Well I don’t suppose so. We never, we never mentioned it. [laughs]
CB: But it was what you’d set your heart on.
RH: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Did you have a particular crew position you wanted to do?
RH: Well everybody wanted to be a pilot didn’t they?
CB: Including you?
RH: Yes. Everybody. Everybody wanted to be a fighter pilot. I don‘t know why. Well I suppose probably safer than a bomber pilot, I don’t know, and actually I went in the first place as a W/Op AG.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Wireless operator/AG. But I failed the Morse code on sixteen words a minute. That was enough to drive you mad.
CB: Where was this at?
RH: At Blackpool.
CB: Oh yeah.
RH: I said I’d never go back and I never went back. You can imagine what Blackpool was like in the middle of winter. It was terrible. And the RAF took over, well all the places really. You know. And –
CB: Were you in a hotel or a guest room?
RH: Oh no. We were in guest house.
CB: Ah.
RH: And some of them were very good to us actually and some of them weren’t. And one we was at, one of the men, he was a friend of Charlie Kunz, the pianist and he used to give us, he used to give us a tune every night you know. That was alright. We were there having a tune one night and the boss came in with a dead cat and put it on the fire. Well everybody was up in arms. We went and reported it but nobody wanted to know.
CB: Oh dear.
RH: He said, ‘Well I’ve got nowhere else to,’ he said, ‘I can’t bury it ‘cause all I’ve got is concrete around the back.’ Every, everybody vacated the room quickly. And then when I failed that course I went on, I went in to the stores for a while while I was waiting for an air gunner course which, in those days you had to wait quite a while to get on one. Anyway, eventually I was posted to [pause] on the Fosse Way.
CB: Swinderby.
RH: Swinderby. Swinderby. Yeah. I went to Swinderby and of course everybody said, ‘Oh you’ll be here for years.’ Nobody, everybody was waiting. And I was only there a month or two and I got a course.
CB: How were things at Swinderby?
RH: Oh quite ok. Yeah. I went into the stores there as well. Oh, that, that was alright. But from there, after about a month I went into flying control. Now that that was a lovely job that was. I was in charge of keeping the availability of aircraft, of aerodromes. It was a huge book with every aerodrome in England on it and we used to get phone calls through such and such an aerodrome is not available, there’s a crash on such and such a runway and all that. All that had to be put down in the book. Yeah. So I was there for quite a while. There was only three of us in there. You wouldn’t run one of them for, with three people would you? Not today. And I mean I didn’t know anything about anything anyway and the one who was in charge was a sergeant pilot that had been, he’d been in a crash and he was sort of resting but I mean we didn’t know anything. Nothing in particular really. There were and there was, there was him, myself and a WAAF on the radio. That’s all there was. Anyway, from there on I went to, I can’t remember, oh I went to air gunnery school at [pause] up on the east coast near Scarborough. Bridlington.
CB: Ah.
RH: I can’t remember what number that was.
CB: No. Don’t worry.
RH: But from there we went to Morpeth and that’s when we did our air gunnery. And that was spectacular. We had Polish pilots and they were absolutely mad.
CB: What sort of planes would this be at this time?
RH: Do you know I was trying to tell somebody the other day? They were aircraft that nobody else wanted actually. They were supposed to have been torpedo bombers for the navy but they weren’t successful at all so they dumped them all at the –
CB: Albacores?
RH: No. They weren’t Albacores. No.
CB: Not to worry. Doesn’t matter.
RH: Yeah.
CB: So you, did you get on with these Polish pilots? They were -
RH: We got on fine with them. In fact, after the war one of them was a friend of mine for years but you know they’d do things like, ‘They say this aircraft won’t fly on one engine. Well it will. I’ll show you,’ and then switch one off you know. Absolutely mad. Yeah. I can remember while we was at Bridlington we were doing PT on the, on the beach and two Spitfires came over and they shot us up on the beach at about nought feet. Well everybody fell flat on the sand and then these two Spitfires went out to sea. They were so low one of their wings caught the sea. He did about ten cartwheels and burst into flames.
CB: Oh dear.
RH: Yeah. And they were both Polish pilots. The other one shot up to about twenty thousand feet. I don’t know what he told them when he got back. [laughs] Anyway, that was, after air gunnery school then we went to Honeybourne. Honeybourne was next. Cow Honeybourne and -
CB: This would be your OTU. Your -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Operational Training Unit.
RH: And we weren’t crewed up or anything then.
CB: No.
RH: We were all this and that. And I know it was a terrible day when we got there about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and there was about twenty people got off the train and everybody was saying, ‘I suppose we wait for transport,’ you know so we were hanging about and this Aussie came up. He said, ‘What’s everybody doing?’ So we said, ‘Well, we don’t know. We’re just waiting.’ ‘Where’s the telephone?’ So he got on the telephone. He said, ‘There’s about twenty of us here waiting at the station for transport. Get it down here quick.’
CB: Was he an officer or just a, just -
RH: No. He was only a sergeant. I thought he’d be alright, you know. He was a pilot. Anyway, after we’d soon got to Honeybourne we had to crew up. Well I suppose everybody knows how we crewed up. Everybody in a room. Just walk around and find who you want you know and I got Bruce. The one that said, ‘Send somebody down’. I got Bruce. He were brilliant. He really was. Yeah. He looked a bit like Churchill and he was more or less his build. Quite fat you know. Yeah. And we went on a, on a course while we was there. Escape course and that. And we had to do everything at the double. It was an army place we went to. Even when you went for your meal you had to go at the double. So we passed Bruce on the way, walking. He said, ‘If you pomme goers want to run,’ he said, ‘You run.’ he said, ‘I’m walking.’ And he never did run [laughs]. He walked everywhere. It was when we were, had to climb over this wall and the rest of the crew trying to push him over this wall [laughs]. It was hilarious really. He always said, ‘If anything happened to the aircraft I’ll never get out.’ Of course poor old Bruce never did. No. Anyway –
CB: So you, you’re a crew now of seven.
RH: No. Six.
CB: Six of you.
RH: Six. Yeah.
CB: And you gelled quite -
RH: We was on Whitleys.
CB: Right.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And you gelled well. You all got on.
RH: Oh yeah. Yeah, we got on well. Yeah. [laughs] The bomb aimer was about twenty seven so we called him the old man. [laughs].
CB: So you were on Whitleys for a while.
RH: We were on Whitleys. I did, I suppose I did about a hundred hours on Whitleys but you see you do what you call circuits and bumps getting used to landings and take-offs and the only people on it was the skipper and me in the back. To balance it out I suppose [laughs]. I was only a balance really.
CB: What did you think of the Whitley as a plane to fly?
RH: I liked it. Oh she was a steady old thing you know and Bruce used to say that if you, if you banked to the left if you didn’t bring the stick back again straight away she carried on going over [laughs]. Anyway, it was a steady old bus and I think it could have taken a lot of punishment as well. Big old thing. You could actually, from the inside, crawl into the wings. There was an opening where you could crawl into the wings and get to the back of the engine because it was quite a -
CB: Yeah.
RH: Wing root. You know. Anyway, from there we went to multi engines. I can’t remember the name of that place.
CB: Did you say it was near York?
RH: Yeah.
CB: And you don’t think it was Elvington though.
RH: No. No. It was only for getting used to multi aircraft. I’ve got a relation lives there now. I can’t even think of the name of the place. That’s the trouble you know. Your brain goes.
CB: No. Not to worry. It might come to you. So you then went to this place.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Went on to the Halifax.
RH: Yeah. And from there we went to Linton on Ouse which was 76 squadron.
CB: How would you compare the Halifax with the Whitley as a plane to be -
RH: Well of course it was completely different really. Faster, and could carry more and it had even got two beds in it. I liked the Halifax. We called it the Halibag actually. And I thought it was good but I mean they did have trouble with the, with the first few marks until they got it right. I think they got it right in about 1944 and they even changed the Merlins for some radial engines which were a lot better and more powerful but I don’t know about that. Anyway, we were there. We did, we only did four ops. The first one we had to come back. The intercom went. Then we went to Stettin and that was low level Stettin was. That was exhilarating. Quite interesting that was. We were low, we were lower than the land at one time over the water, over the Baltic and all the Dutch people were opening their doors, showing their lights you know and waving.
CB: What did you feel when you saw that?
RH: Pardon?
CB: It must have been moving to see that.
RH: Oh moving yeah and I mean we could see people on bicycles and all lit and everybody waved. It was lovely really. Until we got to the flak ships. It’s wasn’t very nice then. [laughs] Anyway, we did Stettin. I thought it was an easy op actually but a lot of people said it was, it was a bad one. I don’t think so. And then there was Duisburg. That was a horrible. Happy Valley was a Happy Valley. You know we called, [pause] Happy Valley, yeah. And mind you we were attacked at one moment but I gave instructions to slip him away because the idea was if you could get away without firing the rest of the fighters wouldn’t say, ‘Ah there’s one there,’ you know. Actually, you give the game away once you’d started firing. So I thought until he’s getting, you know, so he’s dangerous I won’t open fire. So we didn’t.
CB: You could seem him actually following you.
RH: He was just turning on to us.
CB: Oh.
RH: Yeah. I think it was a JU88 actually. And what was the next one? Oh the next one. That was a dead loss. We were doing a gardening trip. You know what gardening is?
CB: Mine laying.
RH: Mines. Yeah. And soon after we got off the ground the intercom went so we had to stooge around for five hours getting rid of the petrol. And then we had to come in with the mines still on board you know.
CB: Five hours.
RH: Sticking out the bottom as well, you know. The horns on them sticking out.
CB: Yes.
RH: A bit dodgy. Held your breath a bit.
CB: How did you feel when you were, you know, due for an op? You knew that your name was on the list. What did you feel?
RH: I can’t remember feeling particularly scared or anything. I think, I think you were so sort of tied up in it that you didn’t think about that aspect really.
CB: The morale was good with your crew.
RH: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Except my navigator. When we was at, we went to Duisburg. That was the Duisburg one and we were just coming up to the markers that the whatsitsnames had dropped and he said, ‘Skipper, can I go up front and have a look?’ He said, ‘I’ve never seen the target.’ He said, ‘Yeah Ted, you go up and have a look.’ We heard him unplug his, about two minutes later he plugged in, ‘I’m not going to bloody well look at that anymore.’ So he said, ‘We’re not going through that are we?’ He said, ‘Yeah. And it’ll be straight and level.’ ‘God,’ he said,’ I don’t want to look again.’
CB: So they’d dropped the target indicators.
RH: He, he -
CB: The target indicators had been dropped.
RH: They had been dropped. Yeah.
CB: And you were heading for the -
RH: And we were on the run in. You know.
CB: So you’d have all the colours and -
RH: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. All the colours. Yeah.
CB: But could you see them? Had he gone through them, sort of thing?
RH: Yeah.
CB: You saw them from the back.
RH: Oh I got a better view than anybody.
CB: So, what, tell me about the conditions in the back with you being the rear gunner. It’s always thought of as the worst position in -
RH: Quite tight.
CB: At five foot eleven and a half I expect it was.
RH: Yeah. And of course when you got your full flying kit on everybody else wore sids, what they called sidcots but I had full ervins on, trousers as well you see and you couldn’t move about. I tried to do this once or twice. Well you can’t. You can’t do it. The guns get in the way or your knuckles get bruised.
CB: Did you remove the panel from the turret like -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Some of them did.
CB: Yeah.
RH: To have a better view.
CB: Yeah.
RH: You did that ‘cause that obviously made it very cold.
RH: That’s right. Very cold. We used to get, they used to pack us sandwiches and some silly fool packed salmon sandwiches one day and of course they froze didn’t they. Couldn’t get your teeth into them [laughs]
CB: I hate to mention a Lancaster but I’ve got to. Was your, the parachutes like behind the, the doors. It wasn’t -
RH: Behind the turret.
CB: Yes.
RH: Yeah. And then -
CB: So you had to swing around to get to it when you needed it.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Right.
RH: Yeah. And the Lanc was the same. Must have been.
CB: Yes. It was.
RH: ‘Cause you can’t wear your parachute in the turret.
CB: There wasn’t room for much.
RH: No.
CB: At all.
RH: And then you had to go, about that far from the turret was a door with a handle on it and that’s what I caught the parachute on which opened it and I didn’t know.
CB: So you’d done, you’d done one, you had to come back on and Stettin and Duisburg and then your, your gardening so was that you being shot down on the fifth or was that a bit later?
RH: No. Now that would have been if everything would have gone right which of course as I say we had to go back on two of them that would have been our fourth trip.
CB: Right.
RH: And at that time everybody, it worked, well they’d worked it out that the average that people did was four. You didn’t last any longer than four so we nearly did it. Yeah. I mean people who did thirty, God knows how. I mean I was reading a book earlier that somebody did thirty and they never fired their guns. They were never attacked. Well they must have been damned lucky. Must have been lucky ‘cause I mean the night fighters there would be sixty or seventy up a night. All around you, you know. And you’d see aircraft exploding all around you when they were hit. You see what they used to do they had to come up underneath and they had a gun, or two guns protruding upwards so all they’d got to do was come underneath and just pull the trigger and you couldn’t see it.
CB: Sneaky.
RH: Couldn’t see it happening and they didn’t seem to do anything about it.
CB: You were told that the operations you know that it was about four before, you know, trouble or whatever. Did that put you off making friends with others or did you just keep to your, your crew and -
RH: Oh no. No. As a matter of fact I had, I had a friend on the same squadron who worked with me before the war who I knew very well and he, he baled out and his chute caught on the tale wheel. Bob Cadmore and he went down with the aircraft. Yeah. [pause] No. No. No. We all mixed up alright together. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Was it a good station? Linton on Ouse.
RH: I thought so. I thought it was very nice and of course we was at a famous hall about a mile away was where we were.
CB: Billeted. Yes.
RH: Where our mess was and our billet was and there was food on all day long there. You could just walk in and huge table with everything on it. It was a lovely place really and I’ve been back there since and we were in a particular room called the oak panelled room and when I went I went to that room and I thought I’d take a photograph, you know, just the same. There were nothing in it. Just the bare room and the panels ‘cause my, when we walked in my navigator said, ‘I wonder which one with the secret door is.’ You know. I always remember that. Anyway, this woman came along and she said, ‘You can’t take photographs in here.’ I said, ‘Oh what a shame.’ I said, ‘I lived in this room for a while in 1943.’ ‘Ahh take as many as you want.’ And I did take some.
CB: Good.
RH: Yeah. Anyway, that was, where did we get to?
CB: We’re on now, I think on this -
RH: 76 squadron.
CB: Yes.
RH: Yeah. Yeah. Which was Cheshire’s.
CB: Yes.
RH: Not at that time. He’d just moved on. Although he was around because I remember standing to attention as he walked in front of me once. Lovely bloke though. Yeah. Everybody liked him.
CB: Yes. I heard.
RH: Yeah. So there.
CB: So we, can we talk about the operation that was -
RH: Yeah. Yeah. Alright.
CB: The final one.
RH: Well it was dusk, duskish when we were taking off and everybody got in the aircraft and my navigator was still standing there. I said, ‘Come on Ted. Get in.’ He said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I’m just taking a last look around,’ he said. ‘I’m not coming back.’ ‘Don’t be so stupid.’ He said, ‘I know I’m not coming back.’ And of course he didn’t. Anyway, I bundled him in and so we took off but we had problems right from the start and this was a brand new aircraft actually. Went for a burton on the first night.
CB: Oh dear.
RH: Another fifty thousand quid gone. And Ted was, he gave the wrong instructions as navigator and Bruce was questioning it. ‘I don’t think you’ve got that right, Ted.’ Anyway, somebody went to him and his oxygen pipe had come undone and he didn’t know quite what he were doing, you know.
CB: Oh.
RH: Anyway we got back on course and as I say as we saw the red markers go down they hit us just as we were turning on to the markers. Yeah. And of course the flames went back about fifty to a hundred yards. You could see everything like daylight and the side of the turret was melting. It was pretty horrendous really. So I got out quick. Forgot I’d got my helmet on and -
CB: When you say you got out quick you mean you turned the turret around.
RH: Turned the turret.
CB: And got into the aircraft.
RH: Well, I was facing that way anyway.
CB: Oh right.
RH: Yeah. Opened the doors. You know.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Got out, threw my flying helmet and picked up the parachute two hooks not knowing I’d only got one on and I went up to the escape hatch and my mid upper gunner was arguing with my engineer. I could see them arguing. I could see that he hadn’t got his parachute and he was trying to make him go, ‘Get back for your parachute,’ you know, and in the end, to save himself he went you know and I’ve forgotten his name now he jumped [without] his parachute. Panicked I suppose, you know, yeah and so we were the only three that went out there. My bomb aimer remembers the aircraft being hit. He don’t remember any more but he woke up on the ground with his parachute at the side of him and he said he don’t know, ‘Who put it on or who pushed me out.’ Somebody must have done. And that’s was how we, that was the end of our trip.
CB: It must have been, we’re talking about seconds here aren’t we in-between being -
RH: Must have been.
CB: Shot and -
RH: I mean I went to jump out the escape hatch, took a last look around and the parachute was all up against the door where I’d just come out of.
CB: You’d got it caught and it had come out.
RH: Yeah. I’d pulled the rip cord. Yeah. And I thought well that’s it. I’ll go and sit with the skipper. I made a move to go and sit up front with the skipper knowing I’d had it you know but something seemed to tell me to gather it up and try.
CB: What was the plane doing at this time? Was it just -
RH: Going down.
CB: Steadily going down.
RH: Yeah. Yeah. Steadily going down. And we’d still got all the bombs on and everything and they’d hit the petrol tank and the incendiaries so you could tell the starboard wing was well on fire. Where did I get to?
CB: You just -
RH: Anyway, I fell out.
CB: Yeah.
RH: I can see it now as plain as anything the tail was that about far from me, zipped over me like that as I was going backwards you know and the tail wheel fortunately never caught on the [?] on the tail pump, the parachute never caught on the tail wheel which a lot of people had that. They made it a retractable tail wheel in the end. Anyway, it opened but it was spilling air all the because it was only on, and I tried to get the other one but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. So I was going down pretty fast but it weren’t half quiet. You can’t, you know, once you baled you’ve been sitting there for about three hours with all that noise and suddenly silence and you think to yourself, ‘Where the hell am I?’ And I didn’t really know exactly where I was to be honest. And then I could see this house coming up. I thought well I can’t steer clear of it and there was such a crash and I went through the roof up to there. I made a lovely mess of the roof.
CB: Good.
RH: Do you know that’s what, that’s funny that’s what crosses your mind. To think that’s buggered the roof up [laughs]. Sorry.
CB: No. That’s quite alright.
RH: And the next thing I was worried about was the parachute. I thought well the parachute’s alright. They’ll use it. What can I do about it? Nothing. But one of the Germans that come up he cut all the cords off me. I thought, good he’s ruined the parachute too. Aint it daft what you think about? It took them about half an hour to get me off the roof but they were very good. They were very good.
CB: It sounds as if they arrived pretty quickly.
RH: Yeah. As soon as I hit the roof I could hear voices. Well I made enough noise.
CB: And where was -
RH: Every time I tried to move clatter clatter clatter clatter you know.
CB: So this would be -
RH: In other words, ‘Come over here. I’m over here.’ [laughs]
CB: I think it’s in the book where you, do you remember the town or the place where you landed so gracefully?
RH: I can’t remember it.
CB: It is in the book over there.
RH: I don’t think it’s very far from Munster because they took me to Munster Hospital. The Luftwaffe picked me up. No, first of all I went to a little hospital which must have been close to hand and I’d dislocated my leg and they tried to put it in with chloroform but the chloroform wasn’t any good. I could feel everything you know so they packed it up and then the Luftwaffe came and they put me in this Mercedes. I remember it was a Mercedes because I remember that bit on the front, you know and inside it was my mid upper gunner. I said, ‘Where’d you come from.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I did a bit of walking but they soon picked me up.’ And they took me to this aerodrome and they dropped him off at this aerodrome. I can always remember this there was FW190s there. We were quite close to them. Then they took me to Munster Hospital and they were, they were marvellous. They really looked after me.
CB: A civilian hospital.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Was it? Yes.
RH: Big hospital. I had a room to myself and when I was getting better, I was there a month, I mean I needn’t have been there a month really. I could wander where I wanted. Go outside. Do what I wanted. And there were nuns. A lot of the nurses were nuns and they were lovely. ‘Anything you want you tell me. I’ll get it for you.’ You know. And there was a picture of Hitler on the wall like that, about as big as that and the first thing I did I turned it around face to the wall you see and she came in she said, ‘You mustn’t do that. You can’t do that in Germany. You mustn’t do that. ‘And she put it back. When she went out I turned it back again. I was doing that backwards and forwards.
CB: Were they German nuns? Yeah.
RH: In Munster.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Anyway, I had a good month there really. There was a lot of French kreigies as we call POWs. There was a lot of French kreigies there and they kept coming in and bringing me some of their food and, although I got plenty of food, and there was a few Russians as well and they stole some neat alcohol and they were drinking this stuff. They wanted me to have some. I said, ‘Not likely. I’m not touching that stuff.’ Anyway, I’d been there about three weeks, no, perhaps about a fortnight, about a fortnight when they did the dams raid. They did the dams raid on the 16th and they brought this other fellow in and he was off my squadron. He was off 76 squadron as well, and he’d got five bullets in him so the doctor there who was a General actually, red stripe down his trousers, you know, he said, ‘We want you to come and hold him down.’ I said, ‘Hold him down?’ ‘We’re not giving him - ’
CB: Chloroform.
RH: ‘Chloroform or anything because we need it for ourselves.’ He said, ‘You’ll just have to hold him down.’ I thought this is going to be fine. Anyway, I went in the operating theatre and held him down while they started taking them out. It’s horrible really and eventually well pretty early on he passed out anyway which was the best you know but he’d got one in his back that was close to his heart. He’d been shot in the back and they went in like that about that far around, took the meat out, took the bullet out, put some stuff around it and put it back. Do you know in a month you couldn’t tell it had been done? He were running around. Tommy Thompson. Yeah. So anyway, we, we got over our little problems and they decided to send us to Dulag Luft. I suppose you’ve heard of Dulag Luft.
CB: Near Frankfurt.
RH: At Frankfurt yeah. So they sent these three Germans to pick us up. The two of us. Well one of them was a fighter pilot who was on a rest and he were lovely. He really was and then there was two more. He was in charge of the other two. So he said, ‘Well before we go to the station,’ he said, ‘If you don’t mind, if you don’t mind, I’m going to see my girlfriend who lives in Munster,’ he said, ‘And you can come along with us. And we went in this house, met his girlfriend and her parents, we had a cup of coffee and then we left to go to the station and all the stations were under water from the dams raid. All the platforms were under water. It was alright at Munster but some of the smaller ones were. Anyway, we had a compartment on our own and he took off his gun belt and threw it on the luggage rack and said, ‘We don’t need that today. We’re all friends.’
CB: You wouldn’t have known that the flooding was due to the dams raid.
RH: No. I didn’t -
CB: Obviously.
RH: Know about that.
CB: Did they mention why it was flooded?
RH: No.
CB: In any way.
RH: No. No. I didn’t find out till afterwards.
CB: Oh.
RH: I wondered what all the water was about, you know. But I mean people say, ‘Oh they didn’t do any good,’ you know. Believe you me they did. Anyway, we had to go down the Rhine and we had to change at Cologne. Change trains at Cologne and as we were changing, no before that, I won’t go too far ahead, when we got to Cologne we had to wait for the train so he took us into a restaurant and we had a meal in the restaurant. There was all German officers and that around. Nobody took any notice. No. Yeah. It was alright. I’d got my cap, no my gloves stuck in my epaulets. He said, ‘Would you mind taking them out? We don’t do that in Germany.’ He said, ‘It looks bad.’ So I stuffed it in my blouse you know. So after we’d had the meal he said, ‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘We’re going for a walk along the Rhine so I’ll take you in Cologne Cathedral. So we went into Cologne Cathedral and had photographs, well he took photographs of us together you know and we come back caught the train, well we got onto the platform and there was a little Canadian air gunner who were being escorted by a German Wehrmacht and he were knocking him about. So this pilot said, he said, ‘Look at him,’ he said ‘A hundred and fifty percent national socialist.’ So he weren’t for Hitler evidently.
CB: No. Well you were going through, you know you were travelling through Germany.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And we’d given it, particularly Cologne, quite a pasting.
RH: Yeah, this was, this was on –
CB: Did you see any of the devastation that –
RH: No. I didn’t.
CB: We’d caused.
RH: I can’t say as I did actually. No. I think we must have missed it. [laughs]
CB: [laughs] So the thousand bomber raid was a bit of a waste of time [laughs]
RH: I will admit that the nurses kept saying, ‘You don’t think they’ll bomb us again will you?’
CB: Ah.
RH: You know. I said, ‘No. I wouldn’t think so.’ They did though not long afterwards of course. Anyway, we had hours long down the Rhine and they kept pointing the different places out. We had a lovely time really. It was lovely.
CB: What was the food like? I mean they had poor rations themselves didn’t they? What food did they give you?
RH: I can’t remember.
CB: Well if it had been poor I think you’d have probably remembered
RH: Yeah. I don’t think it was. Yeah, it was quite good. Course the cinemas and places like that were closed, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It seemed funny to see people walking about though and -
Other: Passed on the right
RH: On the left.
Other: No right through dear.
RH: Right through on the Rhine.
[machine paused]
CB: Ok Ron. We’ve gone down the Rhine and we’ve arrived now at Dulag Luft
RH: Dulag Luft. We were just deposited at Dulag Luft and they put us in a six foot cell to try to get information. I was in that for about a week. Eventually they let you out and when I got out they lined me up at the end of the room, there were five or six more there. Then they brought another one out, another fella out, stood him at the side of me and he said, ‘I know you.’ I said, ‘Yes. I know you.’ I said, ‘It’s Mr Hands. You used to teach me mathematics didn’t you?’ It was my teacher.
CB: Oh good grief.
RH: Yeah. And we stuck together for the whole two years. Yeah. Yeah. That was interesting. Yeah. Anyway, we got into the main compound and there were Yanks in with us as well and from there on they sent us to Heydekrug but we did have normal coaches but they were wooden seats and I think we were about four days. Oh those seats were hard. I finished up in the luggage rack. More comfortable up there. So we got to Heydekrug and it was a fairly new camp actually at that time and had already brought some of Luft 3 in and gradually the camp filled up. Well, I was there for two years. Well not that one for two years but I was there for a year I suppose. It was quite interesting because we did, well I didn’t but they dug a tunnel and I think we got about thirty odd out and I think two or three got back and it was quite interesting really. We did hear. We got letters from them in code to say, you know, ‘We got back,’ sort of thing and then they took us to, we was in Poland. Thorn in Poland for a while. Can’t remember much about that and then from there we went to 357 and there was a lot of paratroops there because as far as the Germans was concerned paratroops were Luftwaffe.
CB: Yes.
RH: So we all got in together you know and they were from Arnhem. We had a lot of the Arnhem fellas in. But that was quite interesting.
CB: So this would be about September ‘44.
RH: Yeah. That’s right. And of course they moved us out of Heydekrug because the Russians were approaching. That’s why they moved us from there. Anyway, back to, Fallingbostel was 357. I have to think about this. They went out on the long march. Fortunately I didn’t have to go on that because I was in hospital at the time. I can’t remember what was wrong with me. So I got out of that one.
CB: So the conditions weren’t, you didn’t think they were too bad during this prisoner of war time.
RH: No. Not until about the last six months, nine months. Then of course we were coming in from one side and the Russians in from another squeezing them you know. We weren’t getting the parcels through. I mean at first we were getting nearly a parcel a week each but towards the end we weren’t getting much at all. All we were getting was potatoes and soup. Soup. Couldn’t call it soup really but we existed on it and got a parcel here and there from the Red Cross. Don’t know what we would have done without the Red Cross really.
CB: The escape from Stalag Luft 3 in March of ‘44 when the, and the fifty were eventually -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Captured and shot.
RH: Yeah.
CB: Was there anything, you know, recriminations or, you know how did you hear about it?
RH: I think the camp commandant told [pause] our leader. I’ve forgotten his name now.
CB: Shaw?
RH: No. Not Shaw. It weren’t Shaw.
CB: Oh.
RH: You’ve got that wrong. The footballer, well he wasn’t but we called him that for a bit.
CB: Oh Dixie Dean.
RH: Dixie Dean.
CB: Right.
RH: Dixie Dean. I think he told Dixie Dean and Dixie Dean said, ‘How many were just injured?’ Because they said they were trying to escape you see. They’d made a run and tried to escape.
CB: Yes.
RH: So he said, ‘How many were only wounded?’ ‘Oh none. They were all killed.’ He said, ‘That’s not possible.’ He said, ‘If you just fired like that,’ he said, ‘There would have been some that would have survived,’ and of course they couldn’t say anything about that.
CB: No.
RH: So the camp went mad. Took all the shutters off the windows, took them in the middle of the parade ground and set fire to them. That was our –
CB: Protest.
RH: Answer to it. You know. So that’s how we found about this. Of course a lot of the fellas that had come from Luft 3 knew all of these people. I didn’t and a lot of us didn’t but some did so –
CB: Was, was morale damaged or did you –
RH: Well we was pretty damned mad really.
CB: More angry than –
RH: Yeah. Yeah. More angry than anything. Anyway, as I say we got 357 and they went on the march and we were left behind fortunately and all I can think of now is this little armoured car came in the gates. One morning we woke up and there were no guards. Everybody had gone and this little armoured car come in. Of course everyone went mad. They crowded around this armoured car. Eventually some of the army came in as well you know and they were looking after us. The white bread was beautiful.
CB: What sort of thing did you do in the prisoner of war camp for entertainment and to, you know, pass the time?
RH: Well -
CB: What did you do?
RH: Of course, Heydekrug people were studying and you could do. It was all, it had been arranged that you could study and some, some people passed exams. So everybody got something to do if you wanted to and there was a good library. I started Polish. Learning Polish. I give it up. I couldn’t stand that. But people were studying all sorts.
CB: And the camp would put on theatre productions.
RH: Oh yeah well everybody got a bit of a hand in that.
CB: Yes. You didn’t take to the stage yourself.
RH: No. No thank you. No. No. And then we were doing things like making panels in the wall that took out so you could get to the next room. You see there were, the hut, there was like two huts like a semidetached house really and the door, the doors were side by side but you had to go up steps to go in one. Well we worked it out it took them so many seconds to come down the step, just walk across, go up the next steps in the next room so we took a panel out of the wall and made it so that you could, somebody’d slip through and back again and somebody in the next hut was one of the escapees so they took a panel off as the Germans went down the first lot of steps, took the panel off, I whipped through, jumped into his bed at the side, pulled the blanket over as though I was asleep and they’d come around counting you see. Well everybody was there but they weren’t. That were good fun. Yeah.
CB: Were there any tunnels that you knew of that were being dug?
RH: I know there was one from the, from the latrines and you know the latrines were actually about thirty holes so you had quite an interesting time when you went to the latrine. ‘Hello John how are you getting on? What are you doing?’ Are you doing so and so, you know. Everybody was talking [laughs] and so you’d go in there and instead of being there for five minutes you’d be there perhaps an hour talking to two or three other people, you know
CB: Did you ever fancy escaping yourself?
RH: No. I didn’t. I couldn’t get in a tunnel. Oh I couldn’t do that. No. I’d helped. I helped them. I helped. I did belong to tally ho as regards helping out with things. You know. Anyway, I thought it was more sensible to stay where you were. Don’t get shot so easily that way. Hopefully. Anyway, went in to the latrines one day and some bloke was standing there and said, ‘Don’t go in number one. They’re digging a tunnel down there.’ They were down there digging a tunnel. Of all the places to pick. But you see that was the closest to the wire. That’s why they went for that one and they did get about thirty odd out.
CB: Right.
RH: Yeah. I don’t know how they smelt but, I think, I bet the Germans picked them up easy [laughs] from their perfume. Oh dear.
CB: So -
RH: Do you know there were people even making model aircraft and flying them? And the only way you could get the glue, you know this sticky brown paper? We never threw, never threw anything away all that was boiled down and finished up as glue at the bottom of the pot you know. And silver paper, you can make things out of silver paper. It was all melted down but you, you needed a pile about half as big as this room to get a little bit of, and then they used to make a mould out of soap and pour it in and you got whatever you wanted so when they were making a German uniform they made the buckle out of silver paper that had been melted down, you know. ‘Cause I mean, we’d got people there that made uniforms and made clothes and all sorts of things because I mean the RAF uniform was almost the same as Luftwaffe. You couldn’t hardly tell the difference. So there was always somebody slaving away on something. Never a dull moment. I mean people, they would say, ‘Well didn’t you get bored?’ We never got bored. Too much to do. Yeah.
CB: Did you know what was happening in Europe war wise at this time?
RH: Oh yeah.
CB: Did you have a radio or -
RH: Yeah we had the radio. Every lunchtime this fella would come in, ‘Right chaps. Watch the windows,’ and somebody’d sit near the window, watching out the windows, see if there’s any moles about. ‘There’s one coming up.’ ‘Hang on a minute.’ ‘Oh sit down. We’ll wait till he’s gone.’ Everybody that walked into that camp, every German that walked in that camp was plotted all the way around. We knew where he was all the while from one mouth to another you know. So and sometimes somebody would say, ‘Ferret.’ We called them ferrets and you see the huts were about this high of the ground and they’d crawl under to make sure that there were no tunnels you see and somebody would say, ‘Ferret.’ ‘Where?’ About ten blokes would get together. They’d stand there, ‘Ready, steady go,’ and everybody would jump up and down. Well all the dirt used to fall like that you know and he’d come scurrying out the other end dirt all down [laughs] Oh we pulled their legs something horrible really. I mean when a, when a guard walked up and down with his rifle over his shoulder there would be about five blokes right on top behind him following him like this you know and then as soon as he turned around they just vanished. One, ‘cause as regards tunnels we had to shore them up with bed boards so eventually everybody had only got about three bed boards left. Head, bottom, feet, you know. Oh it was uncomfortable. And one day they came in, take, they took nearly all the bed boards away on this lorry and there were the German guards standing on top of them with a schmeiser, you know. So when he looking over that end someone were nicking them off the other end. As soon as he swung around they was nicking it off the other end. [Laughs] Whatsisname came around he said, ‘I’m afraid somebody is going to get shot.’ He said, ‘Why don’t they pack it in?’ He said, ‘They’ll get shot.’ Dixie Dean. He said, ‘I’m scared to death somebody’s going to get shot.’ Anyway, nobody ever was.
CB: I think you mentioned that the guards had a peculiar way of searching. They’d search for one thing one day and -
RH: Oh yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. They only took what they were looking for that day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So if they were looking for scissors one day, the next day if they found some they weren’t bothered.
RH: No they weren’t bothered. No. Mad.
CB: What was the relationship between you and the guards? Did you -
RH: Well you got to know one or two of them yeah but don’t forget they were all old people. Not as old as me but they were, they were, some of them had been prisoners of war in England and you might get one that would talk to you, you know but there was always one or two of our people that spoke good German and they’d try and get things. You know. They were kept for getting and once, you know, they’d offer them something big or something that was not much at all but once you’d got him on, under your thumb the answer was well, I want so and so.’ Oh I can’t get that. I can’t get that.’ ‘Well you’d better or else you’ll be on the Eastern Front,’ ‘cause that was always their worry. Eastern front. You know. So they’d get it in the end. Bits for cameras and things like that. Yeah. But we did used to swap things with some of them. I mean I can remember when we were swapping tins of cocoa for a loaf of bread but I mean there was, it were full of sand with a bit of cocoa on the top. [laughs] Oh we were rotten. [laughs] Throwing it over the wire you know.
CB: Did you know when D-Day had happened?
RH: I was home on D-Day.
CB: Oh right.
RH: I was home about a week before D-Day.
CB: Oh.
RH: Yeah. Yeah fortunately because 357 was close to where they signed the -
CB: Oh the -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Armistice.
RH: Can’t remember where that was now but we were close to that. Yeah.
CB: So what was, what happened towards, you know the end of your captivity? How did it come about? The truck arrived. The, and was that the end? Did you -
RH: Yeah. Well they took us out in trucks to this aerodrome. I don’t know what aerodrome it was. I never did find out and we were there all day. There was thousands there you know and the army was in charge. There weren’t many RAF. Not at that moment. They were nearly all army and these Dakotas landed and Lancasters and Halifaxes. They’d pile the army in you know. Well we’d been there all day and one of our blokes said, he said, ‘I’ve had enough of this, they’re not taking all their men.’ He said, ‘We’re the ones, the RAF are taking us back and,’ he said, ‘We’re stuck here.’ He said, ‘I’m going to have a go at this.’ Anyway, the next Dakota came in and he ran across to it and when they put the ladder down he went up and had a word with the pilot, squadron leader somebody. So he said, ‘What’s your problem?’ So he said, ‘They’re taking all the army,’ he said, ‘And just leaving us.’ He said, ‘They’re not bothered about us.’ He said, ‘Well I’ve finished. This was my last flight,’ he said, ‘But I’ll take you. How many of you is there?’ So and so. ‘That’s a couple over what I should do,’ he said, ‘But,’ he said, ‘I’ll chance it if you will.’ He said, ‘All of you come across here,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you home.’ So he did an extra flight and brought us back. And when we got to the other end everybody had a WAAF each to look after us.
CB: This was at Cosford.
RH: At Cosford. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RH: Yeah.
CB: What was your feelings when you landed?
RH: What?
CB: What were you feelings after, you know your captivity, all you’d been through?
RH: Well I can remember, I can remember passing and everybody was looking out the window saying, ‘Look the white cliffs of Dover. At last.’ You know. That was a lovely sight that was. And I don’t know where we landed. It wasn’t Cosford ‘cause we had to catch a train to Cosford.
CB: Oh right.
RH: But there was, on the train there was four of us to a compartment. We had the whole train to ourselves, you know.
CB: Did you ever think you weren’t, you wouldn’t make it back?
RH: No. I never thought about it. I thought we would eventually you know. I suppose we were lucky they didn’t shoot all of us really. Yeah.
CB: And you got to Cosford and then -
RH: We were there ‘til they kitted us out and I think I had six weeks leave. Everybody had about six weeks and back pay for two years.
CB: Wow.
RH: And all the Canadians and Americans were saying, every time they jumped out of bed, ‘Another pound in the bank.’ That were marvellous. I’d draw some money out and when you went back the next time there’d some more been put in. As fast as you drew it out they were putting some more in. I’ve never come across that since then though funnily enough. No. Lovely.
CB: So in your six, six weeks off or so and then what happened? Were you -
RH: Went back to Cosford and they didn’t know what to do with us really. We were going into towns where they were having these parties in the, street parties remember and they were taking us to these street parties and then they took us round Austin Motor Works to see that, all that. You know. It was all very interesting but really we were a dead loss to them really. Couldn’t do anything with us. Not many people stayed in. They asked you if you wanted to stay in. Of course my friend Ted did. He said, ‘Yes. I’ll stay’ and he got to squadron leader.
CB: And what did you do?
RH: Came out.
CB: Went home.
RH: I was a bit sorry. The last day I felt a bit sorry really. Still there we are.
CB: You had the camaraderie of your pals you know, even though -
RH: Yeah.
CB: Just for the four tours or whatever.
RH: Yeah.
CB: And then you had the friends you made in the camps and then it was just a sudden stop.
RH: Yeah and I mean we was all going to meet so and so and not many did.
CB: No.
RH: Once you got back into Civvy Street and you got into work again I suppose it all changed didn’t it really? Yeah.
CB: Perhaps some of them just didn’t want to remember what had happened.
RH: I don’t, I mean people say that. I don’t think we were very bothered any of us. I mean and others say they don’t like to talk about it. Well, all the ones I know don’t mind talking about it. Not really.
CB: What work did you do after the war?
RH: I went back to the Co-op.
CB: And you settled into that happily.
RH: Well only for about two years and then my stepfather was a sub postmaster and when he died I got it so I had the post office for thirty two years. Yeah. That was alright. That was a good job.
CB: Do you think your experiences in the war had any effect on you afterwards?
RH: I don’t know. I suppose in a way you got to the point you were frightened of anything anymore. Weren’t frightened of anything anymore. You know, you thought to yourself, ‘Well. I got through that I can get through anything.’ Yeah. I mean we had three raids at the post office.
CB: Oh crikey.
RH: We got rid, well we got rid of it. I didn’t get rid of one. The second one that come in. He pointed a gun at me and said, ‘Money.’ And my wife was in the corner. She said, ‘What’s he want?’ I said, ‘Money.’ She said, ‘Tell him where to go.’ I said, ‘I’m going to.’ I said, ‘Look. There’s the door. Get out of it.’ And then he turned around and walked out. Which was very lucky. I said to her afterwards, ‘He were pointing a ruddy gun at me not at you.’ [laughs]
CB: You never thought ‘Oh my God I’ve fought this war, I’ve been involved and then this happens.’
RH: It makes you wonder doesn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then there was another man that had been defrauding the post by ordering insurance stamps. Insurance stamps were worth a lot of money in those days and he’d order all these and they’d put them through and he’d say, ‘Oh just a minute. I’ve got a parcel in the car. I’ll go and fetch it.’ He never went back, he never went back with the money. I forget what they called him, they’d given him a name. Two years they tried to catch him and we caught him. He came in and did his usual, you know and the wife was in the corner and she went ‘psst’ you know so I didn’t, I didn’t put the stamps through. I kept them this side you know, he said, ‘Oh I’ve got a parcel. I’ll just go and fetch the parcel.’ I knew he was making a getaway really. He could see I wasn’t going to give and as he went out the postman came in the door and I said, ‘John, get the number of that car, that van for the person who’s just run out.’ ‘Where? Where?’ You know. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘You’re too late.’ I got straight on the phone to the, our policing department and the police put road stops up all around Peterborough and when they got to Stanground the woman on the counter of Stanground said, ‘Oh. I think I’ve just served him.’ Just like that you know. They see this bloke coming out the door, they grabbed him and it wasn’t him. [laughs] Anyway, he were further down the road and they caught him before he got in the car. But I think we got two hundred pound for that. Yeah. We had three lots of two hundred pound. Very useful. [laughs]
CB: Well Ron it’s been absolutely wonderful to hear you. Thank you very much for this interview.
RH: Oh it’s alright. You’re quite welcome.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Ron Hemsworth
Format
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01:14:17 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHemsworthR150729
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-29
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Ron joined the Royal Air Force in January 1941. Initially a wireless operator/air gunner, he failed morse code at Blackpool. He was posted to RAF Swinderby and worked in the stores and flying control. Air gunnery school followed at RAF Bridlington and RAF Morpeth. Ron went to an Operational Training Unit at RAF Honeybourne where he crewed up and flew in Whitleys. He went on to multi-engine aircraft near York and flew Halifaxes. Ron joined 76 Squadron at Linton-on-Ouse and flew four operations: Stettin, Duisburg, a mine laying operation and two trips which were not completed because of issues with the intercom.
Ron describes how his aircraft was hit on the starboard wing and what happened to the crew. He had problems with his parachute and landed on a house roof, dislocating his leg. He spent a month in a civilian hospital in Munster. He was transported by a kind German fighter pilot to Dulag Luft, near Frankfurt. Ron was sent to Stalag Luft 6. People could study, and there was a library and entertainment. Ron made model aircraft. Provisions became scarce in the latter months. A tunnel was dug near the latrines and 30 prisoners escaped. The guards abandoned the camp and Ron was taken to an aerodrome and flown home in a Dakota. He went to RAF Cosford, but, with little to do, he came out of the RAF.
Creator
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Clare Bennett
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Lithuania
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Duisburg
Lithuania--Šilutė
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
76 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
C-47
crewing up
Dulag Luft
escaping
fear
Halifax
military service conditions
mine laying
prisoner of war
RAF Bridlington
RAF Cosford
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Morpeth
RAF Swinderby
shot down
Stalag Luft 6
superstition
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/306/3463/AMooreR160727.1.mp3
6916342becb8f2ec899823178f5b9e73
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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Moore, Raymond
R Moore
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Raymond Moore (1609170 and 179383 Royal Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-27
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
Moore, R
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IL: Ian Locker. I’m interviewing Ray Moore at his home in Sowerby, Thirsk. Right, so Ray, um, tell us a little bit about your early life.
RM: Early life — where, where from?
IL: From you, you, you were born in Sussex?
RM: Yes.
IL: Tell us a little bit about your family and how, how you came to join the RAF.
RM: Well, I’ll only repeat what I said.
IL: Absolutely.
RM: Exactly what — again, I wasn’t thrilled by the war. I remember it very distinctly because my father and two brothers — my two brothers were in the — they called it the —
Sarah: Home Guard? No?
RM: Well, my father got — had been recalled for the covers [?] in other words, he’d done about fourteen years’ service in India and then he went to, he was posted to Gallipoli. He was wounded in 1915 and came back to England and he was in hospital, hospital in Esher, in Esher. That’s in Surrey and that’s where he me my mother but that was just at the beginning. And then he went in the Territorials. They joined in 1938 so they were the first up and the last picture, the last thing I remember of them, I was — they were all at home this particular day, and the last thing I remember I went into the dining room and they were all stood with their arms around one other. It was very moving, was that. And, um, then — so that passed and you didn’t — there was no reality to it even then. And then on the Sunday morning at 11 o’clock on — when Chamberlain said — it still didn’t ring a bell. I still wasn’t — it, it didn’t mean anything. I remember that Sunday morning and hearing Chamberlain and my mother was sat weeping, as they did in them days I suppose, I don’t know, but she was, I remember she was, she was crying and I thought, ‘Well, it’s a war.’ You know and, and honestly at that age, and I was fifteen, at that age you didn’t, you didn’t say, ‘Oh, there’s a war.’ It’s Hitler. It’s Germany. It’s Nazi Germany and I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that we were at war but my father and brothers had already gone but it didn’t ring a bell until about, let’s see that’s 1940. I’m trying to think of the dates. In 1941 there were three of them gone and in 1941 my, er, brother that was older than me — no. A sister that was older than me, Joan, she decided to join the WAAFS. Because at some period of time, you know, women had to sign on as well and she was eligible. She was about twenty-two, twenty-three and so she was the next one to go and to me it was, ‘Ta-ta Joan.’ You know, that was — and then life set again. You started to — some of the things that happened. Because we never had a daily paper because I think the Daily Herald was on the go in those days and so, um, and being a mixed family of, of politics — my father was a conservative and my brothers when they came out, two of them had turned and flying the red flag. That was hilarious was that after the war. But — and so, er, and then it went on and then a brother went and I sort of looked round and instead of eleven of us sat down at that, in that, you know — and it was a fairly big dining room Sarah, wasn’t it? And the dining table, instead of there on a Sunday it was suddenly, suddenly empty and that was when it struck me that something was wrong and that was the time when I really thought about joining up but the age was eighteen and I was damn sure I wasn’t going in the Army or the Navy and I, I’d made up my mind. But as I say there was something by the Government that if you had — you know, there were a lot of big families but if you had so many in that were in the Services you, you were exempt and I should have been exempt. And that rattled my mother more than anything and so that was, you know, I joined up like and that’s when it started. All of it started. I have to admit I was leaving home and the Army didn’t appeal to me in as much as that I’d lost brothers and sisters and my father were all in the services. Because we had a good family life.
Sarah: None of them were killed.
RM: Never lost one of them, no.
IL: Remarkable isn’t it. So had you left school?
RM: Oh, I’d left school.
IL: So did you leave school at fifteen or —
RM: Fourteen.
IL: Right. So, so were you working on the family farm? Or —
RM: No, no, no. I did that, er, I did —
Sarah: What was your first job?
RM: First job, riding a bicycle, pushing — I worked for a butcher, just delivering, just an ordinary menial job. And that was the first, yeah, that was the first year and going to work then nine to five. [cough] I’m trying to think how old I was as well. And about a year or it might have been —
IL: I’m going to move that a little bit nearer to you.
RM: Sorry.
IL: No, it’s OK. [unclear]
RM: It might have been, um, [unclear] I think with there being, when the war was on, 1939, and there was, er, Joan was at home and Frank and so there were those at home so really I hadn’t much care, no idea. I was a good scholar as well. I was a good scholar, even if I say myself.
Sarah: And that’s where your engineering background —
RM: It was. It was really because, um, when I was in, when I joined up, and I was mixing with engines and airframes and things it seemed to — it was something that I wanted to do, wasn’t it? And to come top of the class at the end of thirty-six weeks I thought it was pretty good going. Anyway, er, fifteen and I got to know one or two. I, in that respect I was a bit of a loner, in respect of mixing and things like that and not bothering to look for the future, and I say I couldn’t have cared less and my father was in the Army so he couldn’t boot my backside and tell me to get a job. There, was there and then I went to a Jim Feasts [?]. I even remember his name and they were a greengrocers and all I was doing there was delivering green groceries, groceries and whatever you’re talking about. No, it was greengrocery wasn’t it? That was Jim Feast and that was awful but I suppose I was mixing with different people and Worthing’s a very snobbish place, you know.
IL: I’ve been.
RM: Pardon?
IL: I’ve been.
RM: Oh, you know Worthing.
IL: Not well.
RM: I finished there. I shouldn’t be — and then I worked for Jim Feast until, well, I think he told me to beggar off and, um, they were menial things, weren’t they? And then across The Broadway there was, they called them Fletchers [sound of aircraft]. Now that can go down. They called them Fletchers, the butcher, and so I was riding around then. And I became very friendly with a chap and he was the same as I was. We were the same age and doing the same jobs, riding around and delivering errands, and he said to me one day, he said — and it was time to come up when we were coming up to seventeen and then around that area and he said, ‘By the way.’ He said, ‘I’m going to join, I’m going to join the Navy.’ He said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t join the Navy if you paid me.’ I said, I said, ‘I don’t want to go.’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m going to join the Navy.’ And just up here they call it Teville Road. He said, ‘Up here are the Naval Cadets.’ But it’s ridiculous isn’t it? Because when he said Naval Cadets I thought to myself, ‘What do you do?’ He said, ‘Well, we learn the Morse code and with your arms and hands.’ And I thought — ‘And march and do things like that.’ And bearing in mind there was also a junior Air Cadets but I didn’t even think about the Air Cadets because — and then he was telling me, he said, ‘Why don’t you come up?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to join the Navy.’ He said, ‘Oh, come on.’ He said, ‘It will just be a bit of fun.’ So, I said, ‘Oh, right.’ So, I went up this particular time and went into this hall and I saw these, er, do you know what I mean? There was all these things to learn the Morse code, with di, di, di, da, dat. And I looked at them and I thought — because a friend of mine had joined the air crew and he’d gone as a wireless op and I thought, ‘That’s not a bad thing. There’s a place here I can learn the Morse code and be one in front.’ So, he said — anyway, I thought it would be interesting, sat down and they had about six in a line. I sat down and I got interested, listening to it, and I thought, ‘This will do.’ But this mate of mine, he kept saying, ‘Join.’ He wanted me to join the Naval Cadets and I didn’t want to join and that was when really that I made up my mind. That was about the time that I’d gone down to the recruiting office to join the, to join the Air Force and that was really at the beginning where I made up my mind that I wanted to be air crew and that, that was the last job I think, driving around. They called him Fletcher, that butcher, and that’s, that’s all I did but I think if my dad had been home he would have pushed me because, as I say, I was fairly good, I was fairly good at school. I was. I can wrap anything up, you know, and it seems a shame really. You know, I don’t I mean that I was wasted or anything like that but I know that had I’d gone on I would have gone on to Worthing High School but nothing appealed to me. There was a war on and honestly, that’s the honest truth, there was nothing appealed to me. Nothing at all appealed to me in — accept when it came for the service time to join the Services. That’s all it was.
IL: OK. So when you joined you were seventeen but there was problems because you had to have your mother’s permission I understand.
RM: That’s right.
IL: So, what happened?
RM: What happened?
IL: Yeah. What happened?
RM: Well, I did tell you.
Sarah: But you’re being recorded now dad.
RM: Oh, I see. Oh, well. Well, we didn’t fall out of course not. You can look at that. That’s my family. Oh well, we had a few words of course but nothing, there was nothing dramatic. There was nothing dramatic about it because my mother was a loving woman wasn’t she? I mean, it was her family, her life, but to — but I don’t think even to this day, looking back, that she ever thought that, um, it would come to me signing up. I don’t think she ever thought that I would join up until I left and I got on the train from West Worthing to Victoria. I mean, to be out of, to get out, to go out of Worthing was when I played football. I used to play schoolboy international, um, yeah, I played schoolboy international. We lost —
Sarah: Where did you do your final?
RM: West Ham. No, we didn’t play. We got knocked out, Sarah. West Ham beat us in the semis at — where? What’s the name of their ground?
IL: Upton Park.
RM: Yes. That’s it and it was an absolute sensation because to play schoolboy international was actually a very good thing because when you ran on the pitch and there was six thousand boys there and we ran on the pitch at Upton Park and these boys — you get six thousand boys, six thousand boys there and I can understand — it was absolutely wonderful. Anyway I was thirteen at the time. But going on to where, talking about my mother, it was, it was very disturbing but on, not from my point of view because I knew what I was going to do. It was something. It was something. There was a blooming war on but the papers and you could hear them give the news out. It, it didn’t strike me as being anything. All I wanted to do then was be in the Air Force and to fly. That was my only ambition was to fly and I failed the first time. What did they call it? I failed. I put in for a pilot and I failed as a pilot. I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t just good enough. That was all there was to it. I know that looking back. I think if I’d genned up on it a bit more and waited maybe a couple of months.
Sarah: How did they sort out who was going to be a flight engineer and who was going to be a wireless operator?
RM: By what I had to do. By what you had to do. And you talk about square pegs and round holes, Sarah, and that was what you had to do. I went up to, ah, North London. It’s where they, where the Lord’s Cricket Ground is, somewhere up there, and you go before the — oh, I forgot to tell you that. That’s what happened when I was called up, before I was called up rather, that’s what happened, and you sit down. You go into this classroom and that as well, I had a medical, of course. I mustn’t miss that out, of course you did, and you sat down and it was sort of noughts and crosses, you know. I can’t remember a lot, but you sat down and with a — now I’ve got to just try and think. Anyway I failed as a pilot and so the next best thing —
IL: But at this time you were still only seventeen? This was —
RM: Pardon?
IL: This was between signing up and being called up you had this, like, kind of selection.
RM: That’s right, exactly. I’d forgotten, yeah, of course I did. And as far as I think now I was just put down as air crew. I can’t seem to think that I was classified then because as an air gunner — I knew I wasn’t going to be an air gunner because the air gunners were in and out. They had a six month course. They were up in — they had a very short course, did an air gunner, a rear gunner and a mid-upper gunner. They had a very short — you know, it was awful really. They just learned how to shoot and they put them in, put them in a bomber. And honestly, it was as simple as that.
IL: You also, you also had this thing with your mother, um, she had to sign something, I understand?
RM: Oh yes, yes. She did, oh yeah. Well, I got this paper from — I went down to the recruiting office — and I thought — there again, I knew nothing about it. And I thought you could just sign on the line and they took you but when they came to the ages bit, um, it struck me as not being right, but you, you could not get into the Services. You could get in [emphasis] into the Services, before you were eighteen, but not flying. You could not get into air crew unless you signed up. That’s what it was with me anyway. And to get her to — she just said, ‘You’re not going.’ And that was it. And in practice she’d made her mind up that I wasn’t going to join the aircrew. But my mother then at that time I don’t really think that she knew what air crew was. Honestly I do. I believe that. She didn’t know what air crew was in that respect.
IL: So, how did you get round your mum not signing?
RM: Um, oh, oh well, I waited for a bit, oh yeah, when she wouldn’t sign it. I mean, she was my mother and what could I do? I can’t, even in those days, I mean, well, in those days you had to do what your mother and father said, as far as I was concerned anyway, and she was, um, she was up in arms. I knew she held it — she sort of realised that I’d made my mind up. That’s, that’s what it was all about. And I wanted to, I wanted to join and I she — I can’t tell you what the paper was. It was a sheet of paper with — that you had to sign and I, I forged her signature. Yeah, I did. I practiced writing Clare Moore and, um, I don’t think to this day that she knew what I’d done except when my papers came. I mean, I don’t think she was aware that, I don’t think she was aware because I didn’t turn round to her and say I’d done it. I wouldn’t have done that. Well, I wouldn’t Sarah. And, er, as I say I took it back to that, down Chapel Road, that recruiting office there and just handed it in and, ‘We’ll let you know.’ Sort of thing.
IL: So, what happened when you eventually got called up and had to leave?
RM: And had to leave?
IL: Had, had to leave home. What did your mum do?
RM: Oh, well, that — well, my sister Dorothy, we were good friends, as brother and sister, and she still does to this day. She thinks I’m marvellous. You know, that sort of, her brother, and, um, well, I packed a little suitcase and all I packed in was probably a razor and whatever, you know, things you need, I suppose. I know at that time my mother was very reluctant to pack anything in. You didn’t need anything. You just had, I just had this little case and I guess she packed in soap, a flannel and things like that. That’s all there was, you know. Said, ‘Cheerio.’ And she said, ‘You can beggar off home.’ I remember that. And then when I got to the bottom of the road I looked back. Waving. And I got on a train and went to Victoria, Victoria across to — no, the RTO met us at, um, at Victoria Station. You went into the, what they called, the RTO, that’s the Railroad Transport Offices, the RTO, and I went in there and told them, like, and they took us by coach then to Cardington. And from Cardington — was there two days. That was awful really at Cardington because there were thou— there seemed hundreds, hundreds of airmen milling around in civvies, you know, and it was a funny carry on and it really surprised me, in as much as, over the Tannoy (they had a Tannoy) and it was like a homing thing and it called out on, on the microphone, ‘Is there a,’ and I’ll never forget this, ‘Is there a Raymond Moore here?’ And amongst all the hubbub, you know, I didn’t take a lot of notice and I hadn’t met anybody but I heard it again and again and I thought, ‘That’s me.’ Anyway, er, I found out where it was coming from and what it was — I can’t explain to you how they found out — but what it was somebody more knowledgeable than me and up to date and what it was you could go to and find, there was a list of some sort you, you could go and find and look down this list, like, anybody from Worthing? With their names on it and my name was on it and what — and they called in — oh, I can’t think of it. No good, can’t think, and what happened was, he called in. He was calling, ‘Raymond Moore.’ And I found him and found him and of course he came up and he said, ‘Oh, good. Thank God. There’s somebody here from Worthing.’ And he was a horror. I never liked him because, well, because it weren’t so much — I’d met him through the football and he came from a school called Sussex Road and I came from St Andrews and so there was a bit of competition of the boys from St Andrews and the boys from Sussex Road and I never liked him. And he said, oh, he said, ‘Oh, what school?’ I said, ‘I was at St Andrews.’ And, you know, St Andrews was a bit of a snobbish school. Well, it was a bit of a snobbish school, it was honestly. St Andrews it was. We thought we were a cut above Sussex Road and it was true and, um, but I didn’t want to be with him somehow and I sort of edged away from him and I never met him again. He was posted somewhere else you see. I was posted to Skegness to do — I was there about eight weeks — square bashing and that was good. There again, it was something new wasn’t it, you know? Marching up and down. I even remember the corporal’s name, Corporal Passant, P A S S A N T, Corporal Passant. And we were billeted in houses on the seafront. It was marvellous, weren’t it? Home from home. And he was a very nice corporal, marched us up and down then and I then — we was just thrilled. We didn’t — there was no rifle drill or anything like that. We just had to learn. Well, I knew how to march but he was a professional and he taught us how to march properly. I’ll tell you this instance. I don’t know whether it matters, whether it goes on there or not, but it’s an incident and it struck me because, being brought up Church of England and fairly religious, church parade on a Sunday morning. There was a great big, seemed to me dozens of us, and each one was a platoon with thirty two men in and so this corporal then, as it come down the line, and you had to stand to attention but he’d call out then, ‘Fall out all Roman, fall out all Roman Catholics and Jews and other denominations.’ [slight laugh] Honestly, that’s the gospel truth, as true as I sit here. So I’m stood there and I thought — and of course, all those that were Roman Catholics and Jews and other denominations (what the other denomination was would be Methodist I suppose or something like that) and I’m stood there like and one or two — I saw one or two — falling out and I thought, ‘What’s goes on here?’ I thought there was only one religion, or two at the most. That would be Roman Catholics and Church of England.’ And that’s the honest truth. That’s how, that’s how I was educated, although that the school I went to, St Andrews, they called it a higher — there’s a name for it.
Sarah: Church School? Or a —
RM: Yes, they called it — and it was high church. It was between Roman Catholic and Jews [?]. It was in between but that didn’t make any difference to religion but you know what puzzled me? Every Sunday morning that corporal used to say — and it was a common thing and it caught on. Suddenly all the Church of England suddenly became Roman Catholics or Jews, whatever. It was a peculiar carry on and that is the truth.
Sarah: So they could fall out.
IL: Yes. So, they didn’t have to go to church parade?
RM: Yeah and they just wandered off and that, that is true that, and from — of course when I finished at square bashing I was sent to Cosford and that was eighteen months’ course on engines and that was hard. That was really hard. That was a hard course because when you’re — it’s like, taking maths. If you take maths at school it’s hard if you don’t concentrate and, taking the course on Merlin engines and Hercules engines, it struck me as being — seeing a massive engine there — and you had to learn the theory of it. I knew nothing. I didn’t even know what it looked like and to be thrown into something like that it was hard and I had to work hard if I wanted to — I did. I worked very hard, very, very hard.
IL: So, was that classroom and practical based?
RM: Yes, it was. It’s true. The practice, I was absolutely useless. Even now, right throughout my married life, and I was married for sixty-six years, and I’m telling you, I couldn’t knock a nail in without hitting my thumb. Now, it’s a standing joke in the family. Sarah knows. Don’t you Sarah?
Sarah: My mum was very good at decorating.
RM: The girls decorated and the lads. I could never ever learn anything in the house. It didn’t matter. Now, I don’t, I think it wasn’t, I think I lacked the knowledge of even knocking a nail in. I could never and of course my wife was the opposite. She was marvellous, you know. She had to be.
IL: I have a similar arrangement. [slight laugh]
Sarah: Very capable, was my mum.
RM: Yes, she was. And then from Cosford, I did eighteen weeks there and was posted to Halton, which was, it was the — from going from a lower form of AC1, AC2, LAC you went up then a bit higher because at Halton you had to finish off what you did at Cosford, you know, you know what I mean? It was a bit higher class if you got through and Halton’s in Buckinghamshire and Halton was the sound, it was the grounding for the regular Air Force. RAF Halton it was and that was nice there. We got marched about to a band there. They had their own band. Marched up for our dinners, from classrooms, marched back down again. It was quite good actually.
IL: How long were you there for?
RM: How long? So that was eighteen weeks, so four and a half months. How long was I? Oh, sixteen weeks.
IL: Right.
RM: Sixteen weeks at Halton, yeah, and that was another grind. It was, because, as I say it was a bit, it was harder.
IL: And did you get any leisure time in these places?
RM: No. It was just — well, only if you put in — well, just as an example was, we were billeted in huts and the — it was quite good really. It kept you on your toes. I was never lazy in doing them things but there was about — how many would there be? About fourteen beds in the hut and every Friday night it was bull [?] night and you had to dust your, all around your bed, and I seemed to get a lot of fluff round my bed [slight laugh] you know and then you had to polish the floor and that [emphasis] was the main thing. And you had to polish the floor because you got marks and the sergeant, the flight sergeant, would come round and he’d come round and look and if your, if your hut was good you got a mark of, I don’t know how they worked it, nine out of ten or something, and so after a couple of months your hut — and you worked hard and polished and all the bull you put in to it, and if you came top of the class you could put in for a weekend pass but they weren’t daft were they? You imagine thirty-six hours. Forty-eight hours from Friday until 23.00 hours on the Sunday night and they called that forty-eight hours. In the meantime — and you had to pay your own fare. So, I was living in Worthing and to get to Wolverhampton you had to do an awful lot. It was awfully quick because when my dad used to come home on leave and my mother would say, in a letter, she’d say your father will be coming on leave on such and such a day and he was billeted not far away up at Balcombe Tunnel [?] and, um, he was — so, I got information then so the idea was then if our hut was up on the list and a lot of them, bearing in mind, they lived farther away than that and so you couldn’t afford it. You couldn’t afford it. Your, your pay, you got three shillings a day or something like that, and so if you wanted to go on a weekend you had to save up to get your train fare. And so I would then write a letter and it was a dodge with me because when I wrote a letter to, to which you just had to write a note, ‘Dear Sir.’ Your commanding officer, ‘Dear Sir, I may request, can I request a pass because my father is coming home?’ It was a, it was a squid [?] wasn’t it? And put it in and to put a letter into the orderly room, ‘Dear Sir.’ I, I used to have it off pat saying that I was, um, how did I put it? Dear, Sir, Dear Sir. Oh, it was, it was a mushy letter and I always used to put in as my father is coming home on leave, and that was it, and because if you had a relative like that, you know what I mean? And so, any, any leave that I got that was the letter that I used to put in to the commanding officer, ‘Dear Sir, please may I put forward an application for a forty-eight hour pass to see my father who’s home on leave.’ And I used to put he’s a sergeant major in the eighth battalion of the Royal Fusiliers or something and I it went off pat, of course you did, and I got a forty-eight hour pass and it was the only time I screwed them [laugh] well, I did, you know. It was that little bit that — it was good was that.
IL: It’s not bad to get some time off.
RM: And then — but after I finished a Halton, that course there, I went down to St Athan and that was my final course and of course that was, that was a hard one there because for six weeks or eight weeks you had to write down the theory. It got down to the theory part of flying, the theory of flight, your engine power, and you didn’t even know what you were going to fly actually in them days. And there was another interesting thing that is worth putting down that I, I came top, or we’ll say I came nearly top. I know I was, I know, but at that time of course I was going to be a flight engineer and that was all there was to it. I was going to fly and that meant to finish it off I was going to be good and I intended, that was what I intended. Anyway, we were waiting, I’d got my tapes and braiding [?] that was good sewed it on and it came through then, we were in the billets one night and a corporal it was, the corporal came round and he said, he read four names out and my name was among them and where, where I was at St Athan, um, he said, he read four names out and he said, ‘Now then.’ He said, ‘This is optional.’ Have you ever heard of a Sunderland Flying Boat? No? Have you?
IL: I have, yes.
RM: Well, you know, well — and four of us were picked out then and this was a bit of excitement and they took us down to the, er, Solent on the Southampton waters to give us a trip in a Sunderland Flying Boat to see whether we liked it or not. And, oh boy that, you know, and to fly for the first time. But they were massive. To me they were massive. To be inside one of these things and they carried a crew of thirteen, you know. And, anyway they ferried us out to this Sunderland and, um, we climbed aboard and all the time, you know, I was very nearly messing myself because of the size of it and going up the ladder to get inside it and it was sort of going — it was a lovely gentle — on the Solent, you know, and I thought, ‘There’s something wrong. I don’t know what I’m doing here.’ And I could have refused. It was just something that being in the first four that it was a little present for those that were doing it and, er, I admit, I must admit I didn’t want to go then. And anyway we get inside and it was massive. I’ll never forget it. I mean, where they cooked they had a stove and everything and where they cooked it was as wide as this was. It was massive inside it. I was lost. I remember sitting there. We didn’t have a harness. They didn’t give us a harness. I was just sitting there and I was looking round. And they started the engines up. They were Hercules, no, no, Pegasus, they were Pegasus 16s and, er, then they started up and we were rolling forward and, do you know? I’m not kidding you, bump, bump, bump, and, and I couldn’t see out. All I could see, like, the pilot was up here but the, the feeling of going on, on the water in this blooming great flying boat. And, er anyway there were four of us there and none of us were very — I think all of us looking a bit green. Anyway, we took off and we just circled Southampton and Portsmouth, down there, and we come into land. Well, coming into land was the same as taking off virtually that was but, of course, if you got used to it like everything else — and we landed, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. Anyway when we went, they took us back to, um, we got back to St Athan and well, straight away, like, and we had to sort of say in front of those that were in charge of us down there, they had to say then, ‘Did you like it?’ And I said, I remember saying like, I said, ‘Is that what we’ve got to fly on?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to fly.’ Because honestly the take-off and landing on a Sunderland, honestly you could not understand, and when you look at Southampton, you know, when you look at the, look at the water. It all looks lovely and calm, you know, and you think — but by Jove I’ll tell you it did frighten me. Anyway, we got back and then we got back we were posted and posted then up to Yorkshire. That’s the first I saw of it. Posted to Eastmoor and there we landed at York and we got a truck there and there was thirteen of us. Thirteen flight engineers. And that was the hard bit. Do you know, out of those thirteen there was only about four of us finished. That was, that was hard.
IL: So, did you get to know those people?
RM: Well, when we went to the squadron we — well, Eastmoor was where they put all the crews in a hangar and there was a pilot, and he’d have his navigator, and the pilot would walk round and if you liked, er, like, if, if you liked a fella or you saw him and he saw [unclear] the pilot would go up to them and he’d say, ‘Have you got a crew?’ And this is gospel truth. They were — and some of the Canadians of course they knew one another from school, coming from Canada and things, so they weren’t so bad and I — and of course, when I was, went there it was awful. Well, those billets up there, the blankets were wet. We broke a table up to light the fire. It, it was about midnight when we got there from York and we spilt up and there was about six of us into this hut. It was awful. There, there was no fire. The blankets were wet. Anyway, um, it was awful to move in there. Well, in the daytime, as I say, we went into this big hangar where we were crewed up. And I remember I was sat there and I thought, ‘Nobody wants me.’ And it’s true. I was sat on a table. I was just sat there swinging my legs like. I was looking round, and I thought, I was hoping somebody would come up to me and say, ‘Have you got a crew?’ Or something. Anyway, I sat there and I saw them keep disappearing and I felt very lonely and I thought ‘Nobody wants me.’ Anyway, this, this pilot officer comes up to me and he tapped me on the shoulder and he said, ‘Have you got a crew?’ And I thought — I could have embraced him. I said, ‘No, I haven’t.’ He said, ‘Would you like to join my crew?’ I said, ‘Yes, I would.’ Well, he said, ‘I’m Pilot Officer Bryson.’ And he said, ‘Come with me and I’ll introduce you.’ And he introduced me. And I was the last one in the crew and he said, ‘This is Peter Lewinsky, navigator, Alex Trench was the bomb aimer (he was the Yank that did that book), Peter Lewinsky, er, Alex Trench was the bomb aimer, er, Reg Galloway was the wireless operator. Mid-upper gunner was Ralph Revlin [?] and the rear gunner was Harold Bowles.’ And that was how I was introduced to them.
IL: And so were they all, were they all, were they all British or —
RM: No, they were Canadian.
IL: They were all Canadian? Were you the only non-Canadian?
RM: Yes.
IL: Right.
RM: Yeah, they, they sort of — well, I was the youngest in the crew. The rest were twenty-one. The navigator was twenty-five and the wireless op was twenty-five. They were two of the eldest. The rest of them were twenty-one and I was just nineteen but they, they were marvellous really. They very nearly fostered me, you know. It was true. It was. Well, it was marvellous really accept I wasn’t their friend. When we were coming back they all smoked and so, when we were coming back and when I —
Sarah: Do you mean when you were setting out, when you were doing a, a return flight when you dropped bombs? When you say when you were coming back —
RM: Oh, we were coming back from — yeah, well that’s another story. They — what is was I was in charge of the oxygen and I didn’t smoke at the time (I did on occasion) and the skipper didn’t smoke but all the rest of them, it was like being in a factory. When we were flying, when we were — funnily enough they used to shout out. The rear gunner used to shout out and we’d be at eleven thousand feet and I used to take — and so I’d turn the oxygen off at ten thousand feet, you see, but I was in charge. But we’d be coming down, coming back, that was the worst bit because those that smoked needed a fag. That’s all there was so all they needed was a cig and so, we’d be at eleven thousand feet and then it started, the rear gunner, ‘Ray, Ray. How about turning the oxygen off.’ And we’d be at eleven thousand feet and it was the law but a flying law that you didn’t turn the oxygen off until you were down to ten thousand feet. That was the oxygen height, about twelve thousand feet, ten thousand feet, and so I used to turn to the skipper and I used to tap him because he would hear on, you see, and I used to tap him on the shoulder and he just used to sit there and he used to do just this and so I never answered them because, well, it was silly and then you would hear another one and the wireless operator, he was real — he was like a father, and he used to say, a bit subtler, ’Ray.’ [sound of aircraft] You know, and we’d be down then, coming down then, ‘Ray, Raymond, Raymond.’ And more sympathetic, ‘Turn the oxygen off Ray, Raymond. Turn the oxygen off.’ And so I used, used to turn to the skipper and I used tap him on the shoulder, and he was a bugger was old Bryson, the skipper. He was really stuck to it. At ten thousand feet turn the oxygen off, like, and they can — and it was like a furnace in there, you know, the cigarette smoke. They all smoked.
Sarah: Did they not swear at you occasionally?
RM: Oh, oh yeah. Yeah, it come to being not being pleasant, you know, ‘Turn that — turn that oxygen off. Turn.’ And, er, yeah, it was good fun.
IL: So, once you were crewed up you went to Linton?
RM: Yes.
IL: OK. So was this — so what was Linton?
RM: Linton was the — there were two squadrons at Linton: 408 and 426. That’s about it. There was sixteen to a squadron there so there was about thirty, thirty-two, thirty-two bombers all to take off and land.
Sarah: And you used to stay at Beningbrough didn’t you?
RM: Ah, well we were, we were billeted. We weren’t billeted at Linton. We were billeted at Beningham.
Sarah: Beningham.
IL: Oh, Beningham Hall. Very posh.
RM: Ah, well —
Sarah: We went there a couple of years ago didn’t we? Had a re-visit.
RM: Yes. Sarah took me there. There it is, look. That was when we were — yeah, there were six of us there. That was when we were old. 1987.
Sarah: It was a reunion.
RM: And it was a reunion, yes. They came all the way from Canada. 1987 that was. Oh yeah, they came over two or three times didn’t they, Sarah?
IL: So, when you, so you when you moved, when you first went to — so what, what year was it and what, when did you first start operations?
RM: Linton, we were at Linton in the November ‘43. I did my first trip on — to Berlin. That was a Berlin and I did my first trip to Berlin with Flight Lieutenant Brice. I flew spare. One of the — his engineer — on the 28th of January. That was my first trip to Berlin. That was one of the most unpleasant I had because they all the crew were new, weren’t they? And his engineer, he’d gone, you know, LMF. You know what I’m saying?
IL: Yep.
RM: And his engineer was Australian and poor chap he’d gone. He’d done seven trips and he just, he just packed it in, like, and so me, being clever, I had more flying hours in than any other flight engineer, being clever and the CO, Squadron — no, er, Jacobs at that time, said, Wing Commander Jacobs and said (you didn’t have a choice), ‘You’re flying tonight with Flight Lieutenant Brice.’ And that was my first trip.
IL: So, between November and January what were you actually — was this sort of — you were training as a crew?
RM: Yes. Oh, yes. We did a lot of flying. Well, we only flew if weather was on. I mean, between November and December that year, um, we didn’t do a lot of flying. It wasn’t until after Christmas, into January, that we concentrated on flying. Flying — I don’t mean operational because well, we weren’t, just weren’t on the list to operate and then that was January the 28th. That was my first Berlin with a new crew. That was not very pleasant because I was new to the crew. Mind, he give me a good recommendation. He told my skipper that I was a very good flight engineer and that, that meant a lot to me, er, and so, and then a couple of days later, couple of nights later, all the crew went. That was their — it was my second but their first. It was the 30th of January and we all flew as a crew. That was our first and that was another Berlin, another biggie, the big city, and from then on, you know, every other night, whenever they decided to fly us operationally, you know.
IL: So, so how many, how many operations? Was it a tour of thirty or —
RM: Thirty-one. I did thirty one because I put in that — I should have been screened at thirty but the rest of the crew had to do an extra one so I flew, I, I said I would fly the last one. That was to Cannes I think it was. That was —
IL: Did you have any, um, did you have any, um, interesting experiences or narrow escapes when you were over Germany on, on operations?
RM: Did we ever?
IL: Did you have any, um, narrow escapes? Did you have any, anything you’d like to tell us?
RM: Oh, I’d have to look in there because when you — like the first op I did with Flight Lieutenant Brice. We were both strangers to one another but every movement in that cockpit he relied on me. I’m not bragging. Every movement that that pilot had to do to that plane he had to do it through me, operationally, whatever it was. I don’t mean flying. To do appertaining to the air force, aircraft but flying, when we were flying, and you’re cruising along and you have to be prepared, especially when you fly, you get over the coast and you’re flying to France, flying over France. And the first Berlin that we did, I could never understand it because when you went into briefing there was a map that big, and then the CO used to come in, and there was a curtain and he used to pull the curtain, and you knew by the tone of the crew — there’d be all the crews in the briefing room — and you could hear them, ‘Oh, God. Another, another big city.’ You know. And of course, I was still a sprog wasn’t I? Going in with the crew, this new crew, and so when the curtain was drawn back all you heard was the moans, you know, ‘Oh, God. The big city.’ And I was sat there. I remember sitting there with the crew that I was with and they’d had seven operations between them so I was just a sprog but and so — but I knew my job. That’s what I was going to say. I knew my job as a flight engineer. I knew that I knew my job. That’s what I’m trying to say. I did know so that when we were, when we first started up and things like that I knew how to start everything up, I knew what tanks to be on before take-off, I knew what flaps to put down, the undercarriage and everything like that before we took off and, and so all he did was fly. But don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean that with any belittling sense because they were, they were magnificent machines and they needed good men to fly. That’s what I’m saying and they did and that’s how the crew, that’s how, that’s how you, that’s where the camaraderie came from, no doubt about that. And so when we, we taxied round the perimeter and then we were ready for take-off and you had to do pre-flight preparations before he opened the throttle and the take-off the same. He never said a word, didn’t the pilot, because I did everything for him in that respect accept he flew it. He was, he was the man. He flew it and he was a blooming good pilot as well.
Sarah: Were you excited on your first trip?
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: Were you excited on your first trip?
RM: Yes, I was [cough]. Well, there’s not much you can do, you know. We took off and at a thousand feet the pilot would say to the navigator, ‘Can you give me a course?’ That was just first course out and the first course — and what puzzled me was, what I was going to say was, what puzzled me was, looking at the map, I thought, ‘That’s funny. We’re going to Germany. We should be going to Germany.’ And Berlin is, Berlin was down there and I thought, ‘That’s funny. We’re going up here.’ And we flew over Norway and Den— and, and Sweden. That was how we went, up there, went up there like that and across there, and I thought, ‘What the hell are we flying up there? Why can’t we fly straight to Berlin and back again.’ But you’d blooming soon find out why they did it because you avoided all these little — I can show them to you on there, like, um, Bremen, one or two hot spots just, just inside there, all the big German ports there, and they were hot. They could shoot you down like a, you know, if — so the idea was to take us across to Norway and Sweden and you went, we went across like that and we turned, we took a turn to starboard. So, I suppose we’d be flying east, 2.40 or something like that, and then come down to Berlin, come down like that, and bomb Berlin and then another. All the routes are in there, you know, going to and from the target, and — but that first trip, the first excitement I got really that was excitement because you were looking out for fighters weren’t you and things like that. You were, and the fire over Berlin that fascinated you, there’s no doubt about it. You couldn’t, you weren’t supposed to look, you see. All the aircrew, once you got used to it you weren’t, you weren’t, you weren’t forced to, you couldn’t help, you saw this massive area that was alight and you couldn’t — in my blister (there was a blister in the Lanc) and I used to — I was looking down like that and my skipper give me a punch on the shoulder. He said, ‘You don’t really want to be looking down there.’ He said, ‘You ought to be looking up there for fighters.’ And just, just, the fire in the front of us, it could have been — I could never estimate up there how near we were and all of a sudden there was a massive explosion and a Lancaster or Halifax I think, I don’t know what it was, had been blown up in front of us. Now that brought me to realise that I was we were in the middle of the war, you know what I mean? There was nothing on the way and all of a sudden before the target this, this aircraft blew up and I knew, I realised then, you know, that that was war and we lost thirty-five aircraft that night. And so we lost four on the way so when you got back to briefing, um, that was the hardest part, when you got back to briefing. I’m not saying so much on that trip. And then there was a big board up and it said ‘late’ er, whoever it was, name Frank or any, any one of them down there, ‘late’, ‘arrival’, ‘depart’, ‘arrival’ and, and the time to put down and if you knew who your mate, we’d call him, was flying with you you looked for his pilot. His pilot’s name would be on the board, missing, and so you’d wait. If, if one of them, they called him Rodman [?] and he was — Harry Gilbert was his flight engineer and he should never have been flying because this is what happens and when he used, he used to come up to me because we were good friends. And I’d been through a course with him and I’m not saying I wasn’t frightened, it was ridiculous, but when I met him and he come in and his skipper was Flight Lieutenant Rodman and he used to come up to me and he used to say, ‘How are you Ray?’ And he’d light a fag and he was like this and I thought to myself — and he did, he got the chop, after he done about ten, but he was like this and, ‘How are you Ray?’ You know, ‘You alright?’ And I said, ‘For Christ’s sake Harry, give up.’ And I, I used to do, ‘For Christ’s sake.’ I said, ‘I did have a rough trip but I’m here and so are you.’ And it was the only way you could talk to Harry. He should never have flown, never have flown. Every time he come back and he used to make for me in the briefing room and, I mean it wasn’t as I was brave or anything, but I knew him and he was like this. He come from — he was a Lancashire lad, old Harry Gilbert but he was like this, lighting a fag.
IL: So what’s your definition of a rough trip?
RM: A rough trip?
IL: Yeah. A rough trip. What would have happened on a rough trip?
RM: Right. It was called “The Tale of Strong Winds”. I can go right through that with you because it was the worst trip I ever, it was [emphasis] the worst trip that was. I can talk to you right from there until we came back. Berlin, it was the last one, 24th of March 1944, and the take-off time would be in there. It might have been 4 o’clock in the afternoon. [sound of aircraft] Yeah, it would have been about 4 o’clock. It was March so, yeah, so we go to briefing [sound of aircraft] and, as I say, look at the map and hear the groans, big city again, and it’s a long way. It was an eight hour trip there and back and that’s a long time.
Sarah: Eight hours there?
RM: No, eight hours. Oh, no Sarah. There and back. And we took off, and Met, Met hadn’t said anything about anything. It was just an ordinary. We took off and on that route up there, we went over, going over the North Sea, and it was fine but we had a tail wind going over the North Sea and we did nothing. At that time of the year you did often get what they call a, a southern wind. It was like a south wind and the, the way we were taking off on that runway, we had nearly a tail wind. It was north and south runway as we called it and we took off. It was all fine. Settled down. What I noticed was we were going over Norway and Sweden again but that meant to say it was fairly — and we had a nice tail wind and our ground speed was about hundred and fifty which was pretty fast when you’re on climbing power and it was pretty fast was that and I thought, ‘That’s funny.’ And the skipper said to me, he said, ‘Jesus. We’ve got a tail wind.’ Well, the wireless operator had what they called an aerial and you let out an aerial and it gave us the wind. [background noise] It was like a wind sock and it told you the wind and he, he come back and he said, ‘That’s funny.’ He said, ‘The wind was about fifty or sixty.’ Which was a bit above average. When we got up to the top and turned to Norway, turned over to Norway — I mean, they were all, all these clever fellas in the crew, were talking about winds. You know, I wasn’t a bit interested to be honest. All I was only interested in was the aircraft we were flying [loud background noise] and so, you know, the winds increased, the wireless operator called, ‘The winds increased up to eighty.’ And, oh Jeez, you know, I heard them go round, the pilot, it was [emphasis] fast at eighty miles an hour and as we turned round and, and come down to Berlin I heard the navigator shout in that funny language, ‘Jesus Christ.’ The winds had blown on a what they called a reciprocal so that when we’d reached there and all of a sudden — you can see them on the maps — and the wind had blown literally where we were right up in the north there and turned down to Berlin and the wind had blown us, so instead of — and we had a tail wind. We had a tail wind to take-off and a tail wind going down to the target, Berlin. Our, our ground speed was something like three hundred and odd miles an hour. That was what our ground speed was and that, believe you me — and we had that tail wind up our backside — and what had happened was it blew us past Berlin, about fifty miles. We’d no control. And winds, as I heard some of them bragging about winds being a hundred and fifty miles an hour, and I, I think ours was, we recorded about a hundred and twenty-five, hundred and thirty and it blew us straight past Berlin. So, you can imagine, nearly all the bomber force being blown past Berlin and we had to turn round then, in the face of all these aircraft coming down, and we had to turn round then to go back and bomb Berlin. In other words, it, it sounds ridiculous, but that’s what happened and so when we turned round — and we lost seventy-five that night — and so when we turned round and, and air ground speed had dropped down to forty. That’s how heavy the wind was and it was horrendous really, because when you come to think, you turned round and you had a head wind and it was like standing still, and the pilot kept saying to me — now as an engineer I did know that much, that we were flying [ringing sound] we were flying at engine speeds of climbing speeds and, and flying into a wind, so I knew then — and our maximum power, we could only put maximum power on at about twenty-eight fifty revs plus eight and a quarter pounds of boost so we could only put that power on. I knew that and he kept saying to me, ‘We want more power.’ And it’s a wonder he didn’t strike me and I wouldn’t do it because at that power you could only do it for five minutes otherwise you’d have burnt, you’d have burnt — you know what I’m saying and it was elementary that. But — and air ground speed had been reduced to about forty miles an hour but that wasn’t the point doing that job. Can you imagine half the bomber force coming up and half of it coming down? I mean the aircraft, you could see them. You didn’t know what to do. It was horrendous, it really was, and you just stood there, and poor old Brice, the skipper, he just had to fly straight and level unless you saw something coming towards you. To turn round — well, we would have been blown down and so, and us flying back up and we bombed Berlin. Right, we bombed Berlin and glad to get away and we turned — the navigator gave us a course and it would be, well, I’ll make a figure. I think it was about 090, which was west, flying west, and was fine. We turned round and came back. Now, briefing, they said keep away from Roscos, Roscop —
Sarah: Rostock.
RM: Rostock, Rostock and Bremen, which were — we knew you had to miss them on the way out so you had to miss them on the way down. But with all the excitement that had gone on, and it wasn’t the navigator’s fault because all the wind up there, and we got a bit blown a bit off course. But we were cruising along nicely and all of a sudden bang! And they had then, they were clever you know, were Jerry, they knew we were bombing and they had their defences [clears throat] and it was, what they called a ‘blue searchlight’, and it was a master searchlight, and it hit us like that and what had happened was we had drifted to Rostock and Bremen and that nasty bit of an area down in that quarter there, and that searchlight, he cooked us and he hit us, and it was a blue, it was a blue, and within five minutes, maybe less than that, and there was about twenty searchlights coned us like that. Now, it, it was one of those experiences where you couldn’t see, you couldn’t see nothing, you just had to — he was there and all of a sudden he, he started to what we called ‘corkscrew’ and he shoved it, shoved the nose down, of course as he did it, he didn’t tell anybody he was doing it. He was the pilot and he stuck the nose down and, of course, gravity and as he stuck the nose down like that we went down about five thousand feet in a flash and he stuck the nose down. He screwed it round and stuck the nose down. I went straight up. I went straight up and the, and the bombardier, like, in front he was laid down. He was laid on his back and he was laid down and the language because he wondered what was up because he was in mid-air and that was the first time and navigator was cursing. He was on, he had one of those wheelie seats, he could move around in that little bit of space and, of course, he had his knees underneath the, his desk and his papers, er, as I say, as I went up and all of his nav papers and bits of his machinery was, was flying up in the air. The wireless operator was the only one of us who had any sense. Of course, poor rear gun— gunners, you know, were really thrown about because you can imagine what it was like to be thrown about like that and not knowing where you were and, and the audio was over the intercom, bad language and what was happening? And where are we? And that went on. I mean, for a pilot, and we, we both weighed the same. He weighed nine and a half stone and so did I so you imagine he was skinny, he wasn’t very big. Did you ever meet him Sarah?
Sarah: No. I didn’t.
RM: He wasn’t very big. He was about nine stone and he was five seven and a half in height so there was nothing and that was a big aircraft to throw about, something like twenty-two tonnes, even though it was tear [?] weight and, and anyway that was on the way down. On the way back that was when you felt G. Come back up from five thousand feet, pulling up, and he shouted out to me and I was all scattered brained and he shouted out to me, ‘Ray, Ray, Ray. Give us a hand.’ And so I went and got hold of the stick with him and we were like this and put me feet against that to pull. There was two of us pulling, pulled it out, but that wasn’t it. The searchlights were still on us. They would not let go and we were like that and then down the other side. I bet we were like that. He was flying up and down and trying to get loose from them, lose, lose them, and they were there. But they were there, that master searchlight, and it was an awful experience. It was a dreadful, dreadful experience and, anyway, just in the distance our, our rear gunner called out — they’d, what they done was, as we’d been flying and corkscrewing all over they copped onto another Lancaster and you could see it in the distance, this Lancaster. But they, they’d turned, they’d got hold of him. We just managed to get out of that because what happened after that was fighters. As soon as they, as soon as they — what used to happen was they would suddenly stop and so you were in complete darkness and that’s when the fighter boys used to come in. I think it says there we were attacked by fighters and anyway that wasn’t the end of the story. We were just levelled out and, and he grabbed hold of me, did the pilot, and he got hold of my intercom and he pulled out my intercom and he plugged my intercom into his intercom and he said, and he, he stood up and he said, you know, ‘Get into my seat.’ And, er, he sort of half dragged me, plugged it in. Well, as I passed him, as we were passing the seats, I saw him and he looked, even in the light that there was there, the sweat was literally pouring out of him. I never realised and never thinking like what he’d done and he’d been doing this for about twenty minutes, and that’s a lot in a Lancaster, going up and down and trying to — and, and so there I am, I’m sat in the cockpit. Well, bloody Lancaster, halfway across Germany and I’m sat there and the navigator said, ‘Alter course.’ And I just leaned forward and set the compass [cough] the old — and just set it and just set a bit of rudder, that was all, just to turn it on to whatever it was (I’ve forgotten) and flew it and not a sound, nobody spoke, nobody said anything and poor old Brice, he’d literally had it. And there I am, all quiet there, flying along there. Nothing to flying an aircraft, you know, it’s like driving a car up the M1. You just have to just sit there and hope that there’s no fighters and then it occurred to me I thought, ‘Christ what happens if, if we get attacked? What am I going to do? How am I going to corkscrew out of this?’ And Brice was just stood at the side of me and he kept patting me on the shoulder [slight laugh] and I thought, ‘There’s no good patting me on the shoulder if anything happens brother.’ Anyway, we was flying along. We must have been flying for about half an hour and nothing happened and that is — you, you couldn’t believe really, honestly, after all those experiences that I should be allowed to fly and I flew halfway across Germany. We weren’t far off the French coast and that’s how far I — I didn’t fly the thing. It just flew on its own. All I did was steering it. That’s the honest truth but nobody spoke and the only thing that upset me was nobody else in the crew knew what had happened, that I flew that aircraft. I thought he would have mentioned it, that when we sat down at briefing, ‘My flight engineer did this.’ And he never said, he never told none of those crew and from that day to this that I flew that aircraft back except when we were— well, they didn’t know and when we were coming up you know and the navigator, I think it was the navigator at that time, he tapped me on the shoulder and I got out. But I’d flown but that was the worst experience, one of the worst, and we hadn’t see anything really but —
IL: And that was your last —
RM: No, no.
IL: Sorry, I thought you said it was your last, sorry.
RM: No, no, no, no, no, that was Berlin. That was 24th of March and they called that the “Night of the Winds”. We lost seventy-five that night.
IL: My goodness.
Sarah: On, on a little lighter note do I, do I remember something about bomb doors not opening?
RM: No, I can’t — not bomb doors.
Sarah: No?
RM: No. Oh, we were attacked by night fighters, we got hit by flak, attacked by night fighters. That was the things that happened.
Sarah: Did you not have to come back once because you couldn’t drop some bombs? On a lighter note.
RM: Oh, right. This trip was Dortmund. Dortmund – Emms Canal they called it.
Sarah: There. We got it there.
RM: Dortmund, Dortmund Emms Canal. Right, and that was another, that was a hot spot, Dortmund but, um, experience, yes. We got into B-Baker and I started, I started the engines up, routine, er, before we left, before we left — what do you call it? Well, before we left where they were parked, like, we got in. The idea was to start the engines up, rev them up a bit, and I started the, the starboard engine up, one of them, and I just checked them, what they called a mag drop because, er, luckily it had two mag and what you had to do was run them up to a fifteen hundred and switch one of these mag drops. If you got a mag drop over three or four hundred revs there’s something wrong, you got a — anyway, I was testing them and called, I said to the skipper, I said, ‘It’s not right.’ I said, ‘This starboard inner. There’s too big a mag drop.’ And he said, ‘Oh.’ I said, ‘I’ll open it up again.’ Anyway, I reckoned to open it up to clear anything and give it a good boost, like, and, and no, it didn’t work. So, we stopped the engines, called up control, starboard inner US. Fine, we thought. Every— everybody in the crew thought we’re going to have a night off. Come over from control, um, ‘Bryson, Flight Lieutenant, Flying Officer Bryson there’ll be transport. They’re going to take, they’ll take you to C-Charlie.’ Oh, so we’ll have to go after all. Transport comes along. And imagine having to getting in and out of a Lancaster, across the old spar there and it was hard work. You’d have to take off all your, your, um, parachute like and your harness and things like that. So the transport comes, broom, broom, across to C-Charlie and it was cold and it didn’t feel like your aircraft and straight away there’s a bit of, ‘Who did this aircraft belong to?’ ‘Oh. It belongs to —.’ ‘Oh Christ, its cold.’ And you heard them moaning like and as to what each department they got into, they’d say, ‘Oh, it’s a dirty place.’ You know, the gunners were saying. And anyway we get in, starts the engines up, everything’s fine and navigator — and this is navigation equipment I’m going to tell you and it was called GEE and H2S. Anyway, he’s fiddling about and there’s Bryson and I up front giving it some boost to clear the oil and do all this sort of thing before take-off. We hadn’t left dispersal and navigator calls up, ‘Jesus Christ,’ he says. He said, ‘The GEE’s not working and H2S.’ So we sat there waiting. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Oh.’ We knew then we were going to have a night off. That was the second aircraft. Not on your Nelly. So, they send somebody over and well, to repair anything like that — they were fantastic machines, you know, you’re able to navigate a lot easier, let’s put it that way, with these machines, like, they were operating. Called up control. We thought for sure we were going to have a night off, um, ‘Flying Officer Bryson within C-Charlie. We’re sending out transport that’s going take you to Z-Zebra.’ So, you can imagine us, like, us and that belonged to Flight Lieutenant Franklin. So, transport comes along. What date was that Sarah? Dortmund?
Sarah: Dortmund? 22nd of Feb ’44.
RM: Feb? February?
Sarah: Oh, It says at the side, ‘abort, ice’.
RM: Right, so, we then had to be carted, miserable, returned to miserable then, the crew, ‘Jesus. What the — what are we doing? We should be in York by now.’ Gets into Z-Zebra, same procedure, and we knew the skipper of this aircraft. He wasn’t flying that night. Get into it. This is the third time and tempers were really flaring because, because they were all taking off. Didn’t wait for us, and so they were all taking off, and so I was following to see if we could get in and Bryson, my skipper, and me we never had a wrong word. I did everything he said. All he had to do was fly. And I mean, that’s the way we were. You had to work like that. And anyway, everything was fine and we starts off, and by that time we had to get a move on. It was half an hour since the rest of them had gone and that was bad. That was bad. That was really bad because you wanted to be with the main group, you see. You get over Germany and there’s one of you, you’ve had it. You’ve had it. There’s no doubt about that. [sound of aircraft] Anyway, we took off and we had to get a move on. There was a front, what they called a ‘front’, moving over the North Sea and I was giving him all the power that we could and we weren’t climbing, we were climbing about a hundred and sixty, I suppose, hundred and seventy or something, and the old Hercules engines there, they powered us up there. We were climbing and this front. We got a, what was it? A QDM or QFE saying this front was in and we had to climb above it because it was, excuse me, we was up at ten thousand feet and we had to climb above it. It was forty miles into the North Sea and he knew, did the skipper that I wasn’t going to push it anymore, because there’s always something at the other end of it, in my opinion. That’s how I worked it out. If we’d had pushed it we would have gone up to maximum power and it wouldn’t have done the engines any good. And we were trying to climb and all of a sudden I looked out and there was ice on the main plane like this and you could hear it, the props, straining again the plane, you know, and I looked out and I thought, ‘Oh dear.’ I really thought that we’d had it because we were struggling to move and I, I think our air speed, our air speed [emphasis] had been reduced to hundred and thirty, hundred and forty, and stalling was about ninety, ninety-five, something like that, and — but we plodded on and he called up did Bryson and he said, ‘Well, what are we going to do fellas? Are we going to turn back or are we going to press on, press on regardless?’ And all of a sudden as he said that the old Lanc give, gave a lurch because the ice on the, on the main plane, I’m not kidding, it was about six inches. It was that thick and we could never — we were struggling and all of a sudden it gave a lurch and he had the common sense did Bryson (well, he was a good pilot) and he, he all of a sudden, he stuffed the nose down and give it some starboard twists and we were going straight down. And all, then all of a sudden, as we got down a bit normal, like we were going down, and our air speed is about three hundred and fifty I think going down, but we were at ten thousand feet, eleven thousand feet, and, as I say, stuck the nose down and we just had to hope and all of a sudden as we hit warmer air, warm, warmer air, it flew off and it was a marvellous sight to see, because it flew off the plane did the ice and rubbish, you know, and also you couldn’t see because all the windows had, had, er, snowed-up. We couldn’t see out, couldn’t see where we going, and — but fortunately I had a little bit of knowledge and I remembered that in all those — never had to experience it — and there was a little what they called an alca— what did it contain? That fluid that we used to, they put in engines to stop them — coolant.
IL: Anti-freeze?
RM: Pardon?
IL: Anti-freeze.
RM: Anti-freeze.
IL: Ethylene glycol.
RM: And I was fiddling down as we were going down and I was fiddling down, around. It was down near his bloody rudder, and I remember I said, ‘Get your leg out of the way.’ Because it wasn’t a pump like that and what had happened was if you released the spring it pumped as it came up, not as you went down, and all of a sudden it cleared. The windows went just like that and it cleared but it didn’t make any difference. We were going down and then it started and then of course the weight. We had — it will tell you in there how much, how many bombs we, what we had and we’d have about fourteen thousand pounds of bombs on going straight down. I think we had a cookie that night. It will tell you there somewhere Sarah. Dortmund. Look down the left hand side.
Sarah: Yeah. I’ve got Dortmund there.
RM: And look across. No.
Sarah: I’m not sure. You know where to look. I don’t, dad.
RM: Well, here look. Where’s Dortmund?
Sarah: There.
RM: Right.
Sarah: There.
RM: Right, here look. What number is it? Seventeen.
Sarah: Yeah. Oh, there. Sorry, I’m with you.
RM: Eleven one hundred pounders and five five hundreds. And that’s a lot of bombs.
IL: A big load, yeah.
RM: That’s a lot of bombs. We could carry fifteen one thousand pounders, eight thousand pounders, twelve, twenty-two. Anyway, he says, as we were going down, he called out to the — he said to the bomb aimer, he said, ‘I’m opening the bomb doors.’ Talking to the bomb aimer, he said, ‘Trench. Drop the, drop the bombs.’ Now, protocol. You weren’t allowed to drop your bombs less than forty miles out to sea in the North Sea. Now that was law [emphasis]. That was what they told you to do and you had to be forty miles. Well, can you imagine? We’re out in the North Sea and I remember he called up and he said to the navigator, ‘Where are we nav?’ Or something like that and the navigator says, ‘How the bloody hell do I know if we’re forty miles out to sea.’ Because we’d gone through all this procedure and he called out to the bomb aimer, ‘Trench, I’m opening the bomb doors.’ And when he — well, that’s what I must have said to you Sarah about the bomb doors and he, he selected the bomb doors to be opened and they, with all the frost and they jammed and we were still going down you see and, and he kept pumping up and he said to me, ‘What do I do Ray?’ I said, ‘I haven’t a clue. I have nothing to do with the bomb doors.’ And he’s here, this side like, and all of a sudden they opened and we were going down and that was a nasty [emphasis] experience because you didn’t know what was going to happen. You were hoping then, and a wing and a prayer, and all of a sudden the bomb doors opened. You felt them jar because of the drag and all of a sudden we slowed down a bit, down to — I don’t know and old Trench called out, ‘Bombs gone.’ And we dropped all those [slight laugh] dropped all those bombs into the North Sea and that was a great relief. And so, back to base. When we got back to base, instead of taking us back to briefing, there was no debriefing, and instead the CO told us that he had to see the CO did the skipper so we drove round in this, er, in the wagon. We were inside the wagon and he stopped outside flight control, where the skipper was, where the CO was, and you wouldn’t believe it but our skipper got a rocket because we, we’d, um —
Sarah: You returned safely but you’d not done —
IL: Jettisoned.
Sarah: You’d not done your job.
RM: What did we call it? You wrote it out.
IL: Aborted.
Sarah: Aborted.
RM: Aborted, yes, and we’d aborted, and he got a right rocket did our skipper. He should have done this. He should have done that. And we couldn’t fly. You were literally came to a standstill. I mean, I was up there with him and it was impossible. You know, I really thought we’d had it. When I looked out and saw I really did. I thought — and you know he give it up as a bad job because you, he couldn’t do anything. There was no control. We were just flying forward, like, as slow as we could possibly could and fancy, and so out of spite, and if you look in there, out of spite the following night they sent us to Stuttgart and that, that was another eight hours and we always said he’d taken it out on us, the skipper, because we’d gone, we’d aborted, and that was an awful experience. There’d be, there’d be another one. There were lots of things that happened. I dare say, apart from three or four, you know, do you want me to go on talking? Because I could tell you of an experience, it wouldn’t take long, but of an experience more spiritual.
IL: Please.
RM: It’s interesting but it’s something, this, I’d done twenty-eight trips and that was coming to the end of it, this tour, and I’d done twenty-eight, and we were all a happy crew except this particular morning. I was always the first up in Beningbrough Hall. I was always the first up. There was only one wash basin, out of all those men there, wasn’t there Sarah? There was, well, there may have been more like but there was one on our floor and I was always first up. I was one of those who was embarrassed because I only shaved about twice a week [laugh] I did and so I was always first there and washed and this particular morning, and this is true, this particular morning I woke up and I laid there and it was always half past seven and I laid there and laid there and old Bowles, the rear gunner, he always followed me and he came over and he’d been to the ablutions, ablutions and he come and stood by the bed and he said, ‘Come on Ray.’ He said, ‘What’s up?’ And I looked up at him and said, ‘Oh, I’m alright.’ He said, ‘Well, what’s up?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ And he said, ‘Oh.’ In between times, the while crew was billeted in this one room (they’d lock us in) Beningbrough Hall. And he said, ‘What’s up?’ Anyway, by the time I’d I just closed my eyes and all I wanted to do was — I can’t tell you what it was like. It was awful. I felt awful and I thought, ‘This is it. We’re going to get the chop.’ That’s all that went through my mind. It was — I was so desperate. I thought, ‘We’re, we’re going, we’re going to get the chop.’ And it was 8 o’clock when I got up and I thought — and these buses used to come, you see, and take us to Linton for breakfast to the sergeants’ mess and they came at regular intervals and I remember and I thought, ‘Oh, I feel awful.’ I felt dreadful and I knew that night if we were flying at some time we were going to get the chop. I had that feeling and it was an awful feeling. Anyway they’d all gone and I caught a bus, caught the bus and ended up — and, er, but I couldn’t, I still couldn’t do anything. I didn’t even go to breakfast and I went down to the hangar where the engineers were and I couldn’t, I didn’t seem to want to do anything. All I wanted to do — and I thought, ‘Shall I tell the crew?’ This is true, Ian, it’s true what I’m telling you. I didn’t know whether to tell the crew that not to fly that night. I hadn’t — I wanted to tell them that this was going to be our last trip. That was the feeling I had in me and, oh it must have been getting on, and I thought, ‘I’ll have to get something to eat.’ And I went down to the mess and I had my breakfast and then, from then, I had a walk. I walked, I started to walk to flights and on the way down we passed their chapel (we had a chapel at Linton) and we were going — I’ve got to stop [pause] I had a job. I’ll stop.
Sarah: You want to stop?
RM: Well, it’s a story, so I’ll have to carry on and tell you what happened. I’ll have to carry on.
IL: It’s up to you. I don’t want to make you —
RM: No, no, no. It’s alright. I’ll get over it.
IL: I don’t want to upset you.
RM: No, I’ll get over it. I promise you. I went into church and I said the Lord’s Prayer. It came out and I thought I’d feel better. That’s what I’d done it for, hadn’t I? And I thought I’d feel better and I went back to the, the crewing room, and it was all better then. It did seem better but at the back of my mind there was still this thing and, anyway, the skipper came round and he said, ‘We’re flying tonight.’ And he said, ‘I’ll pick you up Ray.’ As he did every time. He said, ‘I’ll pick you up Ray.’ And he came round with the jeep and, of course, that was what we did every morn— every morning before a flight and we went out to the aircraft and it seemed alright. You know, you run it, I did the checks, you went round and checked everything, and run the engines up, and it was in the back of my mind and it seemed to — it was there and I still I couldn’t tell you why but it was there and, um, anyway — but I still wanted to tell the crew that it was going to be our last one. I had it. Anyway, er, and we got out to flights and we get into the aircraft, and pilot always went first and I followed him, and I was going up the ladder and our old Bowles, he bumped me up the backside going up the ladder. He said, ‘Come on Ray.’ And as I got to the steps my knees gave way and they were trembling, they was literally shaking, and I thought, ‘I’m mad. Why don’t I tell them I’m not going?’ And I thought that, that was there on the twenty-ninth, Sarah. Look on twenty-nine. You’ll see. It was a duff target. I don’t think we lost any of them.
Sarah: Was it Criel?
RM: That’s it. Criel. And, er, he bumped me up the backside. He said, ‘Come on Ray. What’s up?’ And with that I thought, ‘That’s it. Got to go. Got to go now. I’m inside and it’s everything.’ And as, as we were walking up, even the last minute, I was touching things, the old dinghy, the dinghy handle, and I looking round and I knew I’d done it before in the morning and, anyway, we gets off like but all the time I couldn’t — it was there whatever I did, you know. I set the petrol pumps and turned on the right tanks to be on and I had to do something to be — and I remember getting my log, my log, my log card and sort of wanting to do something. Anyway, we took off and everything but I was waiting all the time. I was waiting, waiting for something to happen and anyway we flew out. It was Criel and it was, it was nothing. So we flew out there and I don’t, I don’t think — we didn’t see a fighter, there was hardly any ak-ak fire, I don’t think there was hardly — there was nothing. We turned round and come back and do you know all the time we were coming back I had it in my mind, landing, when we were landing I was waiting [pause] waiting. We landed. Nothing happened and it were really interesting, looking back, it was the best trip I’ve ever been on. I wouldn’t have got back and I thought that I’d been, and what I’m trying to say is had I not been to church, do you understand that?
IL: I do.
RM: Had I not been to church or what would have happened? Was the good Lord on, on our side? But, believe it or not, I would sooner have gone on a trip and been shot at than gone through that experience again. You can’t understand. I couldn’t describe to anybody really and that was on my 29th trip and that was — and I never mentioned it to anybody but I do remember coming out of briefing, um, old, our Bowles, the rear gunner, he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, ‘We done it Ray.’ I don’t think — I think it was about the thirtieth wasn’t it Sarah, Criel?
Sarah: It was your twenty-ninth.
RM: That, that’s what I say, it was the twenty-ninth.
Sarah: How did you feel for your thirtieth then?
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: How did you feel going for your thirtieth?
RM: Nothing.
Sarah: No?
RM: It had gone Sarah. No, no. I was happy as Larry. No, that didn’t even occur to me. All, all of it suddenly when old Bowles came out of the briefing and old Bowles he put his arm on my shoulder and said, ‘You know Ray we done it.’ But what he meant was we were so near to completing and, I mean, one trip there and it says losses and we didn’t lose an aircraft. I mean, it was probably an easy target but that, but that particular time it was awful. It was awful. I had this feeling. But the other thing, of course, you had to have faith. You had to have faith in the rest of your crew and they were a wonderful crew, they really were, and you had to have faith in what they did and, and it was being selfish, thinking of myself, thinking it was me I was worried about and not thinking about them, except I wanted to tell them, and didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go. And that was awful. I would have been LMF. No I wouldn’t. They wouldn’t chance me going. They would screen me. But it was awful you know, I can’t — so I say, I’d rather go to Berlin any time than go through that experience again. It was dreadful and, I mean, you can think what you like about it.
Sarah: How old were you then?
RM: Twenty, nineteen, nineteen.
Sarah: Nineteen. Wow.
RM: Yeah, I was nineteen Sarah, yeah.
Sarah: I think you had every right to have a wobble in your knees. [slight laugh]
IL: Absolutely. So, you finished your, you finished your thirty, thirty-one in your case, and then you — did you keep in touch with your crew after that?
RM: No. That was another thing, um, because something happened when I was at Lindholme. Here, I’ll tell you who I flew — I flew with Pat Moore, you know, the astronomer.
IL: Oh, right.
RM: Yeah. I was billeted with him.
IL: And where was that?
RM: At Lindholme.
IL: Right.
RM: I’ll have to tell you this. This is, this is the brighter side. I was posted to Lindholme. This was from Transport Command.
IL: Right.
RM: And, er, this is a little bit in between. Patrick Moore, tell ‘em, Patrick Moore posted to, er, Lindholme and we formed — what it was I was at it again. We formed a squadron, 716 Squadron, and we were to fly to Manila to bomb Japan. I never heard such rubbish, rubbish. That was what it was but of course Ray Moore put his name down in the orderly room, oh, I’ll volunteer. Yes, I’ll volunteer. Where’s Milan? Where’s —
Sarah: Manila.
RM: Manila. I didn’t even know where it was. My geography wasn’t that bad but I didn’t know where Manila was. It’s true. So we get posted there and the—
Sarah: A bit south of Worthing?
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: A bit south of Worthing.
RM: yeah. So the jeep drops me off and there was houses at Lindholme and all the pilot officers and flying officers were upstairs and all the flight lieutenants were downstairs. That was snobbery wasn’t it? Honestly, truthfully. That’s how it was. Anyway, I get my kit bag and walking up the stairs, and they were big houses, and the front room, there was two of us in the front room upstairs and two in the back room. Anyway, ‘The one on the left is yours.’ Right, and the door was part open, and I walked in, and there was this chap sat on his bed, and I walked in and I turned round and I said, ‘Oh, hello.’ I was feeling good I suppose and I said, ‘Oh, hello.’ And he, he stood up and he said, um, ‘Flying Officer Patrick Moore.’ And I looked at him and said, ‘Flying Officer Raymond Moore.’ And do you know and he had a quizzical look, you know, his eyebrows.
IL: He was famous for those.
RM: Pardon?
IL: He was famous for those.
RM: Yes, that’s it? Well, he gave me this look and he said, and he thought I was pulling, pulling his leg. I know that when I looked at him and I said, ‘Oh, hello.’ Especially when I said, ‘Flying Officer Raymond Moore.’ And I went and slung my kit bag on my bed. And he stood up and he said, ‘Are you from, areyou Irish?’ I said, ‘No I’m not.’ I thought, ‘I’ve got a queer one here.’ You know. I said, ‘No. My parents came from Norwich, Norfolk.’ ‘Oh. Oh, righto.’ And we came very good friends and we visited him down at the Farthings down at —
Sarah: Billericay.
RM: Pardon?
Sarah: Was it Billericay?
RM: No, no. Down on the south coast, um, down on the south coast, Sarah. That lovely big house. Oh yeah, we visited him and he was, he was quite an eccentric, you know, but —
IL: He did have a bit of a reputation.
RM: He did and, um, he did, but we got on fine, famous, we did really. We went and visited him and he was always angry at me because when he started to talk about astronomy — and all I knew was there was a lot of stars up there, and there was the sun and the moon, and I wasn’t a bit interested. He taught me how to use the, um, what did they call it? Sextant. He taught me how to use that on the road that was, at Lindholme. Hehe showed me how to — and afterwards he was absolutely disgusted because after he’d shown me how to use it and I wasn’t a bit interested and he said to me after he, he’d worked out his shot he called it, after he worked out the shot, I was about a hundred miles off target, and he didn’t like it one bit. And that’s a letter, look, he wrote to me after we’d got, after I’d — I wasn’t really a bit interested in. We had family and family life, that’s all, that’s all I wanted was family life so anything in between. And we finished, we retired at sixty, June 28th it was, and he says, ‘Great to hear from you.’ Now, this is all those years after, this was 1987, but, um, we used to play, Bet and myself and another girl called Joan Walters (she was our bridesmaid) and we used to play a foursome at badminton, and he was a keen sportsman, and we got on well together, and I could have kicked his backside because we were stood outside Flying Control after the war was over and he said to me, well we were talking, and he said — but I still had a year’s service to do and after I finished flying — I packed in flying. I did that for moral reasons. That was another thing. I said, ‘I don’t know I’m going to do.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell you what you should do Raymond.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you go in Flying Control?’ He said, ‘It would suit you down to the ground.’ I said, ‘Flying Control?’ I said, ‘No. I don’t want to be [clears throat] associated with aircraft Pat.’ He said, ‘Well what about as— what about —.’ What do they call weather, you know?
IL: Metrologist.
RM: Metrology. He said, ‘Why don’t you take up metrology?’ I said, ‘I never thought much about it.’ I said, ‘No.’ And I took admin and I became an adjutant, for Christ’s sake, after all that. Worst thing I ever did. They were what I call — I’ll repeat it on there — I called them, ‘Hooray Henrys.’ Because that’s what they were, ground crew, what I considered they were. It was an armaments depot and I’ve never had such twelve miserable months in all my life in the service, with all the fact that I’d been aircrew, I was a — they treated me like dirt. They never even thought — and I’m not — it’s the honest truth. I know where they put me, right at the bottom of the list, and I could have fought them. I know I could in the mess, in the officers’ mess. I could have had many a row with them when they talked about air crew and how they — they snubbed me. I was the only member of the air crew there, you see, and I was the assistant adjutant and I couldn’t have cared less. I lost a lot of interest but, er, but I always said that old Pat Moore, although he was trying to do — and I should have done what he did. I should have gone in Flying Control or, er, he says, ‘It’s great to hear from you.’ You can read it.
IL: I’d love to.
RM: Yes. He did. Yes.
IL: Just, just because I’m conscious of that we actually and I don’t want to tire you out but I would like to hear what, what you were telling me earlier about when you went to Dalton and you had sort of an interesting time leaving Dalton. [slight laugh]
RM: Oh that. Oh yeah. Well, I mean, first and foremost, what I must tell you is, when I was sent there as an instructor, I mean, I remember there with old Scot. He finished a tour. Squadron Leader was his skipper, Hailes [?] I think it was, and but we were, we were like buddy buddies you know all the time we were flying and, you know, what are they called? Those two comedians. They’ve both died. The other one —
Sarah: Morecambe and Wise.
RM: No, the other, one was fat and the other a little chubby fella. They died.
Sarah: Oh Oliver Hardy and —
RM: No, no.
Sarah: No?
RM: No. It’s goodnight to him and it’s goodnight to him.
IL: Oh, the two Ronnies.
RM: Two Ronnies.
IL: Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbet.
RM: Well, Ronnie, the shortest one and he looked, he was his twin brother and he was, he was, um, well, Scottie to me. I called him Scottie, but he was very short and when he wore his cap, when he wore his cap he was only about five foot six and he was, he didn’t look right, you know, somehow. He was thin and didn’t look right and [clears throat] we both got posted to Dalton as instructors. Well, you know, it was a joke, I mean for me to be an instructor and when I went into this hut it was about twenty-eight foot long it was. I remember it distinctly and there were two engines in there and they’d been cut in half and all the component parts had been painted different colours. And anyway when I looked in through the door old scot, old scot, he took the air frames and I took the engines. So he was in another part of the building. But we were sent there to be in charge. They’d been opened up as a depot, you know, for training purposes to teach pilots. The airframe and engine of a Lancaster, that was what it was and we’d both been sent there to be in charge to open it up as a training centre, you know, and I’ll never forget I walked inside the door there and I saw this Lanc there, and this Lanc, you can imagine the size of it. It’s a massive thing like this, and all of its components, like red — I can’t tell you, the different colours they painted it, and all you had to do really, apart from the instructing part, which was a major part, you know, what happened to this and what happened to that but I was good. I knew every part of the engine, er, originally but when it came to standing up there and there was a blackboard at the back there and I thought, ‘This is not for me. This is not for me.’ And I hadn’t a clue and what it meant was that I was saying this, that and the other, blackboard, a bit of this, a bit of that. There were six of them, six pilots. Anyway, I got to know them and I told them exactly I was useless as an instructor. I was useless because — and I couldn’t really have cared less. I’d finished flying. I’d done my bit. Anyway Scottie got on fine. He was a crawler, like. He wanted to be in charge and I couldn’t have cared less. He could have run it for me. They could have promoted him. They did do but — and so that’s how it was and so what happened was there was a bit of friction between us. He wanted to, he wanted to be in charge and if he’d have said to me, you know, if he’d have shook his fists and said to me, ‘I’m going to be in charge.’ I would have said to him, ‘Help yourself.’ Anyway, it started off with me instructing, um, and I wasn’t very good. I wasn’t very good at conveying anything. I knew everything that was there, every part of the engine and what it did but when it came to what I — the theory and what happened — so, of a morning, this was my idea, found out that this little café in Topcliffe, you see, which is — you know where Topcliffe is?
IL: I do.
RM: Right, and up one of the sideways there, where it says no entry coming down, and on the right hand side there in them days there was a little old bicycle shop. And they were a lovely couple. They were elderly and we got to know of it and we all had bikes. Everybody had a bike there and every morning I got to find out and just across, as you went through the gates, just across there, there was a NAAFI wagon, er, for a wad and a cup of tea as they called it, a wad and a cup of tea, and it was just across there and all you had to do was walk across there and it used to be there half past nine every morning but I thought, ‘A cup of tea and a wad.’ It was alright but it didn’t seem — it wasn’t up my street. I was a bit more adventurous. We found out this little café in Topcliffe, you see, so the idea was — there was just four of us (there was a couple of them who didn’t go) — and the idea was to get through the gate and I knew them couple on the gate, those red caps, you know, and they in them days — I wasn’t an official man. I was one of them and so I got to know these. There were two of them and [clears throat] go through the gate, pedal to Topcliffe. True, they used to have it very nearly ready for us, a lovely cup or mug of sweet tea and gobble your old spam sandwich. They were beautiful those spam because that spam used to come from America and it was the best spam I’ve ever tasted. So, anyway, then bike back again and Scottie didn’t like this. It wasn’t to his liking because I should have been instructing, you see, and when it struck 10 o’clock I should have been back there. Well, we only, we had half an hour to get there and half an hour back again. It didn’t seem far to me but we used to be late going or late coming back. It never used to bother me. This particular morning, gets the old bike ready, going out, and all of a sudden Scottie appears and he stood in front of this bike. He, he’s just stood in front of me with, with my bike in and grabbed me and, ‘Morning Scott. Morning Scottie, how are you?’ He said, ‘Mr Moore, Mr Moore.’ He said, ‘I’m forbidding you to go.’ He was only a pilot officer same as me but he was trying to throw rank, and he said, ‘Mr Moore.’ He said, ‘I forbid you to go.’ I looked and said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I forbid you to go.’ He knew that we were going you see. He said, ‘It isn’t right.’ He said, ‘You’re not. It’s not right.’ He said, ‘You shouldn’t be going out.’ All this stuff and I said, ‘Get out of the way Scottie.’ He said, ‘I forbid you to go.’ So, and all I did was, I had the handle bars, and I was like this with the handle bars, I said, ‘Get out of the way.’ And he was stood there and what happened was he, he sort of, the bike wheel as it was, and he sort of stumbled on his back-side. I wasn’t even bothered. I just said, ‘Come on fellers. We’ll go back to Topcliffe.’ And I get back. I still, well, that’s how it was. Went back in to the instructing part of it and all of a sudden over the Tannoy, ‘Will Flying officer, would pilot officer Moore report to the orderly office at 12 o’clock.’ I thought, ‘What the hell do they want me for?’ And anyway I didn’t bother. I went on like. At 12 o’clock I wandered over to the orderly room just up the road inside the camp and I went in and there were two, two MPs there, red caps ‘Hello.’ I thought what’s up. Anyway, they stood to one side and, er, I never thought any more about it. I went inside and in fact the squadron leader, I knew him, not as a friend but I knew him as, you know, sort of, not so much this but, um, squadron leader and in the mess and anyway when I went inside like he had a stern looking face on and he had all my folders in front of him with all, all my bumph. ‘Now then.’ He said, ‘You’re in real trouble.’ I said, ‘Why? What have I done?’ He said, ‘You struck a fellow officer.’ I said, ‘I didn’t strike anybody.’ He said, ‘Oh, yes you did.’ He said, ‘You were seen by two members of the military police.’ I said, ‘I didn’t strike him.’ I said, ‘I pushed him.’ I said, ‘I pushed him.’ I said, ‘That’s all I did and said ‘Get out of the way.’’ He said, ‘What? What was it all about?’ [cough] ‘What was it all about?’ I said. ‘You must know, Sir, that bicycles were disappearing of a morning and biking up to Topcliffe.’ I said — he said, ‘Well, you must have known you were in the wrong. You were breaking out of camp.’ I thought, ‘Oh dear.’ And I thought what? The first thing that went through my mind was, what would my dad say if I’m, um, if I’m —
Sarah: Discharged.
RM: Discharged. Well, what it meant was I wouldn’t be discharged. They would have stripped me —
Sarah: Well, yeah.
RM: And put me on — anyway he said, ‘What did you think you were doing?’ He said, ‘Look at your record.’ I said, ‘Honestly.’ I said. He said, ‘I believe you.’ You see on record he said you did strike a fellow officer I said, ‘Sire, there’s no, there’s nothing?’ He said, ‘I’m sorry.’ So, I said, ‘What’s the score?’ He said like, ‘I wanted him to go down to see the MO.’ And I thought, you know, ‘What have I done? What have I done?’ All I did was a friendly get out of the way, you know. If I’d — I couldn’t have hit him. He was about two inches shorter. He was only a little chap and a breath of wind like me, he was — and anyway, he said, ‘I want you to go down to the MO.’ And a very friendly chap, a Flight Lewie [?] and I went down to see him and he said, ‘I’ve just had a phone call from the squadron leader CO.’ And he said, he said, ‘What it is, you’re being posted to Brackla.’ I said, ‘Brackla.’ He said, ‘It’s a joke.’ He said, ‘It’s, they call it the ‘demented air crew’ of Brackla.’ And he said, ‘That is where you’re going.’ He said, ‘I’m going to put you on venal barbital.’ And he said, ‘You have to take these. Here’s a packet.’ And I don’t know if it was in a bottle or what it was and he said, ‘I want you to take one of these in the morning.’ And I thought — I couldn’t believe it. I might have been a bit screwy if you know what I mean, finishing ops. I’m not saying I wasn’t — I’m not saying I was perfect or anything like that. I, I was a bit erratic. I do remember that. I remember getting drunk at the Jim Crack in York, you know, and that was after we’d I finished flying, and where I went — years ago Sarah.
Sarah: Betty’s?
RM: It was something Arms.
Sarah: Oh, I don’t know.
RM: And I remember getting drunk there like but —
Sarah: I know you used to go to Betty’s when —
RM: Oh, Betty’s Bar in York. Oh, well. Betty’s dive. Oh, yeah. A few times back —
Sarah: My, how things have changed.
IL: Yeah.
RM: Where what?
IL: I said ‘My. How things have changed.’ It’s not Betty’s dive any more is it?
RM: Oh, no.
Sarah: No. You pay twenty pounds for afternoon tea.
IL: It’s very up market, Betty’s.
RM: When you went downstairs there you couldn’t see above the smoke. But, um, yes.
Sarah: That’s where you scratched your name.
RM: [cough] The — oh, down inside there. If ever you go inside you want to go downstairs and as you just look round the corner there’s mirrors there and all of — my name’s on there.
IL: Oh, I’ll look.
RM: Scratched, scratched with a diamond ring and there there’s book there with all the names that’s on the glass, on the mirrors.
IL: Oh right.
RM: Yeah. And if you want to and actually if you wanted to see it and you, you’re met at the top of the stairs where they queue for their tea and cakes. If you met up the top of the stairs and you met any one of those girls they would take you down there and they — and you say, ‘Excuse me. I don’t want anything to eat. I just want to look at the glass and the mirrors.’ There’s hundreds of them down there and then there’s a little book. There used to be a little book. Yeah, my name’s on there. The whole crew’s on there, yeah.
IL: Fantastic. So —
RM: Anyway, going back to Brackla, demented air crew, and he said — and it, and was a joke but I thought, ‘Oh to hell with it. I’ve finished flying. They can do what they like with me.’ And it didn’t bother me. It honestly didn’t bother me. I didn’t say — I wasn’t belligerent or anything and I accepted it and he said — our billet’s were further down — he said, ‘Be outside your billet.’ And, yeah, in the morning he said — now I could have gone — there was a station at Dalton and he said — this jeep. That was the beauty of it, wasn’t it? ‘This jeep and it will take you to York, like, and from York you change for Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Inverness, Inverness.’ And look at that, look what I did then. I stayed at that big hotel at Inverness. It’s a beautiful hotel, you know, attached to the station and that’s where I spent the night there. It was marvellous and after the war [cough] there was a cheap trip going up to inverness by train and I took my wife there. And I said to Bet, I said, I said, er, ‘We’ll go to Inverness.’ It was a two day or three day trip to Inverness and it was a cheap one or whatever. [background noise] And — oh, it’s her phone and I think she’ll get fed up with it — and I said, ‘We’ll go back up there Bet and it’ll be an experience. We’ll go up all the way up by train and we’ll stay at this hotel.’ Anyway, fair enough, we get up there, carrying our suitcase, I went up to the desk all — I was feeling on top of the world to treat my wife, to go back to recovery, to this spot. [cough] I went up to the desk and I said, ‘I’d like to book a double room for two, three nights.’ Whatever, and she said, ‘Oh right.’ And I said, ‘How much is it?’ She said, ‘It’s a hundred pound a night.’ This was in 1960, 1975. [clears throat] I’d retired but it was one of those retirement things, wasn’t it? You know, to treat my wife and I said, ‘How much?’ She said, ‘A hundred pound a night.’ I said, ‘I was here in 1944.’ I thought I was going to flannel her, you know, try to get a bit out of it, like, try to get it a bit cheaper, and I said, ‘Excuse me.’ I said, ‘Is there? Haven’t you got any?’ I said, ‘I’ve seen brochures. My wife—.’ She said, ‘It’s a hundred pounds a night.’ I can’t mimic, and she said, she says, ‘It’s a hundred pounds a night.’ I said, ‘So, a hundred pound a night.’ So, I said, ‘From Monday to Wednesday.’ She said, ‘It’s a hundred pound a night.’ I said, ‘Forget it.’ I didn’t know what I was saying because we’d, we’d gone up there by train. It was a cheap train ride up there. So we went outside the hotel and, of course, in them days, like, [unclear] there was always a policeman — did you know that? — at a railway station, nine times out of ten. Are you alright Sarah?
Sarah: Yes. I’m fine dad. Yeah.
RM: Have you got to go?
Sarah: No. It’s alright. Don’t worry.
So went outside and there’s this policeman there. He says, ‘Are you alright?’ Nice and friendly. He says, ‘Are you alright?’ I said, ‘No.’ I explained to him what happened. ‘We’ve come up here.’ He said, ‘Oh, [unclear].’ I said, ‘We can’t afford it.’ I guess we could have if we’d pushed it, don’t you?
Sarah: I think you could have, father.
RM: And, er, anyway I went outside and your mum was outside and I said, ‘It’s a hundred.’ She said, ‘We aren’t staying here.’ So, this policeman, he said, ‘Oh, don’t worry.’ And there was a taxi rank outside and this he said, like, ‘Fred, here.’ So this chap come over and he said, ‘I’ve two wanderers here.’ He said, ‘Can you find them digs for the night?’ ‘Oh, aye.’ He said, ‘Get in the car.’ He drove, we went straight round to this, this lady, bed and breakfast. We went in and it was marvellous. Three night’s bed and breakfast. I, I don’t know how much it was but it was marvellous and we had a lovely three days up there and I didn’t have to spend a hundred pound a night. It was a colossal amount. But it is a beautiful hotel, it is honestly, it is a beautiful hotel.
IL: I don’t know if it’s still there actually.
RM: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I know somebody that — yes it is. And so that was it. That was the hotel I was posted to and I thought it’s be nice to go back. And the following morning there was a jeep. What the devil did they call it that place? It was Brackla. Anyway he knew where to go. It was an RAF jeep and we drove across country and it’s all, all cross country, you know, from Inverness to the other side. I wish I could remember the name. It, it’s fairly popular but, um, that was on the coast and then gets sent to this demented aircrew. It was a joke. I wasn’t, I was no more demented — I might have been, I might have been scratching the door, as I say, I might have been [unclear].
Sarah: Who wouldn’t have been?
RM: I might have been — I was under a psychiatrist when I come out. Pardon?
Sarah: Who wouldn’t have been after that?
RM: What?
Sarah: Scratching the door. I said, ‘Who wouldn’t have been?’
RM: Oh, yes Sarah. Yeah, I realise that.
IL: And all the time and you were there for six months and just sort of —
RM: Oh no, no, no. After I’d seen what was going on and I saw the sergeants’ mess —
IL: Oh, I see. Sorry. I was getting a bit confused, sorry.
Sarah: [unclear] six months.
RM: I tend to go from one thing to another. No, no. I should have gone there for six months. It was a rest camp for demented aircrew. It was very popular. Nobody thought anything about it.
IL: How long were you there for?
RM: No more than two months.
IL: A couple for months.
RM: It might have been — do you what Sarah?
Sarah: You asked to leave didn’t you?
RM: Oh yeah, yeah. I saw the, as I say, I laid in bed and watched the sergeant’s mess burn, watched it burn. Well, I couldn’t understand. I laid in bed and saw these flames and I took no notice until the following day. They burnt it down to the ground. It was burnt to the ground. They were wooden you see.
IL: And all the time you were there you were taking the venal barbital, so did you have to have medical clearance to leave or did you —
RM: Now you’re asking me a question. I would say [clears throat] don’t forget when I went — when you got posted to another station I would say that my medical records would have followed me. That’s what I, I — I shall be honest, I cannot put it to mind. I don’t think, I think I stopped taking them when I got to Ireland. I think I thought what do I — I’m sure I did, I don’t want to take these things any more. I didn’t feel like taking them. That was, that was probably what I thought, you know, but I couldn’t help thinking about them. It was —
IL: Because it would have been an interesting, you know, as a doctor, um, you would think you wouldn’t want people flying who were taking them. But if there was no, if there was no, you know, medical, you know — I think people thought they weren’t particularly — I think people thought they were fairly innocuous drugs in those days, barbiturates.
RM: No. When I came out and we came back to you, we came back to Yo—, we came back to York, came back to Thirsk, came back to live at my mother in laws. Now then —
Sarah: Were you married to my mum then?
RM: Where?
Sarah: When you were in Scotland?
RM: Yeah. Oh no, not during the war.
Sarah: I didn’t think so.
RM: Oh, no, no, no.
Sarah: Then you went to Ireland.
RM: I went to Ireland on Transport Command via — oh gosh, I hated it.
Sarah: But then what, where did you go from Ireland?
RM: I went back on Bomber Command. I told him — well, I won’t tell you about that. That was really truly self-inflicted. Something happened. I went without leave. I buggered off with old Darkie Thorne, my very dear friend, and we went down to Belfast and stayed at the — it wasn’t very — this friend of mine, he got shot down and he walked back, and I met him in Ireland. We were like brothers. We were, and he was a beggar, and he come back and I remember him. And he saw me and we ran to one another. Oh, he said, ‘We’ll have a good time.’ And of course, it was Darkie Thorne and me and it was on the squadron. He said, ‘Look at this.’ And in those days, of course, you got paid in cash and he’d been a prisoner. He had been a prisoner of war and he’d been shot down but he’d was rescued by a French family and he, what we called, walked back. He’d got the caterpillar and it was what we called — he’d walked back. And we met him in Northern Ireland and he said [laugh], and, ‘Look.’ He said, ‘We’re going to spend this.’ I mean he’d been gone about six months and when come back like he’d been to get paid and they didn’t have a bank. You took your money as you were paid and he said, ‘Look. We’re going to have some fun. We’re going to have some fun with this in Belfast.’ And we were, it was about ten miles from Belfast, isn’t it? That international airport?
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It will be.
RM: Yeah, and, er, I thought, ‘Well, I daren’t get into any more trouble.’ I’d been de-commissioned once. I’d lost six months seniority with, you know, getting into a bit of trouble like and I said, I thought, ‘I’d better slow down here.’ Anyway, we were snowbound over there. It snowed from — I was over there in the October I suppose and it snowed and snowed and snowed. We didn’t do a lot of flying and so we were grounded. And when you were grounded you were at school. You went to school. And, anyway, it was one of those times when you got — you couldn’t get bored on the squadron but being there with all this snow and this time he come at me and said, ‘Do you fancy a trip down to Dublin?’ And I said, ‘We can’t Darkie. We can’t. We’ll be interned.’ And, he said, ‘I’ll fix it all up.’ He was a wide boy. He was a Cockney [laugh] and his mum and dad and his sister had been killed in an air raid in London so he was one of those. He, he didn’t just hate the Germans, he detested them. He would have shot every one of them if he could have done and that was his attitude. But he was, he was a Cockney, he says, ‘Would you like to go down to Dublin?’ I said, ‘We can’t Darkie.’ I said, ‘We can’t. We’ll be interned.’ He said, ‘Leave it with me.’ He said, ‘I’ve been looking around.’ He said, ‘There’s a second hand shop in Belfast and we’ll get some civvy suits and we’ll have a rag round and I’ll get, I’ll get two passports.’ And he was going on and I said, ‘Forget it.’ I said, ‘I haven’t got a very good name Darkie.’ And he said, ‘Well you’re alright. You’ve got a commission.’ And poor old Darkie hadn’t even got his flight sergeant. He was still a sergeant he said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll fix it up.’ And I wasn’t really keen to go to Dublin because the Irish are a different people and there was a lot of, as you know as I do, the IRA were still floating around at that time. [clears throat] Anyway, time went by [clears throat] he said, ‘I’ve got your suit.’ I said, ‘You’re joking.’ He said, ‘No. I’ve got your suit.’ He says, ‘A nice brown suit.’ [laugh] He said, ‘I’ve got your suit.’ He said, ‘A nice brown suit.’ I said, ‘What about passports?’ ‘I got them.’ He said, ‘Yes. There’s a place in Belfast where I’ve gone.’ I said, ‘You must be joking.’ ‘No.’ He said, ‘Money and I’ve plenty of it.’ And he has I’m not kidding you. He had a roll. And he said, ‘You don’t pay for a thing so don’t question it.’ [unclear] and the snow in them days, it seemed to stay. We seemed to get snow over there from October right through to February and we did. Very rarely we take off and so you seemed to be in the same spot. Anyway, went to Belfast, got on a train, about halfway down — I don’t know how far we were — and the gendarmes got on, whatever you called them, checked out passports. Have you been to Dublin, Sarah?
Sarah: I have.
RM: Have you? You know the big bridge there then and, and the hotel Ma— it has a Canadian name, Ma—
IL: Montreal?
RM: [unclear] So we go, go and stays at this hotel, books in at this hotel. Well, for four days I can hardly remember, honestly, and I’m not a, I was never an alcoholic, but we drank Guinness chasers. That was Guinness and whisky. And we were drunk from — the only thing we thought about was an evening meal and that’s the honest true. We’d have breakfast. Anyway, it comes to about four days and I says, ‘We’ll have to be back.’ The weather seemed to be lifting and I said, ‘We’ll have to be back Darkie.’ ‘No, no, no, no.’ He said, ‘We’re all right.’ And I gave in and said, ‘Just one more night then.’ He said, ‘Yeah. It will be alright. Went back to camp, walks into the camp, first thing, ‘Flying Officer Moore report to the orderly room. I thought, ‘Oh Jesus.’ I said, ‘This is it, Darkie.’ He said, ‘Oh, tell them to — off.’ But I was commissioned and I respected that commission. Don’t get me wrong, I did, I respected it and, anyway, I went down to the orderly room. I thought they were going to put me in irons, honestly. Went before the CO. There again, the old documents come out and he says, ‘I don’t understand it. I’ve been looking at your documents.’ And he said, ‘How do you feel?’ And I thought ‘Christ. I’m not going back to — no way am I ever going back to — no way am I going back to that camp.’ I said, ‘I feel fine.’ And he said, ‘What are you doing?’ And what had happened was, my crew had crewed up and flown to Karachi with Transport Command and he said, ‘Well, your crew went without you. We had to find another flight engineer, didn’t we?’ And I said, ‘Oh.’ You know, I expected it. No good saying I didn’t and he said, ‘I don’t really know.’ He said, ‘But you see we don’t want fellas like you in Transport Command.’ He said, ‘We don’t want officers like you in Transport Command.’ And all of a sudden I thought, ‘Bugger yer.’ And I turned round to him and I said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. I don’t want to be in Transport Command.’ And he stood back and I said, ‘I don’t want to be in Transport Command.’ And he got hold of my papers and hit the desk and he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to go back to Bomber Command.’ He said, ‘Idiot.’ I said, ‘I want to go back.’ I said, ‘That’s where the camaraderie is.’ And he said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘Be outside your billet at eight.’ Again, you know, he said, ‘Be outside your billet.’ And he said, ‘There’ll be a jeep to take you to Belfast.’ He said, ‘You’ll get on a train.’ He said, ‘You’ll get on a train.’ He said, ‘You’re posted to Lindholme.’ So that’s when I got back to Lindholme to Bomber Command.
IL: So, did you fly any more operations from Lindholme?
RM: Not from Lindholme. We were non-operational. Well, we weren’t non-operational because we were flying and we — they flew the backsides off us. I told your mum. She was always playing hell because my wife was a WAAF on the same station and I was courting her, you know, and fortunately I caught her, didn’t it? And what happened was the — as I say I put my name down, 617, 67, 76 Squadron and that was where I went back. And I said to him, I said, ‘I don’t want to be with Transport Command.’ And he stood back, you know, one of those stiff upper lip chaps and he said, ‘Be outside your billet at 8 or 9 o’clock.’ And said, ‘They’ll take you to Belfast Station and you’re posted to Lindholme. Idiot.’ And I just walked out. I didn’t even turn round and salute him. I thought, ‘Beggar yer.’ But it was another experience wasn’t it, you know?
IL: Oh, absolutely.
RM: Yeah, it was. Another court martial. Dear, oh dear, but —
IL: Were you actually court martialled for that?
RM: Pardon?
IL: Were you court martialled for that?
RM: Oh, no, no, no.
IL: No?
RM: Oh, no, no, no. That’s was how, really and truthfully, I’ll be honest with you, I know I got away with it because I’d done thirty-one trips. I was a hero and they knew it. I’d done my bit, hadn’t I? That was it in a nutshell, I can tell you that now. That was why when he turned to me and, you know, he said that, and I knew he meant it, but at that time I thought, ‘Why should I lick his backside and pretend?’ It was no good pretending. I hated Transport Command. I hated it while I was there and for him to turn round to me and tell me he didn’t want my type. He didn’t want my type in Transport Command and I was as good as any of them. In fact, I was better than them because I’d come from Bomber Command.
IL: Absolutely, absolutely. I’m going to switch this off now, Ray.
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AMooreR160727
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Interview with Raymond Moore
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
Language
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eng
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02:49:26 audio recording
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Pending review
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Ian Locker
Date
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2016-07-27
Description
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Raymond Moore flew 31 operations as a flight engineer with 408 Squadron. He describes initial training at Skegness and then further training at Cosford, Halton and St Athan. He describes the crewing-up procedure at Eastmoor and describes the accommodation at various RAF stations including Linton, where he was billeted at Beningbrough Hall, and at Lindholme. He also gives vivid accounts of difficult trips, including high winds on a Berlin operation on the 24th of March 1944 and being coned by searchlights in the Rostock and Bremen areas and being thrown about as the pilot did a corkscrew manoeuvre.
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 Canadian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Rostock
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
408 Squadron
426 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
faith
fear
flight engineer
lack of moral fibre
military ethos
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Brackla
RAF Cosford
RAF East Moor
RAF Halton
RAF Lindholme
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF St Athan
recruitment
searchlight
sport
training
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f30942c1b075659474b5aa7629b82c74
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/314/3471/AParsonsCER160817.2.mp3
8cf12b67c2a559ad9b550a29e665f2d3
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Parsons, Cecil
Cecil Edgar Robertson Parsons
Cecil E R Parsons
Cecil Parsons
C E R Parsons
C Parsons
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Cecil Edgar Robertson Parsons DFC (b. 1918, 400419 Royal Australian Air Force).
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-17
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Parsons, CER
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: Ok. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Doreen Burge. The interviewee is Cecil Parsons. The interview is taking place at Mr Parson’s home in Ocean Grove, Victoria, Australia on August the 17th, 2016. Now, is it alright if I call you Boz?
CP: Certainly.
DB: Ok. Can you tell me what your birth date is?
CP: 12th of September 1918.
DB: Right. So you’re soon to turn ninety eight.
CP: That’s right.
DB: And where were you born?
CP: In Colac, Victoria.
DB: So not too far from here.
CP: No. No.
DB: And you grew up on a farm or —
CP: Yes. My father had a property near Beeac. Between Beeac and [Kirk?], and that’s where I was born, the youngest of a family of six.
DB: Right. So did you have a cattle farm or sheep?
CP: It was a mixed farm, yes, and we all had horses.
DB: Yes.
CP: All the kids had horses. Dad was a very great cattle man and all the children grew up on horses. I was the youngest of six.
DB: So I bet you could ride well.
CP: Yes. I could. I could ride. I remember riding behind dad in the buggy and I’d always been told that if I looked around I’d fall off. And I did [laughs]
DB: Proved the point to you.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And so can you tell me any more about your family background?
CP: Yes. My mother came from a property near Colac. She was born in the country. My father was born in Gippsland and was on a farm from a very early age, and became a farmer and a very good stock man. And he died when I was only seven so — but I was the youngest of a family of six. So we were very much a country family.
DB: Yes. So your father came from Gippsland.
CP: Came from Gippsland. Yeah.
DB: And moved to Colac.
CP: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right.
DB: When he married.
CP: He came to Colac because my mother’s family had property at Colac.
DB: Right.
CP: And he bought into that family. Into that family’s properties. Yeah.
DB: And so when he died did you all still stay on the farm?
CP: No. We moved in to Geelong.
DB: Right.
CP: Because I was, when he died, he died when I was about seven and I was the youngest of the family of six, and we moved into Colac and then to Geelong.
DB: Yes.
CP: As a family.
DB: So the farm, the farm was sold.
CP: Yes. Sold off.
DB: Yes. And so what — you did your schooling in Geelong.
CP: In Geelong. Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes.
DB: And your brothers and sisters were all there too.
CP: All educated in, in Geelong. Yeah.
DB: So you haven’t moved too far away.
CP: [laughs] No.
DB: That’s right. And so after your schooling what did you do?
CP: I went to, I went to school in Geelong and after schooling I went to university in Melbourne, and into residential college. Trinity College. And —
DB: So that’s at Melbourne University.
CP: Melbourne University.
DB: Yes.
CP: And at the end of those three years it was 1939 and the war came. And I went to the war.
DB: And so what made you decide to go, go to the war?
CP: It became almost automatic I think at that time. I thought of nothing else but going to the war when I finished my university degree in ’39 and went straight in to the air force.
DB: So you were twenty one then or about twenty one.
CP: Twenty one.
DB: Yes. And what made you go for the air force rather than the army or the navy?
CP: Family. Cousins. Friends. And also I was very much attached to flying. My cousins had been flying, and there wasn’t any other thought of doing anything else.
DB: So you really wanted to be a pilot.
CP: Yes.
DB: Right from the start.
CP: Yes.
DB: Yes. Now I’m just going to stop this for a minute to make sure we can hear you alright.
[recording paused]
DB: So Boz do you recall where you signed up? Was it in Melbourne or —?
CP: Indeed in Melbourne. I was, I was at university at the time.
DB: Yes.
CP: And so that was — signed up in 1940 I think.
DB: And so where was your training, most of your training held? Do you remember?
CP: Yes. Indeed. I went almost straight to Narromine and started flying on Tiger Moths.
DB: So is that in New South Wales?
CP: Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes. In central New South Wales. Near Forbes.
DB: Ah yes.
CP: Yeah. And that was the main training. This was early on in the war because it would have been in November of 1940.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And so what did your training while you were at Narromine — what did that involve?
CP: It was just an introduction to flying. We flew Tiger Moths.
DB: That would have been fun.
CP: Yeah. It was. It was something I had wanted to do and hadn’t been able to afford to do, and so I lapped it up, it was great fun.
DB: Yes.
CP: And great. I was the fourth course going through so it was early days and they were a wonderful batch of recruits at that time. You know, they had the pick of the, pick of the bunch really.
DB: So how, how had they selected the people to become pilots? Did you have to sit a test?
CP: Yeah. Quite a, quite an interesting interview, and people who were interested in flying particularly so I got first preference. And you needed to have a reasonably good background in education. Well, I’d been to university so I was well up in the education area.
DB: So what had you studied at university?
CP: I was studying science.
DB: So that would have helped.
CP: Oh yes, yes. Very much so.
DB: Yes. Yes. And so after you did the interview that was when you were selected to be trained as a —
CP: And interestingly enough at that time there wasn’t much of a wait.
DB: Oh right, yes.
CP: They were looking for people. And so we went straight into training.
DB: Right.
CP: It was marvellous. And I think I had to wait for about two or three months, that was all, before I was called up.
DB: Yes. And how did your, the rest of your family feel about what you were doing?
CP: Well I only had a mother. I was the youngest of a family of six and, dad had died when I was only about six.
DB: Yes.
CP: And so it was all up to mum really but —
DB: And how did she feel —?
CP: Well —
DB: About you becoming a pilot?
CP: I don’t know.
DB: She didn’t try and stop you.
CP: No. Certainly not.
DB: And did you have, did any of your —
CP: I’d been to university.
DB: Yes.
CP: And, you know I was pretty well on the —
DB: You were pretty independent.
CP: I was independent.
DB: Yes. And did any of your, did you have brothers who -
CP: Yes. I had an elder brother, five years older than me, he was a medico.
DB: Right.
CP: He did medicine and he went straight into the army.
DB: Yes.
CP: At that time. In 1940.
DB: So it was just the two of you who served then or did some of your other siblings —?
CP: No. I had four sisters, and they all went into something or other. Jan, the eldest was a secretary in Geelong and that’s where she stayed. She was a [Frank Guthrie?] secretary. And my brother was a doctor and he went into the services.
DB: Yes.
CP: He finished his medical degree. He was five years older than me.
DB: So did quite a few of your friends from that, from university sign up as well?
CP: Yeah, practically all of them.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. At that time in 1940 it was, everyone was joining the services.
DB: Yes. Yeah. So how long was your training at Narromine?
CP: Five months and then we went on to more advanced aircraft at another place.
DB: So do you remember where that — where you went after Narromine?
CP: I went to [pause] gee whizz I just can’t quite remember now.
DB: Was it in New South Wales as well?
CP: In New South Wales. Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes.
DB: And then did you then head overseas or?
CP: No [pause] Yes I did, I did. In November of 1940 I got on a ship and sailed to England. Yes. I did indeed.
DB: Do you remember which ship you went on?
CP: No. I couldn’t tell you.
DB: That would have been —
CP: The [unclear] sounds, you know, sounds familiar but I couldn’t tell you for sure.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And there were a lot of you I guess.
CP: A lot. A lot. Yeah. 1940 it was.
DB: And what —
CP: We got to England, you know, at the height of the Battle of Britain. Yeah. A very interesting time really.
DB: I bet.
CP: To be in London.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: Yeah. A different world.
DB: So what sort of experiences did you have when you arrived in London?
CP: Well we pitched in to the very height of the war really. The Battle of Britain had been and London was blacked out. It was an exciting time. It really was.
DB: Very different to being in Melbourne.
CP: [laughs] Absolutely. Yeah. It really was. England was, you know, really fighting a war.
DB: Yes. Yes. And so where, where were you sent to? When you —
CP: We went — I was sent up to Yorkshire and did my training up in Yorkshire. And it was interesting, an exciting to be, to be in England.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: Yeah. Very exciting time. And it was new to me. I’d never been overseas before.
DB: No. Very exciting.
CP: You know. A very exciting time. Yeah.
DB: And what, so which base in Yorkshire were you sent to when you first arrived?
CP: Went to Linton on Ouse.
DB: Right.
CP: Which was a wartime station. Very famous station actually, Linton, and expanding like mad. We had bases all around us you know and Linton itself was a, had been a permanent air force station before the war and had permanent buildings.
DB: Right.
CP: But they were the only permanent buildings we were ever in. We were in Nissen huts most of the time.
DB: And it would have been cold.
CP: Yeah. Cold [laughs] yes.
DB: So you continued training when you got to Linton.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And what, what aircraft?
CP: And then we went on old Whitleys.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Early on. And I went from Whitleys, very temporarily onto Halifaxes while I was a second pilot, and then I went back to Whitleys as a, as a captain in, at Linton. So I got to know that area very well. But flying during a winter in England in RAF Bomber Command on Whitleys, a very early, early aeroplane.
DB: And what, how did you find flying a Whitley compared to —?
CP: Oh it was, I thought it was marvellous. You know. First time in a big aeroplane. You know.
DB: Yes.
CP: Big twin engine aeroplane.
DB: So what crew did you have with you?
CP: A crew of five.
DB: Right. Yes. Yeah. And were they, were they all English? The crew you were with on the Whitleys?
CP: Mixed. Mixed. But mostly English. Yeah. Just, I had an Australian navigator.
DB: Yes.
CP: And the Australians were just sort of coming in.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: But it was an exciting time, 1940.
DB: Yes.
CP: And ’41.
DB: And how were your crews formed at that time? Were you told who you were going to fly with or did you get to form your own crews?
CP: Well very limited amount. We went to a sort of a base and we were really just thrown together. You know, you didn’t have much choice.
DB: Right.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. So did you stay with that crew then for quite a long time?
CP: Over a year.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So you, do you remember when it was you started your operations?
CP: Yes. About September/October 1940.
DB: Ok. Yeah.
CP: Early on.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Really early on.
DB: So you did some training though for a while.
CP: Oh yes.
DB: And then —
CP: Yeah. I couldn’t tell you exactly but I would have thought probably my first operations were the beginning of ’41. We would be training up until that time.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. But they were, you know they were early operations in Bomber Command. 1941.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So your first operations were on the Whitleys.
CP: Yes.
DB: Or did you do all your ops on —
CP: I did some as a second pilot on Halifaxes, because they were on the same squadron. On the same airfield. And Halifaxes were — I think somehow or other they must have been short of, short of second pilots I think and they tossed us in there to get air experience really. And then we went back to fly as captains on the Whitley.
DB: Right. Yes. So do you remember how many operations you did on each, each aircraft?
CP: Well I did five as a second pilot on Halifaxes to start with. And then I went back to Whitleys, and I did twenty eight operations over Europe in the Whitley.
DB: Right.
CP: Which is a tour.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Anything between twenty five and thirty.
DB: Yeah.
CP: And then you got taken off.
DB: And did you have the same crew?
CP: Crew.
DB: Through most of that time?
CP: All the time.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So tell me, tell me what it was like doing your first few operations.
CP: Well the first few operations I did were on Halifaxes as a second pilot. And in fact I didn’t even know where the controls were on the Halifax, you know. You just learned what to do for, you know, raise the undercarriage for the captain, you know. It was, you were really there for experience.
DB: Yes.
CP: To get operational experience.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah. And it was, it was an exciting time. It really was. We were up in Yorkshire then. Lissett.
DB: And do you remember where you flew? Which? What the targets were?
CP: We did everything over Europe. It was a sort of acme of things was to be able to go to the big city. To go to bomb Berlin, you know. And I did that quite early on actually as a second pilot on the Halifax. That was the first trip.
DB: And what did you think?
CP: Oh it was just unbelievable. You wondered what was happening really, you know. You’re so [emphasis] inexperienced and it was such an extraordinary experience, you know. You can’t describe it really.
DB: No. And was the pilot you were flying with quite experienced at that time?
CP: Well I suppose they were very inexperienced. But they were experienced in our view at the time you know. They were a captain of a Halifax, you know. It was just unbelievable.
DB: Yes.
CP: You know.
DB: Yes.
CP: Wonderful aeroplanes.
DB: And did you have any difficult, particularly difficult operations? Or ones that stand out?
CP: I thought they all were [laughs]
DB: I bet they were.
CP: We, very early on I remember we landed at a base back in England that turned out to be what was known as a Q site. It was actually, it was a dummy airfield. We shouldn’t have landed there [laughs] I mean the war was very early on. It was really quite amazing that you survived. But —
DB: And so on —
CP: We landed on I was only the second pilot. I didn’t know, you know, what was happening but he landed on this and we only [pause] we hadn’t even touched down. We were just in the approach and all the lights went out. He had to land, he was, you know he’d committed to land you see.
DB: Yes.
CP: And it wasn’t on an airfield at all.
DB: So what did he —
CP: It was a dummy airfield, you know, but fortunately it was, it was serviceable you know.
DB: So you did managed to land there?
CP: We landed. Yeah. You know. The aircraft stopped you know. No lights. Nothing. Pitch dark. And the tail gunner called out, ‘Christ skipper. We’re in a cornfield.’ [laughs] We’d landed on this dummy airfield. We’d gone through a hedge and stopped and then I mean fortunately there was, it was open country.
DB: Yes.
CP: And we were — no damage done. Flew out to an airfield. At least taxied out to an airfield the next morning.
DB: So you were able to —
CP: Yes. Take off next morning. Yeah.
DB: There was an airfield nearby that you could get to —
CP: Yeah.
DB: And just take off again.
CP: Yeah.
DB: I wonder what the farmer thought who owned the cornfield? [laughs]
CP: [laughs] Yeah. Extraordinary.
DB: So that was, that was one of your early?
CP: That was very early on.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. I then became an experienced captain after that.
DB: And tell me about some of the ops that you did when you were a captain.
CP: Oh we did, we did everything I think. From flying to the big city. Which was going to Berlin. To going to places like on the French coast to St Nazaire. To the aircraft [pause] submarine pens.
DB: Yes.
CP: Used to do a lot of bombing of that area. Oh, you know. We had a very interesting time, you know, quite exciting.
DB: Yes. And did you, did you get to know many of the other people in the, on the squadron?
CP: Oh yes. Did. Yeah. You were living with them.
DB: Yes and what were the losses?
CP: At that time not too many Australians.
DB: No.
CP: And we had an Australian crew but mostly Englishmen. Mostly English people.
DB: And did you have any Canadians or New Zealanders?
CP: Yes. Yes. A lot.
DB: And which, which squadron were you with?
CP: I was with first of all I was with 35 Squadron which was an RAF Halifax squadron. But then I went back to Whitleys and went into 58 Squadron.
DB: Right.
CP: Again, it was again an English squadron. They were all English squadrons.
DB: Yeah.
CP: We were just Australians crews in English squadrons.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. It was early times. It was 1940, ‘41.
DB: So if you started your operations in ’41 do you remember when it was that you finished your twenty eight or thirty? What —
CP: I did them in a year. In about a year. Went through a winter. You were on standby often in the winter time. You can’t, can’t always fly, I mean the weather’s so bad.
DB: So you’d be all briefed and ready to go.
CP: That’s right. Yeah. Get cancelled. A lot of cancelled.
DB: And how did you find that when you’d be all ready to go and —
CP: Oh it’s, you get all keyed up to go you know, it’s a nuisance really. It’s a bit of a mind.
DB: You’d rather just get going.
CP: Get going. Yeah.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: You would be all keyed up to go and [pause] oh it’s a long time ago.
DB: And are there any other of your particular operations that stand out in your mind?
[pause]
CP: Oh yeah. Any, any operation which was going to take you to Berlin was something that stood out.
DB: Yes.
CP: Because it was the, it was the furthest to go in most cases and not the best place to go.
DB: No. Well defended.
CP: It was well defended.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: Yeah. You weren’t terribly keen about going to Berlin. [laughs]
DB: And what —
CP: I went to Berlin as a second pilot on a Halifax but then I went about three times when I was captain of a Whitley.
DB: So you had a few trips there.
CP: I had. Yeah. I’d have to have a look at my logbook.
DB: And were they flying as far as Milan and going to Italy at that time?
CP: Oh yes. Yeah. Interestingly enough I never went to Italy. I got briefed to go to Italy on a couple of occasions, and we always wanted to go to Italy because it wasn’t heavily defended.
DB: No. No.
CP: And you know it was much more fun to go there where there weren’t too many guns. To go to the Ruhr was like going to the bloody home of arsenal.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: That was the most heavily defended area in Germany of course.
DB: Yes.
CP: The Ruhr valley and then Berlin was not nasty [unclear] but it was much further. And you had a lot of flying over the north part of Germany to get to, and then you’d go. We used to fly almost on the coast, on the north coast of Germany. And then you’d fly almost as far as Stettin and then turn down to the right to go down to Berlin and it was a bloody long way.
DB: And defended all the way I guess?
CP: Well, no not too bad really because you could fly over the North Sea for a long time which was a great help. And that was alright, flying over the North Sea, unless you came across a gun boat, and you never knew where they were. And you’d get a bloody burst from that [laughs] yeah.
DB: Yes. That would —
CP: A ship.
DB: A bit of a shock coming out of the blackness wouldn’t it?
CP: That’s right.
DB: Yes. So the furthest target you went to would have been Berlin.
CP: It would. Yeah.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And the closer ones were the French. The submarine pens.
CP: Oh going the other way yeah. Yeah, yeah.
DB: Yes. So you did a few of those as well.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. So you had the same crew with you for that, for all your ops.
CP: Well except when I went as a second pilot and I was going with a totally different crew but when I started flying as a captain I had the same crew.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And did they all survive the war too?
CP: Yes.
DB: They did.
CP: Yeah. Yeah. We were lucky.
DB: Yes. And so you completed your tour at thirty. Thirty operations?
CP: I only did twenty eight.
DB: Right. Yes.
CP: You were meant to do thirty.
DB: But they were happy for you to finish at that point.
CP: That’s right. It worked out that way.
DB: Yes. And what did you do then?
CP: I went instructing.
DB: So —
CP: That was the normal thing.
DB: Yes.
CP: But I must have come back to Australia, you see. When did I come back? I came back. We were all itching to get back as soon as the Japanese came in you see, my first lot of flying was well before the end of 1941. You see I was flying in 1940.
DB: Yes.
CP: In England.
DB: Yes.
CP: And, you see, the Japs didn’t come in until December ’41. So, and none of us came back to Australia until ’42.
DB: And you were pretty keen.
CP: I’d been very early. Very early on. I was the fourth course to go through.
DB: Yes. That’s early. And [pause] now what was I going to ask about? Oh where did you do your instructing?
CP: In England?
DB: Yes. When you went on to instructing after your ops.
CP: The Garden of Eden. The Vale of Evesham. Down south of Birmingham.
DB: Right.
CP: Oh what a beautiful country. The Cotswolds.
DB: Oh beautiful.
CP: I hadn’t realised what a beautiful part of England.
DB: Yes.
CP: I was there for a year instructing. Oh glorious Berkshire there to Somerset.
DB: So you enjoyed your leave time when you were there.
CP: Lovely.
DB: Yes.
CP: England is a most beautiful place.
DB: It is very beautiful. And getting to see, see it from the air must be very special.
CP: Oh it’s lovely, it’s a beautiful country.
DB: And how did you find instructing after having been flying for so long?
CP: Oh I enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah.
DB: So you were instructing different nationalities. Were there Australians and —?
CP: New Zealanders.
DB: New Zealanders. Canadians. Yeah. Lovely. A lovely life. Beautiful. You know. Interesting people. Interesting. So they were pretty well educated you see. That’s what the beauty of it was.
CP: So they were pretty well trained by the time they got to you.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good.
CP: So at that time had the because I know my dad was trained in the Empire Air Training Scheme in Canada.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
CP: Of course I did that.
DB: Oh you did that too?
CP: Yep.
DB: So did you go from Australia to Canada did you? Before you went to England?
CP: Yeah.
DB: Right.
CP: Glorious. I hadn’t realised what a wonderful time we had. We went to [pause] I was in Calgary for the whole of one winter.
DB: It would have been cold.
CP: Cold. But skiing up in the mountains. What a beautiful country.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yes.
DB: So you did a lot of your initial pilot training in Canada.
CP: I did.
DB: As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme.
CP: Went from Tiger Moths in Narromine to Ansons in Calgary.
DB: Right. Yes.
CP: You know. What a wonderful life you know. It was a wonderful time.
DB: So you —
CP: And you know, great companions.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Doing something different, you know. Flying. You couldn’t get anything better for a young man. I’d just finished university, you know, so I was more mature than most of them and you know and just, it was wonderful.
DB: And so you —
CP: The beginning of the war.
DB: Yes. Yes.
CP: 1940.
DB: And you were with a big — big group in Canada training.
CP: Yes, yeah.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: But I think we were the third, third lot to go through.
DB: Right.
CP: You know. So it was all new. And the courses were pretty well picked, you know. The cream of the lot we were really. We were marvellous, had a marvellous time.
DB: And did you have did you feel the instructing was good there?
CP: Excellent, excellent. Some of them were almost professional instructors, you know. Some of them were American. There were senior Canadian pilots, you know. We got the best of the lot.
DB: Yes.
CP: A wonderful time. And ah, [pause] for a young Australian. I was just, I’d just finished university really.
DB: But you were ready for some adventure.
CP: Yeah. Absolutely. You know.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
CP: You know. I wasn’t young. I was twenty one, twenty two, twenty three.
DB: Yes. There were some younger than that weren’t there?
CP: Oh yes. A lot.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. So did you, did some of the people you trained with in Canada go on to the same squadron as you? Did you keep some?
CP: Yeah. Not a lot but you know, quite a few went through the procedure, you know. I think I had one or two that were on [pause] in my crew that had come right through. Yeah.
DB: So did most of the people you trained with survive the war?
CP: I couldn’t tell you.
DB: No. Did you —
CP: I don’t know. You see, because wars sort of go on don’t they? I came back and went into the war in the Pacific.
DB: Right.
CP: You see.
DB: Yes.
CP: I went through a tour of operations in Europe, and then I came back to Australia just after the Japs came in at the end of ’41. And started all over again.
DB: So where were you based then? Were you based somewhere in Australia or — ?
CP: Came down to Darwin.
DB: Right. Yes. That would have been very different flying.
CP: [laughs] quite a difference.
DB: Yes.
CP: Quite a difference.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: So just getting back to England and Bomber Command your son, Bill mentioned that you were awarded the DFC.
CP: Yes.
DB: Can you tell me how? How that came about?
CP: No. Well [pause] If you stayed long enough you you were bound to get a DFC [laughs]
DB: Oh I’m sure that’s not quite the case.
CP: It almost is but you know. Right you see, I suppose I’d done a tour in England and I had done a bit of flying when I came back to Australia, and so it wasn’t a unique thing for me to be given an award. I became a quite senior pilot very early on.
DB: Yes.
CP: On Australia.
DB: So your DFC was awarded when you were in the Pacific.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. Yeah. So you’d done quite a bit of flying by that time.
CP: I’d done a tour of operations in Europe.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And so what, what was the actual flight that resulted in the DFC?
CP: No. In the course of time really. Nothing particular. Just having stayed the distance.
DB: Right. Yes. And you were mentioned in dispatches a couple of times too.
CP: I was. That was pretty automatic too. Provided you stayed alive. [laughs]
DB: So that was during the Pacific flying time or was that in Bomber Command?
CP: No, that was England.
DB: Right. So do you remember?
CP: No.
DB: What that, what that flight was?
CP: I honestly don’t know.
DB: No.
CP: No.
DB: So that was one of your trips over Europe though.
CP: Well, probably not a particular one. Probably having survived several I think.
DB: Yes. So were you commissioned? You were commissioned when you were still in Canada at the end of your —?
CP: No.
DB: No.
CP: I wasn’t commissioned until I’d finished a tour in England.
DB: Right.
CP: I did my first tour as a sergeant.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And then you became a flight lieutenant, is that right? At the, at the end?
CP: I was commissioned when I was in the RAF.
DB: Yeah.
CP: And I just progressed to it through the stages.
DB: Yes. So tell me the things that really stand out in your mind from your time in England. What are the sort of important memories for you of that time?
CP: I think my important memories first of all was when I was seconded to [pause] as a second pilot to 35 Squadron which was a RAF Halifax squadron as a second pilot. And I was flying with some very — I was flying with the squadron commander. Quite a senior RAF wing commander, and it was, he was in command of 35 Squadron in Yorkshire and I was sent up there as a second pilot. He was the first really professional RAF man I flew with. He was just a marvellous man. He, he was a squadron commander and he did more flying, I think, than any one else in the squadron.
DB: Do you remember his name?
CP: Yes. Robinson.
DB: Right. Robinson, yeah. And so you did your —
CP: I, you know, I worshipped him. I thought he was a marvellous bloke.
DB: So you must have been very privileged. Felt very privileged to fly with him.
CP: Well I was very privileged to fly with him as second pilot.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yes. And he would have —
CP: Wonderful man.
DB: Taught you a lot I guess.
CP: Great bloke.
DB: So do you recall where you went on that flight with him?
CP: Yes. We went to Berlin. My first flight as a second pilot was with Wing Commander Robinson. He was the most unflappable bloke I’ve seen. Wonderful example.
DB: Yes. And that would have given you a great sense of security to go with him.
CP: Marvellous. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. I was very privileged. Yeah, lovely man.
DB: So that’s probably one of your most special memories.
CP: Ah, you know. Stands out in my mind.
DB: Yes.
CP: Great.
DB: Yes. And are there any others that stand out of your operations?
CP: I met some very good Australians. I came back to Australia you see. I did a tour of operations in Europe because I was over there, I was very early on. I was the third or fourth course to go through the Empire Air Training Scheme.
DB: Yes.
CP: So I was in England very early, and I came back to Australia you see, because the Japs didn’t come in ‘till, you know, we thought the war was nearly over, end of ’41, beginning of ‘42 and I’d been over there since 1940.
DB: And you’d done a year of instructing then after your ops.
CP: I did. That’s it. And then came back. To Australia.
DB: And then you were able to come back. Yes. So you came back by ship then. Yes. And there was quite a group of you coming back to continue on.
CP: Yes. Yes. Yeah. In Australia. Yes.
DB: And were —
CP: The war didn’t start out here until the end of ‘41 beginning of ‘42 and I’d been in since 1940.
DB: Yes. So you were ready to come back.
CP: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: Yes. And did you keep in contact with any of the people you flew with in England?
CP: No. Not really.
DB: No. So not any of your crew, your own crew.
CP: Yes. I left them behind. Because they hadn’t, they hadn’t done. My navigator I finished up with in England was a bloke called Wilf Stone, an old Scotch College boy, but he stayed behind. I got sent back to Australia you see.
DB: So he was still flying.
CP: He was still flying in England. Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And did he survive the war?
CP: I think so. I think so. Yeah. Wilf Stones. Funny how I forget what happened to him. He went flying with somebody else, I know. A good navigator.
DB: And what about the rest of your crew that you flew with. Were they —
CP: In England?
DB: Yes.
CP: They were all Englishmen.
DB: Right.
CP: Yeah. Yeah. They were all Englishman.
DB: And did they go on and continue with other —?
CP: Yeah. You lose track.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And they —
CP: I came back to Australia you see. When did I come back? End of ’42. Yeah.
DB: And how was it coming home?
CP: Oh it was different world. You know.
DB: Yes.
CP: There hadn’t been a war out here when I left but there was very much a war when I came back.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And did you come back to Melbourne before you were sent to Darwin?
CP: Yeah.
DB: So —
CP: Well, I had a month’s leave I think.
DB: Yes. I bet your mother —
CP: I’d been away for a long time.
DB: Yes. Your mother would have been pleased to see you.
CP: Yeah [laughs] yeah.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. All the family were in the services then. My brother was a doctor. He was five years older than me but he was up in New Guinea.
DB: Yeah. And so how much longer were you in the RAAF then when you went and fought from, flew from Darwin? And so how long —
CP: I stayed in the RAAF after the war.
DB: So you were a career pilot for a while then, yes. So is that what you continued doing for very long?
CP: Well I thought I was going to stay there forever. But I then went. Left and I went flying commercially.
DB: Oh did you? Yes.
CP: I went flying up in Alice Springs. Bush airline. Some of the best flying I ever had I think. That was after the war.
DB: So how long did —
CP: I would have, I would have stayed on flying I think but I was getting married then. The family didn’t want a kid when flying. Yeah.
DB: Did you miss it?
CP: Yeah. I did.
DB: Yes. So —
CP: I went farming, it nearly killed me. I loved flying.
DB: So that nearly — that nearly killed you more than flying in the war did.
CP: I think so [laughs]
DB: Where were you farming then? Were you down this way again?
CP: On York Peninsula.
DB: Oh. In South Australia.
CP: That’s where my wife came from.
DB: Right. Yes. So was that cropping farming?
CP: Yes. Yes.
DB: Yeah.
CP: Yeah. I did that for two years. Then I went school teaching.
DB: And was that in South Australia as well?
CP: No.
DB: No. You came back here.
CP: Came back and I bought a farm out here. Just sort of got or had [unclear] my son’s.
DB: Yes. So that’s close by here is it? Yes. Yeah.
CP: That’s where I came from you see. We came from Geelong originally.
DB: Yes. And —
CP: I went school lteaching.. That became my profession.
DB: So did you teach primary school or secondary?
CP: Secondary.
DB: School. So what subjects did you teach?
CP: Fundamentally agg science but I taught physics and chemistry up to leaving level. Up to you know matric level. And I’d done a university degree before the war.
DB: Yes. Yeah. And so did your, do you think your experiences in the war contributed to your teaching later?
CP: Oh certainly, certainly. Certainly contributed to my, my positions as a house master and what not. Senior positions. Because they were better for you. Very much. Understanding people better I think.
DB: Yes. And you would have —
CP: I was quite mature really when I was teaching. I’d been through the war.
DB: And got, got to know many, many different people I think.
CP: Absolutely. Yeah.
DB: Which would be very helpful with teaching wouldn’t it? Yes. And did you do any more flying?
CP: I continued to fly. I continued to fly. See I went flying professionally after the war for a while. I would have gone on flying forever I think but family didn’t want to.
DB: So did you keep it up as a hobby at all?
CP: Yeah. I still fly.
DB: I saw something on YouTube that your son Bill sent me where you went flying. Was it for your ninetieth birthday?
CP: [laughs] [unclear]
DB: And there’s a film of you climbing up into just a two seater plane.
CP: Yeah.
DB: And looping the loop and all sorts of things.
CP: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
CP: That was recent. Victor Harbour.
DB: Right. Yes. And what —
CP: I still love flying.
DB: Yes.
CP: It gets in your blood. But I had some marvellous flying in Alice Springs. That was some of the best flying I ever did I think. In old aeroplanes and carrying the mail all over the territory. That was wonderful fun.
DB: That would have been very different to flying over England and —
CP: That’s right.
DB: Over Europe.
CP: Totally different.
DB: That huge expanse of country.
CP: Old planes too.
DB: So what sort of planes did you fly in Alice Springs?
CP: Flew a Dragon, DH Dragon twin engine. Two light twins. Great aeroplane. A dragon and a dragonfly. A Dragonfly was a more modern one. Had self-starters.
DB: You didn’t have to get out.
CP: [laughs] No.
DB: Crank the engine.
CP: No.
DB: And did you have crew with you at all on those?
CP: Mail plane?
DB: Yes.
CP: No. No. No. But we often had passengers.
DB: Yes.
CP: But no you were on your own. Lovely.
DB: So what would you say your main memories are of your time flying in England with, with Bomber Command?
CP: In England? In England.
DB: Yes.
CP: [pause] It was two very different sorts of flying because some of the flying was just in England either instructing or in just flying in England. Was nothing to worry about. Or flying from England over Europe which was very tense. Yeah. So some of the flying over England was beautiful.
DB: Yes.
CP: Lovely. Glorious.
DB: Yes. And how did you feel of that tension that you referred to in flying over Europe? How do you think that affected you?
CP: I think I’m, I think I’m a very fortunate person that I don’t get very tight. I’m able to relax pretty well. And I’ve been in some very difficult situations but I’m very fortunate not to get too uptight about it.
DB: Yes.
CP: But some of the flying over England — England is the most beautiful country. It really is the most beautiful place. But when you divorce it from the flying at, from war flying it’s a lovely place.
DB: Yes. And did you enjoy your, your leave times when you were in England?
CP: I did. I did. I did. It was all new to me but I, you know I had good friends to visit.
DB: Yes.
CP: And relations to visit, you know. And it felt like home, you know.
DB: Yes.
CP: England is the most beautiful place.
DB: Yes.
CP: Absolutely beautiful.
DB: So did one or either of your parents have family in England?
CP: Both did [pause] but my mother’s family more so I think although they were fundamentally Australian. Mum was born in Australia and was brought up in the country. Near Colac. And dad was brought up in Australia, a country man from Gippsland. And — but both with strong English connections.
DB: Yes.
CP: So we had a lots of relatives over there. England is such a beautiful country.
DB: It certainly is.
CP: Compared to the vastness of Australia. But I’ve been fortunate to know Australia. Because I’ve been based as an airline pilot in Alice Springs. You’d hardly call it an airline pilot. A bush pilot. [laughs]
DB: Well that would have been great flying experience to do that.
CP: Wonderful. Real. I’ve had a wonderful flying career.
DB: Yes.
CP: You know. Lovely.
DB: Yes. So you’ve had very contrasting flying experience haven’t you?
CP: Absolutely. Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Because it would be very hard to compare flying over outback Australia with flying over Europe during the war.
CP: Yeah. England particularly. England. What a beautiful country.
DB: And have you been back there?
CP: Yes I have. Yeah. Yes.
DB: Yes.
CP: Yeah. We’ve been back quite recently.
DB: And did you go back and visit your old squadron when you went back. Was it still there?
CP: No.
DB: No.
CP: I went back to Stratford. I was training in Stratford in the Vale of Evesham. What a glorious country.
DB: Beautiful.
CP: Absolutely beautiful. Yeah.
DB: Yes. And so you’ve not had much contact with your, your compatriots from that time since the war.
CP: No. No.
DB: No.
CP: Not at all. No. Not at all. England. England is just the most. It’s a garden.
DB: Yes it is.
CP: Do you know it well?
DB: I’ve been a few times. Yes. Yeah. I went with my father and he took me to his old squadron in — he was in Elsham Wolds.
CP: Oh yes.
DB: And there were a few old buildings left in 1995 when I went there with him. So —
CP: Elsham Wolds.
DB: Yes. He thought it was a beautiful place too. He loved it. He had a lot of visits back there as well. Yes.
CP: Beautiful country.
DB: Yes.
CP: Glorious country.
DB: So before we finish I suppose I should just ask if there is sort of one most important or special memory that you have of Bomber Command. Or your [pause] what’s your overall feeling of what Bomber Command was like for you?
CP: Well, I was, I was there very early on compared to what most of them went through later on. It was much more sort of an individualistic sort of operation when I was there. And I was young. I was young. I was enjoying flying. It was a new adventure for me and I just had the most glorious time in England. Glorious time. I met some lovely people and lovely families. And the war was really on then in 1940/41 and London was so different, you know. It was really a city under siege in 1941.
DB: Yes.
CP: So I feel very fortunate to have had the experience.
DB: Yes.
CP: Lovely.
DB: I’ll turn this off now.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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AParsonsCER160817, PParsonsCER1601
Title
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Interview with Cecil Parsons
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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01:02:15 audio recording
Creator
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Doreen Burge
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-17
Description
An account of the resource
Cecil Parsons was born in 1918 in Victoria, Australia. He volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force in 1939 and trained as a pilot in New South Wales and Canada as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme before being posted to England in 1940. He was stationed at RAF Linton on Ouse, flying Whitleys with 58 Squadron and as second pilot on Halifaxes with 35 Squadron. He completed a tour of operations and describes flying operations over Europe, including Berlin and recalls an early occasion when his plane accidentally landed at a dummy airfield. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross before he returned to Australia in 1942 and served as an instructor with the RAAF. He later worked as a commercial pilot and then a schoolteacher.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Canada
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
New South Wales--Orana Region
Victoria--Geelong
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Carolyn Emery
35 Squadron
58 Squadron
Anson
decoy site
Distinguished Flying Cross
Halifax
Nissen hut
RAF Linton on Ouse
Tiger Moth
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/193/3527/PYeomanHT1601.1.jpg
81e8d485ebaa1faca0c2e7fc8ce934c8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/193/3527/AYeomanHT161013.1.mp3
bc5e3721d340abe4d24b5b171dcc0968
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
Yeoman, Harold
Harold Yeoman
Harold T Yeoman
H T Yeoman
Description
An account of the resource
31 items. Collection concerns Harold Yeoman (b. 1921 1059846 and 104405 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 12 Squadron. Collection contains an oral history interview, a memoir, pilot's flying log book, 26 poems, a photograph and details of trail of Malayan collaborator.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Christopher E. Potts and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Yeoman, HT
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
PL: My name’s Pam Locker. And I’m here today in the home of Mr Harold Yeoman of [deleted] on Thursday the 13th of October at 10 o’clock. 2016. So I’d just like to start Harold by saying thank you very much indeed on behalf of Bomber Command Memorial Trust for agreeing to an interview today. And if I could just start by asking you a little bit about your, your younger life and how you came to be involved with Bomber Command in the first place.
HY: Well, as far as my younger life’s concerned I worked in local government. And when the year came to about 1935 or ‘6, it was the day that Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, I realised then that I was of an age where I would have to do something. So, I talked to my parents and I had, my father had been in the army in the First World War and the RAMC. My brother was just about ready to go into the Royal Artillery. So my thoughts were primarily of army. And I thought well, I’ve got to volunteer for something before I’m called up and told what they’re going to do. They might put me in the Navy which I thought would be pretty horrible. So I went along to the local Drill Hall, the Army Drill Hall and said, ‘I’ve come to volunteer.’ And they said, ‘Well, that’s very hard lines because we’re full up. You can go on the waiting list if you like.’ I said, ‘No. I don’t think so. I’ll find something else.’ So [coughs] excuse me about that time I used to go to the pictures about once a week and one of the newsreels that came on, it was black and white of course was quite topical. It was dealing with wartime subjects and it was, the screen was divided into four parts. The picture. And one of the parts was a tank. Another one was a big gun and the one I was interested in was a picture of an aircraft flying along from left to right. I didn’t know what it was then but later I realised it was an Avro Anson. And here was a little man sitting in the gun turret on the top of the Anson. And I thought I could do that. You know, I don’t see why I shouldn’t do that. So, instead of thinking about the army I started thinking about the air force. Anyhow, the army said they were full up, they’d put me on the waiting list. I said, ‘No, thank you. I’ll find something else.’ The something else turned out to be the air force. So my brother who was eight years older than me and he saw what I was going to do and he got a bit jealous. He said, ‘Well, I’ll do the same thing.’ So we both went up to [laughs] we both went up to Newcastle to the, the Recruiting Centre which was in the west end of Newcastle. Scotswood Road. It was a school up on the hill and said, ‘We’ve come to volunteer for the, the air force.’ They said, ‘Righto.’ Took all my particulars and took my brothers particulars and said, ‘Well, you’ve got to have a medical.’ I said, ‘Ok. I can do that.’ And said, ‘well, come this way.’ They gave me [laughs] they just counted my arms and legs and saw whether I could see. They said, ‘Oh yes, you’ve got through.’ So that was it. ‘Just go outside and we’ll do the rest.’ So my brother came out and I said, ‘How did you get on?’ He said, ‘Oh. I failed.’ I said, ‘You failed?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘What was the matter?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got varicose veins.’ I said, ‘Well, so have I but I got through.’ I got a small one which has developed since then but it’s no bother. Never mind. So he came away quite despondent and I came away quite happy that I’d got in to the air force and volunteered for aircrew. I thought I’d be a gunner sitting in the top turret of an Anson somewhere or other. And in due course I got a letter to say that I had to report to the Reception Centre at Babbacombe, a suburb of Torquay. Just, it was just described as P, I think it was P, PUB or something like that which meant pilot, observer or bomb aimer or something some such. POB. So I reported there and learned I was going to become a pilot which was a great surprise to me. So, did all the necessary ground subjects at Babbacombe. Drill, PT and so on and so forth and a bit of air force law. And then I was posted next door into Torquay itself at Number 3 Initial Training Wing. The subjects on the ground developed into a bit more complicated. A bit of navigation, some gunnery. A bit of air force law. As a subject dealing with tactics in, in the air when you were doing civilian, when you, before you got operational. And that all went off. I’d got a written examination there and passed that alright. And from there I was sent to really start finding out about aeroplanes which I’d never, I’d never been close to an aeroplane before that. Never been up in one. Never seen one close too. Never touched one. And went to Number 6 EFTS at Sywell which is just outside Northampton. It’s probably Northampton Civil Aerodrome now, where they had Tiger Moths and did my initiation on to Tiger Moths with a very unpleasant instructor who shall be nameless but I’ve got his name in the back of my mind. Got rid of him and got a much more pleasant instructor which improved my flying no end. I went solo in ten hours forty five minutes I think. Something like that. And I did my first solo flight in a Tiger Moth on Christmas Eve of 1940. And I did my first solo cross-country from Sywell to Cambridge where there was another EFTS where I had to land, report to the watch office and take off again. Come back to, come back to Sywell. Navigating myself which was quite easy. Had a map on my knee. Had to keep a log on the other knee. And I got through that alright and that was more or less the end of that course. And did some aerobatics which I was not very good at. Which I was very poor at actually. From there I didn’t know what was going to happen but I soon found out the next stage was the intermediate training which because of the enemy activity that was going on was done as far away from England as possible. So I was sent out to Canada to 32 SFTS at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan where I flew Harvards. I went solo on them inside a very short order. It was only about half a dozen hours of duel I think on Harvards. We did the same sort of, same type of flying. Solo cross-country’s lasting anything up to about an hour and hour and a half. One was from Moose Jaw to a place called Dafoe. Up north in the north of Saskatchewan. From Dafoe to Watrous which was another small town. And from Watrous back to Moose Jaw. That was quite a nice, nice ride. And did a certain amount of aerobatics at which I was very, very poor. I thought well if I’m going to be a fighter pilot this is not going to serve me very well. So, at the finish of the, the course when I got through everything including examiners, examinations, the interview by the chief instructor, chief flying instructor, then the chief instructor of the station who was a very nice chap and he said, ‘Well, I suppose you want to go on to Spitfires like everybody else do you?’ I said, ‘No sir. I don’t.’ He said, ‘You don’t. What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to go on to bombers.’ I said, ‘My aerobatics are very poor. I know that myself. And my instrument flying is quite good and I enjoy instrument flying so I’d rather go on to bombers.’ He said, ‘Well, I can’t promise you anything but we’ll see what we can do.’ And in due course I came back to England and was sent to Operational Training Unit at Bassingbourn which had Wellingtons. Amazingly enough I went solo on Wellingtons in less than four hours which was astonishing to me because I’d only flown single engine up ‘til then and getting into a Wellington was like coming in to a, in to a house. It was huge in my eyes having just been on single engine stuff. So I went solo on them in about three hours forty five minutes or so and did sort of a lot of basic work. Cross country’s and a bit of blind flying with the hood pulled down so you couldn’t see where you were. Including a blind take off. Well, that was very interesting. Settling down on the runway and getting yourself central. Then the instructor said, ‘Pull the hood down now and you’re going off.’ So I had to just do the take off completely blind with the instructor in the front and just went off by feeling when it was ready to get airborne. Eased back on the stick and away we went. And when I got airborne, climbed up to a thousand feet or so he said, ‘Right. Pull the hood back now. That was ok.’ That was an interesting one. I enjoyed that very much. And that was the initiation on to Wellingtons. Then the important thing was the crewing up which as you may know was done in a very haphazard manner. I just went into a room and there was a whole lot of mixture of pilots, observers as they were then. Observers as were then navigators and bomb aimers. There were gunners as well. And it was just a whole crowd of people and you just had to sort out your own crew and you’d come up to somebody and say, ‘Are you looking for a navigator?’ ‘Are you looking for a gunner?’ And it was like that. Well, I got a good navigator in an Australian chap called Colin Fletcher. The wireless op was from Solihull. We know, we knew him as Mick. Mick Pratt. And the two gunners. One was from Sudbury in Suffolk, Johnny Roe. And the rear gunner was from Balham. He was Tommy Evans. And that was the crew. So we then flew as a crew and did all the basic cross-country flying, night and day. And by that time we were ready to be posted on to a squadron. So we were posted to 12 Squadron at Binbrook. And that’s how I got to 12 Squadron. So was that enough or do you want some more?
PL: Well, what happened next? Once you got to Binbrook. Tell me a little bit about your operations.
HY: Yes. Well, we got to Binbrook as a crew and to [pause] I got into [pause] I was sent to B Flight which was commanded by Squadron Leader Abraham who was a very pleasant chap. And [coughs] my co-pilot who had been a Canadian, he wasn’t, I thought he was a Canadian. He was American actually. My co-pilot whom I picked up at OTU was then, he was detached to go in to another crew and I became co-pilot to Sergeant Potts and we did one or two operations. I did one or two operations with him. The first one I did was supposed to be to Cherbourg as a fresher operation which was one of the Channel Ports. And that was ok except that when we got as far as the south coast of England we started to have trouble with the starboard engine which started to leak glycol vapour. The glycol vapour then became ignited due to the exhaust, the heat of the exhaust. And the engine caught fire and we were trailing a plume of flame about sixty or eighty feet long. And the, the captain who said, who was a very nice bloke actually, Sergeant Potts, he said , ‘We’re going to have to put this thing down somewhere.’ So, it was pitch dark. It was at night and there was a bit of a moon and we, I didn’t know where we were and neither, I suppose neither did he because the navigation had just gone completely out of the window on that side. It was a question of survival. We were too low to bale out. We were only at, on the, over the coast. We were about eight or ten thousand feet. And the, the captain said, ‘We’ve got to go back because the engine’s giving trouble.’ This was before it caught fire. He said, ‘There’s no point in sticking around up here on oxygen. We might as well go down low.’ So we got down to two or three thousand feet by which time the engine had really caught fire. And we started to lose height almost immediately on one engine and we were too low to bale out. Ralph Potts said, ‘I’m going to have to put it down somewhere.’ So eventually we, we did a crash landing in a field by which time the engine was more or less, had more or less subsided. I’d pressed the fire extinguisher button and eventually it took effect. It flooded the engine with foam apparently. I didn’t know that. But I just pressed the button and hoped. Kept my fingers crossed. So, we, we came down in this field and luckily without any undue further mishaps. The engine was still very red hot. And when we hit the field we broke the back of the geodetics which came up through the floor and the aircraft was virtually in two bits. Luckily there was no, no injury to anybody so we all got out the, out of the top escape hatch over the pilot’s seat. And as we got out I was the last one out. I got the rest of the crew out. The captain went out first and I got the crew out by the seat of their pants. Literally pushed them out of the top and they jumped down on to the wing. I was the last one out. As I got out I found that the port engine with having flown on that for so long that was now red hot itself and I thought well that’s going to catch fire so I had to get back in and press the extinguisher button on the port engine. And that was it. We, we all got in to the field and didn’t know where we were. The next thing we knew there was an army corporal came across and said, you know, ‘Are you all ok?’ And we said, ‘Yeah. We’re all walking,’ And I said, ‘Where are we?’ He said, ‘Well, you’re near St Albans.’ So that was news to us. And he helped us over the hedge and the army then took charge of us and said, ‘We’d better get you some billets for the night and get you to a telephone. You can ring your aerodrome, let them know what’s happened.’ So we got the IFF box out of the aircraft. Which was the secret, highly secret in those days, it was a radar tracking appliance which we put on fifty miles from the English coast. We took, sorry we turned that off fifty miles from the English coast going out and put it on a hundred miles from the English coast coming back. And we took that out of the aircraft and put it into the local police station in to the safe. I was billeted in the house with a couple of middle aged ladies and just slept on the floor. There was nowhere else we could go. We got through to the, to Binbrook and let them know that we were, where we were. That we were down and safe and that the aircraft was rather bent. That was about it. We got, we got a meal, a couple of meals at the house. Thanked the ladies very much. And the next morning we got rail warrants to get back to Binbrook. So we had to travel by train from St Albans to London, across London and then from London up to Grimsby. And from Grimsby we got transport to, to Binbrook. And it was a bit, a bit amusing having to go across London on foot and in our flying kit with parachutes. People were looking at us thinking we were enemy spies. But we had, we had quite a nice journey from Kings Cross up to Grimsby. There was, I think there was a business that saw our predicament and didn’t ask many questions but he knew we’d had some trouble. So he took us along to the dining car and gave us a meal which was very kind of him. Anyhow, we got back to Binbrook and resumed activity. That was it.
PL: So, did your, your plane had to be rescued, was that repairable or were you given a new plane?
HY: I think it was. I think it was eventually put together again. And whether it became operational I don’t know but it wasn’t a complete right-off but it was as near as makes no matter [pause] And from then on we, I started in the, I’ve forgotten whose crew it was now. Oh yes it was a Canadian called Harold Cook, who took, took me over with the rest of the crew. My co-pilot, the American whom I thought was a Canadian, Elmer [Menchek?] he went into another crew and I flew with, with Harold Cook. Did a few operations with him which weren’t exactly uneventful but they were survivable. And then I developed, developed stomach trouble. Air sickness. I think it was with the stress of the burning aircraft which we’d had initially. I think that had a lot to do with it. The anti-aircraft fire had a lot more to do with it. And I was being airsick most of the, most of the time. I reported to the MO and he gave me some pills. But I did a few trips with, with these pills and they just didn’t work so I was then grounded. I was sent to Number 1 Group Headquarters at Bawtry Hall just to do a bit of admin as a supernumerary. And from there I went into intelligence. Became an intelligence officer. Did a course at Highgate in London. Got through that. Sent to, they asked me where I wanted to go to. I said well, told them where I lived. As far north as possible. So I got a posting to Linton on Ouse and there was an intelligence officer there for a time with 76 and 78 Squadron which had Halifaxes until I had a difference of opinion with the station commander who was a group captain. Greatly outranked me. He wanted me to do certain other jobs apart from intelligence work. I said, ‘Well, I don’t know how I’m going to fit them in. It’s not possible.’ He didn’t know. He’d just come, come from India. Been posted from India. He was what we called a wingless wonder or a penguin. And he hadn’t a clue about operational flying so as I said we had this difference of opinion. The next thing I knew I was shot out of the station. Posted elsewhere. You couldn’t win an argument with a group captain. It didn’t matter how hard you tried. So then he got rid of me and I was sent out of intelligence in to admin. Posted to [pause] I’m just trying to think of the name of the place now. It was a satellite of Mildenhall. Tuddenham. To assistant adjutant of 90 Squadron at Tuddenham. Which was a very, it was a nice job. It was not connected intimately with flying but it was, we had, we had aircraft on, on the station. That was the main thing. I did a time there and then the bull fell. I was posted to India. I reported to the one of the headquarters in Bombay and they said, ‘Well, you know you’re going to be posted to [pause] it was up in, on the northwest frontier. I said, ‘What’s the rank of the post?’ It was a sergeant who was doing the paperwork. He said, ‘Well it’s a flying officer post.’ And I was a flying officer by that time I’d got a thicker ring. I said, ‘Haven’t you got a flight lieutenant post anywhere?’ I thought I might as well stick my neck out and go the full hog. So he had another look at the paper and said, ‘Oh yes. We have as a matter of fact.’ So [laughs] I got a second ring and I’m just trying to think where I went. My memory is not as good as it was but —
PL: What year was this Harold?
HY: Oh, that was [pause] I think it would have been 1943 or ‘4. One or the other. And I got this flight lieutenant post at Baigachi, near Calcutta. From there I was posted further out east to Penang and I was adjutant of 185 Wing in Penang which was a very pleasant job because Penang is or probably still is the holiday resort of Malaya. And I had a very pleasant time there. It was quite an easy job. We had plenty time of job off. Played cricket. Played rugby. Played soccer. Everything that was going. Did the job as well. And made friends with a family in in George Town which was the, the main town on the island. And then the next thing that was, I think that was the end of my RAF service really because from then I was, I made my own, my own release document out. Being adjutant of 185 Wing I was responsible for moving people around. And I made my own release document out and came back to England and got released from the RAF. And that’s the end of the story.
PL: Well, Harold, just going back a little way. What were you, when you were India flying what what was the —
HY: I wasn’t flying in India.
PL: Oh right. Ok.
HY: No. No I’d been grounded.
PL: Right. Right.
HY: For good by then.
PL: Right.
HY: Had a medical board and been grounded.
PL: Oh right.
HY: Yeah.
PL: Ok. So none of that changed. So what sort of jobs were you doing?
HY: In India?
PL: Yes.
HY: Purely administrative. Movement of personnel. You’re responsible in a way for discipline among the NCOs and airmen which wasn’t a pleasant, it wasn’t an easy, it wasn’t a difficult job because they were all very well behaved. Apart from one bloke who shall be nameless. But they sorted him out quickly. And that was about it. I had plenty of time off and as I say played lots of sport and became quite friendly with as I said a local family who had a very charming daughter. We were quite friendly for a good time until I came home and we lost touch. And that was about it.
PL: And can, can I just take you back to your time in, at Linton when you were doing intelligence work and you left there. What sort of work was that?
HY: Well, that was at, at Linton on Ouse. What sort of work? Well, it was primarily briefing the crews for an operation and interrogating them when they came back. We had a form like you have. We had to ask certain questions. The first one was, ‘Where did you bomb?’ That was the, the target that you briefed them on and incidentally the targets were all military objectives. The aiming points as ours were when I was flying were military objectives. There was no question of deliberately bombing built up areas but we knew that there was now as you say his term collateral. We knew that built up areas were going to be hit. But the briefing was simply hit a certain factory. A main railway station. A GP — the head post office or some important communication centre. And when we came back we had to, they were asked, ‘Where did you bomb? And they always said the primary target which was what we’d briefed them on. ‘What height were you?’ ‘What course were you on?’ ‘How did you identify the target?’ ‘What was the opposition?’ ‘Where were the guns?’ ‘Were there many guns?’ ‘Where were they, where were they based?’ ‘Could you tell me where they were stationed around the target?’ And, ‘How did you identify the target?’ ‘And what was the navigation like?’ ‘What was the weather like?’ ‘What did you determine the wind speed and direction?’ How many, ‘What was the cloud formation?’ ‘How many, how much cloud was there in ten tenths, five tenths?’ Or whatever. And, ‘Did you see any aircraft shot down?’ ‘Could you identify them?’ ‘Where were they?’ ‘What time was it?’ And that was about all I think. So, any questions?
PL: Well, one thing that I always ask is how you felt Bomber Command were treated after the war? Do you have any comments you’d like to make about that?
HY: Yes. I think we became a dirty word. Nobody wanted to know us because we’d done some area bombing. Not, not personally. We knew that we were going to hit built up areas and quite frankly if we couldn’t find the primary target we used to say well we’ll just bomb a built up area if we can find one. And we would do that knowing that the Germans had started it by bombing Rotterdam and by bombing the East End of London fifty odd nights in a row. By bombing Coventry into obliteration. Incidentally, it’s a little aside, when I was in Northampton and they had Sywell posted, billeted out in Northampton with a very nice civilian family. They had a niece who had been in Coventry when it was very heavily bombed and she was staying with them at the time and we became friendly for quite a while ‘til I lost touch again. So as far as built up areas went we knew that the German Air Force had started indiscriminate bombing and our attitude was if we couldn’t find the primary target any built up area would do. We’d bomb any built up area irrespective of where it was as long as it was in enemy territory and it wasn’t in occupied territory which were, you know friendly territory to us. So that, that was the attitude we had about built up areas. There was two things we were, well the thing we were briefed on when we were sent on operations we’d got the primary target which as I say was a military objective — a factory, a railway station, a head post office. We got a primary target in the city. We got a secondary target. If you can’t find that one your secondary target is so and so. And failing all else your alternatives are what was known as SEMO and MOPA. S E M O and M O P A. Self Evident Military Objectives or Military Objectives Previously Attacked. SEMO and MOPA. They were the last resorts. And that was it.
PL: So, we’re just going to stop the tape for the moment.
[recording paused]
PL: Re-commencing tape with Harold Yeoman. So, Harold would you like to tell me a little bit about some of the operations that you were on?
HY: I think the ones that stood out in my mind very clearly were the trips we did to Essen which was the, the city where, in the Ruhr Valley in which Krupps Works was based. And that was the arsenal of the Nazi regime. And I did three trips to Essen altogether. Two of which were within twenty four hours which was a pretty horrific experience. We, the first one we got there at 11 o’clock one night and bombed. We think we bombed the primary. Came back again. I’d reported on the way in when we were approaching Essen I thought well there’s two fires going ahead of us. And I looked. We’d got to pick the correct one. And I worked out that we, we should go to the starboard. Pick the right hand one. That was the proper target. So we did that. When we got back we found that most people had bombed the wrong target which was the left hand fire which was further up the Ruhr Valley. Which was probably no bad thing but it wasn’t what we, the powers that be had said we had to get. So we, we discussed this over breakfast time the next morning and thought well that’s just too bad. We’ll, you know sometime we might get back there. And we thought we were going to have the day off today. Went up to the crew room and found that briefing was at 3 o’clock. So we went back to the, went to the crew room. We got briefed for Essen again and we had to be there by 11 o’clock that night. So that was twice within twenty four hours. And Essen was about the worst target in Germany apart from Berlin which I’d luckily never got to. And we were there within twenty four hours and got away unscathed apart from a few little minor holes. But we lost our own commanding officer on the second raid, Wing Commander Golding, who was a very nice chap. And a Canadian pilot whom I’d come with from Canada on the ship. Met on the ship and we became friends. Flight Sergeant Lowe. He was lost that night too. So we lost two in one night from, from 12 Squadron. Which was a bad blow but that was the thing that happened. That was the way it went. You just had to live with it and get on with it.
PL: And was the target destroyed in that instance?
HY: Well, we never, we never really knew until much later on because the only way we could find out was the, if they sent the, we just called it the PRU Photographic Reconnaissance Unit. They were unarmed Spitfires who went over at about forty thousand feet and took pictures and came back with the photos of the, the target you’d been to. But quite often we didn’t get to know. Occasionally we did, but that was very occasionally. The only, the only place we got to know first-hand was a, really it was an amazing briefing. Really. We’d never imagined that we’d ever get a target which was inside the city of Paris which was declared, virtually declared to be an open city which hadn’t to be attacked, bombed or hadn’t to knock a brick down. But we had a target of the Renault factory and that was in the, the southwest central of the city. The suburb of Billancourt. It was a night attack as all our raids were. They were all night. We didn’t do any daylight raids thank goodness otherwise the casualties would probably have been much heavier, probably Including myself. But this was a night raid and it was at low level which was an unaccustomed thing. We used to be at as high as possible. Usually eighteen thousand to twenty thousand feet was what we aimed at. We usually got that. Sometimes we got a little bit higher than twenty thousand feet but not much. It was a high rate of climb. Anyhow, the Renault factory had to be attacked at low level and it was going to be marked by, and it was marked by flares. A whole lot of flares which were laid by Stirlings which carried a big load. They were four-engined, and they carried quite a huge load. And the Stirlings kept the target marked by means of two rows, parallel rows of flares on either side of the target. All we had to do was find the flares. Fly up the corridor and find the target and drop your bombs and come away. And the opposition was absolutely nil. There was not a gun within range of us. There was one gun firing in Paris. In the, away to the east and it was firing tracer in to the air. At what we never knew. We didn’t care. It was so funny. We were just laughing our heads off at that. They were shooting at nothing and we were at the other side of the city. And we got absolutely no opposition. It was just like taking cake from a baby as they say. So we bombed at about twenty five hundred feet instead of twenty thousand five hundred. We were two thousand five hundred. The height you bombed at was limited by the highest capacity of the bomb that you carried. If you were carrying a four thousand pounder your minimum height was four thousand feet. If you were carrying a one thousand pounder that was your biggest one you could go down as low as a thousand feet. So we split the difference and bombed at two thousand five hundred. And as I say it was, it was just like walking down the street at home. Quite easy. And the target was put out of action for — I think it was nine months. Completely. It was. I’ve seen photos of it. I’ve got them in a book somewhere. And it was absolutely devastated. Unfortunately, we couldn’t help it of course, there was overshoot and undershoot and we killed two or three hundred French civilians. Which was regrettable but we got the message through to say, from the French Resistance to say that how much damage had been done and how many people were killed and said well it’s, that was war. And they were not happy to accept it but they accepted it as one of the risks of war. So these poor French people they paid the price of slight inaccuracies in bombing. Because you dropped your stick of bombs you couldn’t guarantee that every single one was going to hit the target. If you had a, you sometimes carried fourteen two hundred and fifty pound bombs. If you were dropping a stick of fourteen bombs and you were flying at a hundred and eighty miles an hour. Well you can calculate how far apart they were going to be. So if two or three hit the target that was great and the rest were overshoots and undershoots. So that’s about it.
PL: So did you know what was being made at the Renault factory? I mean —
HY: Yes. They were making wheeled vehicles of all sorts for the Germans obviously and to be used on the Russian front. And the Russians were, in those days were our great friends and allies. Supposed to be until we learned differently. There was only one thing they were, they are interested in, or were interested in, that was the Russians. They couldn’t care less about anybody else. Allies or not. But we didn’t know that at the time. Uncle Joe was Uncle Joe and he was great friends, you know. We were all pals together. So we were helping the Russians which we thought was a great thing. That’s what they were doing. Making wheeled vehicles for the Germans to use along the Eastern Front. And as I say production was completely stopped for about eight or nine months. Which is as much as you can expect.
PL: So were there any other raids that you remember Harry that, Harold, that you’d like to talk about?
HY: Well, the, the last one I did was to Cologne which was, I believe the last raid or the last but one before the thousand bomber raid in May of 1942. And that was the last trip I did to, to Cologne which was a brilliant moonlit night. It was a wonderful night really and the target was quite easy to find. We were routed to find the Rhine and we, once we found the Rhine and we flew down it and until we got Cologne in the sights and that was it. That was it. It was quite an easy, an easy one to find. And the trips to Essen were quite hair raising. They were very, very fraught because the opposition was so fierce. I mean it was, there were very few night fighters in those days. I only ever saw two and we got out of there quite smartly but the anti-aircraft fire was intense. And when you’re being shelled by heavy anti-aircraft shells and they’re bombing, they were bursting not very far away from me. You knew all about it. It’s a pretty horrifying experience. It’s one which I wish I [pause] it comes back to me now and again with great clarity. [pause] So that’s about all. Well, as I say at the end of a talk. Any questions?
PL: So, your, your — before you were grounded what was your last, your last trip out before you were grounded?
HY: My last what?
PL: Your last flight out before you were grounded.
HY: That was to Cologne.
PL: That was the Cologne one.
HY: Yeah. That was number fourteen I think. That was my fourteenth trip. And as I say I was being air sick. It started when, when I went to the Paris raid. That was the sixth or seventh trip. That’s when I started having this airsickness and it went on all the rest of the time despite the MOs pills. He said, ‘Well, this can’t go on. We’ll have to stop you flying.’ So, as I say I went to Headquarters 1 Group just as a supernumerary admin officer. I was given six months non-operational flying by the, a medical board in London. And [pause] I was ferrying. That was it. I went on to ferrying from, picking up brand new Wellingtons from a place called Kemble near Cirencester and flying them to Moreton in the Marsh where I was based which was an OTU for pupils who were going to North Africa to join the Desert Air Force. And we picked up, they would ring up in the morning and say, ‘We’ve got —’ one, two, three, maybe four, ‘New aircraft. Come and collect them.’ So the CO would say, ‘Right. You. You. You. Get in the, get in the Anson.’ Be flown up to Kemble and you would say, ‘Well, which one’s mine?’ ‘Oh, that one over there.’ You’d go there. The ground crew would be standing around, they’d say, ‘Would you just sign that,’ and give you a piece of paper. Signing for one brand new Wellington. And you’d get in on your own and just start it up and taxi out and fly back to Moreton in the Marsh and land. And signal. You used signal for transport. We had no radio. We were on our own. It was only a forty mile ride I think. Something like that. And we’d get to Moreton, I’d get to Moreton and signal for transport by pushing the throttles up and down a couple of times to full revs and that told them that you were overhead. You needed something to bring you back to the, back to the flight office.
PL: So were they, were they limited, was there limited equipment in them at that stage?
HY: No. They were fully operational.
PL: Right.
HY: And what —
PL: Apart from the radios.
HY: Well, the radio was there but you were flying. You couldn’t use it. You couldn’t turn it on or off or change the frequency or anything. You just ignored it. But they were handed over to trainee crews at this, this OTU who took the aircraft over and did a certain number of cross-country’s with it and they flew them out to North Africa. That was their first really long flight and it was a long flight. They flew to, from Moreton in the Marsh to Portreath in Cornwall I think. An aerodrome there. From Portreath they flew to Gibraltar. And from Gibraltar to Malta. From Malta to North Africa. And that was the chain that we were part of. Handing these brand new machines over to pupils who flew to North Africa with them.
PL: So Harold is there anything else about your wartime experiences that you’d like to share that perhaps aren’t necessarily to do with operations?
HY: Well, the thing is I still miss is being surrounded by people in uniform. I miss that very much indeed. Even to this day. It comes back to me very clearly at times. I wish there was a crowd of uniforms around me that I could just have a chat to. But incidentally I haven’t mentioned this but when I was sent in to intelligence at Linton on Ouse, the second or third morning I was there. Sat down at the desk. Desk here, telephone there, telephone there and another officer, intelligence office on my left waiting for the, a target to come through. And we had WAAF watchkeepers who act as, virtually they were virtually secret telephone operators. They dealt with all the secret traffic over the telephones can’t you. The second or third morning a WAAFs corporal came in, sat down. I thought I like the look of her. She looks very nice. And finished up dating her. Well, I didn’t date her. I went on a blind date. Somebody arranged a blind date. The girl who arranged it, the WAAF who arranged it said, ‘Would you like to come along?’ I said, ‘Yes. I’ll come along. Where are you going?’ ‘Oh, we’re going to the pub in — ’ not Doncaster. It was a town near Doncaster. Yes. I’ll come along. Who am I taking?’ She said, ‘Oh we’ll find someone very nice for you.’ And it was this WAAF watchkeeper, the corporal watchkeeper and we got on like a house on fire. We chatted away and came back together and I finished up marrying her years later. And that’s her on the mantelpiece.
PL: What a lovely story. So when did you marry?
HY: Well, I, we agreed not to get married until after the war. So I met her in — when was it? 1943 or ‘4.
PL: And how old were you then?
HY: Oh, in, well 1943 I’d be twenty two. And we got married in 1947. Yeah. I got demobbed in ’46 and by the time we got accommodation, that was the big problem, post-war accommodation. My parents and I had to search around here for it and eventually we got a couple of rooms near to where Bill lives now. And we then got, I told Joan that I’d found this and would she like to come up and have a look. So we had a look at them and she said, ‘Yeah. That’s ok.’ I think they weren’t very much. But we got married then. In Guildford where her aunt lived. Her aunt gave us a wedding present as a, got us married and reception etcetera. And I was married at Guildford. We settled down up here. But her home was in Worthing which was a long way but we used to go there on holiday. Spend half the holiday here and half down in Worthing.
PL: So you were demobbed in 1946 and you must have come out of the war thinking, what do I do now?
HY: No. Well I went back to my, my job.
PL: What happened next?
HY: Just, not far from here. A couple of hundred yards from here. I’d been an assistant at the time. Not an inspector. And I went back and just started to study and qualified as a weights and measures inspector and worked, as I say about three hundred yards from where we’re sitting in now. That’s where I met Bill.
PL: And then you’ve had, and that’s where you worked for the rest of your career.
HY: Yes. Yes.
PL: Just stopping the tape again.
[recording paused]
HY: After I was —
PL: Restarting the tape. Sorry Harold.
HY: Yes. After I was grounded my crew continued to fly. They did, I think it was one trip to Hamburg which was a successful one. They got back ok. They did the next trip to Essen. Again that was the bogey target. And they didn’t come back. And they’ve never been found. I’ve made enquiries from the RAF Museum. The RAF Museum at Hendon. And I’ve been over to Amsterdam. Got in touch with the people there who were very interested in RAF history as they used to hear us going over every night as it were. And see if they could do anything to trace them. They put me in touch with, with two people by letter and I’ve been in touch with them to see if there was any possibility of finding out what happened to my crew. But nobody knows anything. They just, they just went missing and they never came back. So all I can assume is that they were damaged in some way and they went down in the North Sea. And that’s the end of that story. No more I can do about it.
PL: You were going to tell me another story about coming back from the French coast, was it? And you saw some lights in the sky.
HY: Oh the glow. Yeah. The single glow. Yeah. When we were going, on the way to Paris we were quite low and just as we crossed the coast I saw a single light ahead. I reported this to the skipper who was flying it. I said, ‘Look. There’s a, I think there’s a fighter ahead. One. It’s a single engine.’ He, he’d got his eye on it and he said, ‘Yeah. I think it is too.’ So we flew on for a bit. I said, ‘We’re not losing him. He’s going the same direction as us.’ So he said, ‘Well, ok. Let’s alter course a bit.’ So we altered course to try and get out of his way and then resumed flying and he was, the glow was still there. In a couple of minutes I said, ‘Do you know that it is?’ I said, ‘That’s the target.’ And we could see the target burning virtually from the French coast. This was the one I’ve told you about. The Renault factory. I said, ‘That’s the,’ so and so, ‘Target. Just aim for that.’ So we just, we just went for that and it was. It got bigger and bigger and bigger. And we got there and we found the whole place was in flames. It was quite, quite an experience. I’d forgotten about that.
PL: Good heavens. And then just another thing we’ve talked about. When you were — leaping all the way back to Penang, you had an experience there where you were involved with a court case.
HY: Yes.
PL: With a local.
HY: Yes. A message came through to my CO. I was his adjutant then. And it came through and he came to me. He said, ‘Look they had the Judge Advocate General’s Department on the phone through our headquarters and they want three officers to sit on a court to try a local man who has been collaborating with the Japanese.’ And he said, ‘They want [pause] they want an army officer,’ who was in charge, a major who was in charge. ‘They want an army captain and they want an RAF officer,’ And he said, ‘You’re it.’ He said, ‘You’re sitting on the court case.’ So. It lasted about a fortnight. We sat there every day. We had to take it all down in longhand. Everything that was said. My hands at the finish were just absolutely useless. We tried this collaborator who was a chap called Carlile da Silva. He was Eurasian and he’d been collaborating with the Japanese and giving them information as to who the English sympathisers were and they’d be sorted out and taken away and tortured and killed and goodness knows what. And he had a very bad history like that. And of course after the war his number was virtually up because people came to us and said, ‘Hey. Get hold of Carlisle de Silva. He’s the man who was betraying you to the Japs.’ So he was arrested and put on trial. And it was very interesting, the trial. They got all the evidence from the various witnesses as to the connections with him. What had happened. What had happened to them. And we had to have, I think it was three interpreters because the, while the locals on by and large spoke some English, some of them very good English but the witnesses were sort of ordinary, ordinary Penang citizens. And some were Indian, some were Chinese and some were Malays. And we had to have interpreters for the three different. In fact the Chinese had two interpreters because some spoke Mandarin and some spoke, most of them spoke Hokkien which was the North China dialect. The North Chinese dialect. So, we had to have four interpreters to interpret the, what they were saying. Or interpret the questions to them and they would answer in their language and that would be interpreted back into English to us and we’d take it all down. And as I say the trial lasted about a fortnight and eventually we found him guilty and he was sentenced to a certain number of years of rigorous hard labour. Which I’m told involved picking up heavy stones and carrying them about twenty yards. Putting them down. Then picking them up again and carrying them back. Until they dropped with fatigue. That was the rigorous hard labour. No more than he deserved because most of them deserved to be put up against the wall but that wasn’t on the cards. But it was, that was an interesting experience being, there was a Major Blacklock I think was the chairman and there was myself and an army captain. The last morning I was a bit disturbed when I, when we were all the three of us came in and sat down on this dais with a desk and the public were admitted to all the proceedings. It was all open. And the last morning when we were going to pronounce sentence and telling him what was going to happen to him the door opened at the back and four or five locals came in and I just didn’t like the look of them. I thought they were pals of the defendant. They were going to probably throw a bomb or a hand grenade or something. So I reported it to the, the major, I said, ‘Look. I don’t like the look of those bods who’ve just came through the door, I said, ‘Can you do something about them?’ So he said, ‘Oh yeah. We’ll see to that.’ So he just got on the phone and the next thing we got a few military policemen came in and just gave them the once over and they were ok actually. They were just local civilians who, who had attended but they had a very suspicious look about them to me. So Carlisle de Silva got eight to ten years rigorous hard labour. Lucky to get away with it I think. But we couldn’t —
PL: Did you ever hear what happened to him after that? Did he survive —
HY: No idea.
PL: The —
HY: No. No idea. He just, it was published in the local paper. In the Penang Times Herald I think it was. I think I’ve got the cutting somewhere. All colourful stuff.
PL: Which leads us neatly to —
HY: Pardon?
PL: Which leads us neatly to your story about the filming of, “The Wooden Horse.”
HY: Oh yes. The local newsagent had an assistant then. A girl assistant. And I used to go in there quite frequently to get a newspaper, magazines or whatever. We became quite friendly and she knew, she was interested in in RAF wartime activities. And do you know I had long, long talks to her. She came here, had a cup of coffee. And when I watched, I watched a film on the box called, I think it was, “The Wooden Horse,” and to my astonishment one of the characters was my own flight commander from 12 Squadron and he was playing the part of the adjutant of a particular unit. And he was completely recognisable. I recognised him instantly. I said, ‘Oh that’s Squadron Leader Abraham.’ So I told this girl who had a very knowledgeable friend about film matters and he was a film photographer himself and he knew all about taking stills of programmes. So he got the still I made I got for her to tell her all about it. And she came and had a look at the, at the recording I had made and she said, ‘Oh, I can get, get a still made of Squadron Leader Abraham’s picture.’ So she did and I’ve got that on the wall behind me. So I’ve got my own flight commander in the room as it were.
PL: Did you ever find out how he got involved with that?
HY: Pardon?
PL: Did you ever find out how he got involved?
HY: No. I didn’t actually. He did change his name from Abraham to Ward apparently. I got to know that through a fellow survivor who I was very friendly with on the squadron who unfortunately lived in Kent. I’ve only seen him twice since the war. But we always talked about, you know the B Flight at Binbrook and Squadron Leader Abraham. He told me that he had a rich relative, an aunt I think who said she would leave him quite a lot of money as long as he changed his name to hers. And he changed his name to Ward. So he became Squadron Leader Ward. But he was from, I think it was Kidderminster. I never saw him after the war at all but I met this friend of mine from B Flight. He was an observer in, in Abraham’s crew actually. Eric [Foynet?] I met, met him a couple of times or three times since the war, in London and I’ve lost touch with him now. I think he must have died. He was a bit older than me. But a very good friend of him. And that’s about it.
PL: Well, Harold, thank you so much for sharing your fascinating stories with us.
HY: I’m glad you found it so. It was quite ordinary to me but obviously to someone else it might be more interesting than I found it.
PL: Extraordinary. Thank you very much indeed.
HY: Oh, you’re very very welcome. I’m glad to have been of help.
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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AYeomanHT161013
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Harold Yeoman
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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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01:11:49 audio recording
Creator
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Pam Locker
Date
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2016-10-13
Description
An account of the resource
Harold Yeoman volunteered for the RAF hoping to become an air gunner and was surprised to find he would be trained as a pilot. He describes a crash landing in a Wellington returning from an operation to Cherbourg and being sent to Essen twice within twenty four hours. After several operations with 12 Squadron he was removed from operational flying due to air sickness and became a ferry pilot. His original crew went on to do more operations without him before they were lost.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
India
England--Lincolnshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
France--Paris
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-12-24
1942
1943
1944
12 Squadron
76 Squadron
78 Squadron
90 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crash
crewing up
Flying Training School
ground personnel
Harvard
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
love and romance
medical officer
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
pilot
promotion
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Kemble
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Sywell
RAF Torquay
RAF Tuddenham
recruitment
sport
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/185/3629/LSayerT591744v1.1.pdf
83e258c6faf6ed7815681549299d9b06
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
Sayer, Tom
Tom Sayer
T Sayer
Description
An account of the resource
13 items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Thomas Sayer DFM (1922 - 2021, 591744 54901 Royal Air Force), two log books, service material, newspaper cuttings and photographs. After training as a pilot in the United States of America, Tom Sayer flew Halifaxes with 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington. He was commissioned in 1944 and became an instructor.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tom Sayer and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-17
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. 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
Sayer, T
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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Tom Sayer's Royal Canadian Air Force pilot's flying log book. Book one
Identifier
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LSayerT591744v1
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. Coastal Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
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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one booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943-02-22
1943-02-25
1943-02-28
1943-03-03
1943-03-06
1943-03-09
1943-03-12
1943-03-15
1943-04-30
1943-05-25
1943-05-26
1943-05-27
1943-05-28
1943-05-29
1943-05-30
1943-06-11
1943-06-12
1943-06-19
1943-06-20
1943-06-21
1943-06-22
1943-07-13
1943-07-14
1943-07-15
1943-07-16
1943-07-24
1943-07-25
1943-07-26
1943-07-30
1943-07-31
1943-08-09
1943-08-10
1943-08-11
1943-08-12
1943-08-13
1943-08-17
1943-08-18
1943-08-23
1943-08-24
1943-08-25
1943-08-27
1943-08-28
1943-08-30
1943-08-31
1943-09-01
1943-09-05
1943-09-06
1943-09-27
1943-09-28
1943-09-29
1943-09-30
1943-10-04
1943-10-05
1943-10-08
1943-10-09
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-09-01
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Canada
France
Germany
Great Britain
United States
Alabama
Florida
England--Gloucestershire
England--Yorkshire
Georgia--Atlanta
France--Le Creusot
France--Montbéliard
Germany--Aachen
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Bochum
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Leverkusen
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Wuppertal
Italy--Milan
Germany--Düsseldorf
England--Cornwall (County)
Italy
Georgia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Description
An account of the resource
Royal Canadian Air Force pilot's flying log book for Sergeant Tom Sayer from 28 July 1941 to 17 December 1944. Detailing training and operations flown with Coastal Command and Bomber Command. After training in the United States and Canada he served at RAF Linton on Ouse, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Pocklington. Aircraft flown were Stearman, Vultee, Harvard, Oxford, Blenheim, Whitley, Halifax, Anson, Horsa and Stirling. He carried out a total of 35 complete operations as a pilot, eight antisubmarine patrols with 10 OTU from RAF St Eval, one with 76 Squadron from RAF Marston Moor and 25 with 102 Squadron from RAF Pocklington on the following targets in France, Germany and Italy: Aachen, Berlin, Bochum, Dusseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover, Krefeld, Le Creusot, Leverkusen, Mannheim, Milan, Montbeliard, Munich, Nuremberg, Peenemunde and Wuppertal. His first or second pilots on operations were Sergeant Carrie, Sergeant Hewlett, Sergeant Lewis, Pilot Officer Mann, Sergeant Green, Flying Officer Phillips, Sergeant Davis, Sergeant Henderson, Sergeant Thorpe, Sergeant Miller, Flight Sergeant Cummings and Flying Officer Kay. He then became an instructor and glider tug pilot. The log book is well annotated and contains printed training material. He completed one additional special operation 18 July 1944 with 620 Squadron from RAF Fairford ‘(SAS. 3 chutists, 24 containers 4 paniers [sic])’ and 1 September 1944 from RAF Ringway ‘parachute jump 600’ singly into lake.’
10 OTU
102 Squadron
1652 HCU
17 OTU
620 Squadron
76 Squadron
81 OTU
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
Blenheim
bombing
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Harvard
Heavy Conversion Unit
Horsa
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
RAF Fairford
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Leconfield
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Ossington
RAF Pocklington
RAF Ringway
RAF Sleap
RAF St Eval
RAF Stanton Harcourt
RAF Tilstock
RAF Upwood
Stearman
Stirling
submarine
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/365/5764/WardM [Pesaro].jpg
d9a2d9c693790af82307dda6f15eb90a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/365/5764/AWardM151214.2.mp3
7d77d7598db6b62a6f0d3db383dffb89
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ward, Mary
Mary Ward
Elsie Mary Ward
E M Ward
Mary Brown
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. Three oral history interviews with Elizabeth Mary Ward (893293, Women's Auxiliary Air Force), her dog tags, an aeroplane broach and a photograph album. Mary Ward was a cook but re-mustered and was promoted becoming a map officer. She served with Bomber Command at RAF Driffield between 1940 and 1944 before being posted to Coastal Command.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Mary ward and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-24
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
Ward, EM
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Monday the 14th of December. We’re talking with Mary Ward about her experiences and we’re in Crowthorne. So, Mary could you start off with your earliest recollections please and then just keep going from there.
MW: Earliest recollections would be in Bloxham and possibly five or six years old. I lived with my mother’s sister, her husband and her brother in a thatched cottage in Bloxham. I went to school at the C of E school in Bloxham until I was eleven and then to Banbury. I left school at fourteen and a half and worked in various jobs to do with lady’s maid for Lady Burnham, Hockley Heath and then decided to become a nursery governess. I went to the nursing home in Sutton Coldfield on recommendation and was at the time was looking after a dyslexic, what they called, a dyslexic child, a two year-old who was unable to speak, as part of my training. I moved out of the nursing home to live with that family to take care of that child and stayed there for a few years, a couple of years possibly and, and then moved on to another similar post with an older child. This was in Sutton Coldfield. On September the 3rd war broke out, 1939. And later on that year we, my friend and I decided that we would join the forces. We wrote to the RAF and were refused on the grounds that they didn’t have any particular job for someone who’d been a nursery maid really and, but we applied again in the early in January that year in 1940 and we were both accepted but unfortunately my friend decided, her parents decided, that it wasn’t for her so I went on my own to, I can’t tell you the date I just don’t remember the date but it was, it would be March 1940. I went for training at Uxbridge, three weeks training. I’ve very little recollection of that but then I was posted. My first posting was to Driffield in North Yorkshire which we didn’t have a complete uniform, there wasn’t enough to go around so we, we had to wait to be, to have a complete uniform but we did have the stockings and the shoes but we didn’t have battle dress until much later. We were, the RAF at that time had moved the civilians from their quarters and we occupied the civilian quarters RAF housing on the periphery of the air force really and we shared a house with oh perhaps four or five of us in a house. I was then general duties and was given a job in the RAF officers’ mess looking after the officers’ needs. Really, the post and anything else that they needed to know to get to, to get from one officer to another or to the group captain or whatever. It was quiet, fairly quiet. Five miles from Bridlington and very little activity until the 15th of August when we had a daylight raid. Fifteen aircraft came over at half past one in the afternoon. I was, I was just at the time helping with the lunch and helping, doing, manning the phone of course and flying control wanted to speak to the group captain immediately. I had seen the group captain not a couple of minutes before but I couldn’t see him just at that moment and I was running about trying to find him. At that particular time in the RAF you didn’t, flying control didn’t sound the siren unless the group captain had given permission and we, they desperately needed to sound the siren. These aircraft were approaching from Bridlington, five minutes flying time away possibly. To sound the siren. I ran around trying but in the end, without his permission, they did sound the siren. By that time it was too late for the officers’ mess. We were completely bombarded. Absolutely flattened. I was pushed in to the shelter by a couple of officers. Finally, we came out and I was helped out by the young Group Captain Cheshire, Pilot Officer Cheshire who had just arrived at the station a couple of days before me. And we were all very shaken. It was, it the dust and the mess that was so difficult to take in. I don’t know how much of this you want but I feel -
CB: Keep going.
MW: That it’s, it’s possibly important that you know that. Leonard Cheshire said to me, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m going, I’m on duty to go to the sick quarters.’ We had a roster for duties, sick quarters and he said, ‘Oh.’ I said, ‘Do you think they’ll need me up there? And he said, he looked at me and said, ‘No. I don’t think they’ll need you really. I think they’ll manage without you.’ So, we did, we split up and went, I went back to the billet and my friend who was an accountant, I said, ‘I don’t like living on the periphery here now,’ I said, ‘It’s too far out. I’ll come in to your, into the quarters with you.’ So I moved in that night. But we tended to recover quite quickly because we all went to see Bob Hope in “Riding Down to Rio” or something during the evening but the station was a complete washout. The ammunition had been all gone. The aircraft hangars had been hit, Cheshire’s aircraft had been, was not, we couldn’t, we couldn’t fly from there so the following day we moved to Pocklington. This was 102 and 78 squadron I think and 58. We moved to Pocklington and did a little flying from there but the one thing I haven’t said about, about Driffield is most of the flying at that time we were dropping leaflets in France and Germany. There were hardly any bombing being used at all. We didn’t have any did we? But during my little while at Pocklington I was asked to consider re-mustering and they were very, very short of cooks. Would I take on a cook’s course? So, reluctantly I did. I went to Melksham and that would be in the September straight into the Battle of Britain and I can’t tell you, I have to say this but I was there for four weeks, five weeks. I passed the course but I have no recollection whatsoever. Absolutely nothing. I can’t tell anyone because I don’t know anything. It was the sheer volume of aircraft, the noise night and day in the shelter in the Battle of Britain. We couldn’t, we couldn’t cope. How I passed the course I don’t know but we did. And then I was posted back to Linton on Ouse. At Linton -
Other: Mary, sorry but the nurses have come.
CB: We’re just pausing for a bit because the health visitor has come.
[Pause]
CB: We’re just talking about early stages of living in Bloxham and the lack of facilities as we know them today. So what was the house like and what were the facilities?
MW: The house was a fourteenth century thatched cottage with a stream running at the bottom with a loo situation, situated down at the bottom of the garden with two seats. The water we got from the spring in order to flush it, try and flush it down. From the, actually from the river. From the stream. Yes, we had, we had a spring in the garden from which we obtained our drinking water, always had the drinking water. You had to be, you had to go and fetch it from the, from the spring and bring it up. We had no gas, no electricity until just before the war and we had oil lamps and candles for lighting in Bloxham. Gas has never been, never come to Bloxham at all. We were too far out for that but, and, but we did keep our own hens and during the war we actually had pigs, a couple of pigs for food. The garden, we were always almost self-contained because we had so much vegetables which we, which we preserved during, during the summer for the, to carry us through the winter. Beans, potatoes, carrots, everything that could be preserved we did and we kept. So, it was really there, wasn’t, when the war came we didn’t have a great deal of difficulty in, in, in maintaining our own food. I have to say when I went on leave during, during the war we, we didn’t really go I had everything I needed really. Really good bacon, eggs and fried bread and things for breakfast which was good after the RAF food [laughs]. How much else do you want me to say?
CB: Well that was just to get an understanding of what it was like. Yes.
MW: Of what it was like.
CB: Yes.
MW: Yes.
CB: Right. So we’re now talking, we’ve talked about your training as a cook.
MW: Oh yes.
CB: At Melksham.
MW: Yes.
CB: And so you returned to Pocklington.
MW: No. I returned to Linton on Ouse.
CB: Oh Linton on Ouse.
MW: Yes.
CB: Okay.
MW: Into the sergeants’ mess.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes. In the sergeants’ mess. That would be possibly about well, August 15th. End of August, September. I was still in the sergeants’ mess for my birthday in November. So that was, but cooking in the RAF was, it, you might be interested to know that it is, it’s quite different from cooking at home or possibly in a hotel. You did, the shifts were from six until two. Eight hour shifts. And when you arrived you were, you were allocated one or the other dishes in which you were in charge of. At that time we had a civilian chef. The RAF provided, were, had quite a few civilians. I worked with two. The chef in the sergeants’ mess and later on, much later on in the map office at Shawbury, they were both civilians. The chef would say, ‘You’re allocated to do the eggs.’ If it was the morning shift do the eggs and that’s all you did. That was you were in charge of the eggs. And in order to get enough eggs for hundreds of people, of RAF, fried they would have large, very large containers and you just drop the eggs in. At least two dozen at a time in to these very large containers and you looked after those, looked after the eggs. Sometimes you were asked to make sandwiches but on the whole that was all you did. That was your job for that, for the shift, doing that. And the afternoon shift from two you were doing a meal for the evening or for tea. You would often get put on puddings. I didn’t like doing the, doing the meats so I asked used to ask the chef if I could do the puddings. So, I learnt to make pastry there and I’m quite good at pastry even now [laughs]. Yes, it was quite different. And this is the most important part of my RAF story what I’m going to tell you now so if you, if you don’t hear what I say do ask me again because this is very important but I’d been in the R --, in the sergeants’ mess a couple of months and I was used to being, being, putting up the rations for the flying aircrew. The officers’ mess and the sergeants’ mess provided rations for the flying, for flying that evening alternatively and on one occasion the chef said, ‘Will you take the, the rations for flying tonight over to the intelligence office.’ I said, ‘Yes I will go over with the, to the,’ so, I went in the afternoon to the intelligence office with the rations for that night’s flying and I went into the intelligence office and I was introduced to the squadron leader and he said, ‘Where have you come from?’ And I said, ‘From the sergeants’ mess. I’ve brought your rations for flying this evening, for the crew this evening.’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Well, what do you do in the sergeants’ mess?’ I said, ‘I cook’ or, ‘try to cook and, and do make sandwiches and do things like that.’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘Now, you don’t wish to do that all your RAF time do you?’ He said, ‘Will you come and work for me?’ I said, ‘I can’t do that. I’d have to re-muster.’ ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘What do you know about maps?’ I said, ‘Very little.’ He said, ‘Well you’ve been to school haven’t you?’ ‘Yes. Yes.’ He said, ‘Where is the mouth of the Danube?’ So, I thought and I said, ‘Well is it in the Black Sea?’ He said, ‘That’ll do.’ And he said, ‘Go and tell your WAAF officer I want you to report here tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock.’ I protested. He said, ‘No,’ he said, ‘Please. You, I want you here tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock.’ Now, you know about the establishment. You know what you have to do to re-muster. My chef made a fuss because I was being, being, being told by Ivor Jones to go to the intelligence office. He said, ‘He can’t take my staff.’ I said, ‘Well that’s what I have to do.’ The WAAF officer made a fuss because I hadn’t re-mustered but Ivor Jones was an ex-army colonel, lieutenant colonel in the Indian army retired and he was head of intelligence at Linton and his word just went really. And so I went to Gloucester on a two, a course for two days. I came back with two stripes and that was it. He said to me at the time the establishment in the intelligence office is for one map corporal. You won’t be able to get any further unless I recommend you for a commission which he did and which I refused but that is a later stage but that, and I knew from then that I would never be able to get anything further than a corporal. That didn’t worry me. And so we settled down and it’s maps. Geography was really I would say my, my best subject at school and I did get along with maps but they were hard, hard to deal with because they were all rolled up. The maps and the charts. The target maps were quite small and we didn’t have very many because we hadn’t, we hadn’t produced them like they had in Germany. I mean they were prepared and we weren’t.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Erm my duties were really, at that time, nine in the morning until five or six in the evening except for when they were flying. The flying, I had to be available for briefing in case they hadn’t, they needed extra maps and certainly for interrogation which was in the middle of the night of course. On returning. Shall I go on about that?
CB: Please go. Yes.
MW: Yes. Well it was a very emotional job. Very emotional. It meant writing up names on the blackboard and having to rub them out the next day because they hadn’t returned. This went on night after night except when it was really bad weather. The boys, the young boys came to the office for maps or for a chat. Many of them didn’t wish to go to Berlin or didn’t wish to go anywhere. Then I would make them a cup of tea, give them a cigarette and say, ‘I’ll be here when you come back’ knowing perfectly well possibly that they weren’t coming back. But on other occasions when they weren’t flying we had very happy times in York. In Betty’s Bar in York. They, they, but I have to say it was a very emotional time for me. Everybody smoked. The air was full of smoke always and –
[pause]
The other thing that we had to contend with was the bombing of the airfield. Bombing of the airfield kept continually in 1940, the end of ’42 and ‘43. Cheshire came back one night and said, ‘It’s worse here than it was in, than we’ve done, we’ve seen in Germany,’ because we’d had such bad raids. At that stage the RAF moved the WAAF off the station at night. We moved, I moved to a house at Newton on Ouse. A country house. And I had to cycle up in the middle of the night for interrogation and the other place that was requisitioned was the Beningbrough Hall, 35 Squadron took Beningbrough Hall and -
CB: Keep going.
MW: That was quite nice because we had little parties down there with the squadron and we, there’s a small village across the Ouse called Nun Monkton and we had to go across in a sort of canoe thing, a very small boat. Get someone to row you across and we had a really nice meal of egg and chips over in that, if you could find someone to pay for it for you [laughs]. Um -
CB: Just on that topic then. How much did you get paid?
MW: Um.
CB: Roughly.
MW: Not a lot.
CB: No.
MW: I’ve got a book that tells me that but I don’t remember it very well um but a corporal, I was a special duties, a map clerk special duties you see. I probably missed that and so I did get a little bit more than, than if um -
CB: Ok. So could you tell us what the role of the map clerk special duties was?
MW: The role?
CB: Ahum.
MW: Well just to look after the maps really and to help out in the intelligence office if I was needed. We did, we did have special duty men but I was the only WAAF involved in the intelligence at that time. We did have map WAAF officers and I’ll come to that at a later stage. I was, Ivor Jones recommended me for commission which I refused on the grounds that I preferred to stay where I was and I didn’t really want to be an administrative. I don’t know, I don’t, I can’t cope with admin at all really but he thought I would be able and on two occasions he did recommend me for commission but I refused on both occasions as I wanted to be able to stay there. Would you like to know a bit about what we did when we were off duty?
CB: Absolutely.
MW: The, the, we had an inspection, a kit inspection, once a month at which everything had to be laid out. I don’t know if you know about the beds but the beds we called biscuits. We had three erm like squares. I think they contained straw or something like that or that kind of thing and there was an iron frame of the bed and there were three biscuits that you, and then your sheets and your blankets and every morning before you left the hut, in my case with being shift working I didn’t, I could get away with it but every morning you had to stack those biscuits into three. Fold your blankets, fold your sheets and everything and put on that every morning. The WAAF officer went around and if they found you hadn’t done that you were in for trouble and um well we had kit inspection once a month but a lot of the time we lost something or forgotten it so while the WAAF officer was down this end we would, somebody would go around and replace it some, what was missing but those evenings turned out to be quite good really because we sat around the fire. We had these, these slow burning stoves, black stoves, this was in the Nissen hut. This, because this was later, after, you know when I was still in the, well I was at Linton for three and a half years you see but most of that time I was in a modern, in RAF quarters or in wooden huts which were a little bit better than the, than the Nissen huts but at a later stage I was in Nissen huts and they were, were not easy to, to heat you know. There was no heat.
CB: Ahum.
MW: We had to go down the road almost to go to the loo or to get a bath. We were allowed four inches of bath. There was a line all the way around the bath, four inches of water and you could, if you were lucky to get a bath. It wasn’t always easy because there wasn’t enough water to go around. But on the whole life was, it, it, I have to say it was very happy. The RAF did take on you as a person, a young person who had left their parents and they did look after you. You certainly got cautioned if you did things wrong and you certainly got, you were confined to barracks if you didn’t, if you did anything really bad. But on the whole you could get away with being a few minutes late on your pass at the guard house, in the guard room. Christmas was good. We always looked forward to Christmas because the officers’ mess always turned out and they waited on us always with the, with the food. They tried to do as much as one could with the lack of resources in those days but you usually had a fairly reasonable Christmas dinner and as I say it was good fun with the officers waiting on us. Dances. We had sergeants’ mess dances, officers’ mess dances which unless you were non-commissioned officers you weren’t allowed to go to those unless you were invited specially. And always the pictures. Always had the pictures. We were issued at Uxbridge with a mug and a knife and a fork and a spoon which we all christened our irons. You’re smiling. You know about irons don’t you?
CB: Absolutely.
MW: And if you got to the mess without your irons well you had to go back for them because they didn’t supply them. On thinking about this and I thought well it’s really quite hygienic because you’ve got, you were responsible for cleaning and looking after your irons, your mug and your irons but you weren’t expected to lose those.
CB: What was the mug made from?
MW: Hmmn?
CB: What was the mug made of?
MW: Oh is it -
CB: Was it metal?
MW: Enamel.
CB: It was enamel.
MW: Enamel. Yes.
CB: Yes.
MW: Yes, yes. White enamel.
CB: Ahum.
MW: And they did provide pyjamas, shoes. Shoes were dreadful, absolutely ruined my feet because they were so hard and everybody complained. Stockings, knickers, vests, everything. We had everything provided that you needed and in a way now one thing I hate getting dressed in the morning now because you don’t know what to put on. In the RAF you always knew what to put on because it was always that’s what you wore, you see. The washing was difficult cause we couldn’t, but we did manage to find women in the village who would do a bit of washing for us but we always took our collars to the Chinese. The Chinese had various laundries in, in York and we took, because they came back nice and stiff you see.
CB: Ahum.
MW: But what people don’t realise, I think how difficult it was then because we had two studs. One for the back. The collar was separate from the shirt you see and you had to put this collar stud in the back of your shirt and pull it around and then there’s another stud there at the front to put your, to do it up and then get your tie on after that. It wasn’t easy [laughs] but we, you get, you did get used to it. I think we enjoyed it mainly because we were young. We couldn’t, we couldn’t have done it over thirty.
CB: Ahum.
MW: No. But none of us were over thirty anyway so that didn’t really - Now, where do I go from there?
CB: Ok, so we touched briefly on the social side.
MW: Yes.
CB: So on the station -
MW: Yes, well I think-
CB: There was a cinema on the station was there?
MW: Things like when Gee came in. Yes -
CB: The navigation aid -
MW: At Linton we were the first to have Gee and I had special maps which were an absolute nightmare to look up because it was so secret at the time. We had to look after that. We were the first Halifaxes at Linton to have cameras available.
CB: This is the bombing camera.
MW: Yes. Bombing cameras. Not that easy to begin with and I did do a bit of, of the research on the photographs that came back. I have to tell you that there were very, very many that never went anywhere near the target.
CB: Absolutely, but one of the reasons for having the camera was to identify -
MW: Absolutely. Yes.
CB: That the target had actually been hit.
MW: Yes but then of course it all got better. It really did and then by ‘43 things really did hot up.
CB: Right.
MW: And we began to get control of things then. The, we had the thousand bomber raid from Linton. Every available aircraft they could pull out of anywhere went that night. Yes. Leonard Cheshire was there all the time. Most of the time actually. He, he was always good fun.
CB: Which squadron was he?
MW: Always danced with the wall flowers [laughs]. And he, yeah and very unassuming and a really charming person. I’ll tell you about when they went to, Cheshire and another went, they won, they tossed up. They wanted some pilots to go up to Canada to bring back Liberators for us to use. Cheshire won the toss up with another pilot. They went off. Quite not quite what they expected it was quite a poor boat that they went out on but they, they managed to go and get there. When they got there to Canada they hadn’t, they hadn’t the Liberators ready because they had to do, have a little bit of training so they were given some leave and he went off, they went off to New York for some leave and Cheshire met an ex-film star and they were having a really good time and this was a lady called Constance Binney and she was twenty years older than Leonard but on the spur of the moment in the few days that they were there they got married. Everybody was really, really sad when, but it obviously wasn’t going to work. It did work for a while and he, he rented, they rented a cottage in Marston Moor and then I think they had a railway carriage in Marston Moor and this was really funny because she was very glamourous and she was a lovely pianist in the mess. She used to play the piano beautifully. And very sociable of course. She, she didn’t get on too well in the, in the cottage and I had a friend who was in charge of the telephones. Telephone is downstairs from my office upstairs and we, as telephonists, could, we could always plug into a conversation. You had to pull the plug back and leave it open and you could hear what the conversation was. Now, we did. When Constance was on the phone we often used listen in to what Cheshire and Constance was, one day she was in a real state because she’d, Cheshire had shot a pheasant because he had somebody coming for supper and she said, she said she had put this thing in the oven and it was making a terrible smell. She couldn’t understand why it was making a terrible smell. Do you know? She left the innards in. But no we were very naughty. Not all the time but occasionally my friend, she would pull the plug back and listen in to the conversation. So we just um -
CB: In your office, was in the control tower was it? Or where?
MW: Yes. In, in -
CB: On the first floor?
MW: Yes, downstairs to begin with. I was in, I was always in headquarters and I was next door to the group captain to begin with. That was a small office. And then one day they moved me upstairs. The intelligence, I could take you blindfold in there now. The intelligence office was on the right-hand side, upstairs adjutant here and briefing room there. All right across the front of the building and my office was the middle one and the intelligence office was on the right-hand side so we were all together really and that made it easy for us to, for me to work when they came back.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Because they were interrogated in the briefing room and then came in to me to, I had to issue aids to escape and things like that. And get all those things back from them.
CB: So were you briefing aircrew before they left as well as debriefing them -
MW: Were they?
CB: Were you briefing aircrew before they left as well as debriefing them?
MW: No.
CB: When they returned. Or just the debrief?
MW: We, they were, the briefing was always on its own you know and then but they all went out together you know in varying, in two or three-minute intervals so that what were coming back did come back. They were, we were, they were debriefed in, in or interrogated in the briefing room. Yes.
CB: And did you sit in on all the debriefing?
MW: No I was making tea but I did do. Yes I did go in if Ivor Jones asked me go in and -
CB: Okay.
MW: And sort out anything like that.
CB: Yes.
MW: But I wasn’t always in on the interrogation.
CB: Right. So -
MW: I know I was in on the briefing because the boys used to all come up together. I went up with the maps, with the target maps one day, one evening, and I got in there, they were in there and there was a man in civilian clothing in there and I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ No civilians. It was very, very secret and hush hush and I said, ‘What are you?’ He said, ‘I’m the met officer.’ ’Cause they were still in civilian clothes in those days you see until quite late on in the war. They -
CB: Oh right.
MW: They weren’t given status to wear uniform but seeing a civilian in the briefing room when we were just about to do, to do a briefing that, and that really threw me a bit.
CB: Ok -
MW: I’ll tell you about Douglas.
CB: Douglas Bader.
MW: Douglas. June the 12th 1942. We’d been seeing each other for about two months and we had been out to York to the pictures the night before. He took-off the following day to an advance base to reconnaissance on the Bay of Biscay looking for minesweepers of course and we’d been out the night before and we’d got engaged. I didn’t have a ring then but, and I said I wouldn’t, we wouldn’t even think about marrying until the war was over. That wasn’t. Plenty of girls did but it wasn’t, it wasn’t really the right thing because they, we lost so many. Well you can say how many -
CB: Yes.
MW: We lost, it really wasn’t the right thing because he often left you with a baby or you know, as a young, a very young widow but we, we, we agreed on this and of course the following day, following evening I was on duty waiting for them to come back and he didn’t and there was that period between, which was the worse really, between when they should have been back and the waiting for them to come back. The wait. A couple of hours and they didn’t come back.
CB: Ahum.
MW: So what I did or what most of us did if we’d been on night duty we, you were just too tensed up to sleep. It was no good. You were supposed to go to sleep but you couldn’t do that. It was, we were just so tensed up with everything that we used to go into York and I quite liked riding at the time so used to go out and have a ride or get, try and get a meal or something just to try and get relaxed because I would be on duty again the next night you see possibly and -
CB: Where was he stationed?
MW: Pardon?
CB: Where was he stationed?
MW: At Linton.
CB: He was.
MW: Yes. But, at 58 squadron.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes [pause]. That was a Wellington.
CB: And what was he doing mainly?
MW: He was a navigator.
CB: Right.
MW: Observer. Yes.
CB: Right. And what happened?
MW: Well I think possibly they ran, they mistook the cloud base and ran into the cliff.
CB: Oh.
MW: And that is why, no one knew, his mother didn’t know, we didn’t know until, I didn’t know until fairly recently, eight years ago when I asked. This is, this is digressing really –
CB: That’s ok.
MW: But I, until my cousin was here and I said would you like to have a look on your internet and see if you can see this young man’s name and I gave him the number and the rank and everything and he came back to me the next morning and said, ‘That was easy.’ He said, ‘There’s only one of that name in the whole of the records.’ He said, ‘Is it Douglas Harsum and I said, ‘Yes.’ And he told me and he told me where, where, where he was and I said, ‘Well, would you like to come? Shall we go to Bilbao and look,’ and we did and we went to the cemetery. It’s wonderful. I’ve got the pictures and I’ll find them for you for the next time you come.
CB: Ahum.
MW: But it’s a beautiful cemetery and -
CB: Good.
MW: It’s, they’re all in one communal grave.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes. But it’s beautifully kept and it was being looked after by an English lady married to a Spanish, yes, Spanish man, yes. She’d been there a number of years. There’s a Book of Remembrance, there’s a small church, small C of E church and a small Catholic church. The Catholic one was very, very rarely or hardly used at all. The C of E one they always have a service on Remembrance Day and on various other days but I’ve got all the info there. It’s all written down and I did write to the WAAF magazine and they printed it actually.
CB: Excellent.
MW: What I wrote and told them about it, about that but I became, after many months of losing Douglas I kept getting letters from his mother. Would I go and see her. I couldn’t do that at that time. I was, partly I was busy and I, emotionally I wasn’t fit to see anybody but eventually I did go and she lived at Richmond and he was an only son and the last in the line of the Harsum and we became very good friends. In fact, she had lost her husband and you see, I did, I kept in touch for many years after that but it didn’t turn out quite as I expected because she got very fond of me and she wanted me to go and live with her but I was young. I wanted to get married or to have children and, and that’s, that’s what happened and I did get married.
CB: This cemetery, the cemetery, is it, because a lot of aircrew were lost in the Bay of Biscay. Does it-
MW: Yes it was mainly, mainly aircrew.
CB: Yeah.
MW: There are one or two others but as I say I’ve got that written down and I can let you -
CB: I was wondering if it’s a War Graves Commission -
MW: Yes, it is.
CB: Cemetery. It is.
MW: Yes, it is.
CB: Right.
MW: In Maidenhead.
CB: Oh I thought you meant the one in Bilbao.
MW: No. The one I got in touch with.
CB: Yes.
MW: To be able to tell me all the info.
CB: Yes.
MW: How to get there and what, you know, what to expect. And that was in -
CB: Was Maidenhead.
MW: Maidenhead, yes.
CB: Yeah.
MW: They gave me all the, Douglas’s crew which I didn’t really know that well and they were, I got all their names and everything all written down from, from, from the Maidenhead people.
CB: How long had you known him?
MW: Three months.
CB: Ahum
MW: Two months. Not long.
CB: And he -
MW: He would have been twenty one on, he was, he was killed in the June. He would have been twenty one in the August, on the 17th of August that year but that was the average age for, for aircrew.
CB: Yeah. And did you -
MW: And then of course you got these, the conscientious objectors.
CB: Yes. Tell me more about those.
MW: Tell me?
CB: More about them.
MW: Well, I don’t know very much except that they would come into my office. You see it cost quite a lot for the RAF to train a pilot or a navigator and then they would, they would go through that training and then find that, that God was, was stronger than what they could do. They couldn’t do it because of their religion but why? I would say, ‘Well, why, if you’re, why didn’t you realise that before you did the training.’ You see it was absolutely out for a, for a conscientious objector. There was no question about anything. You just went out of the RAF just like that with no, no, no reference, no pension, no nothing. It really was a very nasty, a very bad thing to happen to anybody really but they did, they would er -
CB: Who were these people? Were they any types of the crew or just particular members who had this -
MW: Were they?
CB: Were they all sorts of different crew members or -
MW: Oh yes.
CB: Or were they only pilots?
MW: Yes, no
CB: Or -
MW: They were, no they were all different kinds.
CB: Right.
MW: Different ones yeah. Rear gunners were, were it was very rare that pilots I think that would do it but the rear gunners and I don’t know if there was an occasional navigator that, that were conscientious objectors -
CB: There’s a key question here I think that emerges from the point about conscientious objectors who they called conshies.
MW: Yes.
CB: What about LMF?
MW: Hmmn?
CB: Lack of moral fibre.
MW: Absolutely. You’ve got it.
CB: So how do you differentiate between those and the conscientious objectors?
MW: You don’t.
CB: Right.
MW: No. That, that’s an awful phrase really. Isn’t it? Lack of moral conscience -
CB: Moral fibre yeah.
MW: Fibre, Yeah.
CB: What did they do to them? What did they do with them?
MW: What did they do?
CB: When they were identified as falling into this category?
MW: Well they just got in they just had interviews with senior officers and they were just chucked out of the RAF. No, you couldn’t, they couldn’t re-muster. They couldn’t do anything. But that’s what that, they went, just had to go.
CB: This is at Linton on Ouse.
MW: Yes.
CB: Did they run parades and have these people um identified on parades?
MW: On -?
CB: On parades. Did they call together airmen -
MW: Not that I know of.
CB: Ground crew.
MW: No. I don’t think so.
CB: Right.
MW: No. I think they were just turned out you see if they, I felt so very sorry for them really because if you can’t, it was really lack of moral fibre. They just could not do it, you see. They hadn’t got the nerve, you see.
CB: Was, was - sorry.
MW: You, you, you take somebody like Cheshire who did over a hundred operations, sorties including Nagasaki which happened later but that, and you and he said was he ever frightened, nervous about going on any? But of course he was as he said after doing sixty operations you were still nervous about the thing but you had to do it. You had to go in and do it and what I didn’t quite understand about people like Cheshire was that they had no compunction about whatsoever about bombing the Germans, killing the Germans. He knew he was going to kill people but you know on one occasion at a later stage when he went to France, you know that, and he went, he circled the factory that he was meant to bomb, it was when he was on 617 and he circled the factory there three times in order for the girls to get out because he was low level bombing then in the Mosquito.
CB: Ahum.
MW: And, and they did. They got out. And one of those French girls came back to England, came to Linton to thank him. Didn’t want to know. No, didn’t want to know. But after Nagasaki he was a different person. That was the crunch. He wouldn’t, that really turned that man into something completely different.
CB: Interesting.
MW: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
MW: That you, he said you’ve got to find a better way of making peace in this country without that sort of bombing. You’ve got to find a better peace finally. But have we?
CB: Can we just go back to your debriefings? What was the information you were looking for specifically?
MW: Oh I didn’t do debriefing.
CB: At the end of a raid.
MW: Ivor Jones did all the -
CB: Yes, but you were there listening -
MW: We had three -
CB: Some of the time.
MW: We had three squadron er two flight lieutenants, one pilot officer and Squadron Leader Ivor Jones in the intelligence. That was the establishment and I say you, you understand about establishment don’t you? That, that’s what you were allowed and that’s what you had. And one was the managing director of Brylcreem [laughs]. I can’t remember his name just at the minute but he was. I can’t remember his name at the moment.
CB: But he was one of the intelligence officers?
MW: No, they did all the debriefing. They did. Ivor Jones would say. ‘Did you,’ you know did you, did you, ‘Did you see the target? Did you bomb the target?’ And they would make all the notes. Oh no, I didn’t do any of that. No. No I just looked after them morally I suppose, you know with their cups of tea and -
CB: So the maps you were providing did they have before a raid? What was on the map? Was it a plain map or did it have anything drawn on it?
MW: Oh, no it’s Mercator, projector.
CB: Right.
MW: The 48-4 was the main one that they used for Europe you see.
CB: Ahum
MW: And then they had a small target map if, if they were available and these all came from High Wycombe and then they had an ordinary, not always they took a map but they had a silk map provided in their aids to escape which was double sided. I had one when I came out of the RAF but my cousin persuaded me to give it to him which I did and he had it made into a double-sided picture so he has it hanging on the wall.
CB: Okay.
MW: [Which you can] And they had a compass.
CB: These are the escape equipment.
MW: In, in their shoes yeah.
CB: Yeah.
MW: Or in the, underneath the -
CB: In the heel.
MW: You know about these things anyway don’t you?
CB: Well we need to -
MW: But they, and I had to issue things like that and make sure they all came back.
CB: So, how many other WAAFs were there in the intelligence section?
MW: Oh, we had two special duty, two men, young, young, they weren’t corporals. No, I was the only corporal.
CB: Ok.
MW: And I’d say Ivor Jones, Brylcreem and this other one and sometimes a pilot officer.
CB: Were they people who were new to the RAF or were some of them pilots already?
MW: Were they?
CB: Were they people -
MW: No they were, they were admin. No they weren’t -
CB: There weren’t any flying people -
MW: They weren’t flying at all.
CB: In that.
MW: No. I don’t know what Ivor Jones did in the army but I should think he would do, he would do an administrative job because he was so good at it.
CB: Ahum.
MW: As I say we didn’t have any WAAF officers. I think we only had one when I, you see it was 1940 when I went in. My number is quite low. It’s 893293.
CB: Yes.
MW: Yes.
[pause]
CB: So obviously you kept that number all the time.
MW: You can’t get it out of your head, you know.
CB: No. Of course not.
MW: It stays there.
CB: Absolutely.
MW: Absolutely.
CB: I think everybody in the forces knows that -
MW: I know. They do. Yes.
CB: Remembers their number.
MW: Then of course I’m going out of Bomber Command now but I went to er, in the end of ‘43 I went to -
CB: That’s when you went to Shawbury was it?
MW: No. I went to Melksham. No, I went to um Newmarket first.
CB: Oh.
MW: Just for a few weeks.
CB: Yeah.
MW: And then I didn’t do much there. There’s not really any interest at all and then I went to Silverstone.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Silverstone was good because it was very near my home.
CB: Yes.
MW: And we were always, the done thing that we would go down to the bottom of the road and thumb a lift. It was nothing. You just did that.
CB: Yeah.
MW: You wouldn’t do it today. But that’s what you, and that was fine.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Shawbury -
CB: What did you do at Silverstone? That was an OTU.
MW: That’s right yes OTU. I just looked after the maps there and they had a lot of navigational equipment that needed a bit of attention from time to time. Sextants and things like that you know and, and not a great deal, I wasn’t there that long. But then I went to Shawbury that was the air, Empire Air Navigation School and they, the map office was in quite a mess there and needed a lot of attention but they were also working on Aries.
CB: What was Aries?
MW: That aircraft that went, that went to Canada. It was a special, special aircraft. I did help the squadron leader there. Squadron Leader Proctor who, who was handling that project.
CB: What were you helping him with?
MW: With the maps.
CB: Right.
MW: With the map reading. The reading out the numbers and positions on the map where they needed to be.
CB: But you didn’t go over to Canada with him?
MW: Oh no. I didn’t do any of that. No.
CB: Ok.
MW: I did do a bit of flying at Silverstone because they used to come backwards and forwards and around to Oxford in training you see. A few times I went up in an Anson. You know, the little aircraft, the Anson and, and Silverstone um Shawbury was, they were training an Australian squadron. What was, what was their number? 101, yes. All Australians. Very interesting young men. Full of life.
CB: Okay.
MW: Yes. We had, where are we there? Oh yes we were back in married quarters again then. Yes ‘cause I was in charge of a house there.
CB: This is in Shawbury?
MW: In Shawbury, yes.
CB: Yeah.
MW: Yeah ‘cause they tended to use the houses but of course not you see, at Linton and Driffield, they were permanent stations.
CB: Yes.
MW: Pre-war station and all built roughly the same aren’t they?
CB: Yeah and Shawbury. Yeah.
MW: Yes. Yes. Have you been to Linton?
CB: Yes and Shawbury.
MW: And Shawbury oh.
CB: They’re expansions period airfields. Yes. So then after Shawbury, well at Shawbury you were there for a little while.
MW: Yes. I was. And, and then at Shawbury, after Shawbury I went down to Brawdy in South Wales and that’s Coastal Command of course.
CB: Right.
MW: There, they were still, they were still flying of course by then, much later on.
CB: This was 1946.
MW: mmm’ And Shawbury.
CB: Brawdy.
MW: Brawdy was where I met my husband.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes. The map office was in a terrible mess. The navigation officer for whom I worked was absolutely wonderful to work for but I did get through the mess in the end because nobody had done anything for months. And they had just brought maps in, threw them down and it took me ages to get that clear. To, to get some sort of order there but um and then we moved to to Chivenor. The squadron moved to Chivenor and that’s near Barnstable.
CB: Also Coastal Command.
MW: Hmmn?
CB: Also Coastal Command.
MW: Also Coastal, yes.
CB: Yes.
MW: All Coastal then.
CB: So you were issuing a lot of charts for the sea.
MW: Absolutely. Quite different of course. There wasn’t the anxiety that there was with Bomber Command.
CB: So, how long were you at Chivenor?
MW: Not that long. I’m just trying to think. Yes I, and then I went to Northwood. Northwood was -
CB: The navy.
MW: And it and from there, Northwood, I was demobbed.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes.
CB: How far ahead did you know that you were going to be demobbed? Was it, did you volunteer for it or -?
MW: Ah yes well I because I’d been in so long because I was early, joined very early I could have come out much, but I offered to do another year, an extra year because really and truly there was nothing to do for me. I didn’t have a job to come back to and I certainly didn’t want to be back to be back to being a nursery governess again.
CB: Yeah.
MW: And I had met, met up with Roy and we were, I was toying with the idea of either going to live with Douglas’s mother, or going to Australia or marrying Roy and in the end I decided I would get married.
CB: It was a better offer.
MW: A better offer [laughs] but er so then that’s what we did.
CB: So Roy was still at Brawdy.
MW: He was moved to Waddington.
CB: Right. Oh.
MW: Yes. So, I came to live in Lincoln then.
CB: Ahum
MW: After that.
CB: Before you married him.
MW: Hmmn?
CB: Before you married him you were where?
MW: Oh yes. I lived in Lincoln.
CB: Yes.
MW: I got a job in Lincoln with the telephone manager’s officer. And that’s a different story. When you take, when you consider what they do today and what we did then in the telephone manager’s office it’s just archaic. You just don’t believe what, what goes on now. But yes I was, I was there. You wouldn’t want to know about that but -
CB: Well it’s just intriguing because what did people do when they left the RAF?
MW: This is it. I walked the streets to find accommodation for a start. There was nowhere to live. My family were down in Bloxham and I wanted to be near, be with Roy. There was no work in Bloxham, in the Banbury area and there um. There was no work and there was no accommodation but I think accommodation was the worst of my worries when I came out of the RAF. I did have a very good report from the officer at Northolt. Very, very good. He said, it should be in the roof somewhere but quite where, I don’t know and I managed to get a job purely on that, on that reference. You had to have a reference for everything in those days.
CB: Yeah.
MW: On that reference that he gave me I got this job in the telephone manager’s office. And then I managed to get some, some digs in Lincoln. Just one room. And then finally after we got married we got some, shared a house at Navenby. Do you know Navenby?
CB: No.
MW: Yes. Just up the road from -
CB: Yes.
MW: Lovely little village it was. Until Roy went , and we hadn’t been married long and he was posted to Aden.
CB: Oh.
MW: And he went by air. Flying by air was very limited in those days. You couldn’t. It wasn’t like it is now. It was very few and far between but he went out by air to take charge of the station at Aden. Khormaksar that is.
CB: Ahum.
MW: And I could go when he found me some suitable accommodation which [laughs] which again was a nightmare. Him trying to find me, but we did get in the end he decided that I would go to the Crescent Hotel which was the only reasonable place to live in it. So I went out by sea on the Toledo and arrived in Aden on Christmas Day, pouring with rain which he told me it never rained in Aden. And we had two years in Aden. Do you know Aden?
CB: Never been.
MW: No. Well you know where it is of course.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
MW: Yes. Yes. But not many, I say to people, no idea where it is.
CB: We interviewed somebody operating from there.
MW: Yeah.
CB: Ahum.
MW: It’s, I mean you’d think, they don’t know the map these days.
CB: No. No.
MW: They get in the aircraft and fly off somewhere but they’ve no idea where they’re going I don’t think.
CB: So, then, when you, you were there for two years.
MW: Yes.
CB: Then where did you go? Well Roy was posted where?
MW: We came back. He was posted to Upper Heyford and then to Abingdon.
CB: And you got quarters.
MW: No.
CB: Did you get a quarter in both cases?
MW: We didn’t get quarters because he was back as a civilian by then.
CB: Oh, of course. Yes.
MW: Yes. He was a senior met officer in Aden.
CB: Ahum.
MW: In civilian but officer status you see.
CB: Ahum.
MW: So he could have lived in, well he did live in the officers’ mess in Aden but I couldn’t you see. Yes. It was officers’ mess only and so then we stayed in, we managed to buy a house or bungalow in Kennington which is not far from Oxford.
CB: Yeah.
MW: Oh, first of all we went, we had we shared a house in a place called Longworth.
CB: Yeah.
MW: And then we managed to buy this bungalow in Kennington and by that time we had our first son, Richard. Kennington is quite near Radley. Radley College.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Richard went to Radley College. Things were settling down there and then we had to move to Aylesbury.
CB: Roy went to Halton did he?
MW: Hmmn?
CB: Why did you go to Aylesbury?
MW: The Met Office just move you.
CB: Yeah.
MW: It’s like being in the RAF. The same.
CB: But stationed at Halton?
MW: He was stationed at, when we moved to Aylesbury he was stationed at Dunstable.
CB: Oh right.
MW: Dunstable was the main. So we bought a house in Aylesbury and for the five or six years that he was, he was at Dunstable we lived at Aylesbury and I had my second son at Aylesbury.
CB: What’s his name?
MW: Nicholas. And then we moved to Bracknell. The Met Office moved in 1961. It probably was here in 1960 when it was officially opened but the official Met Office where all the forecasting was done.
CB: But you came in ’61.
MW: Yes. They had a huge computer which was as big as this bungalow but it was all valves.
CB: Oh.
MW: All valves there and Roy was in charge of that. They used to get him up in the middle of the night because it had gone wrong and there were only three of those computers in the country and one was owned by Joe Lyons. Why he wanted one I don’t know and the other was down in something to do with the army. I can’t remember but -
CB: Yeah
MW: Roy used to go down there sometimes when the Met Office had broken down and he, well we’ve been in, in Crowthorne for fifty three years now.
CB: Have you really?
MW: Since we were in, but in that time Roy has been to Gan and the Indian Ocean but we weren’t -
CB: Yeah.
MW: I wasn’t allowed to go because they don’t have women on Gan at all.
CB: No. It’s such a small island.
MW: That’s right. Yes.
CB: No.
MW: And I had my third son here.
CB: His name is -?
MW: He’s Edward.
CB: Oh right. Did any of the three go into the Met Office like their father?
MW: No. No. One, Richard is an optician.
CB: Oh right.
MW: He’s got a practice in Hampton Court.
CB: Ahum.
MW: And Nicholas, the middle one is an engineer but he works in Wales and Edward, unfortunately, Edward has a business building children’s playgrounds.
CB: Ah.
MW: He had a very, very successful business doing all the children’s playgrounds around up and down the country but he had a severe stroke.
CB: Oh.
MW: Four years ago.
CB: Right.
MW: I saw him yesterday and he is very disabled. But we do, he’s only down at Halton so we -
CB: Ahum.
MW: Do meet up for lunch but unfortunately it was a very bad stroke.
CB: Oh dear.
MW: It was life and death really.
CB: Awful.
MW: Very bad. But he’s cheerful and I took my friend see him, to have lunch with him yesterday and he said, ‘You know, Mary, he does, he’s with it.’ It’s just the problem is with the speech. He can’t communicate -
CB: Right.
MW: It’s all up here.
CB: Yeah. Frustrating.
MW: And Peter said, ‘Oh he knows what he wants to say Mary. He can’t, just can’t’ -
CB: Ahum.
MW: He’s, he’s living at home now. And he, I don’t think he’s resentful, you know, about what’s happened to him. He seems quite cheerful and my friend said, he hadn’t met him before, and he said that he thought he was, he was really quite good obviously you know with his ability to talk. He says a lot of bloody hells unfortunately.
CB: Does he?
MW: And my friend’s a priest so [laughs]. I said to Peter, ‘Look,’ I said –‘, ‘I don’t really want - ’ He said, ‘Look Mary it’s no difference at all.’ But he’s like that. I mean a lot of priests wouldn’t have -
CB: No.
MW: Gone along with that but he’s very nice and -
CB: How many grandchildren have you got?
MW: Six. They’ve each got two.
CB: Two, two and two are they?
MW: They’ve each have two yeah and one came yesterday with us, Abigail. She’s lovely and she’s finished at Sheffield. She’s got, she’s got a law and criminology.
CB: Oh.
MW: And she’s the prettiest thing you ever saw.
CB: Going back to your, your major role in the RAF was in intelligence.
MW: Ahum.
CB: What was the key item that sticks in your mind about your job there?
MW: About my?
CB: The job you did. What was the most important part of it would you say?
MW: Looking after the boys. Yes. Being, the maps things were easy, I ordered the maps. I knew where they were going and knew how to calculate the targets and that but it was looking after the boys that was the most important.
CB: And what was looking after the boys? What did they really need?
MW: They needed a little bit of comfort. I think Ivor Jones saw that in me when he asked me because that was a very unusual thing to do. Chris, you don’t get away with that sort of thing in the RAF.
CB: No.
MW: I don’t think anybody else would tell you that story.
CB: Ahum.
MW: That, to be, to be told by a squadron leader to report to him the following morning without being re-mustered.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Without being, the WAAF officers being told. It was very unusual. That was the key point in my, it was one of the best jobs in the RAF really.
CB: Ahum.
MW: When I think about it. I mean all these girls that did, the friends of mine that did, that did work on balloons and, and, and television, the er um telephone operators and that but they, mine was, I was right in the midst of it. Right in the midst of the bombing. I knew, I knew the target. I knew what was going on and, and I mean Ivor Jones knew where the flak was coming from, what to tell them what to avoid and that but um and all that and, and it was just I was just in the thick of it really.
CB: So these, these young men are aged nineteen, twenty.
MW: Oh average age yes.
CB: Twenty one.
MW: Yes. Yes.
CB: And what are they really wanting to talk about?
MW: What did they want to talk about? Their home life. They’d just come out of university some of them. Not all of them. Just tell them what was going on at home. I don’t think they really wanted to be there. I’m sure they didn’t, a lot of them but, but they were going to do it. They wanted to be aircrew.
CB: Yeah.
MW: That was the absolutely the aim of every young man in the RAF was to be aircrew. Nobody wanted a groundcrew job at all.
CB: They were just getting things off their chests.
MW: Hmmn?
CB: They were trying to get things off their chest.
MW: Oh yes. Yes. Yeah.
CB: Any ground crew talk to you the same way?
MW: Did the ground crew -?
CB: Any ground people because they would have learned from air crew that you were somebody who was sympathetic to concerns did you get -
MW: No. I never really got to know the [air] crew I was really involved so involved with the maps I didn’t really get to know the ground crew at all.
CB: No.
MW: No.
CB: What was the worst experience you had, would you say?
MW: I think it was at Driffield.
CB: The bombing.
MW: The bombing. Yes.
CB: What was the casualty level then?
MW: We had –
MW: We had one WAAF killed on the station and about seven airmen. Seven others. That’s all in Cheshire’s book.
CB: Is it? Right.
MW: Yes, and even I am mentioned in “Cheshire VC” and he said about this WAAF who he had to put in to, in to the shelter. That was a very near thing for me. Well, for the three of us. There were two officers who weren’t when we went into this small room when, when everything started collapsing and you couldn’t see your way out and as I say then it was, it was Cheshire who pushed us in to the shelter. But I think possibly, we did have some very bad raids at Linton at night. We got, we were bombed one night. We were in the shelter and we got, I got thrown from one end of the shelter to the other end of the shelter. Ended up at the other end of the shelter and I had a piece of shrapnel in my toe, in my foot. But I would have said that because Linton, Driffield was the first experience of that sort of bombing in daylight that we, that it was quite horrendous.
CB: So -
MW: I, I [pause]
CB: Do you want to pause for a bit?
MW: Ahum
CB: This is an emotional -
MW: Ahum
CB: Issue isn’t it. Let’s stop for a bit.
[pause]
Other: Yeah. Look at those two there. That could be Scarlet and James.
CB: Mary’s done so well that we’re just stopping for a cup of tea which of course is what they did in the war as a way of reducing the difficulties of the time.
MW: What we haven’t discussed of course is whether you wanted to know and I thought you did is what I did after the war.
CB: That’s it.
MW: When I came back.
CB: I did. Yes.
MW: And that is quite interesting really.
CB: Is it? Yes.
MW: Yes because after the boys were out of school.
CB: Ahum.
MW: I, I took up flower arranging.
CB: Did you?
MW: Yeah. And I did a City and Guilds. Have you done? Have you?
Other: Yes.
MW: I can’t believe it.
Other: Yes.
MW: Goodness.
Other: I’ve done the floristry as well.
MW: I’ve done floristry as -
Other: And got the City and Guilds, yes.
MW: You’ve done City and Guilds?
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: Goodness me.
CB: Every Wednesday she does flower arranging classes.
MW: Yes. Yeah, well I’ve done the cathedrals.
Other: Lovely.
MW: Oxford twice.
Other: Lovely.
MW: Christchurch, Westminster Abbey, Guildford.
Other: Super.
MW: And I’ve been chairman of the club. Well I -
Other: Have you?
MW: For my sins. But yes, if you want to know about that well -
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: It’s so nice to meet somebody -
Other: It’s a lovely thing to do isn’t it?
MW: You take, whilst you’re flower arranging you can’t think of anything else.
Other: No. That’s right.
MW: [?] And I say to all the classes that I have, that I’ve had in the past, not so much now but in the past I’ve said look if you take up flower arranging if you’ve got a problem and everybody seems to have problems-
Other: Oh yes.
MW: These days. That you can’t think about anything else.
Other: No. No, that’s true.
MW: You just concentrate.
Other: That’s right.
MW: On your flowers. And your foliage of course.
Other: Yes your foliage.
MW: Your foliage.
Other: Is very important. I’ve got a lot of foliage in the garden actually.
MW: So have I. [laughs] Myrtle is the thing isn’t it?
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: Yes, I’ve got -
Other: The only thing I haven’t got which is very useful is Ruscus.
MW: Oh I haven’t got Ruscus either.
Other: That’s a super thing isn’t it?
MW: It is, isn’t it? Yes.
Other: Both the hard and the soft Ruscus.
Other 2: Is that one yours?
CB: Yes.
Other 2: I’ll just empty the tea.
Other: Yes but I must -
MW: Well I did that you see. That was from -
CB: That’s lovely isn’t it?
Other: Beautiful.
MW: That’s somebody brought me some flowers the other day.
Other: Lovely.
MW: But this is what you see -
Other: Yeah. That’s lovely.
MW: You don’t -
CB: I’m glad we didn’t try to be too ambitious with what we brought you. [laughs]
Other: [laughs] I know.
MW: [Laughs] Well if you have to do this random. Have you been to the shows or anything this year?
Other: I’ve been up to new Covent Garden to demonstrations there and, you know. Various church -
CB: Thank you.
Other: Church festivals. Flower festivals and what have you.
MW: Do you do them for church?
Other: I do. Yes. I do. Yes. Not regularly. Only when they have a special occasion. We’ve just had one, we’ve just had a flower festival so I’ve done something -
MW: Oh have you?
Other: For that. Yes. Yes.
MW: I do. I’m on the church roster here.
Other: Yes.
MW: ‘Cause I go to church anyway.
Other: Yes, so do I.
MW: I’m a church going person but I’m on the church roster.
CB: That’s quite a commitment to do that.
Other: I used to. I used to be. I used to do it regularly.
MW: Yes.
Other: But I don’t now.
MW: We have a roster every year -
Other: Yes -
MW: For the year and you -
Other: Which is good.
MW: Put down what you think you can, you are able to do.
Other: That’s it.
MW: Oh, thanks Abigail, lovely.
Other: Yes.
MW: Then if you have another -
CB: Yes.
MW: Go on.
CB: These are very good.
Other: Not for me thank you. No.
CB: Are you on sugar?
MW: No thanks.
Other: We have a problem in our village that there aren’t that many people being willing to do it so I think one of the wardens who was responsible for doing the roster had to give up in the end so if we’re having any special occasion she’ll ask the few of us -
MW: Yes. Yes.
Other: That will do something. To do you know to do something.
MW: Well you know we decide before Easter what we can do during the year you see.
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: And then when we, we get to, if you can’t do that, if something comes up you find amongst yourselves. You -
Other: Somebody else will, yeah.
MW: You do that. But we have a problem with the altar. They won’t do the altar.
Other: Oh really.
CB: Really?
MW: And it always lands in my lap.
Other: Oh right.
MW: But I haven’t got the altar for Christmas. I’ve got the Remembrance table.
Other: Right. Right.
MW: I’m very good at pedestals.
Other: Lovely, yes.
MW: That’s really my strength. The pedestals.
Other: Lovely, lovely and it’s getting the weight right isn’t it?
MW: Yeah. But the, we, I mean I’m going back a long way to Dora Buckingham and that but City and Guilds isn’t an easy exam is it?
Other: No. No.
MW: No. People think you know it is. In fact, I went into it, I was just doing club things and my friend said, ‘Oh let’s go to Bracknell,’ she said, ‘They’ve got a course there going on.’ And so I said, ‘Ok we’ll do the course.’ We did. And then the tutor started talking about exams and I said, ‘What exam? I wasn’t, I wasn’t expecting any exam,’ She said, ‘Oh yes,’ She said, ‘It’s part one.’
Other: Ahum.
MW: And I got through that because I’d never done any, any exam work really in my life but they had what they called a multi, multi questions.
Other: Oh yes.
MW: There were four -
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
MW: And I think -
CB: Oh multiple choice.
MW: There’s only one right one you see.
Other: Yes.
MW: And I managed to do that.
Other: Good.
MW: And I got very good marks for that.
Other: Good.
MW: So then I went on to part two. Part two is very interesting isn’t it?
Other: Ahum.
MW: Did you watch Monty Don last night?
Other: No. I didn’t, no.
MW: Oh ‘cause he went through Capability Brown, Repton -
Other: Oh really.
MW: And Sackville West and all those -
Other: Oh I wish I’d seen that.
MW: People we know about. Yes
Other: Yeah.
MW: And if you’ve got it on your tape or if it comes up again. Do -
Other: I will. I’ll have a look.
MW: Yes.
Other: I will. Yes. Yes.
CB: Well at ninety six I’m amazed what you do.
MW: Oh go on it’s only a number.
CB: Yes but I mean you know the energy you put in to all these things is extraordinary.
MW: Yeah, but -
CB: Thank you very much.
MW: You see, once you’re a flower arranger -
CB: Yeah.
MW: You’re always a flower. You won’t give it up.
Other: No. Oh no. No.
MW: No. You won’t. No.
Other: I mean I go every week. I don’t learn anything but I just go for social -
MW: So do I, you see.
Other: Reasons.
MW: I go every month, you see.
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: Now I’m, I’m -
CB: You instruct though.
MW: Honorary president now.
Other: Right.
MW: Of the club ‘cause I was -
Other: Do you belong to NAFAS?
MW: Yes.
Other: You do. Yes. Which do. I haven’t done that.
MW: Oh.
Other: I haven’t. I’ve only done the floristry.
MW: Oh you’ve done the floristry. Yes.
Other: I’ve done the City and Guilds floristry.
MW: Yes I’ve done the City and Guilds.
Other: And really the floristry that I learned they don’t really use so much now because it was all the wiring of the bouquets.
MW: The wiring and the stuff.
Other: They don’t -
MW: Oh yes.
Other: Do that anymore.
MW: They don’t do that now.
Other: No.
MW: No all those hyacinths that you wire.
Other: Oh don’t. Taking all the, I know, I know.
MW: Yes.
Other: But that’s not done now is it? I mean -
MW: No they are glued on aren’t they?
Other: It’s all that hand tied bouquets. Yeah.
MW: My friend that brought me -
Other: Yes.
MW: Those the other day, she’s a florist -
Other: Right.
MW: From, in Bracknell and she but she’s also a flower arranger.
Other: Ah huh.
MW: And she did a competition at Aldershot last week and she had those flowers over you see so she says, ‘Oh Mary can have those.’
Other: Lovely, no that’s lovely, that’s really lovely yes. It’s one of my favourite arrangements actually. I think that’s a lovely arrangement.
MW: The triangle? Yes.
Other: Yes, yes but on a little pedestal is -
MW: Yes I like that.
Other: Lovely. Yes.
MW: I mean, I, because I judge as well.
Other: Yes.
MW: I do the judging for the horticultural and everything.
Other: Yes.
MW: Yes. You, the, what was I saying?
Other: You do the judging for the Horticultural Society.
MW: Yes. Yeah.
Other: Yes.
MW: And for the various other shows around here now but they I mean some it’s very difficult to judge.
Other: I know.
MW: Because they use all this wire and stuff and -
Other: Exactly. Yes.
MW: And glitter and all that stuff.
Other: I know.
MW: We didn’t do that did we?
Other: No. I had what could have been a very embarrassing moment because I was asked to judge the local Horticultural Society flower arrangements and unbeknown to me, my tutor, the lady that had taught me for years, was putting in an entry and I was judging it and I bumped into her in Tesco and I hadn’t got a list of who was taking part and she was avoiding me you see. She knew that I was going to be the judge but she was avoiding me and I thought that’s funny she’s behaving in a most peculiar way. Anyway, when it came to the judging thank God I gave her first place.
MW: Oh.
Other: But I mean that could have been a disaster couldn’t it?
MW: Oh, yeah and you see, you see people say to me, friends of mine say oh well we didn’t realise about the judging. About the judging that they -
Other: No. I know it’s quite a responsibility isn’t it?
MW: It’s frightening.
Other: And you’ve also got to, you know, give comments as well.
MW: Oh yes you have to give comments.
Other: So you know.
MW: Yes.
Other: You know, it could have been, it could have been absolutely disastrous for me.
MW: Disastrous.
Other: If I’d, if I, you know had not given her -
MW: The judging isn’t easy.
Other: No, it isn’t.
MW: These days anyway.
Other: No. No.
MW: Because they use, and NAFAS have brought out these, you have to judge by NAFAS rules of course don’t you?
Other: Yes. Well I got a book.
MW: You got the-
Other: Actually, I wrote to them and I got a book and I read it because I thought I must, you know, I was asked to do this judging.
MW: Yes.
Other: And I thought I must know a bit more about it.
MW: Of course.
Other: And so of course it all has to -
MW: But as I say nowadays they don’t -
Other: Be certain
MW: If they don’t read the schedule -
Other: That’s right.
MW: If they don’t relate to the, to the, to the schedule that you can’t, you’ve got, you’ve got to down point them really.
Other: Yes.
MW: Last year -
Other: Absolutely.
MW: At Wellington, Wellington College I got a girl, it was a beautiful basket. Absolutely. Sunflowers, which I don’t like anyway -
Other: I don’t. Isn’t that funny?
MW: I hate them actually. [laughs]
Other: I can’t stand them.
MW: And she and she said and she got this beautiful basket and the title was “Let’s Have a Picnic.”
Other: Oh right.
MW: You see, and this basket was there and it was sunny and shining and really, really said a nice sunny day to you but it didn’t say anything about a picnic.
Other: No.
MW: If she’d just put a cake or a couple of -
Other: That’s right. Something yeah.
MW: That would have said, it would have told. I couldn’t -
CB: No story.
MW: I just had to down point it you see but it was certainly, it was certainly the best arrangement there.
Other: Right. Yes.
MW: But you can’t. You can’t do that, like you say. Who have you got at Aylesbury, you live in Buckingham -
Other: I’m at Wilmslow.
MW: You’re at -
Other: So I’ve learnt in Wilmslow at the Education -
MW: Oh.
Other: Centre in Wilmslow actually.
MW: Ahh.
Other: Yeah.
MW: So you belong to the flower club there.
Other: Yes. Yes. Yes.
MW: And, and you do you have all the shows and things like that do you?
Other: Well you can go to various, yes you can go to the various shows but it’s mainly a learning centre so -
MW: A learning centre.
Other: Yes. Yes, educational centre.
MW: See I hadn’t started when we lived at Aylesbury but I still had my -
Other: Well Aylesbury is much better. I mean my floristry course which was one day a week took three years. That’s because in in Wilmslow -
MW: Well the City and Guilds.
Other: It was only a daily, a daily course you see and just a couple of hours.
MW: Yes.
Other: Whereas in Wilmslow they had, sorry, in Aylesbury they had much more, you know, concentrated courses.
MW: Yes.
Other: So it would have been a lot shorter but I was working at the time anyway and it suited me and I thought well I’ve always worked in offices. I wanted to do something different.
MW: Yeah. And you had a garden as well you say.
Other: Yes I’ve got a nice garden. Yes.
MW: Yes I have. At the back.
Other: it’s getting a bit much now because my husband used to do -
MW: Well I’ve got a gardener in now.
Other: Well I’m having to.
MW: That’s why it looks neat and tidy.
Other: I can see. I said to Chris when we got here, ‘The garden’s lovely.’
MW: Yes.
Other: I have a problem with gardeners in as much as they seem to flip from one person to another and they’re not reliable.
MW: Oh mine are actually. They’re costly.
Other: Yes I know.
MW: But I said, ‘Don’t worry about the house.’ I don’t worry about the carpets or anything as long as the garden looks right that’s alright.
CB: So how big is the garden at the back?
MW: Quite big, yes. Yes it’s
CB: And what, what, what sort of layout is it?
MW: Shrubs. I love shrubs.
Other: So do I. Not flowers. Isn’t it funny?
MW: No. You can do without flowers.
Other: People say you’re a flower arranger -
MW: Daphnes out here -
Other: But you don’t like flowers.
MW: My Daphnes are about to flower and all my shrubs at the back there.
Other: CB: What’s your favourite flower?
MW: Flower?
CB: Yes.
MW: Oh I suppose it would have to be the Lily. The Lily of the Valley
Other: Yes, they’re beautiful.
CB: And what about shrub? What’s your favourite shrub?
MW: The Daphne, which is about to flower any minute but we’ve got Azaleas. We’ve got -
Other: So have I.
MW: Magnolias. This estate is wonderful in the -
Other: I can imagine.
MW: We’ve got all this -
Other: The soil looks, the soil looks good.
MW: Yes, It is.
Other: Our soil isn’t good -
MW: No. Well when we lived at Aylesbury -
Other: You see.
MW: We had different soil there but -
Other: Yes, ours is very clayey.
MW: And this friend of mine the priest this is all we talk about when we go out you see. The plants. He is so interested in, in the plant life and he’s very clever but he’s more interested in leaf form.
Other: Yes.
MW: The form that –
Other: Yes. Yes.
MW: He’s got a thing about Viburnums.
Other: Oh right.
MW: He’d like to have the national collection of Vibernums if you please.
Other: Oh does he?
MW: Now there aren’t many Vibernums that I like particularly. They’re not, they don’t last long do they?
Other: No. No.
MW: You know, the Tinus, and what’s that one that’s very scented?
Other: Oh I um no, I can’t think.
MW: This one -
Other: Mine isn’t actually. Mine isn’t scented at all.
MW: But anyway, he, he’s got quite a few but I mean if you looked at his garden it’s, belongs to the church of course because he’s the priest and I would, I looked, took one look at it and I thought there’s no way I could do anything with that. It’s got, its Bagshot sand. He’s got about three or four pines in there. They drop needles all over -
Other: Oh yeah.
MW: The place.
Other: Yeah.
MW: Its dark and I thought, ‘Peter you can’t do anything with that.’
Other: No.
MW: But he does you see, He’s a tryer he’s a real tryer and he said a few months ago. ‘Will you come and have a look at the garden again?’ I said, ‘You’ve got far too much.’
Other: Get rid of something.
MW: He just keeps putting stuff in.
Other: Oh.
MW: I said move this stuff here around in to where you’ve got a bit sun and have this as a woodland garden so we’re in the process of doing that at the moment. Oh I couldn’t live without my garden. Could you?
Other: No. Do you like Hellebores?
MW: Hellebores? I said Daphne for my -
Other: Yeah.
MW: But Hellebores are my favourite flowers.
Other: They’re beautiful aren’t they? But I went to, we’ve got a very large garden centre at Woburn called Frosts and one of the, I can’t remember what his name was but we was one of the gardeners that was always on tele, a florists that was always on television and he’d done this flower arrangement with Hellebores and it was about sixty, sixty five pounds this, this arrangement and I thought I shall be interested to see what that’s like in a couple of days’ time if that doesn’t sell and of course they had, they’d used this you can’t -
MW: Absolutely useless.
Other: Arrange Hellebores and he should have known that.
MW: In fact I had a few in that little glass vase -
Other: Yeah.
MW: Before you came and I thought I’d better turn these out. I’d only had them in a couple of days.
Other: Oh really.
MW: It would not, I chucked them out.
Other: You shouldn’t cut them.
MW: Just before you came I thought I must chuck them out.
Other: Yeah.
MW: But my Christmas Rose, the Hellebore -
Other: Yes.
MW: Niger.
Other: Yes.
MW: Has just started to flower and we only bought that last year.
Other: They are beautiful and they’re so -
MW: They are my favourite. Yes.
Other: Many varieties aren’t there?
MW: Do you cut your leaves back?
Other: Yes.
MW: Yes. I must get the gardener to -
Other: Well I say do I, I mean I haven’t done a lot in the garden since my husband has died. It’s just been one thing after another going.
MW: Really.
Other: With the house with fencing coming down and tiles off the roof you wouldn’t believe it and I’ve had to always -
MW: I would believe it. I would believe it because everything, everything’s happened here.
Other: Yeah.
MW: This house is fifty years old you want to get out of it and get a new one.
Other: But at least it’s lovely though.
MW: Everything happens. The boiler goes and -
Other: That’s right.
MW: Everything wants replacing if you have had three boys that have been -
CB: Kept you on your toes. Mary, thank you so much for all of that and -
MW: Pleasure.
CB: And I’d just like to look at some pictures quickly.
MW: Yes.
Other: It’s these in the book Chris?
MW: Yeah.
CB: So, you couldn’t take pictures. You weren’t allowed to keep a diary.
MW: No.
CB: But the war ended. Is that when you started doing your diary?
MW: ‘45 I got one. Yes.
CB: Yes.
MW: I’ve got the whole, every day I wrote in it. I’m looking for it now but I can’t see it.
CB: Oh right. Ok.
MW: I put it down somewhere.
CB: Am I sitting on it do you think?
MW: It’s not under your -
CB: It’s not here. No.
MW: Is it, not underneath your -
CB: No.
Other: What about –
CB: Well we can have a look for it in a minute can’t we?
MW: But that is all about, about Shawbury?
CB: What prompted you to start taking a diary, making a diary?
MW: Well I don’t think I did much before the war but I did, I thought well somebody gave me this diary and because I hadn’t, I hadn’t been -
CB: Keeping one.
MW: Allowed to do one, I thought well, this is good.
CB: Ok.
MW: Anyway, I will find it.
CB: Yes.
MW: I say I only brought it through this morning, so -
CB: Yes.
MW: And I will find the, I think you will be interested in the album that we did on Bilbao.
CB: Yes.
MW: Because that -
CB: Absolutely.
MW: David took some beautiful pictures.
CB: Did he? Yes.
MW: Of the war graves and -
CB: And which squadron was Douglas in? 58.
MW: Yes, 58.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes.
CB: Yes.
MW: And that was Wellingtons of course. Yes.
CB: Yes.
MW: ‘Cause we didn’t get Halifaxes at Linton until later on and then we still had Whitleys and we still had Wellingtons. We had, at Driffield we had Whitleys you see.
CB: How many squadrons were there on the airfield at any one time?
MW: Linton? There were three.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Yes 102, 76 and 78 ‘cause Cheshire well from Middleton St George he came back on -
CB: Right. Ok.
MW: Well I hope that’s been -
CB: That was the interview with Mrs Mary Ward nee Brown who was getting a bit tired and some emotional issues towards the end anyway. Outstanding points to pick up later are details about her fiancé who died aged twenty one. A 58 squadron man. The emotions surrounding other WAAFs and also the interaction with air crew. So we’ll pick up on those with another tape.
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 Mary Ward. One
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Ward grew up in Bloxham. She joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in 1940 and was posted to RAF Driffield, on general duties in the officers’ mess. She describes a German daylight attack on RAF Driffield on the 15 August 1940 and the extensive damage it caused. Group Captain Leonard Cheshire had recently arrived and assisted her out of a shelter. The station relocated briefly to RAF Pocklington, during which time she was sent on a cookery course at RAF Melksham. She was then posted to RAF Linton-on-Ouse in late 1940. She describes a cook’s shift. While delivering rations she was invited by Squadron Leader Ivor Jones to re-muster as a map clerk special duties. She ordered maps and calculated targets and was sometimes present at debriefings. She describes her living conditions and uniform; the emotional stress of the work; those who were ‘conscientious objectors’ or lacking moral fibre; and Cheshire’s first wife, Constance Binney. In 1942 she met Douglas Harsum and they were engaged. He was killed on 12 June 1942. At the end of 1943, Mary Ward moved to RAF Shawbury, still working on maps, then to RAF Brawdy, where she met her husband Roy Ward. After the war she lived in the Lincoln area while he served at RAF Waddington. They also lived briefly in Aden. In civilian life her husband worked for the Met Office and she describes the various places they lived in England. She also talks about her family and at length about her passion for flower arranging.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-14
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Mal Prissick
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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01:51:51 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AWardM151214
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
England--Shropshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincolnshire
Spain
Spain--Bilbao
Yemen (Republic)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-08-15
1942-06-12
1943
aircrew
bombing
briefing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
control tower
coping mechanism
debriefing
fear
final resting place
Gee
ground personnel
killed in action
lack of moral fibre
love and romance
mess
military living conditions
operations room
RAF Driffield
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Melksham
RAF Pocklington
RAF Shawbury
RAF Silverstone
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/365/5765/WardM [Pesaro].jpg
d9a2d9c693790af82307dda6f15eb90a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/365/5765/AWardEM160217.1.mp3
0e6cbd95c57a49ef84a82479d97093ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ward, Mary
Mary Ward
Elsie Mary Ward
E M Ward
Mary Brown
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. Three oral history interviews with Elizabeth Mary Ward (893293, Women's Auxiliary Air Force), her dog tags, an aeroplane broach and a photograph album. Mary Ward was a cook but re-mustered and was promoted becoming a map officer. She served with Bomber Command at RAF Driffield between 1940 and 1944 before being posted to Coastal Command.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Mary ward and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-24
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
Ward, EM
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: Let me just introduce you. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 17th of February 2016. We’re back with Mary Ward in Crowthorne and we’re picking up on some of the points that needed elaborating upon and the first point is really, Mary, to do with your fiancé Douglas and what happened with that. How did you come to meet him in the first place and what went on after that?
MW: Well, I can’t remember the exact dates of when we met but it was ‘42 and he came with the rest of his crew to my map office to collect some maps. They needed new charts and they, they came to me to pick up the maps and the charts and he stayed behind when the rest of the crew left the office and asked me if I could go out with, if I would like to go to York with him. So, yes. I went to York with him and which followed, several dates followed and then he was diverted and was away for a few, a few days. I can’t remember exactly where the diversion was at this moment and then he came back and a few nights later he, they were, they went to an advance base and, to do reconnaissance over the Bay of Biscay.
CB: And this is flying in Wellingtons.
MW: That was flying in yes and he, he didn’t return that night. Well, several of the crews were lost that night but we, we, I was on duty. Most nights I was on duty when we were operating and we, I stayed until 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning trying to see if there was going to be any news but no there wasn’t any news and several days went by and I said to Squadron Leader Ivor Jones, ‘Do you think there’s any hope?’ And I actually said to him at that stage, ‘I can’t go on with this job. It’s too, too much to take. Losing all these boys.’ And his reply was that ‘I’m old enough to be your father. You’ve got to stop being, you mustn’t relate to this incident. You must put it aside because I need you here.’ So, right, well several months went by and worked very hard. That was a very busy time. And then I got a letter from Douglas’s mother who lived at Richmond. She had been, had been sent the, the um Douglas’s um kit and everything from, from the station. The adjutant had organised, always, always organised these things and, and she said, ‘I would like to meet you. Would you come and stay with me for the weekend?’ She said, ‘I’ve, I’d had a letter from Douglas just before, before he, he went missing and he said he’d met the girl he wanted to marry, he was going to marry.’ But I couldn’t do it then. I’m afraid, Chris, that it was too much for me. I had work. We were in Yorkshire, at Linton and they were in, she was in London so I kept putting it off and she kept phoning me. In the end, several months later, I did go. Very, very emotional. I’ll never forget the time she, when I went to meet her and I stayed the weekend, a lovely house. But she sobbed and sobbed. It really was her only son. The last one in their family and do you want to know what she was a sister, theatre sister in the South Middlesex Hospital and she said she’d married late and all she wanted was a little, a boy which she got and at twenty years old he was killed. Well, we did become very friendly. If you want me to go on with this do you? Ahum. And I went there quite a lot and then the time came for me. It was coming towards the end of ‘45 it would be and she said. ‘What are you going to do? Will you come and live with me after the, when the war’s over?’ I said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘You can have the house. You can have everything I’ve got’. But it was too much. I was too young to tie myself down at that stage and I knew Doug wouldn’t really have wanted me to do, to tie myself down so. And I met Roy and I had, well you probably saw from that diary I had loads of young men from the RAF from, from Australia who really wanted me to, to go back to Australia with them but in the end I decided, no. I would get a job and, and stay here. So we, we parted company really. I did write to her a few times afterwards but she was very disappointed that I wouldn’t go and live and live with her. And then I met Roy and um but that was after when I went back to, to South Wales to um to Brawdy. That’s Coastal Command, Brawdy. That’s where they were actually operating. They were still doing met, met work from there and I was there for a while until they, they closed Brawdy. I think the navy took it on then and then we went, we went to Chivenor, near Barnstable and from there I went to Northwood. That was headquarters at Coastal Command and from there I was demobbed. So, up until that time I think, I can’t remember, but I can, I can find out when I went to Bilbao. Up until that time I really, I mean I don’t, I can honestly say that there isn’t really a day that goes by when I don’t think of Douglas in some way or other and his christening cup is there on the mantelpiece. And his engagement ring. You will be very interested in this because she gave me her engagement ring which is a lovely three diamonds ring which I wore a lot and my granddaughter was looking at my, and she said she liked my rings and I said, ‘Right, well you can have this one when you get engaged.’ So recently, only last Christmas I had Douglas’s engagement ring put right. You know, cleaned up and made, made to fit and everything, you see. It is an old fashioned one of course. It’s quite old. And I gave it to her when she got engaged earlier this year. Well, I gave, I gave it to her boyfriend before then but Abigail now has it and she said, ‘Grandma,’ she said, ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said, ‘I have to keep putting it in the box,’ back in the box looking at it. So that has been passed, as something that’s been passed on to her, on to her. Through her.
CB: So, you were thinking of Douglas all this time.
MW: Ahum.
CB: Was that -
MW: I only knew him -
CB: How long did you know him?
MW: Three months at the most.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes. But three months, three days, almost, almost you could say three minutes is long enough to know. You know you’ve got, there’s an attraction there isn’t there? You see, you’ve -
CB: Right. So, after how long did he propose?
MW: How much?
CB: After how many weeks or months did he propose to you? How long did you know him before he proposed?
MW: Oh only a few, they were all a bit like only, oh it must have been less than a month but he, and he used to make a joke of it because he used to send the boys, the other boys, the rest of the crew were there. They would say, ‘Oh when are you going to marry Mary then?’ And he said, ‘No.’ No. Oh some date in the far distance he would say but I didn’t, I wouldn’t have married anyone until after the war was over. In my, my, it wasn’t, in my book it wasn’t fair really, to get married, not to, but I had a feeling with the boys, with the bomber boys that they really, they wanted to leave something behind and, and if they could marry you and get you pregnant well they would. You know, there was something being, they knew, I mean all the boys knew that they weren’t, they weren’t likely to come back and of course most of them didn’t. It was only the few that um like Cheshire. Leonard was there at that time and his office was next door to mine until I moved upstairs. I was going to say to you, and I’m digressing, is there a possibility that I could get up to Linton?
CB: Absolutely. Yes. We can arrange that.
MW: I did read somewhere in the magazine that they had, they had funding that they, not that money would make any difference but I would just need the authority and perhaps a driver or something to, to go up for a couple of nights.
CB: Well, we do have a link with Linton on Ouse. There’s a wing commander who is responsible for the history of the place.
MW: Ahum.
CB: So I know we can get that sorted.
MW: You have that.
CB: Ahum
MW: Oh.
CB: Peter Jones who’s the, one of the -
MW: Who?
CB: Peter Jones.
MW: Peter Jones. Oh yes.
CB: Jones. He sent you the album back and he deals with all the, I send stuff to him.
MW: Oh really? Oh.
CB: So we can send that -
MW: He sent a very nice letter.
CB: Did he? Good.
MW: And Heather sent one as well.
CB: Good.
MW: Yes.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Well I would appreciate that because I think now as I say I’m just hoping that I’ll get Roy into a nursing home. Then I can have some free time.
CB: Of course.
MW: And do it because I do feel that this is, this is the last straw.
CB: Yeah.
MW: This is, you know, I really must do it -
CB: Ahum.
MW: Now. Otherwise I might do something disastrous because it is at that pitch at the moment, you know.
CB: Well, we, just keep us posted and we can sort it out. I know that because of a conversation separately that I’ve had with -
MW: Yes. I’m sure.
CB: With Peter.
MW: It would, it’s so nostalgic.
CB: Of course.
MW: But in my mind I can take you to the, to the, in to the headquarters, up the stairs into the adjutant’s room, to the intelligence office, the operations room and, and all those places. They’re all in my head you see.
CB: Of course. Of course.
MW: And it would be lovely just to have. I think it would be lovely -
CB: Ahum.
MW: Just to have a, have a look around again.
CB: So you met Doug when he was twenty two.
MW: He was twenty.
CB: Twenty.
MW: Yes.
CB: And you were twenty two.
MW: Yes.
CB: And um -
MW: He would have been, June the, June the um is it -
CB: ‘Cause the 12th was when he was lost. June ‘42.
MW: When he went down.
CB: Yes.
MW: Yes. And then in the August, on the 17th of August he would have been twenty one.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes.
CB: So what was the, you had a lot of choice of aircrew on the station.
MW: Had a lot of -?
CB: Choice of aircrew ‘cause there was so many.
MW: Oh.
CB: What was special about Doug?
MW: I don’t know really. He was just, we just seemed to hit it off. He was a very good dancer and I wasn’t and he was a very good skater. He skated at the ice rink at Richmond. And, and all that but I don’t know I don’t even know whether I knew him well enough to know how much he appreciated music but I’ve always been fanatic about classical music and I still am but whether or not he was I wouldn’t really know. He had quite a nice twinkle in his eye you know. He was, sort of a nice smile. Other than that -
CB: And was he a navigator? What was he?
MW: Was he - ?
CB: Was he a navigator or - ?
MW: He was observer plus navigator.
CB: Right.
MW: Yes. That was a bit more than a navigator.
CB: So he’d been trained in South Africa had he?
MW: No.
CB: Oh he hadn’t. Okay.
MW: No. Here.
CB: Right.
MW: He was a biochemist and he worked for [Joe Lyons] and he’d only just started. Well I mean, obviously, because of his age. He was only twenty, you see when he was killed.
CB: Yeah. And on the airfield, just going a bit broader than this now, you mentioned last time about you were issuing the charts for the raids but the lads would come and talk to you.
MW: Oh, yes they did.
CB: So what was the basis of that?
MW: The basis of that?
CB: Yeah. Their conversations.
MW: Oh their conversations. Well -
CB: Apart from the fact that you were a pretty girl that they came because also they had concerns. Did they?
MW: They would tell you about their personal life. Tell me anyway. And they would say how a lot of them didn’t want to go to the Ruhr and they didn’t, they didn’t, they didn’t know the target at that time when they came in until we went into the briefing room and everybody else was assembled. The met officer and the intelligence officer and briefing and everything and then once they, we had a large board on the wall, blackboard, and they, and then the route and everything was, was up on that board for them and the squadron navigation officer and the intelligence officer would point out various routes to go which were, which had, heavy, heavy flak and or searchlights and things like that but a lot of the time I know that a lot of them didn’t take any notice of what, where and they went their own way. Cheshire did that an awful lot.
CB: Oh did he?
MW: And they would change course and go over the routes that they thought might be more -
CB: From experience.
MW: Yes.
CB: Because what we’re talking about is a big map on the wall isn’t it?
MW: This -
CB: And it shows the route on this huge map -
MW: Yes. But we had -
CB: On the wall at the end of the -
MW: A big blackboard -
CB: Yeah.
MW: As well on the night when we, a big, like at school.
CB: Yeah.
MW: You know, a big blackboard it was and that’s what we had in the intelligence office to write the names of the, we wrote all the names down on the board that were going and who they were and the number of the aircraft and everything.
CB: Right.
MW: On that board so that when, when you came back in the morning, so when they first started coming back, you would be able to, to, you cross off the ones who’d arrived and what time they’d arrived back and then of course the ones that didn’t come back were still there on the board.
CB: Ahum.
MW: But when they came back of course they came straight up to the briefing office, to the interrogation office and the intelligence officer there and I was there and I took the aids to escape from them and made some more, made the tea for them.
CB: Ahum.
MW: But when, when they were talking to me before they took off, not all of them came in but a lot of them came in, it was mainly about they didn’t really like certain targets. Well, that was obvious really that they were heavily, they were going to be heavily bombed, er shot at. The Ruhr was very, very well protected and Hamburg and places, that was a bit further up. Hamburg is a bit further up but um and of course Berlin was almost, at that time, Berlin, you could only carry the Whitleys and the Wellingtons could only just get to Berlin on the fuel they had. And so there was no, no point in trying to go around twice or anything because they hadn’t got the fuel to get there. It was just, just enough fuel to get them in to, in to Berlin and back but, until the Halifax and the Lancasters came in and then they could of course.
CB: So, we’re talking the early part of the war before the heavy bombers -
MW: Yes.
CB: Came in.
MW: Yes.
CB: Right.
MW: And I mean for a lot of the, for a long time when I went to Driffield, at Driffield all they were doing was dropping leaflets from there but um -
CB: How did they feel about that?
MW: Not very good. But we didn’t have it, Chris.
CB: No.
MW: We didn’t have anything. It’s alright for Churchill to stand up there and say that we’ll do this, we’ll do that but we hadn’t anything to do it with until once the factories got going in this country and we made, well we made wonderful progress of course.
CB: So this added to the apprehension of the crews?
MW: Yes. Yes.
CB: Is what you’re saying?
MW: Yes they wanted to go, those boys. Yes they, but of course a lot of them weren’t so keen on the, on the target. Going in the Halifaxes, they were very so slow but I mean they used to christen the Whitley as a flying coffin.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Oh you know that do you?
CB: I do. Yes. So when the bigger planes came, so we’re talking about the Halifax and Lancasters, but Halifax in Yorkshire, how did the attitude of the crews change?
MW: It did change quite a bit really because they, for one thing we had, at Linton we would have the first Halifaxes to have cameras so you had a camera in there.
CB: For the target.
MW: But it did show a lot. It showed an awful lot in the first, in the beginning that they were, some of them were nowhere near the target.
CB: Right
MW: I shouldn’t say that should I?
CB: No, you should because these are important points and the review that was carried out proved that they were sometimes fifty miles away -
MW: Absolutely.
CB: From the target. And you -
MW: I had a job then –
CB: You were seeing that
MW: In the beginning. I didn’t do a lot of it mind you.
CB: Ahum.
MW: But I did do it because my eyesight is very short-sighted well not very short but good enough to read a very tiny, and I did a lot of looking at the maps when they came back from the cameras and you could see that, you know, then but the boys seemed to appreciate that. And then we had the other. What was it called? H2O I think.
CB: H2S.
MW: H2S.
CB: Yes.
MW: That’s right. Yes.
CB: The radar.
MW: That was fitted and I think that was we were one of the first stations to get that, you see.
CB: Right.
MW: And those maps were very, very secret and we made sure that they signed for them.
CB: Right.
MW: But of course that soon went by the board and everybody got them and that but Linton was very upmarket in that -
CB: Was it?
MW: Respect but it was -
CB: Right.
MW: We were. I don’t know why but, whether we of course later on with Cheshire there and Chesh was there for a long time and it’s – [pause]
CB: So when, when they came back from a raid they came upstairs.
MW: In to the briefing -
CB: Brought the charts back.
MW: In to the interrogation office, yes.
CB: What happened then? How did it then progress with Ivor?
MW: Oh. Well we, they had they had a cup of tea and a biscuit and they, they had a one to one talk with an intelligence officer. We had Ivor Jones and Brylcreem and what was the other ones called? About four of them there.
CB: Right.
MW: One was the manager from Brylcreem. The hair thing.
CB: Right.
MW: We always called him Brylcreem but Ivor Jones was the senior man.
CB: Right.
MW: And, but they all got an interview. A one to one interview with them and asked where they, what they’d done, how, what, what the opposition was like, what the flak was like and, and that and obviously a lot of the time they had been, been, come back with, with a few bomb holes in their, in the aircraft but what height did they bomb from and how many times did they circle around the target and just general things like that and then they were free to go and sometimes they would come back in to my office and have another cup of tea and sit down and talk a bit but other times they went off to the mess and had bacon and eggs and, and you know it was dawn by then you see.
CB: So, what -
MW: But I stayed till about eight in the morning because some nights I was on again you see but I did tell you about the, the, my role in, was, - the establishment in the RAF you know about that. If they allocated, they allocated at that time one map clerk, special duties map clerk for each station and I was that one for Linton but if, if you wanted leave you had to have liaison with one of the corporals or the sergeants in the intelligence office that didn’t deal with maps but would take over from me but I didn’t have a colleague who I could just say, ‘I want leave.’ And that, and that happened on all the stations because we were only needed on bomber stations really because the rest of the, Fighter Command and Coastal and that, they didn’t need a lot of maps there but it was critical for us to have enough maps available for -
CB: Of Germany.
MW: Yes. If, I mean most of it was covered on a 48-4 and the Mercator’s projection map but - [laughs] Yes.
CB: Big.
MW: All came
CB: Rolled up
MW: Rolled up. My poor fingers. They’re very, very harsh. The edges of maps and charts and charts especially. And you’d try to roll them back to get them into these big chests that we had to put them in and they, and you -
CB: Difficult.
MW: Nip your fingers off with the, if you weren’t careful.
CB: So, some of the crew used to return for another cup of tea.
MW: Yes. They did.
CB: It wasn’t the fact it was another cup of tea was it? They came to talk to you.
MW: Probably.
CB: So what would they be talking about in that case?
MW: Oh, what they were going to do, you know, if they, when they got their leave and where they were going to. It’s just, didn’t talk about what they had done so much as what they, their personal life. And I had one or two conscientious objectors and that was very difficult, very difficult because the RAF had paid a lot of money to train a pilot or a navigator and then after eight to ten weeks of training they decided they couldn’t do it and they became conscientious and the RAF is very cruel to those young men.
CB: Ahum.
MW: You know.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Yes.
CB: I’d like to know more though.
MW: Absolutely. Yes.
CB: So what did they do to them?
MW: Well, they, they were just thrown out of the RAF. No two ways about it. There were no references or anything like that given. They weren’t allowed to re-muster to do another job. It was a very cruel and harsh end but a couple of them got out on religious grounds. They couldn’t come to terms with that fact that God didn’t want them to, to kill other people whereas I will say most of the boys I spoke to and Cheshire was certainly had no regrets whatsoever about going over to Germany and bombing. He didn’t. They started this, we’ve got to, we’ve got to, that was Cheshire’s attitude about it but when he, I don’t know what year when he was flying in 617 on the, and he had a Mosquito and he went low level flying and what they call that and he went to a factory to [drop leaflets] to bomb in France.
CB: In France. Yes
MW: You know this do you?
CB: Yes. Go on.
MW: And he circled around three times I think to warn those girls to get out and they did and then he went in and bombed it you see but one of those girls came back to Linton.
Other: Oh really.
MW: To thank him. Yes. And he said, ‘Oh no. Go away’ he said, ‘We don’t, we’re glad you all got out.’ So, that was his attitude but his attitude changed and he was a different character after Hiroshima. And that is what, he was a different character after that.
CB: Because he was on the bomber -
MW: He was on the -
CB: One of the bombers.
MW: Not on the one that dropped the bomb but -
CB: The second one.
MW: The one that was observing. Yes. Yes. I don’t know much about that because it was, it all took place.
CB: Yeah.
MW: You know, there, but it was -
CB: And then he became a Roman Catholic and then he started his Cheshire Homes.
MW: You have to speak up.
CB: He became a Roman Catholic and he -
MW: Oh he was a Roman Catholic.
CB: Also started -
MW: Yes he did.
CB: Started the Cheshire Homes.
MW: The Cheshire Homes with Sue Ryder yes. But I told you about him being married before didn’t -
CB: No. Go on.
MW: Oh didn’t I? Poor old Binney.
CB: Take that for me.
MW: Are you alright for tea?
Other: Yes.
CB: Do you want to stop for a mo?
MW: Yeah okay. Do you want another bit of cake?
[pause]
CB: So, we’ve just taken a brief break and we’ve been talking about conscientious objectors but what about the other people who came under the title LMF. How did you come up against that?
MW: Um I didn’t see a great deal of that apart in, well I suppose in a way it was about three or four of them actually came through aircrew who, who decided that they couldn’t cope and they were known as conscientious objectors. A lot of them did offer the, the reason for not wanting to continue with flying, with, with bombing was that religion and whether or not they’d been religious people before or whether they’d just taken up with religion I really don’t know but it, they were obviously lacking in some moral fibre yes because it takes a lot of nerve to be a bomber pilot at whatever age. They were young men. This must be an awfully hard for you to go out night after night knowing that you’re not, you probably won’t come back and I think these young men probably couldn’t take that. But on the other hand the RAF had, had paid a lot of money to get them trained to be crew, to be aircrew which was all the air crew, as you know Chris were all voluntary reserves. Nobody was conscripted to aircrew and therefore if you felt fit enough and this was what you wanted to do for the country you should have been able to carry it out after that training but um all I did was offer them tea and sympathy but I couldn’t really do much else except listen and, and that’s what I did. To listen to them. They had various problems. They had this and they had that in their personal life which was, which they felt was more important than being, being, being shot down over Germany.
CB: And in many cases they felt a lot better for talking with you.
MW: Well, I wouldn’t know but I think they came so possibly that they did. Yes. Yes, I had a lot of spare time during the day when I was just tidying maps. I had a large office and when I was just tidying maps and checking on numbers of charts and things. Well, one of the charts which was used practically every night was Europe 48-4 on those were I had to order and perhaps if I’d had a delivery well that took a lot of time putting them all away, putting everything away and that but I did have quite a lot of time, spare time, during the day until we got the target and everything and then I needed to get those ready and the aids to escape which all had to be signed for. So, really and truly they, they, they knew that they could probably pop up to see me or pop up for, to have a chat and come in my office.
CB: Could you just explain what the aids to escape were?
MW: Well um they had a lot, the ones that I was involved with were, were things that they put in their boots and there was maps, there’s a silk map. Now one of them, one of these silk maps I had, of France. They’re back to back on both sides. Silk they are. And I, I did have one and I gave it to my cousin and he’s had it framed so you that can have one side one, one side and other as a picture like on the wall and he’s agreed with me that when he dies that he’ll send it to the museum for you. You’ll have it so you can have it.
CB: Thank you.
MW: There -
CB: Yeah.
MW: But um -
CB: What else did they have?
MW: There’s a compass.
CB: Yeah. That’s a small compass.
MW: Small compass.
CB: Pin head type.
MW: Yes. Yes.
CB: Button size.
MW: That’s right. Yes. And what else were they? I don’t remember too much about, about those.
CB: And then they had made their own arrangements for rations.
MW: Ahum. They, one of, one of the group captains at Linton used to wear a civilian suit underneath his, his uniform.
CB: His battle dress, yes.
MW: But he didn’t fly very often. That was Whitley wasn’t it, was it who did that?
CB: So he could immediately go into civilian clothes.
MW: Exactly. Yes. Yes, yeah, strip off everything if they were shot down and they had a chance of getting away.
CB: Now you moved on from Linton to other places. The Halifax had arrived before you moved. The operations were different because of the camera amongst other things.
MW: Before I moved?
CB: But you moved on from, from Linton. Where did you go to next?
MW: Oh but I was at Linton for three and a half years.
CB: Right.
MW: No. It was Driffield. We were bombed out of that.
CB: Of course.
MW: We did that last time didn’t we?
CB: Yes. Yes.
MW: August the 15th we had a daylight raid.
CB: Yeah.
MW: And we were wiped out of Lint –
CB: Yeah
MW: Er Driffield. Ammunition went up, we’d got people killed and that was a day I shall never forget.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Because it was a daylight raid and it was very early on, you see, in 1940 but, and then I was, then I went, we were moved to Pocklington with 102 and 76 and then we went from, I went on a course and, have I not told you this?
CB: What was the course for?
MW: Well they were very short of cooks.
CB: Oh yes.
MW: They sent me to Melksham.
CB: Oh yes.
MW: To do this course and this was, this was a day when the Battle of Britain was on and I can honestly sit here and tell you that I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened there. Where I was. It is as if there’s a complete blank.
CB: Really.
MW: I know I went to Melksham. I know I passed the course and I know that I came back to Linton but I’ve no other recollection at all and that was because, the only recollection I have of being there is that we were scared out of our wits because they were bombing day and night, daylight bombing and it just went on and on. You couldn’t, but I have a good memory as you know.
CB: This was Germans bombing you?
MW: But I can’t tell you a thing about that.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Nothing.
CB: You’re talking about the Germans bombing you?
MW: Yes. Oh yes. That was the battle yes, the Battle of Britain. That was on then. And then I came back to Linton and that’s where I stayed but I went back to Linton in to the officers’, to the sergeants’ mess to do, to do cooking and I, there was a civilian cook there ‘cause they did have a lot of civilians still working on the stations from the remains from before the war, you see. And the civilian chef and he, he used to give the orders and I took the rations across to the intelligence office. He said to me, ‘Will you take the rations across for the flying,’ for that night. The, the sergeant’s mess and the officers’ mess provided the rations. The tea and the sugar and the biscuits to make tea for them when they came back, you see and I took them across there and Ivor Jones, the intelligence officer, looked up from his desk when I went in and he said, ‘Where are you from?’ And I said, ‘I’m from the sergeants’ mess. I’ve brought the rations for tonight.’ And he said, ‘Oh would you come downstairs with me?’ He said, ‘Would you like, do you know anything about maps?’ I said, ‘No. Not a lot.’ And he said, he said ‘Where is the mouth of the Danube? Do you know that?’ I remember this as plain as anything. I said, is it in the Red, in the, er where was it now? It’s in the, can’t get it, it’ll come back and he said oh and what about so and so and so and so and I seemed to provide him with the answers but I said, ‘What’s all this about sir?’ And he said, ‘I want you to come and work for me.’ I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ I said, ‘I’m already in the, in the -’ you know what it was like in the RAF you had to have a re-muster put you to all the re-mustering, do all that and send it away and they would put it through to the officers in charge. I know this was very early on in the war, in 1940 but it’s he seemed to take command. He was an ex-military man and he, we always called him the colonel and he said, ‘Report to me tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock.’ I went back to the civilian chef and he said, ‘He can’t do that. He can’t take my staff.’ I said, ‘Well what I do?’ And so anyway I thought I’d better do what he says. He’s a squadron leader. So I went back and he said, ‘One of these lads, these corporals in the intelligence office, will show you what to do and you can go on a course in about a week’s time to Gloucester and, and then you’ll come back and when you come back you’ll be a corporal. And this, all this happened, you see. It was most, I mean you, you might think I’m telling you a really big story but I’m not. I assure you that is exactly what happened.
CB: And this was all when you were aged nineteen.
MW: Hmmn?
CB: This was when you were aged nineteen.
MW: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
MW: Twenty actually.
CB: Twenty.
MW: Yeah. This is what happened and it was so out of character for anybody to do. I don’t think you’d find anyone else in the RAF who had been promoted like that by, by a squadron leader. Just, just said, ‘Look, you come and you - ,’ and I thought about it afterwards and I thought well I really didn’t know very much. I hadn’t, I had, I wasn’t very good at school really but I was good at geography funnily enough but I wasn’t all that bright at school because I wanted to be outside. I spent most of the time looking out of the window you know instead of paying attention to the board but I think it was perhaps not, it’s not charisma but it’s attraction. People want to talk to me.
CB: Ahum.
MW: And I think he knew that. And of course -
CB: He could sense it.
MW: And this is what worked for him. These boys needed someone. Not motherly love at nineteen or twenty years old but that sort of, so that was where I was and that was where I stayed for the rest of the um until later on. He, he then, Ivor Jones said, ‘I’ve put a recommendation in for you for a commission’. He said, ‘You’ve got an interview,’ on so and so and so and so and I thought about and I said, ‘I don’t want it sir.’ He said, ‘You don’t want it?’ I said, ‘No. I don’t want it.’ And he said, ‘Well,’ Anyway I went and I got accepted but I still didn’t want it.
CB: Ahum.
MW: So I refused and he said, ‘Why don’t you want it?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be an admin officer for a start.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be and I don’t want to be, to go away from these boys. I don’t want to leave this job. This job is what I like doing.’ I didn’t like it in that sense but I did, I felt I was needed then, you know. Sort of needed there with looking -
CB: Ahum.
MW: And then a bit later on, another year later he said, ‘Are you, would you, would you consider doing, having a commission now?’ I said, ‘No. I don’t want it.’ It just didn’t appeal to me.
CB: No.
MW: To be sitting at a desk or -
CB: Quite.
MW: Or doing these things so then I moved. I’d say I moved on then a bit. I think we’ve done all this -
CB: I think we have. I need to ask you a couple of other things if I may. One is, you were a number of several hundred WAAFs. Two hundred perhaps.
MW: Oh on the station.
CB: On the station.
MW: Oh yes. Yes.
CB: So what was the general link between the association between the WAAFs and the flying people?
MW: The flying?
CB: The aircrew.
MW: The aircrew.
CB: Ahum.
MW: Oh we all, all the girls loved them of course. I mean if you wanted a date you didn’t have, it wasn’t much if you didn’t have a date with, with, with aircrew or with an officer or something like that you, you, you were aiming a bit high but with aircrew yes they all liked the aircrew boys ‘cause they were fun you see. They were great, they were really, and er but I didn’t have much to do with the other WAAFs really because I was on shift work, you see. I mean my, my duties weren’t nine to five although I was usually there about 9 o’clock but because I would then have to be, be back in the evening, in the middle of the night and that was a bit traumatic when we, we had a very bad raid one night. We were always having, we were always being bombed at that time. They seemed to target the RAF stations up, up in the north and Cheshire came back and said, ‘It looks worse than we’ve left, what we’ve done in Germany.’ This RAF at Linton but um after then they decided that the WAAF couldn’t sleep on the camp so we were billeted out to various large houses in the vicinity and my, I went to Newton on Ouse which is just down the road from Linton. If you’ve been to Linton you probably know it’s just down the road and um but that wasn’t very good because I had to be, go on my bike in the middle of the night to get back to the office to, for interrogation you see and they used to be droning overhead and me on my bike trying to get back because you weren’t allowed lights or anything. But -
CB: It was dangerous on the road was it?
MW: On the road? At -
CB: Yes.
MW: Not in the middle of the night it wasn’t. No. No, it was, it’s very countrified, you know um but you couldn’t see where you were going in the middle of the night with no lights on.
CB: No.
MW: And there’s aircraft droning overhead but, the ones that were coming back because as I say I stayed until, until we cleared everybody and then it was about 8 o’clock or 9 o’clock and then you were so tensed up you couldn’t go to bed really so we used to hop off into York and have a play around, you know, in York for a bit, come back in the afternoon and have a bit of sleep because you might, I might be, be back on again in the evening you see. If the weather was good then I, you would be back on duty again but if the weather was bad you would have a few days off if it wasn’t fit for flying.
CB: Finally, fast forward to 1945.
MW: Hmmn?
CB: 1945.
MW: Yes.
CB: Fast forward to 1945. You, in your diary you’ve got a very brief statement on the 8th of May, VE day. About the end of the hostilities in Europe. The end of the war.
MW: Yes.
CB: Was the 8th of May. How did you feel at that time?
MW: Where, where the 8th of May, where was?
CB: So you’ve put in here, I’m going to have to do, you’ve put in here, “Down to the beach with Pam and Ray. Peace declared with Germany. Had tea at the Met Office.” So -
MW: Oh is it -?
CB: What happened really that day? Did everybody celebrate?
MW: Oh yes.
CB: Did it just go over their heads?
MW: Went mad. Everyone -
CB: Or what happened?
MW: Oh went mad down at the beach and you let all the dogs out. You know, some of the crews and we, we, had their dogs with them but they couldn’t have on the station. They had them boarded out you see and we went and got all the dogs and took them for a walk down on the beach. It was quite a nice day actually then wasn’t it. That, that year.
CB: And then on VJ day the end of the war in the Far East.
MW: Yes.
CB: Then -
MW: Oh I went to down to Plymouth didn’t I, because we were dancing in the Hoe in the middle of the night. Yes. That’s right.
CB: So, there really was a lot of celebration was there?
MW: Oh dear yes.
CB: With these things.
MW: Yes
MW: Yes. So it sounded as though there was plenty going on then.
MW: Yes. Yes.
CB: Yeah. Right.
MW: Well I wasn’t tied up with anybody at all of course. I didn’t get tied up with anybody after Douglas was killed until -
CB: No.
MW: Until I got, got to know Roy. I did know plenty of boys. I mean there was no shortage of friends to go out and that but I wasn’t over serious about anybody.
CB: No.
MW: Until as I say and that was sometimes think it probably wasn’t a good thing but on the other hand I should, should have probably given it a bit more time but it seemed to me that he was very keen to get married and, and at that time he was a very different person you see.
CB: Of course.
MW: A completely different person but this is what people as you say about the young marriages you, about Douglas, there’s nothing to say that that couldn’t have gone completely wrong because you don’t know the future do you?
Other: No.
CB: No.
MW: Although you think at the time that it’s all going to go -
CB: Yes.
MW: Alright but er -
CB: Yes. There’s another entry where there’s a chap who takes you on a flight after the war is finished over France.
MW: Yes. Oh yes.
CB: How on earth did you manage that?
MW: Well, yes. I was a bit privileged in those days and we yes we went over to France. That was, that wasn’t Roy’s crew. That was another crew. That was from Brawdy wasn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
MW: Yes and oh my goodness me how those, I really got to know what it was like being, being on board a Halifax with going over there oh it was awful. So little space in those things. You couldn’t, and of course you had to wear oxygen masks in those things. Nowadays, it’s completely different and yes that was quite exciting. I’d been wanting a flight but when I got to, I was at Shawbury, not Shawbury, Silverstone. You know the race course that was RAF and I was there for a short time. It was training and they wanted somebody to, to clear the map office ‘cause they hadn’t they’d had they hadn’t had anybody but they had a lot of instruments hanging about, navigational instruments so I went there for a short while and while I was there the nav officer said to me, he said, ‘Now if you don’t behave yourself you’re going up to Lossiemouth tomorrow’[laughs]. He would, he would threaten me you see and I kept saying, ‘Now when you’re going to Oxford again can I come for the trip?’ And he promised me. ‘Yes, he would. We would go.’ So, this particular day it was a really lovely sunny day and I said. ‘Now, look, can I come to Oxford with you if you’re going? And, ‘Oh alright but you won’t like it.’ I said, ‘But look it’s a lovely sunny day.’ Of course it was. There was all this, all this cloud about you see and oh God it was a terrible trip. This was in one these twin light aircraft. What was it? Anson?
CB: Anson.
MW: Anson. Yes.
CB: Avro Anson.
MW: Anson Avro Anson. It was the most awful trip. I’ve never felt so sick.
CB: Did you sit up at the front?
MW: Hmmn? Yeah I went up to the -
CB: Did you sit up at the front?
MW: Yes of course but of course it’s the cloud -
CB: Twin engine. Yes.
MW: But you have to run into cloud and then it went whoohoo! all over the place in those light aircraft in those days.
CB: I must just go to the loo.
MW: Ahum.
CB: Thank you.
MW: I hope it’s clean and tidy. Anyway how are the flowers?
Other: Oh doing well. Thank you very much.
MW: Are you still going?
Other: I’m still going.
MW: Oh good.
Other: Only, only really it’s more of a social thing I suppose because I’ve been doing it -
MW: Don’t, don’t give it up.
Other: No I won’t.
MW: It’s so therapeutic.
Other: It’s my, it’s one of my pastimes.
MW: Isn’t it?
Other: Yes. That’s right.
MW: The next time you come I’ve got a really lovely Daphne out here.
Other: Oh have you?
MW: Yes Daphne, not Miseria um Daphne Odora
Other: Ah huh.
MW: Marginata. And the scent is gorgeous.
Other: ‘Cause not many, not many flowers have a scent now do they?
MW: Not at this time of the year. No.
Other: No.
MW: No. And my, at the back I’ve got so many Hellebores out this year.
Other: Have you? Its’ been a good year for Hellebores.
MW: Have you got Hellebores?
Other: I have. They’re down at the bottom of the garden.
MW: Oh right.
Other: I can just see them.
MW: Yeah.
Other: I’m being very lazy actually because I need a gardener to come again and sort me out.
MW: Right.
Other: The lawns are all fine. They’re all being treated
MW: Yes.
Other: And airyated and God knows what but um -
MW: Well I have the gardener once a fortnight and I’m not giving up that.
Other: No, your garden’s lovely. Your garden’s lovely but you’ve got good soil.
MW: Ahum.
Other: My soil is clay based.
MW: Oh yes.
Other: And it’s a nightmare.
MW: Well I say good. This is sand really it’s -
Other: Yeah.
MW: Sandy.
Other: But it’s looks lovely rich, dark soil.
MW: The water runs through that you need in the summer. It goes very dry.
Other: Yeah.
MW: But I mean the Camelia’s on this wall I brought some the other day. Out already, you see.
Other: Well it doesn’t know what season it is.
MW: Look at the Daffs.
Other: I know. It’s all the same. I know. They’ve all come through haven’t they? It’s incredible.
MW: Yes. What it’s going to be like in a couple of months because everything will be gone.
Other: Well that’s right.
MW: They’re forecasting snow for the weekend aren’t they?
Other: Yes. Yes they are.
MW: The Daphne’s done very well this year and Peter, my friend brought me another one. What’s that one called? That’s over the side there but I don’t, hopefully it’s going to go, go, right in the corner when, as you go out. The Sarcococca, have you got that?
Other: No. I haven’t.
MW: Oh that’s, when you go, when you go out it’s right on the drive.
Other: Ok.
MW: It’s got little white flowers on it.
Other: Lovely.
MW: And the scent is fantastic.
Other: Beautiful. Oh I’ll have to look.
MW: Just pick a bit and take it off with you.
Other: I’ll just have a little look.
MW: Smell it in the car going out.
CB: Sounds super. Thank you.
Other: Yes.
MW: It’s really gorgeous.
Other: Yes. Yes
MW: Yes. Everything seems to be -
Other: Well as I say nothing knows what season it is.
MW: What it is, no.
Other: That’s the trouble.
MW: No.
Other: Isn’t it? Everything’s coming through far too early.
CB: Well the trees are blossoming where I am.
Other: Yeah it’s crazy isn’t it?
CB: Well we were just talking about the Daphne’s and things but I say my garden comes first. I mean I could really go to town on this house and have it all decorated but I’m not going to.
Other: Why bother? No. It’s, it’s
MW: Why spend the, I’d rather spend the money on the garden, you see.
Other: Exactly. Exactly ahum.
CB: You need to get going in a minute I know but final point blossoming is interesting comment in a way, a word because you have all these young girls who are WAAFs on an airfield and you have these young men and they were young men become real men very quickly in the terror of the war. How did the WAAFs react? They blossomed quickly? What was the sort of way things went with WAAFs?
MW: What was the -
CB: How did they react to being in the air force in these circumstances?
MW: In - ?
CB: How did the WAAFs react to being in front line station like Linton?
MW: I don’t think we thought anything about it. I didn’t think, I don’t think we even gave it a thought that we were in, no, I’m sure we didn’t.
CB: But they grew up quickly as well.
MW: We grew up quickly and oh yes, my goodness.
Other: Had to.
MW: You had to. We, it wasn’t, we were there to do a job and at the RAF as you know they, don’t suffer fools gladly. You have to do that job. I’m very concentrated and if I but I go in the straight line, I can’t sit on the, everything goes this way but of course I’m very much a perfectionist as well and I think that gives you, in the RAF that’s, they don’t want, they can’t have people who can’t take orders. If you’re given an order you that’s it, isn’t it?
CB: Let’s get on with it.
Other: Yeah.
MW: No, I don’t honestly think that any of the WAAFs that I knew I knew mostly met office girls in the later stages because sharing a hut and being, being, being an NCO you had, you were given charge of a hut or a house. In the early days at Linton and at Driffield I lived in the married quarters that belonged, that the RAF people had vacated when, you know, the wives, when the war started.
CB: Ahum.
MW: We had their bedding and everything because that was all supplied by the RAF as it is today of course. They, you, you go in naked and you come out naked really don’t you? Because they provide everything -
CB: Yes.
MW: For you but, and it is a very good life if you, if you can stand the discipline.
CB: Yes.
MW: Yes.
CB: So here we are in a barrack hut with all these young girls. How difficult were they, as their corporal, to manage their activities?
MW: It wasn’t very difficult really. I know there are a lot of stories. I’ve heard a lot of stories about the WAAF went off with airmen and got pregnant and so on and so forth but it was few and far between in my experience. I mean, you had to be in at five to midnight or whatever it was and you did it. I mean, If the circumstances where you didn’t catch the bus well you just had to pay the price for it. It was there were no excuse in the RAF.
CB: Ahum
Other: No.
MW: No. You just and I think, in my opinion the RAF is rather maligned really in as much what we did during that war hasn’t been, had enough said about it. We did, Bomber Command didn’t win the war as people have said but my goodness what we’d have done without them I’m afraid is, I dread to think. We couldn’t, with Hiroshima coming forward that much if we hadn’t done Hiroshima we would still have been fighting now wouldn’t we? They wouldn’t have given in would they?
CB: No.
MW: No. No.
CB: Well on that note I think we’d better let you get on. Thank you very much indeed and we’ll arrange another meeting. Thank you -
MW: Well I don’t think we have done very much today.
Other: Let’s get all this into -
CB: We’re just talking about Mary’s dog tags and the plane. What was the origins of those.
MW: The dog -?
CB: Those that everybody wore.
MW: Oh yes one is fireproof and the other’s waterproof. Yes.
CB: Right.
MW: And I don’t know which is which mind you but if you were in a bombing raid over here or anywhere if you’d been, if there was very little left that would still be there to recognise, say that that was you.
CB: Ahum.
MW: You had been there and equally if you’d been drowned this one of them would be.
CB: Right.
MW: We were issued with these on the first day and you wore them around your neck.
CB: Right. And it’s got your service number on it.
MW: Yes, your, its um and your religion.
CB: Yes.
MW: I think. Yes.
CB: Yeah.
MW: I say that. They need a bit of a clean-up.
CB: Okay.
CB: And this is little bits of silverware when they were making the Mosquito. They had to use a certain amount of silver in it and there were little bits left over and the boys would make little things like, and this is -
CB: A brooch.
MW: It’s a little brooch from, it’s pure silver and it is from a Mosquito.
CB: Fantastic yeah.
MW: A Mosquito? Yes, it would be, I think. Yes.
CB: Ok. Thank you.
MW: And you’re very welcome to those.
CB: So what we’re looking at now is the detail.
MW: Yes these are -
CB: Where the grave -
MW: Are all the correspondence from you?
CB: Yes. Thank you. And in your binder here we’ve got details of the grave of
MW: Yes.
CB: Douglas Arthur Harsum, your fiancé.
MW: Yes. That’s 58 Squadron. That’s his number and reserve -
CB: And he died on the 12th of June 1942.
MW: Yes. And I think that’s the rest of the crew and that’s his headstone -
CB: Right.
MW: In Bilbao. And these are on board the boat.
CB: How many years was it before you found where he was buried?
MW: This is only about eight or nine years ago.
CB: Right. So it -
MW: Going back.
CB: So it took sixty years -
MW: Yes.
CB: To find out -
MW: To find out.
CB: Where he was.
MW: Ahum.
MW: And I stood there and I mean it’s probably been on the internet. My cousin came for the day and I’d had this well not because of that but I said to him, ‘When you’re playing about on your computer would you like to have a look and see if you can find where this young man was buried?’ And he came back with it. Hello.
Other2: Hello. Hello. Hello.
Other: Hello.
MW: I said um and he came back the next morning. He said, ‘Well that was easy there was only one Harsum in the RAF.’ Because it’s a very unusual name.
CB: Yeah, indeed yeah.
MW: And he said he’s in so and so and so and so and I said to Roy, ‘Would you like to come?’ And he said, ‘No I wouldn’t,’ he said, ‘But why don’t you ask David if he would.’ So we, I rang David and I said, ‘How do you think about it?’ I said, ‘If I pay everything because I’d got this legacy you see from -
CB: Oh did you? Yes.
MW: And I said the three of us will go. And we went and I stood in front of that headstone and it was, I could almost hear Douglas say. ‘You’ve come at last.’
CB: Really?
MW: It was -
CB: It’s very touching.
MW: Strange. It really is. But it’s such a beautiful place.
CB: Is it?
MW: And do you know when we went in the lady that keeps it going she’s English married to um whether he’s Italian I think he’s probably Italian and she took us to the little, the book where you can, and I wrote in it.
CB: A Book of Remembrance
MW: And there’s a little church, a catholic church and, and a protestant church. Catholic one’s not used very often but she said the protestant one they always use it on Remembrance Day and it is open on some occasions but it’s so well kept.
CB: Is it?
MW: And this is a communal grave of course.
CB: Yes. Right -
MW: But that’s on board the, the Bilbao and -
CB: That is the
MW: That’s the -
CB: Commonwealth War Graves. Yes.
MW: And there are the war graves. Can you see [?]
Other: Yes, I can see. Yes. Yes.
MW: You can see and these are, [pause] oh that’s Lorna and me.
CB: Yeah.
MW: And that’s the lady who looks after it and I say there was a cockerel running around.
CB: Oh was there?
MW: I think that’s him there. And when we went back a couple of days later there was a rabbit
CB: Oh was there?
MW: Running around.
CB: Really?
Other: Wow
MW: Beautifully kept.
CB: Yes.
MW: And these are all the ones that, is this of any interest?
CB: Yes. Thank you.
MW: Would you like to take it?
CB: We’d like to borrow that as well.
MW: Would you?
CB: Yes. And let you have that back.
MW: Ok. Oh well you can have a look -
CB: Yeah.
MW: At it when you get back.
CB: Thank you.
MW: I mean you, as I say there’s only us three on it.
CB: Yes.
MW: And you’ll recognise me -
CB: But it’s an important link in what you’ve been talking about.
MW: Right. Well you take that.
CB: Thank you.
MW: And I’ll keep all your correspondence.
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 Mary Ward. Two
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Ward joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in 1940. She served briefly at RAF Driffield but mostly at RAF Linton on Ouse. She trained as a cook before being moved to duties as a map officer. She prepared maps for briefings and debriefings. She was engaged to a flying officer, Douglas Arthur Harsum, who was killed in action on 12 June 1942. She offered a listening ear to aircrew who would visit her for tea and a chat. She describes their fears and the dilemmas of those whom she calls ‘conscientious objectors’. For a time she worked in the office next to Leonard Cheshire’s. She describes the VE and VJ Day celebrations, as well as a flight she took in a Halifax over France. She transferred to RAF Coastal Command towards the end of the war, serving at RAF Brawdy, where she met her husband Roy Ward. She also describes visiting Harsum’s grave in Bilbao some sixty years after his death.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-17
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Mal Prissick
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
01:11:12 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWardEM160217
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. Coastal Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
France
Great Britain
Yemen (Republic)--Aden
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
Spain
Spain--Bilbao
Yemen (Republic)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1942-06-12
1945
aircrew
animal
briefing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Cook’s tour
coping mechanism
debriefing
fear
final resting place
grief
ground personnel
H2S
Halifax
heirloom
killed in action
lack of moral fibre
love and romance
military service conditions
operations room
RAF Driffield
RAF Linton on Ouse
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/81/7914/LGodfreyCR1281391v10001.2.pdf
2bb4feee369606f050f7e0e0563b6922
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
Godfrey, Charles Randall
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Description
An account of the resource
64 items. The collection concerns Flight Lieutenant Charles Randall Godfrey DFC (b. 1921, 146099, Royal Air Force) and consists of his logbook and operational notes, items of memorabilia, association memberships, personnel documentation, medals and photographs. He completed 37 operations with 37 Squadron in North Africa and the Mediterranean and 59 operations with 635 Squadron. He flew as a wireless operator in the crew of Squadron Leader Ian Willoughby Bazalgette VC.
The collection has has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Charles Godfrey and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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
Godfrey, CR
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-18
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
Charles Godfey'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
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
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LGodfreyCR1281391v10001
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Belgium
Egypt
France
Libya
Greece
Germany
Gibraltar
Great Britain
Netherlands
Scotland
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Belgium--Haine-Saint-Pierre
Egypt--Alexandria
Egypt--Cairo
Egypt--Ismailia (Province)
Egypt--Marsá Maṭrūḥ
Egypt--Tall al-Ḍabʻah
England--Berkshire
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Cumbria
England--Devon
England--Gloucestershire
England--Hampshire
England--Kent
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Norfolk
England--Northumberland
England--Oxfordshire
England--Rutland
England--Shropshire
England--Suffolk
England--Wiltshire
England--Worcestershire
England--Yorkshire
France--Angers
France--Caen
France--Creil
France--Mantes-la-Jolie
France--Nucourt
France--Rennes
Germany--Wiesbaden
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Chemnitz
Germany--Dorsten
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düren (Cologne)
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Karlsruhe
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Germany--Mainz (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Merseburg
Germany--Mönchengladbach
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Osterfeld
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Troisdorf
Germany--Wanne-Eickel
Germany--Wesel (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Wesseling
Greece--Ērakleion
Greece--Piraeus
Libya--Darnah
Libya--Tobruk
Netherlands--Hasselt
Netherlands--Rotterdam
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
England--Cornwall (County)
North Africa
Libya--Banghāzī
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Libya--Gazala
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1942-03-23
1942-06-10
1942-06-11
1942-06-12
1942-06-13
1942-06-14
1942-06-15
1942-06-16
1942-06-17
1942-06-18
1942-06-19
1942-06-20
1942-06-22
1942-06-23
1942-06-24
1942-06-25
1942-06-26
1942-06-28
1942-06-29
1942-07-02
1942-07-03
1942-07-05
1942-07-08
1942-07-09
1942-07-10
1942-07-12
1942-07-13
1942-07-15
1942-07-16
1942-07-17
1942-07-19
1942-07-20
1942-07-25
1942-07-26
1942-07-28
1942-07-29
1942-07-31
1942-08-01
1942-08-06
1942-08-07
1942-08-08
1942-08-09
1942-08-14
1942-08-15
1942-08-16
1942-08-17
1942-08-18
1942-08-19
1942-08-21
1942-08-22
1942-08-23
1942-08-24
1942-08-25
1942-08-26
1942-08-27
1942-08-28
1942-08-29
1942-08-30
1942-08-31
1942-09-01
1942-09-03
1942-09-05
1942-09-06
1942-09-08
1942-09-09
1944-05-06
1944-05-08
1944-05-12
1944-05-13
1944-05-27
1944-05-28
1944-05-29
1944-06-05
1944-06-07
1944-06-08
1944-06-09
1944-06-12
1944-06-13
1944-06-15
1944-06-16
1944-06-23
1944-06-24
1944-07-07
1944-07-09
1944-07-10
1944-07-14
1944-07-15
1944-07-16
1944-07-18
1944-07-19
1944-07-20
1944-07-23
1944-07-24
1944-07-25
1944-07-26
1944-07-28
1944-07-29
1944-07-30
1944-08-01
1944-08-04
1944-11-17
1944-11-18
1944-12-04
1944-12-06
1944-12-07
1944-12-12
1944-12-15
1944-12-18
1944-12-24
1944-12-28
1944-12-29
1945-01-01
1945-01-02
1945-01-05
1945-01-07
1945-01-08
1945-01-23
1945-02-01
1945-02-02
1945-02-03
1945-02-04
1945-02-07
1945-02-08
1945-02-09
1945-02-14
1945-02-15
1945-02-18
1945-02-20
1945-02-21
1945-03-07
1945-03-08
1945-03-22
1945-03-24
1945-03-25
1945-03-31
1945-04-11
1945-04-13
1945-04-14
1945-04-25
1945-04-30
1945-05-05
1945-05-07
1945-05-15
1945-05-22
1945-06-08
1945-06-18
1945-08-03
1945-08-05
1944-06-06
1944-08-03
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
Description
An account of the resource
Observer's and air gunner's flying log book for Pilot Officer Godfrey from 3 of February 1941 to 25 of September 1945 detailing training schedule, instructional duties and operations flown. Aircraft flown were Dominie, Proctor, Wellington, Hampden, Anson, Defiant, Martinet, Stirling, Lancaster, C-47 and Oxford. He was stationed at RAF Manby, RAF Bassingbourn, RAF Harwell, RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Downham Market, RAF Hemswell, RAF Wittering, RAF Abingdon, RAF Upper- Heyford, RAF Upwood, RAF Gillingham, RAF Cranwell, RAF Melton Mowbray, RAF Church Fenton, RAF Market Drayton, RAF Waddington, RAF Upavon, RAF Sywell, RAF Carlisle, RAF Linton-On-Ouse, RAF Newbury, RAF Cottesmore, RAF Brize Norton, RAF Exeter, RAF Andover, RAF Hampstead Norris, RAF Hythe, RAF Gibraltar, RAF St Eval, RAF El Dabba, RAF Shaluffa, RAF Abu Sueir, RAF Almaza, RAF Blyton, RAF Ingham, RAF Marston Moor, RAF Leeming, RAF Acklington, RAF Middleton St. George, RAF Newmarket, RAF Moreton-in-Marsh, RAF Leconfield, RAF Skipton-on-Swale, RAF Wyton, RAF Warboys, RAF Westcott, RAF Gravely and RAF Worcester. He completed 37 operations with 37 Squadron in North Africa and the Mediterranean and 59 operations with 635 Squadron to targets in Belgium, France and Germany. Targets included: Heraklion, Piraeus, Derna, Tamimi, Benghazi Harbour, Gazala, Mersa Matruh, Ras El Shaqiq, El Daba, Tobruk, Fuqa, Quatafiya, Düren, Munster, Mantes- Gassicourt rail yards, Haine St. Pierre rail yards, Hasselt rail yards, Rennes, Angers rail yards, Caen, Ravigny rail yards, Nucourt, Wesseling oil refineries, L’Hey, Kiel, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Notre Dame, Trossy St. Maximin, Karlsruhe, Merseburg, Essen, Ludwigshafen, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Mönchengladbach, Troisdorf, Dortmund, Nuremberg, Hannover, Munich, Gelsenkirchen, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Osterfeld, Kleve, Wanne- Eickel, Chemnitz, Wesel, Worms, Hemmingstedt, Dorsten, Bottrop, Osnabruck, Berchtesgaden, Ypenburg and Rotterdam. Notable events are that Charles Godfrey undertook a search and rescue operation in a Defiant and during the operation to Trossy St Maximin 4 August 1944 his aircraft, Lancaster ND811, was brought down by anti-aircraft fire. Whilst he survived and evaded, his pilot, Ian Willoughby Bazalgette was awarded the Posthumous Victoria Cross. The hand written notes added to the end of the log book give a description to the crash, and his attempts to evade capture. Pilot Officer Godfrey also took part in Operation Manna, Operation Exodus and Operation Dodge.
11 OTU
15 OTU
20 OTU
37 Squadron
635 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
Bombing of Trossy St Maximin (3 August 1944)
C-47
Cook’s tour
Defiant
Dominie
evading
Hampden
killed in action
Lancaster
Martinet
missing in action
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
Pathfinders
Proctor
RAF Abingdon
RAF Andover
RAF Bassingbourn
RAF Blyton
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Carlisle
RAF Church Fenton
RAF Cottesmore
RAF Cranwell
RAF Downham Market
RAF Graveley
RAF Hampstead Norris
RAF Harwell
RAF Hemswell
RAF Ingham
RAF Leconfield
RAF Leeming
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Manby
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Melton Mowbray
RAF Middleton St George
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Newmarket
RAF Skipton on Swale
RAF St Eval
RAF Sywell
RAF Upavon
RAF Upper Heyford
RAF Upwood
RAF Waddington
RAF Warboys
RAF Westcott
RAF Wittering
RAF Wyton
shot down
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
training
Victoria Cross
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/510/8413/ADunnGC170308.1.mp3
0bdeaf205e0caafc4a51fbc886e08f7f
Dublin Core
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Title
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Dunn, George
George Charles Dunn
G C Dunn
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Dunn, GC
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. Two oral history interviews with George Dunn DFC (1922 1333537, 149315 Royal Air Force), a photograph a document and two log books. He flew operations as a pilot with 10, 76, and 608 Squadrons then transferred to 1409 Meteorological Flight.
There is a sub collection of his photographs from Egypt.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-03-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 8th March 2017 and I’m, I’m in Saltdean with George Dunn to talk about his experiences in life, and particularly in the RAF. So what are your earliest recollections of life, George?
GD: I think probably er, when I went to infants school, which was about five and er, that was at West Meads Infant School in Whitstable. From there I went to the Oxford Street Boys Council School and er, I was quite good at football and er, I played and was captain of the juniors, and then the seniors, and er, I did actually get picked for the county but that’s another story, because it happened just after I left school er, where did we go from there?
CB: What did father do? What did your father do?
GD: My, my father was a plasterer, I had two sisters er, one is two years younger than me, and the other one is er, twelve years younger than me, she still lives in Whitstable and the other one lives in er, New South Wales, Australia. I left school when I was fourteen and er, joined Pickfords the removal company as a junior clerk. I stayed with them in, in the, in the following years, I played football for various local sides, and er, I can remember the day that the war broke out. I was sitting round a little radio set that my father had bought with Black Cat tobacco coupons er, we weren’t very well off so that was one way of getting a, getting a radio set. I don’t know how many cigarettes he must have smoked to get it [laughs]. I can well remember, we were all sitting round this radio set on the day that war was declared, anxiously waiting for Mr. Chamberlain to er, make his announcement er, which he did at eleven o’clock I think it was, and it was a funny feeling ‘cos one minute we were at peace, and in the blink of an eyelid, we were at war and of course we were all wondering what it was going to mean, er going on a bit er, when the blitz started on London I used to stand on the er, cliffs at Whitstable and could see all these hordes of German bombers coming up the Thames Estuary. Because Whitstable is on the North Kent coast and er, it was er, it was an awful sight because you knew what was going to happen when they reached London. I also saw a lot of the Battle of Britain er, which er took place obviously mostly over Kent and Sussex, and I think possibly that might have influenced me in why I joined the RAF. The other reasons that I joined is, for one thing I have a fear of drowning, and I didn’t fancy the army ‘cos one always had a picture in the background, the trenches and er, the terrible slaughter that went on in the First World War so I thought well I’ll go for the RAF. When I went up to Chatham, er this, I would be eighteen at that time, this was in January 1941, I went up to Chatham and er decided that I would apply for wireless operator air gunner. We had to do a written, a written exam and er, when I went to the interview, I think there were three RAF officers there, and they said, ‘why have you applied to er, er for a WOPAG?’ So I said, ‘well I don’t really think that I’m sufficiently educated to er, go for anything higher like a pilot’, and they said, ‘well we’ve had a look at your results and we think you are qualified, so would you consider er changing to under training pilot?’ So I said, ‘well yes, I’d be quite happy to.’ I was quite elated to think that er, then er, National Registration Card was stamped U/T pilot, under training pilot. I wasn’t called up until June of that year 1941 and I went down to um, oh prior to that, of course, after I volunteered at Chatham, I did go to Uxbridge to be sworn in, going back to er, being called up, I went down to Babbacombe and spent a week there getting kitted up er, listening to er, lectures on Air Force Law er. and that sort of thing and doing drill, and at the end of that er week, we were then posted to initial training wing, which was number eight at Newquay. That was a six week course which involved er, going back to partially mathematics, basic navigation, Air Force Law, Morse Code, and then at the end of that, I was posted up to a transit camp at er, West Kirby in the Wirral. I had only been there a short while when I was strickened down with appendicitis and peritonitis and er, I was on the dangerously ill list, my parents were sent for to come up because I was not expected to live er, anyway fortune favoured me and I did recover. At the end of that, I was given three weeks, I spent three weeks in an RAF hospital, had two operations and er, at the end of that was given three weeks sick leave er, after which I had to go to RAF Holton for a, a full medical at the end of that they said, ‘we’re going to put you on six months home service, you won’t be able to go abroad.’ Which rather disappointed me because er, there was very little elementary flying being done in England at that stage, nearly all the flying was being done under the Commonwealth Air Training Scheme at Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia and er, lots of places in Canada When I got back to er West Kirby after sick leave, within about three days, I found I was on draft for Southern Rhodesia. Well, I’d always I’d always fancied Canada so I went up to the warrant officer and I said er, ‘can’t send me to Southern Rhodesia,’ showed him my card which said six months home service. So I was taken off draft, spent a few more weeks there just kicking the heels, and then was sent to another transit camp at Heaton Park in Manchester. There again it was a question of weeding gardens, picking up litter, literally didn’t know what to do with you. A few days before Christmas, I suddenly was told I was on draft for Canada, so this time I kept quiet and I was on tenterhooks right up until the day we set sail, which was Christmas Eve and er, on the ship, and we set off. It was a an awful ship er from Norway, it was called “The Bergensfjord” and the weather was atrocious across the Irish Sea, and for thirty six hours I was absolutely stricken down, along with many others, with sea sickness. We were, we were just, people were just laying all over the ship, in the toilets, absolutely prostrate, anyway we finally recovered and we got to, to Halifax Nova Scotia I think it was, er New Year’s Day or thereabouts. From there we caught the train down to Moncton, which was a Royal Canadian Air Force Base, and when we got there that evening, the dining table was a sight to behold. There was butter, sugar, milk, ice cream, steak, you name it, it was there, and we thought if this is what we’re going to get for the next nine months or so, it’s gonna be great. We then went on to er, I was posted to Saskatchewan, which took us three days to get there on, on the train, the seats were just slatted on this train so our backsides had got quite a few dents in when we got there er, it was snowing practically the whole way and quite deep snow at, at er a little place called Caron. There was nothing there apart from the RAF or the RCAF base and er a couple of grain elevators and two or three cottages, it was about eighteen miles west of Moose Jaw, so I did my er, elementary training there on Tiger Moths, which I think was sixty hours, and from there I was posted to a place called Weyburn, which was south east of Moose Jaw, and that was on er twin engine Avro Ansons. At the end of that course, we got our wings and after that we were posted back to Moncton, which included er a week’s leave which I spent with some distant relatives in Toronto, also called Dunn. From there we went up to Halifax again and er, we were shipped back to this country er, arriving here at Greenock, from Greenock we went down to Bournemouth to await a posting er, to carry on the further flying. I went to er Little Rissington and from there er, to Chipping Norton, which was a satellite of er Rissi, and did a er short course on Air Speed Oxfords, which was about I think forty five hours, that was to get used to er the flying conditions in this country because of course, Canada was well lit up, but this country was under blackout conditions so it was quite, quite a change. On completion of that course, I was sent up to er, Lossiemouth er, on er OTU on Wellingtons 1C’s and it was there that we formed our crew, initially of five people. Now the way a crew was formed was quite casual, we were strolling around in a hanger, in my case I um, met up with a chap from Ayr who was a bomb aimer, and he said, ‘are you crewed up yet?’ and I said, ‘no.’ He said er, ‘do you fancy crewing up with me or me with you?’ I said, ‘yeah fair enough.’ he said, ‘I happen to know another Scotsman called er Todd, Jock Todd, he’s a wireless operator. If you like I’ll have a word with him,’ so that was made three of us, we then met up with er, er a pilot officer [phone ringing]. Shall I take that?
CB: So you’ve got your wireless operator.
GD: And er, he said -
CB: And, your bomb aimer.
GD: And he said um, ‘oh I know um, I’ve also met up with pilot office and navigator from Belfast, he’s not crewed up with anyone,’ so we got introduced and er, that made four of us and um, I forget now we, we, we met up with a little Canadian rear gunner er, a little chap called Dixie Dean er, so he made up the five which was all you needed at um OUT. From there we did our, we did our course, and er were then posted to um, Rufforth, which was a Heavy Conversion Unit, Halifaxes er, near York. Whilst we were there er, Reg the navigator knew of another gunner, a mid upper gunner who was er remustered physical training instructor, and er so that made us up with six and then the flight engineer was the only one that was actually allocated. This chap came up to me, his name was Ferris Newton, and he said, ‘er are you George Dunn?’ I said, ‘yes,’ he said, ‘oh I’ve been allocated as your flight engineer,’ so I said, ‘fair enough.’ Well of course it was a bit of a bonus er having him, because it turned out that not only did he own a car but his wife and his mother ran a pub at Horsforth near Leeds, so we used to er get seven of us, if you can believe it, in a Morris 8, that was three in the front and four in the back, and we would go over to er Horsforth from er Rufforth, and er well now perhaps I’m jumping the gun a bit. We didn’t go there then, we waited till we got on squadron, anyway when we got to Rufforth, I’d hardly my feet had hardly touched the ground and they said, ‘you’ve got to go off to 10 Squadron at Melbourne to do your two second dickie trips,’ because a pilot, had to go and do two trips with an experienced crew before he was allowed to take his own crew on operations, but at that time I hadn’t even set foot in a Halifax, most pilots did a few hours flying and then they were sent off, but in my case I was sent off virtually straight away, and of course, of all of all trips, the first one was er Essen, which was probably the worst target that you could er imagine having to go to, probably the most heavily defended town in the Ruhr, so I did two I did Essen that night and Kiel the following night and then went back to um Rufforth to start the conversion on the Halifaxes. And of course, the first thing the others wanted to know, you know, ‘how did you get on George? What was it like?’ so I said, ‘well put it this way, when you go on your first trip make sure that you got a clean pair of underpants with you.’ [laughs] Anyway we, we got through our Heavy Conversion Unit and er we were then posted to 76 Squadron at Linton-on-Ouse. Now at Linton, there were two squadrons operating at the same time, 76 and 78. I did five trips, I think it was, from there with the crew and then sadly they said, ‘your um, your whole squadron is going to a place called Holme on Spalding Moor.’ What had happened was that the Canadian group, number six group, was being formed and they were given all the peacetime stations, and this applied to the Australians as well but both the Australians and the Canadians said, ‘look our chaps are not going in to Nissen Huts, if they go do operations on raids over Germany, there going to have something decent to live in,’ so we were shipped out to a Nissen Camp, and the Canadians and the Australians got all the peacetime stations so that’s where we finished. We carried on our tour from Holme on Spalding Moor, and of course during that during that period, when we got the nights off, we would pile in this Morris 8, three in the front and four in the back, and off to um “The Old Ball” at er Horsforth, and of course the locals were very good to us, we stayed overnight er, one or two of us stayed in the pub, the others were put up by some of the customers, they were very hospitable there’s no doubt about it, and of course, we’d go off back early in the morning, the following morning feeling a bit worse for wear. So where do we go from there?
CB: So when you came to the end, did you do thirty ops per tour?
GD: I did thirty, the rest of the crew didn’t because I had two in front of them.
CB: Yes with somebody else, with another captain did you?
GD: When I went to Number 10 Squadron.
CB: Yes.
GD: Yes.
CB: Right, so what happened then?
GD: Well when we finished our tour of course, we were all split up which was a bit emotional, and from the first morning, following our last trip, the following morning I was woken up by the adjutant and said, ‘sorry, but we’ve got a rather sad task for you. You’ve got to take four coffins containing two Mosquito crews which collided nearby, you’ve got to take them to um, York Station to go to their respective er, er towns where they were being being buried,’ er which was a little bit of an anti-climax because you know, there was only one er place beside the driver, the rest of us had to sit in the back with the coffins. So there we were, we were split up, and er I went to um er OTU at Finningley, Wellingtons again, 1C’s, er I didn’t stay at Finningley long because they had a satellite station at Worksop, and er there I was instructing. I did two instructors courses, one on Wellingtons at Church Broughton and another one, a month at the Central Flying School at er Lulsgate Bottom, which is now Bristol Airport. I carried on instructing until I think it was just before Christmas ’45, and er I saw a notice on the er on the board about er, they wanted er Mosquito crews, well I’d already become friendly with a, with a navigator who was in the navigation section at Worksop, and er I said to him, ‘how do you fancy going back on ops, on Mossis?’ He said, ‘I’m a bit fed up with instructing,’ I said, ‘yeah well so am I,’ so we volunteered to go back and er, we were posted to er, Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, and from there to er, a satellite station at Barford St. John, which was just outside of Banbury. We did short, I did about four or five hours dual on a Mosquito before I went solo and from there we were posted to 608 Squadron, which was a main force Mosquito Squadron at Downham Market in Norfolk. I did a number of trips there, mostly to Berlin, and then a friend of mine who was on a Mosquito met flight at Whitton said, ‘there’s a vacancy come up for a crew with us on a met flight, do you fancy it?’ So we said, ‘yes,’ we weren’t, we weren’t all that happy at 608 Squadron, I don’t know why but the atmosphere wasn’t the same as when it was on Halifaxes, so we moved to Whitton on this met flight, and er I did er a few ops on that and then war, the war finished and then I stayed on er, I stayed on the met flight, we moved to er Upwood er near Peterborough, and then it was disbanded. It was the 1409, the met flight, and it was disbanded, and we went on to 109 Squadron which was being converted to a met flight, er from there, we had very three quick moves, we went to Woodhall Spa, Wickenby, and Hemswell, all within a month, and then whilst we were at Hemswell, there was a request, they wanted to start a met flight er Mosquitos, at er Malta. So they got ten crews together er and er I’d still got my navigator, and we flew out in a Stirling to Malta and when we got there, the er powers that be said, ‘what are you lot doing here? We don’t know anything about you,’ so we, we appointed, well most of the pilots were flight lieutenants, there’s no other rank above that, so we appointed a spokesman and he went and saw the CO, the Group Captain Station Commander, he said, ‘well I don’t know what’s going on,’ he said, ‘we’ve got no idea of what you are doing there, we, we weren’t told,’ so they gave us er, they gave us an old hut on the far side of Luqa Airfield, they gave us an old lorry to transport us so we just spent a lovely six weeks in Malta going to Valletta and Silema, they didn’t want to know us. Anyway they, whilst we were there, I did manage to get one or two ferry trips in er from Italy in Mosquitos, and er eventually they decided that they weren’t going to form a met flight after all, so we were split up, I went to um a, a, a transit camp at El Marso, which was er well, and my navigator which was just outside Cairo and er literally just kicked our heels. We went into Cario most days, sunbathing at er one of the hotels swimming pools, and then eventually I er got a posting to Ismailia and my navigator got a posting to Heliopolis, which is a suburb of Cairo, and when, and when I got to Ismailia, I reported to the er flight commander, who was er Flight Lieutenant Tommy Grace, I said, well told him the story that I’d been through Malta and we’d er we weren’t required after all and er I said, ‘I don’t know what I’ve come here for?’ I said er, ‘what aircraft do you fly?’ He said, ‘we fly Spitfires,’ so I said, ‘well I haven’t flown a single engine aircraft since I flew a Tiger Moth er when I first er started flying.’ ‘Oh,’ he said ‘I shouldn’t worry about it,’ he said, ‘you’ll soon get used to it,’ gave me the pilots notes on the Spitfire. In those days, there was no dual er Spitfires so er I just got in and went off, and what we were doing, basically we were renovating um aircraft, mostly Spitfires for er the Greek Air Force. We testing them and then there were two Greek pilots there and once we passed them, they had to pass them out and then when we got er about ten Spitfires ready, we used to take them over to Athens with a Lancaster escort to do the navigating and er refuel at er Cyprus, and come back to Egypt in a Lanc as passengers, and of course whilst I was there I managed to get a a trip in a Hurricane, a Mustang and various other training aircraft. Harvard, a thing called a Fairchild Argus, er an Auster, a Proctor. it was a free for all [laughs].
CB: How long were you doing that for?
GD: And then er this would be and then it got to um, it would be, I suppose about May and I had a phone call to say I was wanted over at a tented camp, everything was tents, the mess, the living quarters, everything was tents. There wasn’t a building there apart from the hangars and they said er, ‘we’ve got some Halifaxes here that er we want testing, and we haven’t got a, there’s not a Halifax pilot in the area anywhere that we can know of.' Well just a few weeks prior to that, an engineering officer had also been posted from Kasfareet where I was then, to this place at er Kilo 40, which was known as Gebel Hamzi and um, he’s gone to sleep look [laughs].
CB: He’s doing all right.
GD: [Laughs] and er there were some Yugoslav pilots there who er had never flown Halifaxes, so I had to take them up, test these Halifaxes and er pass these er Yugoslav pilots out to fly them.
CB: Where had they come from then?
GD: Don’t know where they come from, er and then of course whilst I, whilst I was there, I got the opportunity of flying a couple back to this country and er also in that time, I flew, I think it was a couple of Mosquitoes back here, er and my last flight in June ’47 was to bring a Halifax back here which I left at er Thetford.
CB: But what was your unit? If you were flying these things and ferrying them, what was the unit? Was it an MU or was it a squadron?
GD: No, no, no, it wasn’t a squadron. I’ll tell you what it was [opens a draw looking for something].
CB: So just get them. So your unit was at Ismailia still but it was actually an MU as well as flying base?
GD: Well that’s, that’s what it was called, 132 MU.
CB: MU yes.
GD: There was no squadron.
CB: No.
GD: No squadron or anything like that.
CB: What I meant was, MU didn’t normally -
GD: Just 132 and 132 MU
CB: Yes. [Pause] So when you, you delivered the aircraft, Halifax or Mosquito, how did they get you back there?
GD: I came back in used to come back in the York
CB: Ah.
GD: Yeah, where are we [flipping through pages of book] yeah came back in the York from Lyneham.
CB: Lyneham. So you’d fly all these planes into Lyneham would you?
GD: No, no er, one, once I went to Gosforth with one and then we’d nip home for a few days leave and er report back to Lyneham for for, ‘cos that was transport command.
CB: Right. So why were these planes being brought back, what had happened to their crews?
GD: I don’t know, you know, I don’t even know why they were there.
CB: Because the Yugoslav pilots were flying the Halifaxes.
GD: I don’t know where they went to, I was only there, when did I go there, October ’46 I went to Kilo 40 [looking through book], yes I was only there for, only there for a short period.
CB: Yes, but what was the reason for you going out to Ismailia in the first place?
GD: Well that was when, that was when we, we didn’t form the met flight er see.
CB: Right.
GD: When they split us all up at Malta, I don’t know where the others went to but my navigator and myself found ourselves at El Marsa, at this transit camp near Cairo.
CB: So when you returned the Halifaxes to Britain, was it just the two of you on the plane?
GD: Oh no, no.
CB: You had a full crew?
GD: No, no, no we didn’t have gunners, just er er wireless op, navigator, flight engineer, and pilot.
CB: Right.
GD: No, no need for gunners.
CB: No.
GD: And then of course we used to have to clear customs er when we got back here in those days.
CB: What were you bringing back - figs?
GD: [Laughs] Oh they were very hot the customs yeah. I brought a Mosquito back once and they were, they were quite thorough, went all through the fuselage and everything.
CB: What did people bring back then carpets or? I mean a serious point because in the Middle East they made carpets.
GD: Well I suppose people, a few people tried to get back cigarettes and booze, usual thing, but er it wasn’t worth it. No they were too thorough.
CB: So that’s October ’46, you didn’t leave until ’47 so what did you do the rest of the time?
GD: Well I was flying, um doing mostly flying Spitfires on testing.
CB: Because at the MU they’d been repairing them.
GD: Yes, yes.
CB: Any hiccups with that, when you were test flying?
GD: No, no they were, they were in pretty good condition, yeah, but I mean, see there’s one there, Halifax in January er I brought it back to Manston for customs clearance and then took it up to Scotland, to a place called Edsel, but for the life of me, I don’t know how I got back from there. Must have been by rail I think, then the next thing was coming back I, I delivered it to Edsel on the 17th January and flew back in a York a week later.
CB: How long did it take in a York to fly to Ismailia, you made a load of stops?
GD: Er fourteen hours, we went to er Castel Benito and then on to El Marsa, Palestine.
CB: Castel Benito.
GD: No Egypt, North Africa.
CB: Ah yes, in Libya, yes. So how did you find those ferry trips, were they exciting, boring or-
GD: Oh boring, nothing to do, I mean they weren’t comfortable.
CB: What sort of height would you fly?
GD: Oh no idea really.
CB: To keep cool I was thinking.
GD: Wouldn’t be, wouldn’t be that high I shouldn’t think.
CB: No.
GD: Probably around fifteen thousand, probably yes.
CB: So what was the most memorable point about your service in the RAF would you say?
GD: Are you talking about an operation? oh I think um, probably the raid on Peenemunde which er -
CB: How did that go?
GD: Well from our point of view, it went very well but er not so, because when we er, when we went to the briefing er that afternoon, the first thing we noted was that there was extra RAF Police on the door, which we thought was rather unusual and er of course when we got inside and everbody was there and they drew the curtains back, we saw the er the red ribbon going right the way up the North Sea across Denmark to keep us clear of the flak on the North German coast. But er when we were in the briefing, you know, they, they pulled the curtains back and when we saw this track and then it finished up at this vague point on the Baltic coast. I mean we were used to bombing from about eighteen, nineteen thousand feet on German cities you know, big areas, and this target and we weren’t told the precise nature of what was going on there, all we were told was that it was a research station connected with radar, but that it was a very important raid as far as we were concerned, as far as this country was concerned. Because we thought, well I mean, it was just five hundred and ninety six aircraft, what are five hundred and ninety six aircraft doing on a target not much bigger than about two football stadiums, where we were used to er, I mean huge areas. What could possibly be there that would warrant a maximum effort from Bomber Command and of course initially, it was gonna, the raid was gonna take place in three waves, two bomber, two bomber groups in each wave. Now initially, 4 Group which was Halifaxes, together with another Group, I can’t remember which one it was, was scheduled to go in last. Our aiming point was the living quarters where all the scientists and the technicians were, but the schedule was changed, we were moved from the last wave to the first, because they were frightened that our aiming point was gonna to be obscured by smoke from the smoke detonators, so they moved us to the first wave. Which as it turned out was very fortunate from our point of view, I mean we, we ran in on our final run in, er the flak was only light and we, we bombed and turned out and came away, but of course when the raid was halfway over, the night fighters arrived because what had happened in, in with the main force, there were about a small force of Mosquitoes I think it was, about eight that went on to Berlin because they wanted them to think that it was a raid on Berlin. So the Mosquitoes veered off to Berlin, we veered left to Peenemunde and of course, over the previous months Peenemunde had got a bit complacent, because at one time, when Berlin was bombed, although it was about um, I think it was about sixty miles away, the air raid sirens and that all went off at Peenemunde and everything was shut down so it interrupted their all their work. But then of course, Peenemunde was never bombed, it was always Berlin, so of course they got complacent, so when we got there that night, they had no idea that was there was going to be a raid, and over Berlin the Mosquitoes had been dropping window, you know the little slips of aluminium which had been previously used on Hamburg, and the night fighters of course were at their usual height, looking for the heavy bombers at eighteen, twenty, twenty one thousand, and they weren’t there and it was er the, the ground controllers were in turmoil they, the -.
CB: The German ones?
GD: Yeah the German ones. The night fighters were saying well where are they, and the ground controllers couldn’t tell them, and it wasn’t until one pilot happened to spot the fires at Peenemunde about halfway through the raid, that they realised that it was Peenemunde that was being bombed. So of course all the night fighters and I mean it was a perfect night, it was no cloud, er moonlight, we, we went in at seven thousand feet instead of eighteen, nineteen thousand, and er of course once the night fighters got there, they had a field day. We finished up losing forty aircraft, nearly three hundred men
CB: Amazing
GD: So that change from us going from the third to the first wave, I might not have been talking to you now.
CB: Yes yes, saved you. So how long was that flight?
GD: Well it was about seven hours forty I think.
CB: Right.
GD: Seven hours forty I think.
CB: Now going over the Baltic and then, first of all over Denmark and then over the Baltic, how close did you get to Sweden?
GD: Oh not that close the, the main place that we had to er miss if possible was Flensburg, that was a bit of a hot spot for flak, seven hours forty, and then we had er, we had a bad hydraulic leak, so when we came back, we were diverted to a place called Wymeswold in er Lincolnshire, we had to leave the aircraft there it was.
CB: Oh, did you.
GD: Yes, couldn’t fly it back.
CB: So you got the undercarriage down by winding it down did you?
GD: No, no we got the undercarriage down all right, we had no flaps.
CB: Oh I see.
GD: We didn’t have any flaps.
CB: Mmm, okay, so that was the most memorable event of your ops?
GD: The only other thing the, the nearest I suppose I got to getting the chop was um when I was instructing at er Worksop. I was in charge of night flying one night and I had a pupil by the name of Flying Officer Jennings, he was quite experienced, he’d come from flying training command, and he was down to do circuits and bumps, and the, it was a bit like this er, the weather was, it was a bit hazy, not bad not as bad as this, and I said to him, ‘well I’ll come with you on the first circuit, just to make sure that the weather conditions are okay for you to carry on.’ er and I’d arranged for, after we landed, for him to taxi round to the take off point where er transport, I got out, transport picked me up and he went off on his next circuit. When he came round and for some reason, he overshot. Now why he overshot I don’t know whether it was, whether he made an error on his approach or whatever I, I don’t know, anyway that was it, never saw him again. It turned out he crashed at er somewhere near Nottingham and at the, I had to go down to the, I had to go down to the Court of Enquiry and eventually it was found that a prop line had come off so -
CB: Was that the implication it destroyed the aircraft because of vibration or the blade hit the pilot?
GD: I don’t know, I didn’t get the full result, all I know a prop line had come off it would I mean er I don’t know whether he had a chance to feather it or so that was that was a bit of a near do [laughs].
CB: Yeah, How did you like being an instructor?
GD: Oh it was all right but it, it got a bit, it got a bit boring after a while, you know, when you were teaching somebody circuits and landings all that, and then you’d have to go on a cross country with them when they were doing there um, er navigation, they were doing their cross countries you had to er sort of sit there for four or five hours.
CB: Now what about the social life surrounding all of this, how did that work?
GD: Well squadron life was actually quite good because there was no er no bull at all, you know, we didn’t have, we didn’t have parades or anything like that. I mean a typical day would be, we’d go down to flights about nine, nine thirty, report to flight commander, have a look up when they decided whether there was ops on that night, you know, and look at the battle order and see whether you were on. And then er you might go and do an air test if er, there’d been something wrong with your aircraft might go and do an air test, or you might go down to the intelligence office, spend an hour down there, you might go on sometimes, we’d do what you call dry dinghy drill. We’d go out to the dispersal and practice, getting out if we had to ditch um, we might go and do a bit of aircraft recognition, go down the parachute section have a look at them packing parachutes. By lunchtime you were free to do what you want, I mean I played football, I played cricket, I played squash, tennis er it was quite um a sort of casual life apart from the er you know the operations and that the rest of it, was, was quite nice.
CB: Now the successful flight of an aircraft is partly based on ground crew, so how did they, what were they like.
GD: We had a smashing ground crew, you couldn’t, you couldn’t have done the job without them. I mean er we used to take them down to the pub for a beer every now and again, but er you know, you relied on them doing their job properly.
CB: And how many planes did they look after, one, two?
GD: Ooh. I would think, I mean the people that looked after our plane were, always looked after that one and they probably have another, maybe another one, another two.
CB: A topic that comes up occasionally is LMF. What experience did you have of that?
GD: Lack of moral fibre.
CB: Yes.
GD: Yeah we did have one chap that er got er turfed off, he was always turning back, flying officer, and always turning back for some reason or the other until they um they cottoned on to him er and he was shipped off to Sheffield, stripped of his rank.
CB: What did they do to make an example of him, at the station. Did they do anything?
GD: No, one minute they were, there the next minute they were gone, it was all very quick. That was the only, that was the only case that I remember that stood out er.
CB: But that was your squadron?
GD: Yeah.
CB: Was it, how many squadrons on the airfield?
GD: Only ours
CB: Only yours.
GD: Except for Linton.
CB: Yes.
GD: Before we split up with 78, 78 went to Breighton, we went to Holme on Spalding Moor.
CB: And how many aircraft would there be in the squadron?
GD: Er probably about thirty.
CB: So four flights?
GD: Three.
CB: Three flights.
GD: A, B, and C.
CB: Ok.
GD: Roughly ten aircraft a flight.
CB: Some of the raids were quite dicey, others were quiet. How many times did you get chased by fighters?
GD: We never got, we were lucky, we never got chased by a fighter. We got involved with flak quite a bit ‘cos the Ruhr, most of my er trips were to the Ruhr, and er that was pretty heavy for flak there.
CB: So on the run in, can you just talk us through how that worked, what was the timespan you had to settle down before on your way in, so how would that work?
GD: You tried, you tried to get on to your course, your final course for the run in, and then for say five minutes roughly, you were in the hands of the bomb aimer, completely in his hands, you know. He would say, ‘right, left, left, steady, steady, a bit more left,’ until he got to the stage when he would say, ‘bombs are gone,’ and then of course, you had to wait, you had to stay on course for your photo flash.
CB: So how was the, the time you had to stay on course depended on your height for the photo flash to drop, so who worked that out, was that prescribed before you set off?
GD: Yes I mean height, height didn’t really come into it because you knew you were going in at say er eighteen, nineteen thousand, I mean you knew that before you started.
CB: Yes that’s what I meant.
GD: That would be your bombing height so the er flash was er, would follow on from there, but you definitely, that was the worst part, making sure that you stayed until flash operated.
CB: So the bombs went, you were some way from the target when the bombs went?
GD: We were still, yes.
CB: Because of their parabola of the fall.
GD: Forward fall, yes.
CB: And photo flash went how soon after the bombs were released.
GD: Approximately half a minute.
CB: Right, so on balance, you’d have to be steady in order to take your picture, for how long roughly?
GD: About half a minute.
CB: Right, and who operated the camera the bomb aimer or -
GD: That was automatic.
CB: Oh automatic, and what did they do with that picture?
GD: Went to intelligence you might, I don’t think I’ve actually got any, any um somewhere, that’s the sort of picture, look that could be taken, that was probably, that was probably er er a flare.
CB: Yeah, blowing in the wind.
GD: Yeah, but you would, you would hopefully try and get ground detail if possible in the flash.
CB: So what about the smoke, to what extent was smoke over the target a problem for you?
GD: Well yeah, I mean basically, I mean, you bombed on the reds and greens put down by pathfinders.
CB: By pathfinders yeah.
GD: And it was, if it was um er, cloud of course, you did, they did air markings which was called whanganui, I think the air markers but of course, that wasn’t all that accurate.
CB: To what extent could you see other aircraft in the vicinity?
GD: You could see if they were close enough and of course, you did see aircraft being shot down as well.
CB: How did you feel about that?
GD: Hard luck.
CB: Yes.
GD: Not us, I mean my friend Dave at Balcombe we were talking about, they were involved in a mid-air collision.
CB: Were they?
GD: With another Lancaster, they lost six foot of their wing.
CB: And still kept flying?
GD: Managed to get back and land safely.
CB: What about the one that hit them?
GD: The what?
CB: What about the one that hit them?
GD: All went down, all killed.
CB: Oh were they.
GD: Yes.
CB: So effectively, the propeller sliced off the end of the wing but that completely jiggered the other aircraft?
GD: Yeah, well they’d got no aileron, you see.
CB: Right.
GD: The aileron went.
CB: Right.
GD: So he had a job, he had a job to er, I think they lost an engine as well I think on that, so they had yeah er, quite a job bringing it back.
CB: So as a pilot, how would you handle a three engine with bad damage?
GD: Well you’ve got, you’ve got trimming tabs which er would allow you to make sure that the aircraft would go the way you wanted it to, er the trimming tabs of course were actually on the ailerons, but of course on one side, they’d gone.
CB: Yes.
GD: Of course you could, you could feather the engine, you see, where the prop, where the prop blades turn, so you got the least wind resistance.
CB: Yes, so er your speed would normally be what?
GD: Halifax, about a hundred and sixty.
CB: Oh, was it knots or miles per hour?
GD: Knots.
CB: Right, so that’s a hundred and sixty, hundred and seventy five miles an hour. Now were the other bombers in the stream at different heights, so was there a level that the Halifaxes flew at, and a different one that the Lancasters flew at?
GD: Yes.
CB: Why was that?
GD: Well you obviously tried to er spread the raid out as much as you could, if you had everybody, if you had sort of six hundred aircraft, all flying at the same height, whereas Stirlings would be down here, Halifaxes would be there, Lancasters would be there, but er there was always a risk of course and it did happen, that er you would get hit by somebody else’s bomb.
CB: Yeah. Did you see any of that happening?
GD: No, well you saw an explosion but you wouldn’t know what caused it.
CB: No, and thinking of explosions, to what extent did you see aircraft shot down from underneath by Germans, German night fighters?
GD: They hadn’t got that when we on [unclear].
CB: Oh they hadn’t.
GD: No schlagermusic.
CB: Schlagermusic
GD: Yeah, no, that came a bit later.
CB: Okay, so I think we’ve covered a huge range of things but after you left the RAF, what did you do?
GD: I went back to Pickfords, I did my um er, B Licence in London and er went to London School of Air Navigation, but there were so many of us on the market and of course, I mean, in my digs alone, there were nineteen pilots and, and they had about five courses running at the same time, I mean the, the civil airlines hadn’t really got going, the people that scored were the RAF pilots that were seconded to British European Airways before they were demobbed, before the war finished perhaps, but er ‘cos they got in on the ground floor. I mean they’d, in fact I went into the gents, I think it was in was it in Malta, and I stood next to my flight commander at er Holme on Spalding Moor, he was with er British European Airways.
CB: Oh, was he, right.
GD: So, so I, I, I er, I tried one or two places to get a job, but er there was nothing doing, so I went back to Pickfords, because they had to keep your job open you see, all, all companies had to keep your job available for you and in any case, they were, they were half the people anyway, the company and I stayed with them until I retired.
CB: At sixty five.
GD: Sixty.
CB: Sixty. What was you doing at Pickfords then?
GD: I was a branch manager.
CB: Right.
GD: Mmm.
CB: Round here?
GD: And we had a travel business as well.
CB: So where were you operating from, from Pickfords?
GD: Well when I came out the RAF, I went back to Hearne Bay for a while um, for a couple of years, and then I was posted up to Lancashire, er stayed there for about six and a half years, and then down to Aldershot, where I was, I was there for eleven years, and then finally down to here, where I retired. I retired early because there was those were when the pressure started being put on people to produce more [laughs], I’d had enough of that, I did, I didn’t stop work, I, I found several, I used to work for other removal companies, doing estimating and er I went up to London, stood in for the training officer that suddenly went back to Australia. I was there for six months doing the, doing their training so er I didn’t actually pack up work.
CB: As far as associations concerned, was there a squadron association running for many years that you were associated with?
GD: No, not, not to start with, er 76 Squadron Association of course is still going today, um did go to one or two reunions and I also went to two Bomber Command reunions.
CB: Yes.
GD: Where the first one I think was run by the Evening Standard or it was at the Albert Hall.
CB: Oh the Albert Hall.
GD: And everyone was shouting, ‘we want butch, we want butch,’ [laughs].
CB: He’d gone to South Africa. So how do you feel about the, getting the position of getting the clasp now for Bomber Command but not having -
GD: Well I mean quite honestly, when you look at it and you see what it is, and it took all that time and all that argument and, and discussion, and when you finish up with not, I wasn’t bothered about it.
CB: Right, how did you feel about bombing?
GD: Oh I mean don’t forget that. What was I, was, I had my twenty first birthday two weeks after I’d finished my tour on Halifaxes and I mean in those days, an eighteen to twenty year old was a lot different to an eighteen twenty year old today. We were a lot more naïve and don’t forget, I’d seen a lot living at Whitstable, I’d seen all these hordes of German bombers going up to London, and of course places like Coventry and Plymouth and er Southampton, all those places got very badly bombed. And er er no I mean war is war, and women and children are going to get killed, it’s unavoidable. I mean if you take er factories, er take the Ruhr for example, if you’ve got factories, you are going to have people living near them, workers and er not all bombs are going to hit the factory. I, I’ve never felt any guilt about it and of course Bomber Command did get a bad press after the war, what with Dresden.
CB: So when the RAF memorial was unveiled, how did you feel about that?
GD: I thought that was something, it was well worthwhile, well worth waiting for.
CB: ‘Cos you were there?
GD: Yeah it was, it’s a marvellous monument, it’s a marvellous memorial. I mean the sculpture is beautiful. No I think it was, it should have happened a lot earlier, I mean not so much for the people that survived but for the fifty five and half thousand that didn’t.
CB: Yes.
GD: Was a lot you know I mean out of a hundred, what’s it, a hundred and twenty five?
CB: A hundred and twenty five thousand.
GD: Over five fifty five and half killed.
CB: Fifty five thousand five hundred.
GD: It’s a big percentage.
CB: Yes 44.4.
GD: Well take Peenemunde for example.
CB: Yes.
GD: You know fourteen aircraft, nearly three hundred men in one night, and that was only one raid in the war.
CB: Good. Thank you very much indeed, really interesting, fascinating actually.
CB: Just as a recap George, in your early days, when you were at OTU and then HCU and then on the squadron, er how did you go through training for evading fighters? Did you have fighter affiliation? How did that work?
GD: Well the only fighter affiliation we had was when we were at, not on the squadron. I didn’t do any on the squadron but on HCU, we’d just go off and then er we knew that somewhere, usually it was a spitfire who would er appear from nowhere, your gunners, your gunners would be on the alert and er give you the instruction you know, ‘corkscrew right, corkscrew left, dive,’ and er I think we only did about two when I was on HCU two fighter affiliations.
CB: But there would always be a corkscrew in the affiliation would there?
GD: Yes.
CB: And in earnest, how often did you have to use er, corkscrew?
GD: Only once, er I’m trying to think which raid it was, um we got, we got coned.
CB: Oh yes by searchlights.
GD: By one of the um, one of the radar patrolled searchlights, and of course, you were like a, like a, once you’re coned with the blue one, all the others come on and you’re like a fairy sitting on top of a Christmas tree and er straight away, you corkscrew out. We didn’t have to corkscrew because of a fighter but only because of the er getting coned.
CB: And that worked did it?
GD: That worked yeah, but um, er it’s not pleasant.
CB: No.
GD: You just sit sitting up there er, you know, as I say with a like a fairy on a Christmas tree [laughs], you know, you’re the focal point and you’ve gotta get out of it as soon as you can, but fortunately that was the only time we had to do it in combat. We, we were lucky on our tour, we had, I would say, I mean apart from the heavy flak which you got er most of the time um, we, we didn’t get attacked by a fighter and um we had probably a reasonably good tour.
CB: Much damage to the aircraft from flak?
GD: Yeah a few flak holes, yeah, nothing serious.
CB: Ground crew reaction to damaging their aeroplane?
GD: Yeah [laughs], what you bring it like that for [laughs], you ought to know better [laughs].
CB: Did it cost you a beer or two?
GD: Yes [laughs], yes.
CB: So with the ground crew, how did the liaison go?
GD: Oh very well, in fact I kept in touch with one of our ground crew after the war, er a fellow called Johnnie, Johnnie somebody, lived in Stoke Newington.
CB: Was he the chiefy?
GD: No, not the chiefy.
CB: And with the ground crew, who was the main, the person normally linking with them in the aircrew. Was it the pilot or would it be the engineer?
GD: Well both really er because you see, you had the engine fitter, the airframe fitter, the instrument fitter, the instrument man, the armourer, so er they were all they were all involved.
CB: Because you were on the fighting edge of technology in those days, so did you have Gee?
GD: Yeah.
CB: And how did you feel about the use of Gee?
GD: Very good, only trouble was you only got it to about five degrees east.
CB: And you didn’t have GH in those days?
GD: No of course, pathfinders of course came in with H2S and Oboe. I mean the marking the PFM marking was good, yes.
CB: And you’d know the colour of the markers before you set off, would you?
GD: Yes, I mean basically you bombed on the reds.
CB: Right.
GD: Or if not the reds, the green back ups.
CB: Would there always be a master bomber hovering?
GD: No the master bomber, there was a master bomber on Peenemunde, Group Captain Searby, and he directed the er he would say, you know, ‘ignore so and so, or bomb so and so, stop, stop the creepback,’ or whatever.
CB: Was the creep a problem?
GD: Pardon?
CB: Was, was creep much of a problem on targets?
GD: Well it wasn’t providing you stuck to bombing the indicators that you were supposed to, but of course there were some crews you know, that er got a bit hesitant, and er just get rid of them quick and of course if you’ve got fires showing up, you might have your red and green markers, but then you might have fires back coming back, but they weren’t marked so er yeah, there were, there was a bit of creepback sometimes.
CB: Did they have to remark sometimes?
GD: Well I don’t know because you see, you were once you’d done your bombing run.
CB: Yes.
GD: You don’t know what was going on other than that, but we didn’t have any, we didn’t have any master bomber, we didn’t have any master bombers apart from Peenemunde. On er the only other time I was involved with a master bomber was er when we went to er, I think it was Kiel er with a Mosquito, we had a, we had a [looking through book] a special camera.
CB: On the Mosquito?
GD: On that particular night we had a special camera, and we had to er report the um weather conditions to the er master bomber
CB: Right.
GD: On that I don’t know when that was, ‘46 [looking through book], and yeah must have been the last, must have been probably the last one, yeah, we were hit that one, there we were hit in, on both nose cones on er Mosquitos.
CB: By flak?
GD: On a Berlin, yeah, flak hits on both spillers.
CB: Oh, on the spillers.
GD: Yes.
CB: So you were lucky not to lose the engines?
GD: Well yeah because if they’d hit the, if they’d have hit the glycol tanks, that would have been it, there wouldn’t have been any time hardly to -
CB: Was there a particularly vulnerable point on the Mosquito?
GD: No not really, only the engines, ‘cos liquid cooled, so if you got hit with a, if your glycol got punctured, then that was it.
CB: So, you did thirty ops on your first tour.
GD: Yes.
CB: How many did you do on Mosquitos?
GD: Fourteen.
CB: And what stopped that?
GD: The war ended.
CB: Right, now you’ve got a DFC, when was that awarded?
GD: After the completion of the tour on the Halifaxes.
CB: On the Halifaxes, your first tour, do you have the citation for that?
GD: Mm somewhere [laughs].
CB: Only I’m just wondering how they worded it you see?
GD: Oh haven’t got it that I know of, it could be somewhere amongst the debris up in the loft [laughs].
CB: So when you were commissioned was that expected or unexpected?
GD: Unexpected I think, mind you, I think most pilots got commissioned round about halfway through their tour, I mean it was quite a, I was just told that I’d been recommended and went up before the group captain and that was it, it came through.
CB: What did he say?
GD: I can’t remember.
CB: You’re a jolly good.
GD: Funnily enough the next time I met him, he was a Group Captain Hodson, and er when I was at Ismailia, for my sins, I was Tennis Officer [laughs], and er the Group Captain there was a chap called Fletcher, and he called me in one day and he said, ‘I’ve got the Air Vice Marshall coming over from 205 Group in Cairo to play tennis with me, so I want you to make sure everything is tickety boo.’ You know, we had a, we had a pro, a pro, a civilian tennis chap there and he said, I want of course the AOC turned up, I don’t know what he came in, whether he came in an Oxford or not, turned up and Group Captain Fletcher introduced me and it was the same Group Captain that interviewed me for my commission.
CB: Small world. So he said?
GD: He did look at me and he said, ‘I’ve got an idea we might have met before.’ I said, ‘yes sir,’ I said, ‘you interviewed me for my commission,’ ‘that’s it,’ he said, ’76 Squadron.’ Air Vice Marshall Hodson.
CB: Thinking of senior officers and operations, how often did Group Captains and even Wing Commanders go on ops?
GD: It’s funny you should say that, we lost two fairly quickly.
CB: Two which?
GD: Two Group Captains, two Station Commanders.
CB: Did you?
GD: The first one was um er I can’t think of this name, I think his name was er, he got bombed in fact I think there might have been three There was one when the squadron was at Driffield and Driffield was bombed and the station commander was killed.
CB: Early in the war?
GD: Would be, yeah.
CB: Battle of Britain?
GD: And er Group Captain Whittley went as second pilot to a chap called um Jock, it’s in the, it’s in the [unclear] book, oops.
CB: The cups gone over, have you got a cloth.
GD: Group Captain Whittley.
CB: This is the squadron history, is it?
GD: Yeah, see the dawn breaking.
CB: Right.
GD: Er [looking through book] Group Captain John Whittley 1576, yeah, Group Captain Garaway was the one that lost his life in the um he was er
CB: In the bombing raid?
GD: Linton, Linton Station Commander, Group Captain Garaway OBE was struck and killed by fragments from an anti-personnel bomb whilst leading a team to extinguish a serious incendiary blade er blaze, and then of course Whittley followed him. Ah yes, another one 76 [looking through book], yes he flew with er a chap called Jock Cary er and er four were killed, Group Captain Whittley, Pilot Officer David and Sergeants’ Davis and Strange evaded capture and then there was a Wilson, just wondered what happened to him. I think there were three Group Captains in 76 who were lost.
CB: Who were Station Commanders?
GD: Yes.
CB: Were they were allowed to fly, encouraged to fly or how did it work?
GD: They were not encouraged to fly really, they would only do one trip, a trip every now and again.
CB: Yes.
GD: You see even the squadron commanders didn’t. I mean the squadron commander squadron leader, he could probably take up to a year to do his tour because he might only fly once a month.
CB: The wing commander.
GD: And the wing commander.
CB: He’d be the wing commander, the squadron commander.
GD: No that was the flight commander, the squadron commander again, he would only fly er our um, our er squadron commander was a chap called Don Smith, oh what’s a name, a squadron commander that left a week, a fortnight before I joined Cheshire, he was at 76 at Linton and he’d just gone when I joined, yeah.
CB: He had an American wife who used to play the piano in the mess.
GD: Yes, yes.
CB: That came from an earlier interview. Right I think we’ve done extraordinarily well.
GD: That was the code name for um, sky marking, nearly all the er code names for marking were New Zealand, you had Paramata um, what else Paramata.
CB: Oh right.
GD: Paramater.
WT: Betemangui here and how did you and I understand the pathfinders went in which were hugely Mosquitos?
CB: They were Lancasters.
GD: They were both.
WT: And they dropped flares?
GD: Yes
WT: On the bombing area on the area?
GD: Known as target indicators.
WT: How long before you, the bombers, followed them in to bomb, how soon after the flares or whatever it was that were dropped, did the bombers actually come in?
GD: Well I can’t answer that right, because er when we, every trip that I went on the target was nearly always alight when we got there, it would only be the people that were actually in the very first wave that would that would know that.
WT: Right.
GD: I wouldn’t think it wouldn’t be long because er you see once the indicators had gone down, the ground people would know that that was going to be a raid so they would want to get the bombs dropping er fairly quickly.
WT: But I mean were they actually flares that were dropped so they’d burn out fairly quickly?
GD: Oh no, no, they kept alight for a while.
WT: And when you couldn’t see the ground you mentioned sky marking.
GD: Sky marking. Whanganui.
WT: How does that work?
GD: Well they were coloured lights in the sky that would hover, which is why sky marking wasn’t all that accurate because you see they -
CB: They would drift.
GD: They would drift, a ground marker.
WT: Don’t flares drift ground markers?
GD: Oh no, because they’d be actually on the ground, they’d be burning.
WT: Yes.
GD: On the ground
WT: No I meant, sorry I’m being a bit pedantic, but if you’ve got quite a strong wind, and okay, they would allow for that, but I mean, they aren’t going to get it right all the time, you could find that the flares have moved away from the target but therefore?
GD: But that would only happen before they hit the ground,
WT: Right.
GD: Wouldn’t it? If you were dropping a target indicator.
WT: Yes.
GD: It could move before it hit the ground but they, they would know the wind and they would that would be allowed for.
WT: So the accuracy of the pathfinders, for what I’m really getting to, who dropped the flares not only was it critical, but they were very accurate.
GD: Yes because don’t forget, they had what they called Oboe which was er direction where the lines crossed and er they um, Oboe was quite accurate and they would, they would drop their target indicator according to the grat[unclear]
CB: This is transmitters sending out a signal in a line that would then converge in the point where the bomb was to be dropped, that was in the later part of the war.
WT: Very good.
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Title
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Interview with George Dunn
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-03-08
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Sound
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ADunnGC170308
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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01:34:14 audio recording
Description
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George Dunn DFC joined the Royal Air Force in June 1941 and initially trained as a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner, before training in Canada as a Pilot. He flew aircraft such as Avro Ansons and Airspeed Oxford.
He tells of his experiences as ‘second dickey’ on trips to Essen and Kiel, before joining No. 76 Squadron at Linton-on-Ouse, flying Handley Page Halifaxes. He also spent time on 10 Squadron and was finally transferred to 608 Squadron based at Downham Market in Suffolk flying Mosquitos.
George tells of his trip to Malta, and flying Spitfires that were being renovated for the Greek Air Force.
George flew 30 operations flying Halifaxes and a further 14 flying the Mosquito.
After the war, George returned to his previous company, Pickfords, where he worked as a Branch Manager before retiring at the age of 60.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
10 Squadron
109 Squadron
608 Squadron
76 Squadron
Anson
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
ground crew
Halifax
lack of moral fibre
Master Bomber
memorial
mid-air collision
Mosquito
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
perception of bombing war
RAF Chipping Norton
RAF Downham Market
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Melbourne
RAF Rufforth
RAF Upper Heyford
Spitfire
target indicator
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/560/8828/PStockerEE1601.2.jpg
dc2149cee1df664fefc275fb3f1a16c4
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/560/8828/AStockerEE161013.2.mp3
a6ef8f8aef1748927c2931c8116ebbf3
Dublin Core
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Title
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Stocker, Ted
Edward Ernest Stocker DSO DFC
E E Stocker
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Stocker, EE
Description
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Three oral history interviews with Flight Lieutenant Ted Stocker DSO DFC (b. 1922, 573288 Royal Air Force). He flew 108 operations as a pilot and navigator with 7, 35, 102 and 582 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2015-09-23
2016-08-30
2016-10-13
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DK: So, I’ll just introduce myself. Make sure this is working OK.
ES: OK?
DK: I, I — you’re sometimes beaten by the technology. So, it’s David Kavanagh inter— interviewing Flight Lieutenant Ted Stocker at his home on the 13th of October 2016. I’ll, I’ll just leave that there. If, if I keep looking down, I’m not being rude, I’m just making sure it’s, it’s going.
ES: Er, I’m one of the lucky ones I suppose. If you’ve seen how many trips I’ve done, you’ll know I’m a lucky one.
DK: No, I’ve seen the statistics and they’re terrifying. It’s — they’re covered in your book obviously. What I wanted to ask you was first of all, what were you doing immediately before the war?
ES: I was in the Air Force. I was an apprentice at RAF Halton. I joined the Air Force in 1938, January ‘38, and I — when the war started, they — it should have been a three year apprenticeship but when the war started, they cut it down. They [cough], I did two years and three months I think, so I was a bit short, but they, to make up for the shortcomings, we lost our Wednesday afternoon sports and Thursday afternoon, er, Friday afternoon, um, drill so they stopped the apprenticeship short and gave us accelerated apprenticeship, so I came out. Oh dear, I was still an apprentice — I was an apprentice when the war started because I heard Mr — I was on church parade. We were at church, um, on the 3rd of September and, um, the padre cut his sermon short to say that Chamberlain was talking on, on the BBC and we would go back early so we could actually get in the NAAFI to hear the Chamberlain broadcast. Remember, in those days there wasn’t — radios were expensive but they were all batteries and batteries cost more than you earned in a week, so that’s why we had to use the, the NAAFI to hear the broadcast. Anyway, we heard this broadcast and we’re now at war, which was very good, nice to know [cough] because — as I’d just heard that news, I walked out of the NAAFI to go back to get my irons to go to the cookhouse to get some food and, um, the war had been on for a good ten minutes, maybe a quarter of an hour, and there was a snotty little PTI corporal said, ‘You’re on a charge. You haven’t got your gas mask with you. Don’t you know there’s a war on? You’re supposed to be carrying your gas mask’. I hadn’t — there wasn’t a war on when I left the barrack room and that’s where I left my gas mask [slight laugh], so that was a good start to the war. Anyway, I carried on, er, 1940, in April, March or something, my, er, my apprenticeship was foreshortened and I was passed out as an aircraftman first class. When you’re an apprentice, you can pass out either as an AOC, which there was very few of them (I think in our entry there were two), and an AC1 which was the middle of the road and most of us did, and AC2 which was those who weren’t very bright. And there had — I had a very good posting really, I was posted to Boscombe Down. So, unlike most of the people, when they left their apprenticeship, they went to a squadron and whatever aircraft the squadron had that was the aircraft they worked on but, being lucky, and going to Boscombe I had all sorts of aeroplanes. We had the first prototype Stirling I, I worked on and we had all sorts of funny fighters we were getting. The RAF took over aircraft that the French had ordered but the Germans rather stopped the Americans delivering to them so we took over things like the Mohawk and things and, um, so I, I got into working as a fitter on all sorts of different aeroplanes and then I applied for — I went in to see the flight commander and said, ‘I’d like a pilot’s course’, and he said, ‘No, you can’t do a pilot’s course with AC1. You’ve got to be AOC before you can apply for a pilot’s course’. Anyway, I went back to work and did some — my trade test and became an AOC. I went back into the flight commander and said, ‘I’m an AOC now, can I have a pilot’s course?’ He said, ‘You’ve got to be an AOC for six months at least’. Unfortunately, five months later they made me a corporal, so now I can’t be a pilot because I’m too valuable but then the first of the four engine, as I say all those — I worked on the Stirling, the first of the four engine bombers, and, um, they came with an AMO. They wanted exceptional AOCs, corporals and sergeants and the fitters trades, fitter trades to become flight engineers because before the war, you didn’t have flight engineers because they didn’t have any four engine aircraft, apart from the Stirling, and so I thought — Stirling, Sunderland flying boat, and, um, so I thought well — I didn’t [slight laugh], I didn’t know about this AMO until the flight c—, um, the flight clerk came down — I was working on an aeroplane — with this bit of paper in his hand and said, ‘The flight commander thought you might like to read this’. It was the first, er, call for flight engineers and flight commander had his head in his hand on the right way. He thought that was the [unclear] tell about it so I went back with the flight commander, flight clerk to the flight commander and said, ‘I’d like to be a flight engineer’. Well, I got that, um, sort of got back to barracks, about — it must have been within forty-eight hours, they really were desperate, um, I was called back to the flight commander, given an hour warning, sent off to, off to — where was it in Scotland? Er, oh dear, just north of inverness, north-west from Inverness? I was off on a three week air gunner’s course. I didn’t want to be an air gunner, I wanted to be a flight engineer but, um, I did the three, this three week air gunner’s course, flying in some decrepit old airplanes, and I was then posted to 35 Squadron in Linton as a flight engineer on Halifaxes. I hadn’t done, apart from being a fitter and the three weeks’ air gunner course, I was now a flight engineer. Fortunately, at this, they got the crew but they hadn’t got the airplanes. Point of interest perhaps, my flight commander at that time was a guy called, er, Leonard Cheshire, Flight Lieutenant Leonard Cheshire was my flight commander and —
DK: What were your feelings about Cheshire as a man?
ES: Well as a man [unclear], didn’t have a great understanding of aeroplanes, little or no knowledge of engineering but, um, he had the knack of flying the aeroplane. He could fly it quite well.
DK: Did you, did you fly with him at all?
ES: Only, er, local flying from the thing.
DK: And he was a competent pilot, was he?
ES: He was a — he seemed competent but a little bit slap happy. He talked myself and several other flight engineers, who were new to the squadron, up in the Halifax on a very nasty day in Yorkshire. We sort of took off straight into a cloud and he plugged into the intercom and said, ‘Now I’m running the engines on hot air because of the — to stop them icing up. I’m now going to switch two of them off onto cold air’. Of course, within about three minutes, they’d iced up and the engines had stopped. ‘Now you see what happens when you don’t use hot air’. Yes, I know but we’re flying in cloud at about three thousand feet somewhere over the Yorkshire Moors, no real radio, or any thought. It was a bit stupid. Stating the obvious.
DK: Was he a slightly eccentric man then?
ES: No, not slightly.
DK: No. OK. Completely [laugh].
ES: He was an academic from an academic background. I think he didn’t have a very high regard for engineers or any engineer, and, er, Paddy O’Kane was his flight engineer. He was an Irishman who kept — must have let his temper well under control.
DK: Were you, were you quite pleased to get down then after that flight?
ES: Oh, I wasn’t that — it was interesting. I thought I was too young to be too worried, I just didn’t like it. It knew it wasn’t the right thing to be doing [slight laugh] and, er, I messed about on the squadron there. As I said we were very short of aeroplanes, plenty of crews, there about three flight engineers to every engine, every aeroplane. But I just went back, a lot of us went back to working on the flights as a fitter, ordinary fitter again. And, um, I went there I think Ap— March or April ‘40. It wasn’t until October that I got a crew with an aeroplane, joined a crew and started operating over Germany. I wasn’t very impressed when we did start. We were supposed to be bombing Essen at night, and we — in those days they had very little in the way of range. When they dropped the bombs, I wasn’t that impressed. I said, ‘How –?’ I looked out and I couldn’t see how the hell they knew where they were, and listening to the navigator talking to the pilot, I don’t think he had that much of an idea. It was a very hit and run, well hit and miss, mainly miss, flying in the first few months of the war or the first few months when I started flying. But I, er, what did I do? Oh yes, I know. Early on, with the flight commander, by saying, briefing us for our second trip, ‘We’re going to Nuremberg#. It was rather a long way to Nuremberg from Yorkshire, particularly when we were flying in the early Halifaxes, which did not have as many fuel tanks as the later ones and I, being a sort of awkward bloke, I knew what fuel load we’d got and I had a chat with the navigator, he was another sergeant so I could talk to him, got the air miles and the fuel load and I did some sums. We haven’t got enough money to — enough fuel to get there and back let alone have a reserve and anyway, still being young and cheeky, I said to the flight commander, ‘Sir, I don’t think we’ve got enough fuel for this trip’. To which he replied, ‘Nonsense lad. Group know what they’re doing’. Well, they didn’t. We came back and I was keeping the throttles closed as much as I could, getting the best air miles out of it. We actually could see the airfield and when we crashed, we were almost within walking distance of the airfield [slight laugh].
DK: You just literally ran out of fuel?
ES: Yeah. Well, we ran out on one — because we were low, I was running, um, each side’s engines on all the tanks in that wing and, um, two engines stopped on one side, so I went down the back and put a cross feed on, um, and so I ran four engines off an empty tank but —
DK: So was anybody hurt in the crash or —
ES: Er, no. When we were sort of getting organised I, I‘d dumped the escape hatches over myself, the pilot and myself, and I was actually on — the skipper had started to bail the crew out. There should have been only two of us left in the aeroplane at that stage but the engines finally ran out of fuel and stopped and, er, we went down, hit the ground on a rather nasty bump, bounced over one hedge and landed in the next field and —
DK: So, there was just the pilot, yourself and one other still on board?
ES: Should have been the pilot and myself but we hit the field, the ground and bounced as I said. I was amidships with the hatch open there, the skipper was in his seat but the hatch over his head was missing, so when things grew to a halt, and the engines started burning, um, we decided to leave so the skipper came up on the wing next to me. I’d got onto the wing, which was the back edge of the wing because the undercarriage was up of course (when you’ve got to crash you don’t have the wheels down) and slid off the wing. The cows in the field didn’t like the intrusion. The skipper and I were looking around to find a quick way through and while we were doing so, a voice from behind said, ‘Wait for me’. It was the, um, the air gunner. He should be the first out. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to take his parachute down the back. He’d left the parachute amidships by the door and he was actually in the fuselage, walking up the fuselage, to get this parachute pack when we hit the ground. Anyway, he got out alright and, um, we were going, er, out of the field and eventually, er, two ambulances arrived. ‘Are you injured?’ ‘No’. ‘OK, go away. This is for injured’. The other ambulance, ‘You’re not dead? This is for bodies’. So, we were still left there by the aeroplane and eventually the CO came over in his little car. As I say, we were within sight of the airfield when we actually hit the ground and the CO had driven over in his Hillman, and he sort of had a few words with the skipper. He kept well away from me. I told him we was short of fuel and I was bloody right [laugh]. But, um, he must have borne that in mind because, having done four operations with 35, um, I’m called in and told I’m going to a new squadron, where they‘re just going to get Halifaxes to instruct the flight engineers and pilots on the Halifax. I’d done four operations and there I am, I’m an instructor on 102 Squadron and obviously the CO at that time was a squadron leader, um, he’d got the message I might know what I’m talking about and there I was, an instructor. Much later on in the war he was the fli— squadron commander of the Pathfinder Squadron, I was the engineer leader and when he wanted to fly, guess who he took as his flight engineer? But, um, anyway I went to this 102 Squadron, had two qualified flying instructors to teach the pilots and things, and I had to explain the workings of the Halifax and things to the pi— new pilots and check up on the en— blokes that were posted in as engineers. And so there I was, twenty years old, telling these people. I said, um, the flight, flight commander who was the flying instructor, like me was an apprentice from Halton, trouble is he was about six years before me [laugh]. However, he thought, he must have thought I was making a good job of it, telling these people, because he suddenly called me into his office. He said, ’What do you think about taking a commission?’ A twenty-year-old sergeant. ‘Ay?’ I said, ‘Well you, you did it. What do you think?’ And he said, ’I think you should’. So, I suddenly found myself twenty years old, commissioned and — being commissioned anyway. I wasn’t actually commissioned at that time. I was put in for it. Later, on the Pathfinders, were starting and they were asking for crews and they asked for volunteers from other squadrons. There was a, a couple of Canadians, a pilot and navigator flew together, and they thought it would be a good idea to go to Pathfinders. Their flight engineer lived locally to New York so he wasn’t keen at all so, er, Hank, the skipper that was, he came to me and said, ‘We want a flight engineer. What do you think?’ I said, ‘OK. Put me down. I’ll go with you’, so I was posted to Pathfinders on 35 Squadron and, um, I was still a sergeant. And suddenly one day, the adjutant called, er, sent for me and I go to the adjutant’s office. The adjutant was sort of absolutely horrified, ‘You’ve been commissioned’, so I was the first flight engineer, one of the first flight — batch of flight engineers to be commissioned. Mind you, I did have to go for an interview at the Air Ministry first. It was quite an interesting one because at — down at Pathfinders at Graveley, which has its own station down the road to get straight into London, about an hour, three quarters of an hour ride to London so I knew, um, when I was told about this interview at the Air Ministry, I was flying that night. So went, you know, did my trip, came back, changed, had a shower, changed into my best blue, down the station and on the train up to Air Ministry for this bloody interview. I didn’t really know what it was all about but, er, they want to see me they can see me. So, I staggered into this interview thing and lots of sen— brass there, mainly group captains or wing commanders but there wasn’t a pilot or anything amongst them. They were all engineers you see, and, um, they didn’t know really know that much about it, they’d got to interview me and that was it. I sort of staggered in and I went asleep in the waiting room outside and they woke me up to go in, and I was sort of wiping the sleeping dust from my eyes as I went in for the interview. And one of these officious men obviously, um, thought I was on, been on the booze up in London that night, ‘Where were you last night?’ I gave them the name of the target [laugh]. Oh dear, atmosphere changed [laugh]. They gave me the wrong answer to the right question and, um, after that the interview went quite well. I ended up them telling them more about what went on than they knew about. Well, so that’s OK, so I’m told I’m commissioned, I go down to London with a bit of — coupons and some money and buy myself a uniform as a pilot officer. I go back to the office, back to the squadron and I get called in again, ‘We haven’t got a, what is it? An establishment for pilot officer flight engineer, only a flight lieutenant. You’re an acting flight lieutenant’. So I went, in about a matter of weeks, I went from a scruffy sergeant to a blown-up flight lieutenant [laugh] and I’ve been all sorts of flight lieutenant ever since. That was pilot officer acting flight lieutenant, flying officer acting flight lieutenant, war [unclear] flight lieutenant, end of the war flying officer acting flight lieutenant, er, proper flight lieutenant. There you go. I’ve been promoted to flight lieutenant so bloody often that I don’t know — but, um, that’s how it goes.
DK: So, so once you’re in the Pathfinder Squadron then, what was your — what did you do there? What were the Pathfinders doing?
ES: Well, it’s, um, the first thing they said was if you go into Pathfinders instead of doing thirty operations and being rested, you’ll do sixty. That didn’t last long. They cut those down to forty-five and —
DK: How did you fell about that, having to do two tours?
ES: Not too worried. I was young and stupid. Anyway, um, having being made a flight lieutenant, I was in charge of all the flight engineers, and when my crew finished their forty-seven, forty-five, they were posted away and I stayed on as flight engineer leader, and then suddenly somebody, something clicked, ‘Oh he shouldn’t be here, he’s done it’. And, um, I did, I did a couple more afterwards with other crews that hadn’t got an engineer at the time. And, um, shows you how stupid I was, I thought I’ve never, never tried — I’d like to try a trip as, um, a gunner so I volunteered to go on a trip as a mid-upper gunner on a flight just for the heck of it and, er, they suddenly realised I shouldn’t be there and I got posted straight away to a Training — a Pathfinder Training Unit. I arrived there just as 7 Squadron had taken a beating. They’d lost a squadron commander, two flight commanders and all the leaders. They had a hell of a time and so they suddenly they needed some experienced people in the Squadron, so they came to NTU to get them and, er, so they gathered — drew a few of us together and posted us to 7 Squadron. The only thing is, I hadn’t been there very long so before I knew where I was, I was back on op— on an operational squadron, on 7 Squadron, but they’d got Lancasters and I didn’t know a bloody thing about the Lancaster. The Halifax — I’d been on propeller courses, engine courses, er, aircraft course, airplane courses, everything and they had the, the Linc— the Lincolns. The Lancaster, I didn’t know anything about really apart from they had four Merlins and they were much the same as the Merlins in the, er, Halifax except they were made in America and had a better, er, better, um, type of — better design cylinder block, didn’t get internal leaks, and, um, I thought, ‘Well I must find out something about this aeroplane’. And I was still sort of feeling my way trying to find some books and things and they suddenly said, ‘You’re on ops tonight. Oh, and you’re a bomb aimer as well’. Because on Pathfinders, on Lancs, they used their flight engineer as a bomb aimer. Well, I don’t know a thing about bomb aiming and so they gave me a quick run through on the ground on how to set the bomb sight up and they said, ‘You better try it. Have a go’. They put, they put eight practice bombs on one of the Lancs then go off to a bombing raid, do my first bombing, eight, eight training ship. Trouble is, I dropped one and then the thing didn’t turn out right, the rest wouldn’t drop, so I had dropped one practice bomb. I was a bomb aimer with one practice and I’m on ops. I dropped four — about 80,000 tons of bombs, bombs that night, just practising [laugh] and that’s how life goes on.
DK: So as, as a flight engineer then, what did you prefer the Halifax or the Lancaster, once you got to know the Lancaster?
ES: If I was going to crash, I’d rather do it in a Lanc, in a Halifax. If I was going to go to war and not get shot at, I’d go in a Lanc. The Lanc was a much less sturdy aeroplane and it had the most diabolical position to bail out from. The, the door is right in front of the tail plane. On the Halifax the escape hatch in the fuselage is on the bottom corner of the fuselage and you dive out there, and the tail plane is way over. The only thing you’ve got to worry about is hitting the tail wheel. But, um, so if I had to bail out, I’d rather bail out of a Halifax and, um, I think I’d rather crash in a Halifax. It’s a much sturdier aeroplane, much — old fashioned pre-war des— design. The Lanc was a, a lash-up, um, it would never, it would never have flown, been allowed before the war because, um, aeroplanes had to fit in a hundred foot hangar. Well, the Manchester, which was the forerunner of the Lanc would go in a Halifax, in a hundred foot hangar, but when they took the Eag— Rolls Royce Eagles out and put a Merlin there, and then a bit of wing with another Merlin, that put an extra bit of wing on and the thing wouldn’t go in the hangar. So, it would, it would never have been allowed pre-war. But it, it gave an extra form of — the later Hali 3, they did have extended wing tips, they extended the wing on the Hali 3s which was a good solid aeroplane. I would like to have seen a Hali 3 with four Merlins, um, I think it would probably have been as good as the Lanc, but it didn’t —because it was built like — I was going to say a brick shit house [laugh]. As it was very well built, it didn’t have the same bomb carrying cap— capabilities and it didn’t have a bomb door, a bomb bay. The Lanc had this enormous long bomb bay which the Americans, the Americans saw that bomb bay and said, ‘Good God’, and so, um, you could you could carry a eight thousand pounder in a Halifax, which was two fours joined together, but it wouldn’t take any of the big things and it was very narrow and it had these extra bomb, er, bomb bays in the inner wing too. It wasn’t as well designed as the Lanc was. The Lanc wasn’t designed that way. It was a bit like Topsy. That was the way it grew. Yeah, I tried them both.
DK: As a flight engineer though, and purely as your role as a flight engineer, you preferred the Lancaster?
ES: Well on the Halifax, you had a much better instrument panel, you could see what’s going on, but you had a very complex fuel system. You started out with four tanks on the Hali 1s, early Hali 1As, that soon went to —from four tanks to — it went up again, and I think we ended up with 7 or 8 tanks in each wing and all little bits where they squeezed a bit in, um, which gave a very complex fuel system. To keep the CG right you had to keep messing about. I say the nose tank, number 2, which was on the leading edge of the wing, er, you couldn’t use that for landing or take off because of the change, sudden changes of altitude. So, the Halifax, you had — needed an engineer or somebody who knew what they were doing to manage the fuel system. The Lancs, with four bloody great tanks, you didn’t. Basically, you didn’t need a flight engineer on a Halifax, it was just another pair of hands, another pair of eyes and somebody else to keep an eye on the gauges —
DK: On the Lancaster, on the Lancaster, you didn’t need a flight engineer?
ES: No, but you did need somebody in the right hand seat.
DK: Right. OK. Yeah.
ES: And the flight engineer was cheaper than a, a co-pilot, a pilot, that’s really what it was, they were a cheap pilot substitute in a way.
DK: On the Lancaster so you didn’t need, really need a flight engineer on the Lancaster?
ES: Not as an engineer. I’ll tell you, the fuel cogs were two little handles but they had very big tanks. The Lanc, the Lanc, the original design of the Lanc was based on the premise that you would have sealed wings and there’d be a filler cap in the wing and you filled the wing up. But that meant that — that was fine until they said all tanks have got to be self-sealing, and you can’t put self-sealing on the outside of the tanks and that’s why they ended up putting little tanks in. But um, it’s a matter of history there. The Lanc arrived just at the right time. The Halifax was before its time and was outdated as soon as it arrived really but it was better than a Stirling.
DK: Yes. Did you fly ever on the Stirling or —
ES: Yes, I had, down at Boscombe.
DK: Not operationally though?
ES: No.
DK: No, no. So can you say a little about what the Pathfinders actually did and their, their role that was different to —
ES: Oh, quite different, um, initially it was a matter of, er, developing the technique. Don Bennett developed the tech— developed the, or developed the technique, I say, initially on Pathfinders, it was a matter — we had people going at H – 4 and dropping flares like mad and then other people following on trying to find the target. Later on, it got much more sophisticated. You still had the supporters and the important people in the H – 4. Supporters were supplied by the squadrons from the new boys in Pathfinders, this was in the opening stages. The crew in Pathfinders, first thing flying as a supporter, going in as H – 4 and, um, then later on getting promoted to being a flare dropper, still going in early, er, usually several rows of flare droppers, H – 4 and H – 2, and then you had the king-pins dropping the target markers, er, target indicators, from — with the light of the flares of the others and then once the master had put, um, put his marker on the target the supporters came along to keep it going. Basically, that’s all there was to it really, but it got a bit more sophisticated.
DK: Did you actually meet Don Bennett at this time?
ES: Oh yes. I knew, I met him.
DK: What did you think of, of Don Bennett?
ES: I — he didn’t need any crew. He knew it all. No, I was a great admirer of Don Bennett.
DK: You actually flew with him, did you?
ES: Yes, I did some — the first time we had a Hali 3 deli— delivered to, um, Graveley as a possible aircraft for Pathfinder Group because at that, at that stage we had Hali 2s, Lancs, Wellingtons, er, all in different squadrons. And Don wanted — was trying to get all his aircraft —
DK: Standardised —
ES: Same aircraft right through the Group, um, but anyway a Hali 3 had been sent to Bos— to Graveley for him to have a try. Well, he’d flown the Hali 2s and 1s, he was an experienced Halifax pilot but there was this Hali 3 he had been sent to try, so just he and I got into the aeroplane, nobody else, and he tried to fly the Hali 3. Well compared to the Hali 1s and 2s with four Merlins, four Hercules were a whole different proposition and one of the flight engineers’ job is following the pilot, as he opens the throttle, keep your hands behind so as if he moves his hands, the throttles won’t go back. And unfortunately, we were on the end of the runway, two of us in the aeroplane, not big fuel, no great fuel load, and he’s sort of half way up and I was following, and suddenly we were airborne. Now that was quite a different experience. Anyway completely opened the throttles, I held them and locked them open or locked them and that was his first experience of the Hali 3 and mine [laugh] but only the two of us in there anyway.
DK: But presumably, he then made the decision not the Hali 3, but go for the Lancaster then, did he?
ES: He flew the Hali 3 and he flew the Lanc.
DK: And he decided on the Lancaster then.
ES: Yeah, he was also — there was some talk of a teed-up Wellington with a pressure cabin.
DK: Oh right.
ES: It was only — I don’t think we even had one with us, I knew it existed and I’d seen pictures of it. They actually put a pressure cabin inside, inside the Wellington. It was quite a high-altitude aeroplane. I think they used it for high altitude research afterwards. Yes, so Don knew what he was doing and wasn’t wor— never worried, it was fine with him. A man than can take a tuner off, the control locks on, flies around Hamburg and land the bloody thing with the stick stuck.
DK: That’s what he did? The control lock was still on?
ES: Yeah.
DK: And he flew to Hamburg and back?
ES: No, he flew, took off from Hamburg. He should have been going to Berlin but he turned round, went round the airfield, and got it back down on the ground again, took off the control locks and flew to berlin on the Berlin shuttle.
DK: On the Berlin airlift.
ES: Yeah.
DK: On the Berlin airlift, yeah.
ES: Yeah. Oh, he knew what he was doing.
DK: So how many operations did you actually fly altogether then?
ES: Hundred and eight. Forty-seven on Wellingtons, on Halifaxes and sixty-one on Lancs. I know they say it isn’t allowed, you shouldn’t last that long. I hadn’t read the statistics [laugh].
DK: Well, if you didn’t know the statistics.
ES: It only happened by chance really. I did my forty-seven on Halifaxes and I was sent to NTU. 7 Squadron had a chop and NTU were asked to supply replacements. I was there, I was one of the replacements. They wanted a replacement, you know, they’d lost a lot of their top end. They wanted experienced people and I — so I was off operations for a few weeks and I was back on the Lancs, um, once I’d got through the — with first with 7 and then, um, 582 was formed, one flight from 7 Squadron and one flight from 156. I went there and, um, I just soldiered on. I was sort of a decoration round the place, I think I was a bit of a show piece. You know, a funny thing, when I did my hundredth operation, I was keeping quiet, I wasn’t making any fuss about it. But I used to help, deal with the crew list for the CO, and there was a young lad coming through as a skipper. He was a bit of a nervous type, he was worried because he was going to do his thirteenth trip. I thought, what the hell, I put myself down as his flight engineer. He came back and, um, we landed back at base and he said, ‘Ah that’s good, I’ve made my — done my thirteenth’, I said, ‘Well done. I’ve done my hundredth’ [laugh].
DK: And that was the first he knew?
ES: That was the first he knew. Nobody had reached three figures before. We’d lost two people at ninety-eight. We never lost one at ninety-nine but we did lose two at ninety-eight.
DK: Was there any recognition for the hundredth operation at all from the squadron or —
ES: Not from the squadron but I think there’s mention, um, in my DSO. I went over my hundredth anyway but, um, that’s really all there was. I got my DSO, I think I was the only flight engineer I think that did.
DK: How do you feel now looking back on that period [unclear] operations?
ES: I was lucky. I don’t know. It was my job. I was in the Air Force for a job and it was part of the job, sort of.
DK: And now if we move to the post war period. I was reading that you went to South America?
ES: Oh, I did the South American trip with Harris, yes.
DK: What was, what was Harris like?
ES: Well, he knew who I was when we got there [laugh]. But it was quite a crazy thing, we didn’t see much of him really. He was the top brass and we were the, we were the tail end. Funny thing is, when we first flew over, we went down to Gambia, went across to Recife, just by the mouth of the Amazon and, um, we had — Harris himself and his, his PA had been in America with the RAF during the war and they had the correct drill for America. They had long — they were in khaki but they had long trousers. We were issued with khaki appropriate to, er, West Africa but we had shorts. Oh dear, when we landed in Brazil, what a kerfuffle, ‘[unclear] get those men back in the aeroplane out of sight’. Anyway, we were pu— pushed back in the aeroplane and, um, the top brass, me, Harris and his little entourage and they were marched off to a decent hotel, and somebody came out to us, ‘Put your trousers on’, and we were allowed to go and get a meal as well [laugh]. It was ridiculous. We didn’t know what was going on.
DK: So, it, so it was three Lancasters you took to Brazil then?
ES: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. And how did they perform going across the —
ES: Oh, no problems there. Um, the fuel was — you had to watch the fuel. We weren’t over dressed for it. We didn’t have long range tanks or anything which are available, were avail— or eventually became available for the Lancs, but there was no problem.
DK: So, what was the purpose of the visit then? Was it just an invite for Harris by the Brazilians?.
ES: Brazil was our allies. They had a division fighting in Italy and we were there. We —the division for me — because Brazil did not declare war on Japan, er, mainly because they had too large a Japanese population. The only thing that the Brazilians did about the Japanese is they all had to live at least a hundred kilometres from the coast. That was the Brazilian, um, result of Japan entering the war, um, and their Army only fought in Europe with the American 5th Army and they came back. We were there when they came back. We were flying over them as they went down the main street in Rio, we were over— overhead.
DK: Oh, I see, so it was a kind of com— celebration for the return of their army, in effect?
ES: Er, you mentioned the three Lancs. Well, when we turned round to come back, one of them had engine trouble. It wasn’t my aircraft but of the flight engineers, I was the only one that could change an engine or knew anything about it so I ended up staying behind waiting for the new engine. And the Brazilians were very good, they gave us a lot of coffee beans and they were tied up in the bomb bay and the aeroplane was flown by the 617 Squadron crew, and 617 Squadron took off from the airport at Brazil, at, er, Rio, which is six hours from the, er, air— from the promenade. Um, being 617 Squadron, they didn’t have bomb bays. They weren’t used to bomb, bomb doors so they took off with the bomb doors open (because you always park with the bomb doors open), so they took off with them open and some of us left behind saw them turn out over the harbour and watched our coffee beans descend into the harbour.
DK: Oh no.
ES: One, er, bag didn’t detach and when we got back instead of getting a whole bag of coffee beans which were of course rationed around, almost unavailable in England, we had a two-pound bag of them. But anyway, yeah.
DK: So, after that, is this when you then went for pilot training?
ES: Not immediately, no. I went — I did an engineering officers course, um, I was already, although I was a fitter and a qualified fitter, um, I went on to — down to St Athan, I think for four months, an accelerated engineering officer’s course, filling in the gaps between what I’d been through, what I knew as an apprentice, what I knew as a flight engineer, just filling in the gaps. I come out as a fully trained flight engineering officer which was quite useful in the end. But I went back to the Squadron and I was then on 20, on 24 Squadron, the VIP Squadron, flying Lancastrians, er, VIPs around the place. I managed to save the life of myself, Sir Robert Watson Watts and Ralph Cochrane all in one go. I — if they’d gone down and I’d been with them. We had Lancasters, Lancastrians sorry, but they had a belly tank to increase the range, because the Lanc couldn’t fly the Atlantic, so the Lancastrian couldn’t unless they put long range tanks in the bomb bay. Since it was a [unclear] thing, it wasn’t a proper — it wasn’t a well thought out plan. The filling was, um, on the side of the bomb bay with the — the flight engineer had an extension which you undid a hatch on the bomb bay, took the cap off the, er, tank, put this extension on and then you could fill the fuel up, fill the long range tank up. Good idea. Well, on going to America we were carrying two flight engineers, so I was filling the port wing and the other guy was filling the starboard wing, and I filled my wing and I look down and this bloke who was filing the bomb bay, belly tank seemed to be having a lot of trouble, seemed to be stopping and starting and whatever. So, I went down to see what, you know, the problem was. We were out in the Azores and I don’t speak Portuguese so I was chattering away, took the thing out. No wonder he was having trouble. What was he putting in the tank? Engine oil.
DK: Oh dear.
ES: I had a quick thought, er, I could see us, another one in the Bermuda Triangle. We’d have been somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle when I switched over to that tank. We wouldn’t have gone much further. Anyway, I got him out of the way, and I go the crew and anyone standing around. I got a pan out from the side of the airfield and pushed the thing back and got the wheel, the bit, the tail wheel and a bit more of the fuselage over the grass, got my tool box out [slight laugh], undid the, this false bomb door that we had, it was only two sheets of metal, opened that up. I could then get to the Pulsometer pump, which was used to transfer the, er, petrol as it should have been to the wing. But fortunately, it wasn’t switched on I don’t think. I quickly disconnected it actually in case anybody did switch it on and, um, took the Pulsometer pump off and, er, of course all the oil flowed out, straight onto the grass, er, put the thing back on again, got the fella with the petrol bowser and put a couple of hundred gallons in the tank. I’m not paying [laugh].
DK: It makes you wonder if that happened in the past if —
ES: Oh yes. I think that’s what happened with MacMillan in the Star Tiger. A very similar installation on the, on the Tudor. The Tudor had the tank in the same position.
DK: Because several went missing, didn’t they?
ES: Yeah, well if you put oil in the bloody thing. The Portuguese people, they come out with the tanker and you can’t see what’s in the tanker. But, um, anyway I did, er, swirled this thing out, pumped this fuel, fuel oil mixture out with the Pulsometer pump, got a bucket with, um, pure petrol in, stripped the Pulsometer pump out down to its essential bits, washed out the inside, swirled it round and, um, pumped some, put some more petrol in the tank, swirled it round and hoped for the best, put the Pulsometer pump on and we got to Washington DC on that fuel. Otherwise, there’d be no me, no Sir Robert Watson Watt, no Sir Ralph Cochrane or anybody but, um, that’s what flight engineers are for, aren’t they?
DK: Exactly. I guess they, they never knew. Never knew how close to disaster they came.
ES: No, they were too busy scoffing. We didn’t get a meal, the other engineers and I didn’t get anything to eat at all until the other — Washington, actually Indianapolis. We didn’t stop long in Washington, then we went on to Indianapolis. It’s all a story.
DK: So, it was then soon after that you took the pilot training then, was it?
ES: Yes, ‘47 or, ‘47 I think I took the pilot training.
DK: And ended up on the Neptunes?
ES: No, I ended up on Lancasters.
DK: Oh right. OK.
ES: At first. As soon as I took the pilots course, I thought, ‘What’s going to happen now?’ Well, I’d been on Transport Command, been on Bomber Command. Oh, put him on Coastal Command. And what do they give him to fly? A Lancaster. And, um, I was flight commander on 217 Squadron and I was off to the States [slight laugh].
DK: And so how did it feel now you were a pilot of a Lancaster, after so many operations as a flight engineer?
ES: It seemed quite natural, though I must admit, when I first went as a pilot for the conversion course, as a pilot up to Kinloss, I had the first instruction for pilot. I’ll teach him all about the Lanc. He can teach me all about the Lanc [laugh], He knew who I was and I knew who he was [laugh].
DK: He couldn’t teach you much then?
ES: Eh?
DK: He couldn’t teach you much?
ES: Well, he didn’t bother. I sat there and listened to it all. You got to show willing and, er, that’s how it went
DK: So, once you converted to the Neptunes then, what were they like?
ES: A dream, a dream. You could do anything with them. They had these spoilers in the wing. When you put the spoilers on, when you put thing on, it went vroom. Of course, when we first got the Neptunes, all the top people wanted to fly them so we had a, a group of MPs come up to Kinloss to see us and find out all about these new aeroplanes. We didn’t, they were not our aeroplanes, the Neptunes, the RAF never owned any Neptunes. They were only on loan waiting, because the Sund— the Shackletons were late on delivery and these were taken as, in a sort of stop gap until we got — Avro got their finger out, started producing Shackletons. I quite enjoyed flying the Neptune. Nicest aeroplane I’d ever flown.
DK: Did you get to fly the Shackleton then, eventually?
ES: No. It was just a heavy Lancaster. The Neptune was a whole different ball game, you could do things with that.
DK: Do you think the Nim— Shack— Neptune should have been used instead of the Shackleton then?
ES: It was — the Neptunes were loaned, loan to us until we could get enough Shackletons delivered. They were only on loan. They went back to the States and went on loan to somebody else no doubt. Other — the Aussies they picked up two Shackletons, two Neptunes at the same time. They weren’t bare backed robbers but they bought theirs.
DK: Do you think we should have bought the Neptune then?
ES: I think they were better. I think it would have been a better deal than the Shackleton ever was. To give you an example, er, Churchill was coming back from America on one of the Queens, and the idea was that the RAF should go out to the mid-Atlantic and beyond to welcome him, and this was the plan and I was sitting in the mess having breakfast and saw the Shackleton taking off to meet Winny. Then I finished my breakfast, went down to flight, did my briefing, got into the aeroplane, flew off and once we got the Queen on radar I, we homed in over the Queen and then I looked on the radar and, oh yes, there’s a Shackleton coming in. We’d guide him in to —
DK: Because they were so much slower.
ES: Slower? They didn’t — they only had one speed. You see, we used to transit at ten thousand feet which gives you a much better air speed, but they did everything at about two thousand, the Shackleton, which gives us about a hundred miles an hour advantage at ten thousand. And, um, so anyway we guided them and we had a fly round the Queen and, um, Churchill could see them and then it was time for them to go. So, they went off there. We watched them go and a little bit later, we flew off and I was back in the mess when the Shackletons landed [laugh]. That’s the difference you see. They were no faster on attack really. I was going to tell you, when we first got the Neptune, a group MPs came up to have a look at it. My squadron commander, he was a hard drinking man, so we, after they arrived so I left, er, I had a dinner with them, and spoke to them and that and left the squadron commander to take care of them. He was quite happy drinking all night. Oh, that car’s — the car’s just driven two houses up and stopped there. Never mind, it’s not in your way. But anyway, they had there thing in the mess and the next morning they were going for a flight. Well, one of the things the Neptune could do which the Shackleton never got round to doing, was rocket attacks, [unclear] sixteen rockets, sort of equivalent of two, um, salvos from a cruiser and for a rocket attack on an aircraft, ship or submarine, your flying indicators about twelve hundred feet, and you put the nose down to about seventy degrees, take aim, fire the rockets. They were very, very accurate too. I say, to practice we had old wrecks of cars out on the range. You expect to hit a car with a rocket. It’s not that big a target but you hit a car with a rocket, a ship will be a big problem because of course the salvos, that car doesn’t fire back at you, but, um, we’d got two 20 mm cannons and a nose sight and they can do some damage. Anyway, so I take these MPs up and they’d had a good night out the night before [laugh], and I was flying at a thousand feet and we’re going into attack, vroom, MPs on the ceiling [laugh] and we go in and attack, fire the rocket, horrible. You got to have fun, you got to have your fun somehow.
DK: Were the MPs impressed by that?
ES: I don’t know [laugh]. They were quite quiet when we came back [laugh].
DK: I can imagine.
ES: Not used to big aeroplanes. They liked fighters. But I had fun.
DK: So, when did you actually leave the RAF then? What year would that have been?
ES: Oh dear. Oh, I just managed to — it was Army, aft— after, um, flight commander at 617. I spent some time doing my stint as a ground eng— ground fitter, a ground officer. I was quite lucky. I got rather a cushy number for my two years. I was posted out to Germany as adjutant with an AOP Squadron with Austers, and, um, it was when I finished my, just finishing my two years out there when the Army MO called me in for the annual medical, and he said, ‘You’re too deaf to fly’, And that was it. Oh yes, a bloody Army bloke, a Pongo got me out. Actually, he didn’t get me out, he said, ‘You’re unfit to fly’. The Air Force said, ‘You can stay in in your current rank until you reach retirement age’. Well, I was thirty-five, I didn’t want to do another twenty bloody years doing bugger all, nothing interesting, so I elected to take an early retirement. Been drawing a pension ever since. I’ve been drawing my RAF pension, this is the first month of my sixty-first year of drawing a pension.
DK: Excellent. Well, I think on that note we’ll —
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 Ted Stocker. Three
Creator
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David Kavanagh
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-13
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AStockerEE161013, PStockerEE1601
Conforms To
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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01:11:31 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Ted joined the air force in January 1938 as an apprentice at RAF Halton. This was accelerated because of the war, and he was posted to RAF Boscombe Down.
Although he wanted to be a pilot, Ted’s skills were needed as a flight engineer. He was posted to 35 Squadron at Linton-on-Ouse in 1940 where he encountered Flight Lieutenant Leonard Cheshire. Later that year, Ted found a crew and aircraft and started operations over Germany. After only four operations, he went to instruct pilots and flight engineers on Halifaxes at 102 Squadron.
Ted was posted to Pathfinders 35 Squadron and was the first flight engineer to be commissioned. After 47 operations, he volunteered and was sent for training as a mid-upper gunner to a Pathfinder Training Unit and 7 Squadron, who needed experienced people. He had to learn about Lancasters, which he compares in some detail to Halifaxes.
Ted outlines the work of the Pathfinders and how the system became more sophisticated. He encountered Donald Bennett and once flew with him, as well as flying with Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris to Brazil.
Ted flew 108 operations (47 on Halifaxes and 61 on Lancasters). He was awarded a Distinguished Service Order.
Ted did an engineering officers’ course at RAF St Athan, followed by 24 Squadron, a VIP transport squadron, flying Lancastrians.
After pilot training in 1947, Ted was flight commander on 217 squadron. He flew Neptunes, which he compares favourably to Shackletons. Ted was then posted to Germany for two years as adjutant with an Air Observation Post squadron and flew Austers. He left the RAF because of impaired hearing.
Temporal Coverage
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1938
1940
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Wiltshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany
102 Squadron
35 Squadron
582 Squadron
7 Squadron
aircrew
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
crash
Distinguished Service Order
fitter engine
flight engineer
fuelling
ground crew
Halifax
Halifax Mk 1
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Lancaster
Lancastrian
military service conditions
Pathfinders
promotion
RAF Boscombe Down
RAF Halton
RAF Linton on Ouse
Shackleton
Stirling
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/652/8923/PWadeR1503.2.jpg
0b506137cd4da312b391a18185ae0198
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/652/8923/AWadeR150726.1.mp3
95701c1624fa69e8a17fb1a5fdcce23c
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
Wade, Ron
R Wade
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Wade
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Ron Wade (b. 1917, Royal Air Force) and three photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 58 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Okay, so this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moody, and the interviewee is Ron Wade, and the interview is taking place at Mr Wade’s home in, near Cheltenham at Bishops Cleve on the 26th July 2015. So, Ron, if you just may be start off with just a little bit about your background, about your school days and what your parents did? Off you go.
RW: All right now, it’s switched off
AM: [Laughs]. Okay, so off you go Ron.
RW: Right. What do you want first?
AM: Well just tell me a little bit about your, what your parents did, and school days, where you were born, just a little bit of background about you.
RW: Yes, right, I was, you’ve got the date I was born.
AM: I have.
RW: And um, my parents, I was one of four children, I had two sisters and a brother. Unfortunately my brother was killed during the war, not on operations, but he, after I was shot down, he was working for the gas company and he would have been, um, he needn’t have joined, let’s put it that way, but er, because I was missing believed killed for six months and he said, ‘they’ve got Ron, I’m going to take his place’, and he joined the RAF. He was coming home on his birthday, 1943, on a motorcycle, and I was the motorcyclist in the family and taking risks a place, he hit a lorry and was killed outright, and so my parents had a rough time because I was, they thought I was, I was injured they didn’t know how badly and so um, they had a rough time.
AM: They must have done, yeah. What did your parents do Ron?
RW: My father was, they had a grocery shop at the time, but before the war my father was a Master Grocer and he was made redundant by the person he worked for it as a, I was born. Let’s start off where I was born. I was born in Stoke-on-Trent and Longton was the name of the one of the six towns, not five towns, they forgot Fenton, and so, um my, that was my father, he was a Master Grocer and those days, when he was younger, to be a Master Grocer was quite a trade. And so um, he, my mother worked in the Potteries in Longton where most of the china was produced and Ainsley and all the top china work, and she was a Paintress, a freehand Paintress, and er, the, also my sister, one of my sisters was also a paint, a freehand Paintress on pottery.
AM: Where did you go to school?
RW: I went to school at Woodhouse, it was called Woodhouse and er, an Elementary School. I wasn’t very good [laughs] at maths but I enjoyed school, but when came the age of fourteen, in those days you had to pay to go to Grammar School. We couldn’t afford that, so at the age of fourteen I was kicked out and I left, and so um, I wandered around trying to get a job. If you think, this was in the thirties and a lot of unemployment and so I was told to go and get a job. So I got a job in a factory at Longton and it was a bit rough because I had to, as a warehouse boy, I was paid five shillings a week and one of my jobs was to scrub the floors, light a fire under a heater in the factory so they could bring their food and put it on the top to heat it up for lunch. If I was late getting all that done, I was in dead trouble [laughs], but scrubbing the floors, it was so the one floor from downstairs, the ovens, we had two big ovens, one gloss and one biscuit, that we called biscuit ovens, [coughs] and then after a while the former warehouse boy he er, he worked in the moulding, he became a moulder in the moulding shop, and he said, ‘have they got on to you yet about moving from here?’ and at that time, I was scrubbing the floors with a scrubbing brush, cold water, down the steps, all wood, wooden steps, cleaning the steps going down there [laughs]. And so and er, then the crunch came when they said ‘right, pack it in, you go downstairs and help unloading from the ovens’ and what happened, it was, they’d be firing and then they used to open up after the firing, take all the bricks away from the entrance and then for twelve hours it would be cooling off. And then they got me with the others, the people unloading right from the top of the ladders and they brought it down and it was still very, very hot ware and then they got me with the others, carrying ware like dinner plates, [laughs], carrying from the oven. Up the stairs, two flights of stairs, along the corridor, which I had to clean [laughs] and into the warehouse, where the women were and they unloaded from the baskets. And one day, I was going up with a basket full of cups and saucers, and I used to carry them on my shoulder, basket on my shoulder and one hand on my hip, going up the same flight of stairs and I caught a water pipe that was sticking out from the stairs, just caught the basket and I had a choice. Shall I go down with the basket [laughs] or try and retrieve what I could, but I decided to let the basket go [laughs] and save myself.
AM: Save yourself.
RW: And there the ugly manager, who was one of the bosses sons stood at the bottom, with his hands on his hips and he saw, he saw all the ware down there, all smashed, and he said, ‘I’ll stop that out of your wages’ [laughs].
AM: And did they?
RW: No, no, they’d have been forever [laughs].
AM: I was going to say wages probably wouldn’t have been enough, would they?
RW: No [laughs] so that was that.
AM: So that was your introduction to work.
RW: My introduction to work.
AM: What about the RAF, how did you come to join the RAF?
RW: The RAF yes - what happened there?
AM: What made you want to join?
RW: From there, I went, I had several other jobs you know, trying to make a living in the 1930’s, wasn’t easy, and I walked around for miles getting jobs for five shillings a week. And then I was always interested in the RAF and I wanted to fly and so I went to join up when the war started and er, they said, ‘no, no’. I said ‘I want to be a pilot’, because my uncle had been a pilot and been killed, and um, but I always, right from a tiny child, wanted to fly, I wanted to be a pilot, and so they said ‘no, we have enough pilots’, and um, my maths wouldn’t have been good enough anyway.
AM: This was right at the beginning of the war, 1939?
RW: Oh yes, the beginning of the war, when the war started.
AM: So you would be twenty two?
RW: Twenty two, that’s right and I had been married. I made the mistake of getting married, and er, anyway I had a daughter by that marriage and she is now ninety seven, eighty seven, sorry, and amazingly enough, she visits me, she stills lives near Stoke-on-Trent.
AM: Yes, excellent.
RW: And she comes now and then to visit. I, then, that’s right, oh they said, ‘if you want to go into aircrew, if you want to fly, we can offer you the um’, what shall I say, oh yes, ‘offer you the way you can get into aircrew and you can be the wireless operator, and then from wireless operator, you would be an air gunner. That’s the only thing we can offer you if you want to fly’, and so this is what happened. I joined up, I was called up and I offered my services then, and I was called up in January 1940 and I did my ITW in Morecambe, sent to Morecambe, and that was quite an experience, because we all walked down the street in Morecambe and they said, ‘you eight in that house, you eight in the next house’, and so this went on and as we were allocated this one house and the dear lady, who was the boss of the house, she was coming downstairs and we were just coming into the house, into the hall and she said, ‘I didn’t want you here, I’ve had enough with guests through the summer’, [laughs] and so that was our introduction to this place. She wouldn’t let us use the lounge, we had a little room at the back and then they had a kitchen, where we were allowed in, but not the lounge [laughs], and I wasn’t very popular with her because I didn’t like her attitude, and she said we had to be in at ten o’clock at night and so one of us used to stay around, say like if we went to a dance, you see, and so this is what we did and er, we made it enjoyable. I think the pranks we got up to such as I cut out a skull and crossbones and put it in the light that it shone, the light shone through the skull and crossbones [laughs]. They had um, a, a bit of a showcase in there and I saw er, a cup in there, I thought, the old man, poor devil, he was really under the thumb with the old girl, and I saw a cup in there, an inscribed cup and I thought, marvellous, he must have been a runner or something like that, and so when I examined the cup, fortunately the door wasn’t locked on the showcase, and I was disgusted to see that it was for mineral waters [laughs]. The cup was given for being very good with his mineral waters, and so what happened there was, I filled it with cold tea [laughs]and I wasn’t very popular at all.
AM: No.
RW: We were allowed to go upstairs to our rooms, she complained about, about the rifles, we all had our the Enfield rifles.
AM: Because you were square bashing?
RW: That’s right, yes, up and down the streets, and so um, she complained because we put our rifles in the umbrella stand in the hall, so she said, ‘no, they must go upstairs and under your beds’, so fair enough, this is what we did. But at ten o’clock in the mornings, we had to get up early, but at ten o’clock we had a tea break and so we all, the whistle went and we all had to fall outside in the street and er, the old boy had to make the tea, you see. By the time he’d made the tea for the eight of us, the whistle went again [laughs] so we had to form up outside again, and er, also the rifles had to keep going upstairs under the beds [laughs], so by the time we had done all these things, then we were going to be late on parade so that’s fair enough we managed it.
AM: Oh good.
RW: Yes, and then we were eventually, we were called by the CO, we had to go, we were called into the CO’s Office in Morecambe and – left, right, left ,right, halt - and er, we stood, the eight of us there, and we stood in front of the CO, and he had his bits of paper on his desk and he said ‘which one of you is Wade?’, so - left, right, left, right, halt - ‘Right, I’ve had complaints from your landlady’, and er, he read out all these different things that I had done in the house. And then I tried to explain, I said ‘I’m guilty of what she said, but it’s very difficult to go up and down the stairs in our boots and not make a noise’, that was one thing that she went on about, and the other thing was that she had to take up the stair carpet and so we were making more noise going up and down the stairs and this went on for a while, but the CO, ‘well, you won’t be here for very much longer’, which we weren’t fortunately, but next door they had a marvellous time, the eight in there, and they were allowed into the lounge and they had a piano, and the pianist there, I’m trying to think of his name - Ronnie, Ronnie, but he played at the BBC and er, his friend ran the Squadronaires.
AM: Right.
RW: I forget his name now, they were a nice couple of guys, and they also were able to fraternise with the two daughters [laughs] so they were unhappy to leave Morecambe [laughs]. Anyway we went from Morecambe up to um, to do the wireless course, wireless operators and er, so as I say I joined in January and when I went to Swanton Morley, no, not Swanton Morley, I’m trying to think of the name of the place we went to now.
AM: No, never mind
RW: It’ll come, and um, that’s right, and so I started a course there as a wireless operator and er, I did quite a few months there, doing Morse. Very difficult, very difficult and I was very happy to leave there [laughs].
AM: Did you pass?
RW: I passed, yes, we had to, and from there I was interviewed, now I was hoping they were putting me onto a pilots course [coughs] and I was interviewed by a group, and they were ex pilots from the First World War and um, as I sat there they were asking questions, ‘why did I want to fly?’ and I said ‘I’ve always wanted to fly since, I, since being very small’ and so er, I thought I am going to get my course as a pilot. But the one question one of these old boys threw at me was, ‘what would your feelings or attitude be, if you fired at a German and you saw his face disintegrate due to your bullets?’ I said ‘bloody good show, that’s what I joined for’ and so [laughs], and they all looked at me, you know, ‘who’s this crazy guy we’ve got here’ [laughs] and so that went on, and I thought, oh no, they’re going to put me on a pilots course. ‘No’, they said, ‘no, you will be an air gunner’. So I went down to South Wales and did an air gunner’s course there and this is just about the end of the Battle of Britain, and er, we were being bombed and shot up every day and night there, and er, and I was chased down the runway one day by a Junkers 88 and I managed [laughs], the bullets were going all around me and I got behind a sand bin and they came through the sand, the bullets from this 88 and then the hut, the hut we were in the, the normal RAF Huts.
AM: Nissen Huts.
RW: Yes, that’s right, all wood, and er, one day they bombed and destroyed the one each side of ours then we had to lie down flat as they strafed us, the bullet holes through the hut, through the wood.
AM: And this was at training camp in South Wales?
RW: In South Wales, yes, day and night. We weren’t allowed, as air crew, we weren’t allowed to sleep in the huts so we had to go out in the field and within tents and sleep outside, and there again, I was a bit crazy and I slept behind the beds. I put my mattress down there and then I thought ‘what’s it going to be?’ and my DRO’s, one of our men, was killed because he didn’t get in the tents, so I was turfed out of there and I had to go into a tent and er, that was the end of the Battle of Britain.
AM: Of the Battle of Britain.
RW: Yes.
AM: What was the training like Ron, the air gunner training?
RW: Oh it was intense, very intense and we had, had er, we had the um, Fairey Battles, Whitley’s 1’s and 3’s which were, they were pretty awful things this is why they had, and the Whitley 5’s we finished up on, they were also rubbish, [laughs] sorry to say. And um, as I said training had to be intense because we were the only ones carrying the war to the Germans, Bomber Command, and so from there other things happened you know, I was lucky to get away with we were, because they were bombing night and day.
AM: Because of the bombing?
RW: And so er, from there I went to OTU at Abingdon.
AM: Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
RW: That’s right, Abingdon, and er, that was very intense. We had very few hours off and because we were needed, and so from there a very good friend of mine, he was a pilot doing his training too and we were formed up into fives.
AM: So it was five, there were five of you in your group?
RW: Five in a group.
AM: This was for a Whitley?
RW: Whitley 5, yes, and er, Mac was his name, MacGregor Cheers and I’ve got it in my book, and he didn’t want to be a pilot, he wasn’t happy training as a pilot, poor Mac. There was me, I wanted to be a pilot and he would have rather, rather been an air gunner but it didn’t work out that way.
AM: How did you get together as a crew?
RW: Oh there we er, we had, later on when we got to the squadron, I moved on to 58 Squadron er, from training and um, this, our CO there, he said ‘I’ve been having too many complaints from you, from all air crew about the Whitley’, and we said ‘we’d rather be on the Wimpeys’, you know the Wimpey?
AM: I don’t know the Wimpey.
RW: Yes, the Wimpey was the one, I’m trying to think of it now, the Wimpey. We were on the Whitleys, I was flying on the Whitleys, this was the, this will probably tell you in the book there [looks through the book].
AM: I can’t find it, never mind it doesn’t matter.
RW: Anyway, we’ll find it yes. It’s my age [laughs].
AM: You’re allowed [laughs].
RW: And so we said we’d rather be on different aircraft, we didn’t like Whitleys, and he said, ‘anymore complaints and you’ll be off flying, you’ll be grounded’, he said ‘you fly in this and it’s a very good aircraft and you have to fly it’.
AM: Where was 58 Squadron based then, at that point?
RW: We were at Linton on Ouse.
AM: Okay.
RW: And that is where we had to form up and choose the crew, choose the fives, and er, it was very good, very good. And, oh yes, when I arrived there, our flight commander came through the hangar, I came from one door and he came through the other door, flight lieutenant, and um, he said ‘my god, we are glad to see you’, he said, ‘we had a rough night on Berlin last night and we had one aircraft left in our flight’. So he said, ‘come and meet the lads’, so off I went in the crew room and er, I met the lads and er, he said ‘right, this is Ron, Ron Wade, and er, he wants a cup of coffee. What do you want, tea or coffee? Who’s on making coffee?’, ‘Oh, I did it yesterday’, ‘now make him a cuppa, whatever he wants’, so I met the lads that way. But er, how we formed up in a crew we went into flying control and into the room there and all milling around meeting each other, formally or informally and this is where we formed up, and er, I was very lucky guy. I had a lucky war really because my original crew, I was taken off, we did two trips, two trips, I forget where it was now, but they said, ‘right that’s me softened up so you are being replaced by this Graham (I think his name was), Graham, because he ditched in the sea and he has been on leave for a couple of months, but he will be taking your place’, then last heard of, they came down in the sea, so this Graham had two trips, two operations both into the sea and the second time they weren’t recovered, so I was very lucky there, but I said to Amy, ‘how must his parents have felt?’
AM: Yes
RW: Because I think of him now, taking my place I had through good luck and he had the bad luck. My folks had the bad luck with my brother being killed and me being [unclear] after six months they thought I’d been killed.
AM: So just wheeling back a bit.
RW: Yes.
AM: So you didn’t, you were taken off that crew and then, presumably, put with another crew?
RW: Yes
AM: And did some more operations?
RW: Yes, with another crew, and then I was waiting to get on another crew and er, it was rather boring because I was sweeping, I was cleaning the snooker table and I got very good at snooker, and I was waiting and then I had several attempts to go on ops but something happened every time. And then on a Whitley 5, they um, they had a lot of what you call exacter trouble. If they snatched too hard then it would go fully fine and we would have to turn back and so er, this happened, different things happened and I didn’t get, because I had, I just, oh yes, what happened, from the trip before, it had been a bit hairy, got a few holes in it and er, I had a premonition from that, that as we were coming into land, I saw the runway and I thought I won’t see this again, I’m going to be killed. Strange feeling, it was a very, very, it, it and I knew I was going to be killed, strangely enough and I wanted to get this trip over, the next trip over, all my crew who were going to be my crew were on leave and I should have waited to come back but this is on January, January 8th I think, I think it’s in there, the book. Oh yes, my roommate, I won’t mention his name, but he came back from leave and he said that he was tired, he knew what the trip was going to be, it was a tough one, Konigsburg, and er, the CO said, ‘there are two fighter areas’, so he said, ‘keep North and be very wary because of the fighters’, and I knew that it was going to be tough because of so many things going on there. And so er, I volunteered for this, and he said that he was tired so the sawbones gave him a pill and told him to go to bed, so I volunteered, do you want to go to bed because always a thing come back, leave, he had a tough one, crew didn’t make it, we were losing so many in those days. And so off with his name, on with mine, just the [unclear] they wanted and er, I thought, I’m going to get it over with, and so off we went and this is when we were in Holland, North Holland, and then we had, they hit the port engine and we set on fire.
AM: Where? On the way to drop your bombs?
RW: Yes.
AM: On the way there.
RW: On the way there, yes, and er, we thought we were going to come down in the North Sea, we were going over the North Sea at the time, and January you didn’t live very long in the North Sea, and so we thought, that’s it, and all the rest of the crew were aged nineteen and I was the oldest.
AM: You were an old boy, twenty three?
RW: Twenty three, yes, and so um, the navigator said, ‘I don’t think we’ll make it, we are not going to make Holland’ and so the skipper said, ‘right I don’t know what you are going to do, but it’s no use coming down, we’ll have to go down into the sea and about five minutes that will be it because Whitley’s didn’t swim very well’ [laughs]. And so I was in the, I was flying as a rear gunner at the time, operating as a rear gunner, and by the way before that I had done a trip from um, the, when I was at OUT, I’d been, I was on a crew, going, dropping leaflets over Italy. We had a trip to Turin and it’s in the book there and dropping leaflets and we were attacked by two fighters and I told the pilot to do this um, manoeuvre to get away from them and um, then when we came up again, they fired at us and then I had the new Brownings, four of them, and they really did damage because I fired at them and then they turned and smoke poured from both of them and they retreated and went back. I didn’t know if they went down or not but they weren’t happy, and so that was an earlier.
AM: So that was Italy,
RW: And I was going to tell you.
AM: So now, now you’re on your way to Holland?
RW: That’s right on operations, I’d gone from there and I had a photograph taken by picture post in the turret, in the rear turret, showing off these new Brownings , and er, yes, so back to the squadron, on our way to Wilhelmshaven and then we were hit and I thought that’s it, this is my premonition coming because fire broke out and it was getting close, my job to get, we were given the order to bail out although if we wanted to over the sea, but by this time the navigator had informed us that we could make it, we just made it, North Holland, so we had been told to bail out. I had to get out of the rear turret somehow, we’d been losing height at quite a pace, so when I got out of the rear turret, because my parachute was in the fuselage, and so I had to open the rear doors of my turret, crawl out, then the order was to get my parachute and harness, ‘cos there’s no room in the turret for them, so my training was that I got these and then I had to get back into the turret with great difficultly, close the doors, turn ninety degrees and then go out backwards.
AM: Right
RW: But fortunately for me, as I was getting my parachute and harness and I put them on, the first wireless op came down the fuselage and he jettisoned the door, waved to me and the sparks and flames coming past the fuselage door, and he waved and jumped through this. Now I’m not getting back in that turret, I’ll never make it and so I was going after him and so I made for the door and, what happened next then, and, oh yes, I was about to jump and then out of the corner of my eye I saw the navigator coming down dragging his parachute and harness. He hadn’t put it on.
AM. Oh no.
RW: And so I couldn’t leave him, the plane was slipping like this – slipping, slipping, slipping - we lost a lot of altitude and we were getting pretty close, and so he couldn’t do anything because he was almost falling over every time the plane went. What had happened, the two pilots had gone from the door, from the front.
AM: So they’d bailed out?
RW: They’d bailed out, because he’d given orders for us to bail out by then, and as I say don’t forget that all the rest of the crew were nineteen, they very young. And so he went, that’s right, so I went back and zipped him up and then pushed him out, hoping that he’s there [laughs], then I went after him. Then I don’t remember anything else, apart from it had been snowing through the night, it was a very, very bad night and um, it was about eight o’clock and then I came down in this field and er, the place is called Anna Paulowna, a little hamlet, and the next morning um, a man going to work on the farm and er, he just saw me and I was covered in snow, and it had been deep snow through the night, and he found I was still ticking.
AM: So you were unconscious?
RW: I was unconscious because, what had happened, the Dutch people told me afterwards, that I had gone towards the plane, so we must have been pretty low when I bailed out. I was the last one out, and so that’s why I don’t remember anything, they said that they called to me to come away ‘cos I was making for the plane, so it wasn’t very far away, but as, what I remember when I bailed out, that I was hoping that the parachute would open [laughs].
AM: Quickly.
RW: Quickly, and the um, I wasn’t scared, strangely enough, I just wasn’t scared, and the only thing I could think of, I missed my bacon and eggs, because the only time we had bacon and eggs was when we came back from an operation, then I was calling swear words to the others ‘lucky bastards’ [laughs].
AM: No bacon and eggs.
RW: [Laughs] You’ll be having my bacon and eggs and that’s all I could think off [laughs]. I’d been looking forward to that, and then they called me to come away from the aircraft and so what had happened then, as the ammunition had been exploding, then I stopped one in the back of the head and so I’d been treated in hospital there and um -
AM: So the Dutch people found you?
RW: Yes
AM: And took you to hospital?
RW: No, oh no.
AM: Oh right.
RW: They called the Germans, because if they’d been found, they took me into the hamlet where they lived and then they called the Germans because if the Germans had come and found me first, we’d have all been shot. So the Germans took me away and then they took me into hospital because I’d stopped the bullet in the back of the head, the doctor said I was very fortunate because if it had been any deeper I would have been killed, which was my premonition. And if it had been over a little, I would have been blind and so what happened, I lost, I found out later, I lost the least of the senses that was smell and taste and I’ve never been able to smell and taste since. I can taste, I was tested for it when I came back home and I can taste sugar, salt, vinegar.
AM: So things that have a strong taste.
RW: That’s right yes, that’s all I can taste, so that was it.
AM: So you are in the hospital, you’ve been treated?
RW: Oh yes, I’d been treated.
AM: Then what happened?
RW: What had happened, I had an enema, do they call it? It was a hell of a mess [laughs] and then I was in this ward and er, I was, I remember being in this bed and looking up and there’s a fellow waving to me across the ward, and I thought, ‘who the hells that. I don’t know him’, and this went on for a whole day when he was waving and that was the navigator.
AM: Right
RW: And I didn’t recognise him and this went on and after a while it came, my memory came back again.
AM: So that’s two of you in the hospital?
RW: That was in the hospital. Oh yes and um, when I got talking to the navigator again, he said, ‘careful’, because I was well known for my dirty jokes at times [laughs], anyway different thing he said, ‘be very careful what you say because that one there, is a Nazi’. The only time they listened to the radio was when Hitler was making a speech so he said, ‘very, very careful what you say’. He used to go to the cupboard there, get this radio out, switch it on when Hitler finished speaking, disconnect, back in there, so he said, ‘be very careful’ [laughs], and from there I went in an ambulance, that’s right. They took me to an old camp, the French, French and Belgians in there and um, I’d asked one Frenchman there, he spoke English, if he could get me some information because we were right next to an airfield and they were working on the airfield, and I said, ‘can you get me an old coat to wear and er, then I can make my way with you to this airfield’. Somehow I was going to, although I was a wireless op, I knew the controls and I was going to try and steal a plane and get back home.
AM: This is in the first camp after the hospital?
RW: In the first camp, yes, and er, it was a rough old camp. I remember the blanket I had was 1917, and er, it was rough, and er, and I’ll never forget having, oh yes, they said, ‘can’t you taste that?’ I said, ‘why it’s all right’. I was eating this stuff, sauerkraut [laughs], rough sauerkraut, they were dished up with, I said, ‘no’ [laughs]. Anyway just after that, next day, two great big Nazi’s came in, ‘wait’, so this Frenchman must have, must have told them what I was up to because they took me and after seeing films of people being taken for a ride, I went in this Opel I think, I think the car was an Opel, it was an Opel, and the one as big as Gary. I had one each side of me, I was down middle of them, and off we went and er, I was taken down to the station, down near the station, into the large, like a town hall - left, right, left, right - up in front [laughs], not so nicer man, this CO, and he said, ‘right, this and that’ [unclear] it was a big desk, I’ll never forget and he said, ‘this man here has had his orders, and he is going to take you on the train to Frankfurt and he’s been warned and told that if you try to escape, or do anything, he will shoot you dead’.
AM: He spoke to you in English?
RW: Oh yes, oh yes in English, and so um, I was, people were trying to attack me on the way up, up to this town hall.
AM: Civilians?
RW: And one man came with a knife and the guard had to fend him off and others because they’d had an air raid there, you see, and so off I went, and went up to this town hall and that’s when he had his orders, anyway I was taken back down to the railway station.
AM: What town was this Ron?
RW: This was in Cologne.
AM: You were in Cologne by then.
RW: Yes, and I was driven right the way down there, and so I thought, oh yes. When I was in the waiting room and other er, Germans were in there, you see, drinking coffee, suppose that’s coffee and things like that, nothing was offered to me [laughs] and so then I said oh, ‘stand up’, and the door opened, as this door opened a major (unclear) he came in.
AM: An English, a German?
RW: No a German, a German major, he came in and they all gave the Nazi salute, ‘Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler’, yes, I came out I said, ‘Heil Churchill’, oh, he was just turning to go and I said this, and he got his gun out his Mauser, his Mauser or whatever it was, and I thought, well you’ve done it this time [laughs], and then he said ‘English schweinhund’ (unclear) off he went. I got away with that one [laughs], especially as I had just had this
AM: The warning?
RW: Warning yes, and um, and that was that and so when the train came, we went up to Frankfurt and um, he was watching me like a hawk.
AM: Were you handcuffed to him or anything?
RW: No, no.
AM: There was nowhere to run to though is there?
RW: No, but all the way I was wondering how I was going to belt him and looking at the window, how strong is it because I was going to smash it with his rifle, you see.
AM: Right.
RW: And it was quite a journey, beautiful trip from Cologne, up to Frankfurt but that’s in my mind all the time, how am I going to get out of here and get rid of him [laughs], and then the chance didn’t come, didn’t come. His eyes were on me every step of the way, he was scared he would have been shot if I had escaped, and so we went to my first real prison camp that was up to the um, what they called, it wasn’t a Stalag, before the Stalag.
AM: Was it a Dulag, Ron?
RW: A Dulag, and once again this officer, German officer came in and I was in the cell there, and one very high window, and er, oh he said, ‘I speak English very well, I was educated in Oxford’, and er, he said, ‘you will find we will treat you very well now, but er, a few things to add’, and er, he said, ‘this form here’, he’d got a form with a red cross on the top, ‘so all you need do is answer a few questions, so there you are’, and he said, ‘first of all, do you smoke?’, and I smoked in those days, so he got a packet of Capstans and a box of Swans.
AM: Vesta.
RW: Vesta matches, put them on the top there and there I was, smoking away, ‘right then, first things, name, rank, number’, that’s all right, name, rank, and number, and so put those in, he said, ’good, then we will let your parents know or what have you, that you are alive and well and injured’, and so um, that’s all right. ‘Now these other things’, and I looked on this form, ‘what squadron, your CO, what was his name, and the airfield you took off from, what was the aircraft you were flying, note it down here’. ‘There we are and that’s all I can give you, name, rank and number’. He said, ‘surely you want your people to know, you want your parents to know you’re alive?’, ‘yes course I do and that’s what you have to do because that’s all I’m giving you, my name, rank and number’. Then he became a German, and he went red and he did a lot of words came out that weren’t English and he said, ‘then you’ll stay here until you do fill that in’, and [laughs], and he grabbed the matches and cigarettes and put them in his pocket, and so I was fortunate in as much as I had to be taken up to the hospital to get my bullet hole seen to [laughs] and so I got away with that. Next cell he, whoever it was, had had a rough time, I heard him groaning and yelling and I think they beat him up because he wouldn’t answer and I refused too. The next morning they had taken my uniform away through the night, they’d taken it, I had to strip it off and they took it all away. The next morning, I saw they knew where the map was in the shoulder, then they’d taken the button off.
AM: So all the stuff that was to help you to escape?
RW: That’s right, they knew where it was, they’d taken it and the needle, the compass needle had gone out of the button [laughs] so then you weren’t full of tricks, and so that was Dulag, and from there, I was taken, I went to, yes, Stalag Luft 1, yes, I was taken there next.
AM: Were you still being taken on your own or were you with other prisoners by then?
RW: No I went in, the other prisoners I met there in Dulag and um, you know it was great to meet them and speak English, it was great and they’d give tips and that. I went to Stalag Luft 1 and um, then we stood at the gate welcoming the boys coming in and it was a sandy soil and we got them to throw the lighters and things in there, because the guards were trying to keep us back, you see, and as we went towards the gate, we did this at every camp we went to, throw your things in, throw them in, throw them in, because they had been stripped of things mostly and so what they did, pick them up and give them back to him and then, and then when we couldn’t get down to things, we just trod them in.
AM: Trod them into the ground?
RW: Into the ground as they forced us back, because them bleeders were very sharp [laughs].
AM: So you could go back for them later?
RW: Yes that’s it, and especially went from Stalag Luft 1 and then did about eighteen months there and then we were moved to Stalag Luft 3 and er -
AM: So what year are we now, 41 probably?
RW: My god, yes.
AM: So you were shot down early 41.
RW: January 41 yes.
AM: And then you were in hospital and eighteen months.
RW: I wasn’t in the hospital for eighteen months.
AM: No, no, the hospital and then you were in Stalag Luft 1 for eighteen months.
RW: That’s right.
AM: So we are now?
RW: Now in Stalag Luft 3.
AM: Probably early 43?
RW: About 43.
AM: By this time.
RW: And we did, and went to this new camp, er, we hadn’t heard of before.
AM: How did they move you, on trains?
RW: Yes, and er, yes, on cattle trucks, they weren’t very clean. There’s wire both sides of the entrance of the cattle truck and we were put in twenty each side, standing up, you couldn’t sit down, we were packed in. When you think half a cattle truck, and so this is how we moved, sometimes we had better accommodation but this new camp we went to was Stalag Luft 3, everything is new there, all the huts were new and so we started a different life.
AM: Were you the first intake into Stalag Luft 3?
RW: We were yes, from Stalag Luft 1 into Stalag Luft 3, and then, after that, they started to bring the RAF prisoners from other camps into Stalag Luft 3, and er, they said, ‘you’ll never escape from here, we’ve learnt too many lessons’, but we did, the lot, a lot of people said they tried, escaped from there and they probably tried but they didn’t succeed and it was difficult, and then all the different things, books had been written by prisoners [laughs] and things, no, it was very difficult. I tried once and out of the corner of our hut, I got down and one man from Cheltenham said, ‘you’ll get us all shot, you know’ because I dug through the floor and dug down and I could see where workmen had been, electricians or something yes, been working outside and there was a trench near the camp, near the um, wire and so I got down there and then got out there in the early hours of the morning. It was dark and er, I thought I can get under the wire, get under there, escape, fair enough, so I tried this and then I heard a guard approaching with his dog. Dogs, they were more like wolves, and he had got this one and I heard him coming along and so I got out of there, swiftly went up the road, oh yes, and I had an experience, I ran between two huts and I didn’t see wire stretching from one hut to the other and I ran into it, and it got me in the mouth, took me off my feet and I was strung up and the wire went into my mouth and forced, forced my teeth out. I lost seven teeth, and I landed on my back and then there was the guard and the dog, and he was afraid of that dog as I was [laughs], they weren’t trained to be friendly and so I was put into the cooler from there.
AM: What was that like?
RW: Rough. I had water to drink, bread, well when they say bread, black bread, just bread and er, I was in there for over a week.
AM: On your own?
RW: Oh yes, yes, oh yes.
AM: And no teeth.
RW: No teeth, they’d come out, I have no teeth now. I tell people that um, if I’ll say I had my teeth out, all paid for [laughs]. But um, all the time we were trying to, if we had any ideas about escaping, we had they had to go to this Massey who was the -
AM: What was the name sorry, Ron?
RW: Massey, Group Captain Massey, and you had to give your ideas to him for the escape committee, but something we noticed when we first went into Stalag Luft 3, that one part where the fence was, they hadn’t built any German huts or anything there, it hadn’t been finished. And so John Shaw, my good friend, he noticed this first and he said, ‘we’re gonna go try that’, he said, ‘we go first, the four of us’, I forget the other one and he said, ‘I go first because I noticed it first’. I said, ‘okay, then I’ll go, you get away now, I’ll go follow on’.
AM: How were you going to get out, were you going to tunnel under?
RW: Tunnel under there because they hadn’t built anything that side, so this is what we are going to do, and so you’ve got to appreciate, so John decided to go. What happened, bang, bang, and I have a photograph I’ll show you, with John, and shown in his coffin, he was shot right through the heart, so if people thought that these guards were asleep in the huts, no, and they were crack shots, they got him right through the heart, poor John.
AM: So the other three of you didn’t go?
RW: No, we’d been discovered that was it.
AM: Did you know the people who were involved in the great escape?
RW: No.
AM: No.
RW: No, they were mainly officers. You see what happened, we started off these tunnels under the cooking, took that away and then got all that (unclear) and then dug down to do the tunnels, but then again, we said this would happen, the officers took over, we started it as sergeants and then they said, ‘no, we are going to take over’, and then we were moved eventually to Heydekrug.
AM: To?
RW: Heydekrug.
AM: Which is?
RW: Heydekrug.
AM: Which is another camp?
RW: Which is another camp, yes, so we’d done a lot of work. I was, I helped out with moving the earth wearing these things there, but the soil, the soil we brought up from below, it was a different colour, so we had to take this earth from down below, walk around, walk around and distribute it and dig it in as we were moving, because they were watching us all the time.
AM: These are from the tunnels you dug?
RW: That’s right, yes [laughs], and we were getting rid of the earth, tons of earth, you know. It’s boring.
AM: Well yes, what else did you do in camp?
RW: Oh all kinds of things, apart from trying to escape [laughs], and er, we wrote shows. We did this, you see, and Les Knowle became a very good friend of mine and he was a pianist before the war, before he joined up and he, a professional pianist, was very good too.
AM: Was he the one next door to you in Morecambe or a different pianist?
RW: No, no, it was a different one.
AM: A different one.
RW: No, Les Knowle, he was a different one. This one I’m trying to think of his name, Ron, I forget now, but he went on to the BBC and worked from there and he was on the RAF Band.
AM: Yes.
RW: And then he became well known.
[Interruption]
AM: I’m just going to pause for a moment.
RW: Have you anywhere else.
AM: No, no, so we’ve got shows, what about, did you do any education they had?
RW: Oh yes, yes, and um, I’ve a pencil, and I was studying maths actually and I was going to do a course on maths and it was difficult because it was very, very cold, very cold, up in Lithuania, this was and getting close to Russia and so I was studying and then trying to write out holding the pencil.
AM: So literally holding it with whole of your hand?
RW: That’s right.
AM: Trying to write.
RW: Trying to write, it wasn’t easy, but it was quite good and then I studied, I was studying, was architect because I had been in the building trade, you see. I was taken away from the factory when I was fourteen.
AM: When you were fourteen yes.
RW: By my brother-in-law, who was, um, he’d come to the factory, fortunately before they absolutely killed me [laughs], and he said, ‘you, out’ and he took me away and made me an apprenticeship joiner.
AM: So you were a joiner. Going back to the camp in Lithuania.
RW: Oh Yes.
AM: So what happened then as, what did you know about what was happening in the war?
RW: We had clever people as sergeants, not all officers then. We had people from all walks of life as sergeants.
AM: As sergeants yes.
RW: And er, we had entertainers from the stage, and I wrote um, with Les Knowle, he wrote the music and I wrote the words for shows on the stage and I’ll show you a picture of him, but I don’t know if you have ever heard of Roy Dotrice?
AM: Yes
RW: You have? Well Roy, I’ll show you a picture.
AM: His daughter was an actress, Michelle.
RW: That’s right, he had two daughters, one lives in the States, Michelle, I was watching her the other night.
AM: And was he in the prison camp with you?
RW: Yes, yes, and then I never thought that he would, because he was very young, he was born in Jersey and he changed his age. He was very much younger than me then and he came over to the mainland and joined the RAF.
AM: What happened at the end of the war, how did you find out that the war was ending and what happened?
RW: Oh yes, now then, we had our radios that were built out of things, things we’d stolen from the Germans. I remember walking behind one man carrying, carrying a box and stealing something out of there and when they, they used to um, we used to be woken up in the early hours of the morning by the Nazis. They used to come in and get us out of bed, tear the place apart, and never put it back again, and all things taken out and then we would be walking around the compound from the early morning to late at night while these Nazis were searching and they, yes, and they used to go away with things. Oh yes, we used to steal their hats and their gloves and they weren’t very happy [laughs], and also if anyone escaped, they used to have what we called a sheep count, and they’d form up the barriers so we used to have to go through, and they’d check and check the numbers, you see, and we used to go through and then we used to go back round, and come in again, in the end they had more prisoners than they wanted [laughs], and that was one gag we got up to, and then some had contact at home. You’ve possibly seen it in the letters they used a code in a letter which the Germans couldn’t spot.
AM: To say where they were?
RW: That’s right, all kinds of things.
AM: So how did you find out that the war was coming to an end? From the radios?
RW: From the radios we had, yes. We had certain guys who were very clever, clever electricians among us, all kinds of things they used to do, where if a German came in the front about or something, a buzzer would ring at the far end telling whoever was doing something, escape committee at the other end.
AM: To stop them?
RW: Then bury the stuff again.
AM: Gosh.
RW: And then all things like that and um, the, yes, parts for the radios be stolen from the Germans [laughs] and they would build a main radio that one clever man used to operate. I forget the names now and um, they used to come around the huts and give us the, the news we used to get daily news, we knew exactly what was happening back home, and e,r when the invasion came, the first time, the Germans were gloating when they said, ‘that was your invasion’, when so many Canadians were killed, remember, my minds going.
AM: On the beaches at, yes.
RW: Yes, where so many were killed, and the Germans thought that was our invasion. They said, ‘you’ve had your invasion, you’ll be here’, I was told that I would be there for the rest of my life, they used to enjoy telling us this, that we would be there and we will be rebuilding Germany.
AM: Because they would win.
RW: That’s right.
AM: Sadly for them but thankfully for us.
RW: Oh, thankfully for us.
AM: They didn’t.
RW: But they loved telling us that we would be there forever.
AM: When it did all end? Were you involved in the long march?
RW: Oh yes.
AM: You were.
RW: That was the worst part of it.
AM: Gary’s making faces.
Gary: I’ll leave it.
RW: Okay. That was a tough one, the long march.
AM: How long were you on the march for, Ron?
RW: I can’t think now.
AM: Months, it was months, wasn’t it?
RW: Months, months, bad weather, bad weather, so many died, and then we were, we had no food and they’d been trying to get through to us and then this one Red Cross wagon appeared and he said, ‘this is the third load I’ve had. I’ve been shot at, and destroyed, then I have gone back and got another load’, and finally, well you know the story.
AM: Sadly.
RW: And some sights there, on that march, and one man, he was signalling with his coat in the meadow, this meadow where we were, shot up by the fighters and I saw him just cut in the air.
AM: Shot at by German fighters?
RW: No, by our fighters.
AM: By our fighters.
RW: Yes, they thought we were Germans.
AM: Right.
RW: And he was just cut in two, Roger. Next time I saw him, just his legs standing there, top half gone and they killed forty, fifty of us there, it was a rough one. Oh, and we were in twos, they delivered these Red Cross parcels, we shared one between two, and when we were shot at by Typhoons by the way, based locally and all the way through, we’d been shot at by Spitfires, and what have you, Hurricanes, they thought we were Germans. And on one occasion, we were walking, they made us walk at night because, so through the day, we had to sleep in barns with their animals, and the Germans, the German people used to give things to the guards but nothing to us, not like this country where there were prisoners, their prisoners there given food but we never got anything from the Germans. If we wanted a drink, we had to wait till we got to rivers, lakes, or something or get washed.
AM: So how did you get rescued in the end?
RW: Oh that is another story. The 10th Hussars. We were hearing reports our, our troops across the Rhine and how close they were getting and we were being marched away, we were going to be hostages and Hitler would have got rid of us eventually, we’d have been shot or what have you. We were heading for Norway somewhere and they were taking us as we were going to be hostages, but so many things happened we were shut up, barns were set on fire, men were there.
AM: With men in them?
RW: Yes.
AM: Yes. But the 10th Hussars were?
RW: The 10th Hussars caught up with us and oh, they were marvellous, they treated us like royalty. They set up trestles in this village in Ratzeburg in Lubeck, Ratzeburg, and er, this little village and it was in March, was it May?
AM: So May of 45?
RW: We went through Luneburg, where they signed the Armistice, and we went through there and then we came back through there when the signing had been done, and it was marvellous, so they set up tables there with food on, couldn’t eat it.
AM: I was going to say, could you eat it?
RW: No, no. One man died because he tried, he tried to eat, couldn’t. Then we came back from Lowenberg on Lancasters and I’ll never forget seeing white girls, posh ladies all made up, I thought they, I thought they were on the stage somewhere, heavy lipstick.
AM: Once you got back you mean?
RW: And this is when we, no, when the 10th Hussars. Oh yes, that’s another one, we had the, this major, English major. I said, ‘can I help?’ because I had had stomach trouble and couldn’t eat anything, so I felt this marvellous feeling.
AM: Freedom.
RW: Freedom, marvellous after four and a half years, freedom. And I’d stuck my neck out several times, one man, I bent down to pick up food or something, I don’t know what it was, peas somebody dropped on the road, and this guard, he came behind me, kicked me up the backside and I went over and I got up and turned round to gonna belt him, and the look on his face, and his Tommy gun was there waiting for it, just what he wanted. All they wanted, an excuse.
AM: To kill you?
RW: Yes and er -
AM: When you saw the Lancaster?
RW: Oh yes.
AM: You’d been in Whitleys, what did you think of the Lancaster?
RW: We saw the side of it really [laughs].
AM: Four engines.
RW: Four engines, yes, marvellous.
AM: So they brought you home in the Lanc.
RW: Yes, they landed at, forget now where it was, down South somewhere, and as we landed they opened the door and a lovely young WAAF came, and I had my box with some belongings in. This girl got it and I grabbed it back from her she said, ‘it’s all right you are home now’ [laughs] and er, she led me off and as I was talking to her, going up to the hangar, I said, ‘this is a holiday’, this is VE Day, you see. I said, ‘you’re on holiday, what are you doing here?’ She said ‘oh we volunteered, we were the lucky ones’. I couldn’t understand it ‘cos we were filthy and the first this they did - whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
AM: Shower?
RW: Not a shower.
AM: Water?
RW: No - debugged.
AM: Oh right, oh sorry, they sprayed you?
RW: That’s right, yes, before anybody could touch us [laughs] and then they had all this food out, I couldn’t eat anything, not a thing, and then from there we came up on the train to where we went, see that photograph, and we came up there, all there, all the records were up there. That was marvellous. Then one day we were taken over, over there, records and what have you, but I went home and that was a rough time because I found my wife, I had my daughter, was that much older, she was only two and a half when I went away, she was seven she didn’t know me, didn’t know me, didn’t want to know me. And er, then my wife had met me at the station, although I didn’t want to see her because I’d had reports and she wrote to me and didn’t want to know me ‘cos she’d met an American and she wanted to get married to him. And so um, that was my homecoming, didn’t want to know me. I‘d had a letter from her saying she wanted a divorce, which I wanted too after that, and then my folks had been trying to meet the train to tell me what she had been up to, what she’d become, well you can understand it, it had been a long time.
AM: Yes.
RW: But the way she did it, she dyed her hair, it was red, and er, I’d asked a friend in camp who came from Stoke, from near where I was, where I lived, if he could find out why, what’s happening because she didn’t write to me. I’d only one letter that I had and she wanted more money, it’s all she was interested in.
AM: So your pay while you were a prisoner of war goes to your wife, doesn’t it?
RW: That’s right, it went to her and then she wanted more money, and so I came back and went up and met my wife, as I say, I didn’t know anything what she had been doing, no one had told me and this friend in camp, I’d asked him to find out what was happening, why I hadn’t had any letters from my, my wife and er, he put it off all the while. I said, ‘have you heard from your wife?’, ‘no’. I didn’t know anything about it.
AM: He wouldn’t tell you?
RW: No, and so when I got back, it was my wife who knew, my wife. He said to me, he said, ‘Ron, I couldn’t tell you what I found out about her’.
AM: No.
RW: Couldn’t tell you. So I met her and she was all over me and I met all her sisters and her brothers because it’s difficult, very difficult because my folks had been trying to meet me off the train but she’s the one who had been told.
AM: She’s the one who’s entitled to know.
RW: That’s right, and she’d got the time of the train, she met me, all the other trains had been coming in my side had been.
AM: They all missed you?
RW: They’d all missed me, everyone.
AM: Oh dear.
RW: My homecoming and I felt like going back.
AM: You married again though. Amy.
RW: Yes.
AM: I’ve met Amy and she is lovely for the record.
RW: Yes, oh the best thing that ever happened to me.
AM: Wonderful. I’m going to switch off now, Ron.
RW: Yes 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/.
Title
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Interview with Ron Wade
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-26
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AWadeR150726, PWadeR1503
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:44:54 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
Description
An account of the resource
Ron was born in Stoke-on-Trent. He left school at fourteen and tells of his experiences working in a pottery factory doing odd jobs until he was called up. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1939 at the age of twenty-two. Ron trained as an air gunner at RAF Morecambe after initially wanting to be selected for pilot training. He completed his air gunner training in South Wales at the end of the Battle of Britain - he tells of being strafed by a Junkers 88 and the damage that was inflicted to the Nissen huts. Ron flew the Whitley, which he did not enjoy. He then went to an Operational Training Unit at RAF Abingdon before moving to 58 Squadron based at RAF Linton on Ouse. Ron tells of being forced to bale out in 1941 after his Whitley was attacked by two German fighters over the the Netherlands. He did not remember that much since ammunition was exploding and a bullet hit him in the back of the head, leaving him with memory, taste and smell impairment. Ron also tells of his first interrogation by a German officer and how his humour nearly causing trouble at the at Cologne railway station. He was transferred to Stalag Luft I and then to Stalag Luft III. Ron tried a few times to escape but was discovered every time - he also details the death of his close friend during one attempt. Ron was eventually transferred to Stalag Luft VI (Heydekrug, Lithuania) which was his last camp before the end of the war. However, with the end looming, Ron was then forced to go on the long march. He then tells of some of his memories of the event, including being strafed by British fighters. Ron was freed when the British Army 10th Hussars caught up with the group near Lubeck, and he tells the story of his homecoming in May 1945.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Lancashire
Netherlands
Poland
Germany
Lithuania
Poland--Żagań
Germany--Barth
Lithuania--Šilutė
Wales
Germany--Oberursel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1945-05
58 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
animal
bale out
bombing
crewing up
Dulag Luft
escaping
Ju 88
Nissen hut
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Abingdon
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Morecambe
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 6
strafing
the long march
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/998/9671/PWardEM16010044.1.jpg
8d5d763bd011aead70cd64efc9260660
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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Ward, Mary. Album
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-14
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
Ward, EM
Description
An account of the resource
42 items. The album concerns the work of 517 Squadron Meteorological Flight at RAF Shawbury, RAF Chivenor and RAF Brawdy. It contains photographs of aircraft and staff at work and on leave.
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
Flying Officer Ron Ward
Description
An account of the resource
Formal photograph of 175740 Flying Officer Ron Ward, in uniform, with meteorological observer's half wing. Captioned 'Ron Ward', 'RAF Service August 1944 - 1946', 'Photo 1946, MORLEY'.
Page has hand written log of his flights at Empire Air navigation School in 1946, flying in Lancaster, Lancastrian 'Aries' and Halifax. Also a list of the RAF stations he was stationed at from 1939 to 1946.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PWardEM16010044
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
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.
Format
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One b/w photograph on an album page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Text
Text. Personal research
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Devon
England--Lincolnshire
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Pembrokeshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
aircrew
ground personnel
Halifax
Lancaster
Lancastrian
meteorological officer
RAF Brawdy
RAF Chivenor
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Pocklington
RAF Shawbury
RAF Waddington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/671/10077/AAn01137-170710.1.mp3
5891ad598147a2d8741af4ff73476bab
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
An01137
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with an anonymous member of Bomber Command ground personnel. He served as an electrician at RAF Topcliffe and RAF Dishforth.
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
2017-07-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
An01137
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
SC: So, if I do the introduction. I’m with Mr [redacted] sorry [redacted] I’ve got that — I’ve got that wrong right from the beginning.
Other: That’s a good start that is.
SC: I do apologise. That’s —
Other: Don’t worry.
SC: It was, it was wrong on the email that I got. But —
Anon: Oh.
SC: So we’ve corrected that. I’m here at your home at [redacted] and it is the 10th of July, I think today at 10am. And you were a of member of, you were a ground crew electrician.
Anon: Yes.
SC: I believe. So, if you want to start with your earliest memories of contact.
Anon: Well, my first contact with Bomber Command was when I was in the Air Training Corps at Scarborough. I, I was 313 Squadron. I was in that from the beginning of it and, in 1941, I think. And we went on a week’s camp to Driffield. RAF Driffield. And there were two squadrons there. If I remember rightly there was Blenheims, Bristol Blenheims and Handley Page Hampdens. And they, whilst we were there in May it was the first thousand bomber raid. I think it was on Cologne. And that was the first one that Harris put out as more or less I would have said a PR —
SC: Yeah.
Anon: Exercise. But as far as I know they all came back. And whilst we were there also, that was with Bomber Command. But also it was the first time I went in the air. That was in an Airspeed Oxford. A trainer.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And that was interesting from the point of view we flew over Scarborough which was my home town. And the pilot quickly came back from the sea because there was a convoy there. He said to us after, he said, ‘I came back inland quickly because,’ he said, ‘They start shooting at anything these days.’ [laughs] So, and that was the first introduction into the Air Force proper. And then at seventeen and a half I tried to get into the Fleet Air Arm as a pilot but I’m only five foot two now. I don’t think I was much less than that then. The first thing they do is sit you on the floor with your back to the wall and there’s a white line. If your feet don’t reach that white line then my chances of being a pilot were [pause] Anyway, they offered me to come in as a telegraphist air gunner or an observer. No. They said, ‘What are you going to do?’ This is a lieutenant commander. He played up with me because I was trying to shuffle [laughs] to get my feet to reach the white line. But yeah, I said, ‘Oh. I’ll try the Air Force.’ And I went to Hull, to the centre there. Recruiting Centre. And a flight sergeant interviewed me. He says, ‘Well, you’ll never make pilot. You’re far too small.’ He says, ‘But I see you’re an apprentice electrician.’ He says, ‘Well, you’re in a reserved occupation.’ I said, ‘Yes. But I’ve got permission to break my apprenticeship and join up as long as it’s aircrew or submarines.’ He says, ‘Well,’ he says, ‘Come in as aircrew. But you’re an apprentice electrician,’ he says, ‘Why don’t you come in as an electrician and then re-muster when you’re tall enough and become a pilot.’
SC: Yeah.
Anon: So, I didn’t take any talking into it. That’s what happened. Well, I never was tall enough. I’m still only five foot two [laughs] Anyway, the outcome was that I went to Hull and then got a railway ticket from there down to Cardington on my eighteenth birthday actually. Handy because they wouldn’t let me in before then. And I got my King’s Shilling I think it was then and fitted out. Kitted out. And then went to Blackpool for six weeks square bashing and, well you learned to use a rifle and throw a grenade and that sort of thing.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And didn’t have to be taught drill although I had to do it. And get your hair cut several times.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But went from, after six weeks there went to RAF Henlow which was in two halves as an operational station there and a training centre for electricians. And I was there for four and a half months and then you get a weeks’ leave. But before you go on leave you’re given a form to fill in. ‘If,’ that’s a big word, ‘If you had the choice where would you wish to serve?’ So I put three months at RAF Driffield then anywhere overseas. Well [laughs] I never got out of Yorkshire. I went to RAF Topcliffe which was used by the Royal Canadian Air Force. 424 Squadron. And that was on Wellingtons which, rather amusing in a way because at the training school at Henlow the sergeant who took us for bomb gear, he says, ‘Well, I’m supposed to have three days on Wellingtons but,’ he says, ‘You’ll never see one.’ So, he says, ‘All I’ll tell you is it’s an unusual connection. Unusual things for connecting to the bomb release.’ So there was five, a five pin plug. He says, ‘And I’ll tell you something now so that you’ll never forget the rotation. The order of connecting it,’ he says. From the lip, the little pin thing that sticks up. ‘Going clockwise,’ he says, ‘It’s red, yellow, blue, green, white or white green. But,’ he says, ‘I’ll tell you how you’ll never forget it’, he says, ‘Now, I’ve have to modify this because we’ve got WRNS coming err WAAFs coming through,’ he says, ‘But it’s — Rub Your Belly With Grease.’ [laughs] You can still, even now, seventy, well seventy odd years isn’t it? More than that now. You just don’t forget.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But that was just amusing in a way.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: Because you’d got to Wellingtons and that was all there was for 424 Squadron and you’d never been taught anything about them so you’re there with [laughs] they’ve given you a manual and you’re having to read from it —
SC: Yeah.
Anon: As you worked. But they moved then [pause] well, we went to Linton on Ouse and then back again to [pause] Linton on Ouse back to —
SC: You’ve got Skipton is the next one.
Anon: No.
SC: Oh sorry. Back. Yeah.
Anon: I’ve got to read from this thing. ATC, Blackpool, Henlow, Topcliffe, Linton Ouse. It was Skipton on Swale but that didn’t come in that order.
SC: Right.
Anon: My memories. Although I’ve got all the places I was stationed at I haven’t got them in the right order.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: Went back, and still on Wellingtons. And then 424 were going to be posted to North Africa and this was in ’43. And we went, we were kitted out with a whole new squadron of Wellingtons in tropical paintwork.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: Very light sandy colour. And we worked for, well I worked for thirty two hours without any break.
SC: Gosh.
Anon: Except for meals. Bringing the aircraft which were brand new up to scratch and that was when the first Gee was put in. That was the electronic stuff. Although we, the electricians only put the supply there.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But the machine itself, the screen was covered up in a shroud so as we’d no idea what it was we were putting in the supply there for.
SC: Right. Yeah.
Anon: For — but anyway the outcome was that we were — got all those done. Then they sent us to — it was Dishforth where that was done.
SC: Right.
Anon: And then they sent us up to Catterick airfield where they kitted us out for Africa. We got all the gear and gave us the injections. Then decided that the English ground crew weren’t going.
SC: Ah.
Anon: So [laughs] then, I think I went to Skipton on Swale I think it was. And it was Halifaxes. No. Tholthorpe.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: Halifaxes. 425 Squadron. French Canadians. And it, they were Halifaxes and they weren’t very — how can I put it? They weren’t electrically well fit out.
SC: Right.
Anon: It struck me afterwards that the electrical stuff was an afterthought. See —
SC: Gosh.
Anon: The difference between that and the Lancasters that come on later was where you’ve got the main panel all the conduits coming in, in the Halifax there was one screw connection in front of another one. So if you wanted the back one you had to undo the front one to get to it. Umpteen wires in these air conduits. Plastic things. But in the Lancaster they were staggered so that you could do the one you wanted.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: A nightmare as an electrician on the Halifaxes. A pleasure on Lancasters.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But then, oh I finished up in that squadron, 425 maintaining the link flight simulator thing. Nothing like the simulators of today but they actually got in it. A little laid out thing like an aircraft cockpit. And it was operated by pneumatics and electric and on the port side of the [pause] Just down the side there was a lever you could operate to regulate the turbulence.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And you could nearly make yourself sick. [laughs]
SC: Gosh.
Anon: I know. But you used to have fun with that. It wasn’t used much by the pilots funnily enough. That was the French Canadians. So it was a sort of a lazy time that. A bit on the boring side. But posted then back to Linton on Ouse where I think it was 426 Squadron then and they were Lancasters and they were lovely aircraft to work on. Seven miles of wiring I believe and used to, for the DI, Daily Inspections there used to be two electricians and one went around the outside while the other one was inside operating the switches to put the various things on.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: The landing lights. The wing lights and the tail lights that you going around seeing if they work. And then the chap that’s outside gets in and does the rear turret. Checking the gun solenoids and the lighting. And the, the lighting on the gun sight.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But also the one outside checks the micro switches on the landing gear.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And the chap up in the cockpit makes sure that the lights, the green or red lights operate as they should.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And the [pause] there was a plug for an external accumulator. Trolley acc as they are called. But you only used that for when they’re trying the engines out. Now, the engine fitters were the bane of our lives because if you weren’t around they would sneakily run the engines up without having put the trolley acc in and they were running your internal batteries down.
SC: Right.
Anon: So, if [pause] if the battery was flat when you came to do an inspection you had to change the batteries.
SC: Oh.
Anon: And that was a heavy job. You had to trail to the battery room. Get a transport. That wasn’t always easy either. Sometimes you had to push them on a trolley all the way back to the aircraft.
SC: All the way back.
Anon: Another thing about the aircraft which might sound amusing now but if you’d any soldering to do there was nothing like electric soldering irons of course.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: You had what they called a mox iron, M O X, and it was a white tablet. Quite a large one that burned like fury. And it had, well to me a whacking big soldering iron, the old one with the wooden handle.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And a big chunk of copper at the end of it.
SC: At the end of it.
Anon: And you put that over the flame you’d got but you had to be fifty yards away from the aircraft. And you had to run like made after it got to the heat. When the flames died down it run like mad. You got a hot iron and get in to the Lancaster and run up to the fuselage to get to where the batteries are because the lugs occasionally needed replacing. But that was — oh, I’d better say where I’ve been. That’s the easiest way I think. We got to Henlow, Topcliffe, Linton on Ouse, Skipton on Swale, Sutton on Forest, Tholthorpe, Dishforth, Catterick, Linton on Ouse again, Lindholme. Ah, this was when I finished at the Canadians but whilst I was with the Canadians the discipline was far slacker than in the RAF. Whilst I was at East Moor the, occasionally they had what they called a backers up course for ground crew. It was [pause] well earlier on when the RAF regiment weren’t as prominent. The, you’re doing the protection of the airfield really but you’re taught how to use a rifle again and bayonet and what was it? Throw a grenade.
SC: Throw a grenade. Yeah.
Anon: That sort of thing.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And unarmed combat.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And really infantry work. And you had this to do for a week which we all detested. We were supposed to be craftsmen. Anyway, the outcome was that whilst the last day of our week a Halifax unfortunately crashed in our area. And I have the impression that whichever the area it crashed in the nearest airfield had the job of guarding the wreck that crashed. And unfortunately, although all the crew except the pilot got out the pilot stayed in and he was burned. And horrible really. But the backing up course that week was only about, if I remember rightly about eight or ten of you. You were given the job of guarding the crash.
SC: Yes.
Anon: And you were fitted you up with sandwiches and food for the night sort of thing and a bell tent and some slept but there was always one on guard. When it came to my turn it was the middle of the night and and then it was bitterly cold. And I got inside the back end of the Halifax to get out of the cold. While I’m in there I heard something moving. And so I got out and still listened and still could hear walking. So, ‘Halt. Who goes there?’ Frightened to death [laughs] The rifle and — and got no reply. ‘Halt and be recognised.’ Mooooo moooo [laughs] A cow in the next field. But but that only lasted, you had to stay there until they cleared the crash and we were there a few days actually. And, but you get seventy two hours leave after that weeks’ training.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: I’m all togged up, best blues and just walking towards the main gate when from the office, SWO’s office, the SWO, Station Warrant Officer that is —
SC: Yeah.
Anon: Shouts, ‘Airman.’ Beckoned to me of course. Says, ‘I want you as an escort.’ ‘I’m going on leave, sir.’ ‘Not until you’ve been on this.’
SC: An escort.
Anon: And it was escort for a couple of Canadian airmen that had been caught in Thirsk with their caps off. And the Redcaps, RAF police had caught them and reported them. And anyway that’s, ‘Escort and accused, quick march. Caps off.’ And you’re there in front of the Wing Co. And this is the Wing Co who I said how good he was. He, ‘Read the charge out, SWO.’ And this, ‘Whilst on active duty,’ and the date and so on, ‘The airmen seen without their caps on going from the Red Lion to the Black Bull at Thirsk.’ ‘Anything to say?’ — CO. ‘No sir, but actually we were going from the Black Bull to the Red Lion.’ ‘Case dismissed. Incorrect evidence’. You should have seen that station warrant officer’s face. He was an RAF — a lot of the admin staff were RAF. I missed my train but [laughs] it was worth it to see his face.
SC: It was worth it. Yeah.
Anon: But that’s just amusing. But that was with 426 if I remember rightly. 432 that, aye. Thurlby I think his name was. Wing co. But he used to have parties in the mess for the morale and that. Thought the world of him, everybody. But then I went back finally whilst I was with the RAF, RCAF. Went back to Linton on Ouse and 432 were there with Lancasters. And one of my old friends was an air gunner. Flight sergeant air gunner, Freddie Frith and I was talking to him the night before he took off and of course we’d been pals back in Scarborough and lived in the same street actually. And —
SC: Gosh.
Anon: Played football and cricket and that sort of thing as lads. And he never came back. And he was the one I was telling you about. That unknown grave. And he’s at Runnymede. The Memorial there. But went then, went back to the RAF proper. Talk about bringing you down to earth. You had to have your buttons cleaned and really be professional I suppose.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But it was very relaxed on the Canadian side. But back there and this wasn’t an operational squadron. The first time I hadn’t been on an operational squadron and it was [pause] well to us it was stricter than the rest had been on the ops. But we, I was there almost a year and there you had the job of, well apart from looking after Lancasters you did the battery charging. And they also had the airfield runway lights to keep and check and for that you had to have transport. Well, one day it was my turn to do this. We did it in turns and when I went for transport the one that was available they says, ‘Have you got a licence?’ I says. ‘Only one for civvy street. I haven’t had one—’ ‘Oh, well if you’ve one for civvy street you must be able to drive.’ He says, ‘That’s the only car available,’ and it was the CO’s Humber.
SC: Oh gosh.
Anon: I’d never been in a posh car like that before. And I got it on the runway up to ninety miles an hour [laughs]
SC: Wow.
Anon: I really, really enjoyed that but —
SC: Yeah.
Anon: Then of course you had to go back slowly to make sure all the lights were on.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: On the — but that was [pause] that was by 1945 now. And I may be right [pause] yes it would be. Anyway, the oh the other thing we had to do which I mentioned earlier to you was at Metheringham we had a lighthouse to let planes know where they were. Those that had lost their way and didn’t know where they were. This flashing talked from the parent station which was Lindholme, by telephone. It told to put the aerial lighthouse on and it flashed two Morse letters which the aircrew all recognised as where it was. A bit like a lighthouse at sea flashing.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: Certain letters. But that was an amusing that was. Being young and silly in those days. It was the middle of summer this time I’m thinking of. We used to go out before the, well the aircraft weren’t going out really ‘til dark time so during the day we went into the nearby town. I can’t think of the name of it now. It wouldn’t be Scunthorpe would it? Anyway, and on a pushbike.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: Which I’d biked from the airfield on and I finished up that night with my bike on top of a haystack. Stuck. So [laughs] Young and silly. But when the phone went you had to get out there and get that flashing light going. That shows. And there’s a motor mechanic, a corporal general duties chap in charge of you and yourself, an electrician and you had a caravan. And it was a change from being on the airfield.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And the farmer or his wife used to keep you well fed as well.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But that was the end of the RAF. I was at Lindholme which is now a prison. Raise a few eyebrows when you say, ‘Oh, I’ve been in Lindholme.’ [laughs] But anyway, I was there when VE day came. And shortly after that there was a notice went up asking for volunteers for the Fleet Air Arm for going out to see the Japs off.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: That finished my RAF lot. But I did volunteer for the Fleet Air Arm and went there as an electrician. Well, for two minutes at, I think it was RAF Warrington but it was a mixed camp. Half the camp was Air Force, the other half Navy and you were kitted out when you got to the other side of the camp. You were, for two minutes — a minute to twelve and a minute after twelve you were a civilian. You’d been discharged from the Air Force.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But hadn’t been accepted into the Navy. And then you, you were kitted out on the Naval side. And they’d pipe in the morning dress of the day. And but number, you were given [number 9?] now, I forget. But they — nobody had a clue how to dress. You stood on your beds trying to look out these Nissen hut’s window to see what other people were wearing.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But from there you went to transit camp which was at the HMS Daedalus II. Daedalus III rather. The shore base. And you just got kitted there waiting to go somewhere but they get all sorts of things. And don’t let anybody tell them Nelson’s dead. He’s not.
SC: Right.
Anon: The air force, went and got at Melksham. This was an RAF base but it was Navy training for American electric switches which are different to our RAF wiring. We had two wire system. They had one wire and earth. And what, you were given the month on that. But two weeks of that were trying to learn what all the initials were because everything’s done by initials in the Navy.
SC: Right.
Anon: We were always in trouble with the master at arms for various things. Two of us, I was one of them walking across what we called the parade ground and somebody bawled out to us, and we were, ‘At the double,’ because we had started walking towards him. It turned out he was the master at arms and he wanted to know why we were walking across the quarter deck instead of doubling. And this is the sort of thing.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And I think the Navy was about fifty years behind the Air Force but it was still enjoyable. But whilst I was on that course they dropped the atom bombs and they didn’t know what to do with us. They — I finished up instead of hoping to have got overseas as my original intention had always been was, I was posted up to Scotland. To Royal Naval Air Station Dunino. And I was on Fairey Barracudas.
SC: Gosh.
Anon: Which were torpedo bombers and they’re like toys compared to Lancasters.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But all we were doing was getting them up to front line state to be flown down to — I think it was Speke in Lancaster. Lancashire. Where they were dumped. Scrapped.
SC: Right.
Anon: But they wouldn’t let us, them go if there was anything wrong at all.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But, I don’t think [pause] I hope I haven’t wasted your time.
SC: No. Gosh, no. No. It’s been a fascinating journey.
Other: That was the first time I’ve heard it.
Anon: The very first time.
Other: Thank you.
SC: Oh gosh.
Anon: The very first time I realised how ignorant I was, was I was still eighteen. First time on night duty at Topcliffe. Wellingtons. And you were underneath the Wellington because you’ve got trolley acc lead plugged in.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And they start the engines up. They start the port, port one up first and flames shoot out of the exhaust.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: I’d never seen one at night. I saw flames and I shouted up through the hatch, which is the hatch where they went in up the ladder. Baled out at height. I shouted, ‘You’re on fire.’ It wasn’t on fire at all just the [laughs] Fortunately because of the engine noise he couldn’t hear me so —
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But you learn as you go along.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: In that case. And how on earth we won the war.
Other: You must be dry after all that. You’ve got it. Would you like some pineapple juice?
SC: I’d love. Yes, please.
Anon: But I — no, I enjoyed it.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And I’ll be honest here. I’d have stayed in the Navy. In the Fleet Air Arm. But my mother was a widow.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: My father died when I was twelve and I went back more or less to support her but —
SC: Yeah.
Anon: But on the demob leave that’s when I met Jean.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And we’ve been married just over seventy years now.
SC: Oh gosh. Congratulations.
Anon: Thank you.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: Commiserations I think you said [laughs]
SC: You said that. Not me [laughs] Thank you very much.
Other: Right.
Anon: I don’t think I’ve been much use to you. What I’ve said.
SC: Oh, it has been. It has been a tremendous valuable story. I’ll switch this off now.
Anon: The worst thing I think I had to do was change an alternator in the middle of the night. Well, I say it was the middle of the night. It was pitch dark.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And it was snowing. And it was out on the airfield. It wasn’t in the hangar. And I stood on the engine stand there. Your fingers, you could hardly feel them.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And you’d wires to connect.
SC: Yeah.
Anon: And bolts to, well the fitters I suppose were supposed to do that but you weren’t going to get a fitter out of the Nissen hut to come and —
SC: Yeah.
Anon: Do something you could do yourself. Put the nuts and bolts to hold it in place. But —
SC: It must have been really difficult.
Anon: But I managed to go through the lot and never get charged.
SC: That’s good. That’s an achievement.
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 an anonymous interviewee (An01137)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Steve Cooke
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
2017-07-10
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
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AAn01137-170710
Format
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00:38:15 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal Navy
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Description
An account of the resource
Anon, from Scarborough was keen to join the Fleet Air Arm as a pilot. Disappointed that he didn’t meet the height requirement he joined the RAF and began training as an electrician. His aim was to travel abroad with the service but to his disappointment he never left Yorkshire. His first posting was with 424 Squadron. The squadron was kitted out to transfer to North Africa and although they prepared the aircraft for the journey the British ground crew didn’t make the move and he was posted to 425 Squadron. Among his duties other than the electrical work was to provide guard duty for crash sites and he was also called on as an escort to airmen who were accused of misdemeanours. On the squadron he met a childhood friend from Scarborough who was an air gunner. He was killed on operations. He volunteered to transfer to the Fleet Air Arm and joined that service until he was demobbed.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1943
1945
424 Squadron
425 Squadron
426 Squadron
432 Squadron
ground personnel
Halifax
Lancaster
memorial
military discipline
military ethos
military service conditions
RAF Dishforth
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Skipton on Swale
RAF Tholthorpe
RAF Topcliffe
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/883/10084/AAtkinsonG180802.2.mp3
c407b87d274b13d28e2b821e283853b7
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
Horton, Arthur
Arthur Leslie Horton
A L Horton
Description
An account of the resource
21 items. The collection includes an oral history interview with Gordon Atkinson, letters from Canada and a Canadian soldier, and photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Gordon Atkinson 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
2018-08-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Horton, AL
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: Right. So, this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre with Gordon Atkinson. My name is Dan Ellin. It’s the 2nd of August 2018. Gordon, again can you tell me a little bit about where you were born and brought up and your early life please?
GA: I was born in Flixborough in 1938. August 1938. My parents worked in the steelworks. Well, my father did. And we went to school in Flixborough village school, Church of England school and was brought up there and lived there. Grandfather was a keeper and you know there was a [pause] where we, my memories of the war time were seeing the aeroplanes coming over. And my parents took us out to watch the red sky in the north east from us and it was Hull that had been badly bombed and was on fire in the evenings and such like and it was frightening times in some respect but we got on, and had to get on with it. And —
DE: What else did you see?
GA: It was, it well when I got a bit older and seeing things you know when I was three or four or suchlike you remember things better then. And it would be later on, just before D-Day when there was thousands of troops in the area probably practising for the D-Day landings. And my mother had three cousins from Canada that came over. Two were in the army and one in the RAF. And it was probably in 1944 when I was about five years old that they must have had a weekend pass and, not at the same time but one, he with the soldier he came and visited us. And then Lesley. We knew him as Lesley. Arthur Lesley came over. He was based in Linton on Ouse in the RAF. He was a wireless operator/air gunner. I think on Halifax bombers. And he came over one weekend and, to stay with us and that was the last time we ever saw or heard from him. And it was later on that we found out that he’d perished somewhere on a mission coming back from Belgium and presumed lost in the North Sea somewhere. And it was his parents who emigrated to Canada in about 1913 on the Empress of Ireland and it got sunk in the Gulf of St Lawrence in a fog patch when it crashed with a Norwegian collier ship. And it was some six months after it had sunk that my parents found out that he’d, that they’d arrived safely when they got a postcard to say that they’d arrived safely. So that had been a worrying time for them. And they had three sons and a daughter and it was my mother’s cousin who corresponded the rest of her life with my mum and kept her informed with what had happened and where they were. And that was sort of the war for us. When we used to go out, did I say that before that the bombers coming over about a, probably a thousand raid bombers they used to come up from South Lincolnshire and Suffolk or whatever it was, congregate out over the Humber and probably waiting for a fighter escort and coming down from the north. Newcastle and Northumberland and all such as that. And then in the morning you’d be able to go outside and see them coming home with their engines failing and bits dropped off and everything like that. Coming home on a wing and a prayer I think they called it. And that’s some of the, some of the biggest memories that we’ve got of the war. Occasionally we saw the odd Doodlebug passing over and most of them went over the Trent and probably heading for Sheffield or Rotherham or somewhere in the Midlands and such like which was a frightening sound which you never forget. Like you never forget the sound of a Lancaster and that. It still you know, puts the hair on the back of your neck up somehow. I don’t know why it does that but it still does to this day. But the other year when I was getting excited seeing two bombers flying together. I said to myself well, get some time in, you know. We’d seen them a thousand at a time.
DE: Yeah.
GA: Hope they never return but it was an exciting time seeing all these amphibious vehicles crossing the Trent practising for when they got over to Germany across the bigger rivers of the Rhine and such like that they would have to pass over.
DE: So what was that like?
GA: Well, to kids at that age it was very exciting seeing all these churned up roads that these track vehicles had churned up and everything. And the soldiers. He was, I think he was in the Canadian artillery. We’ve still got three letters he wrote to my mum thanking her for, for small food parcels and cigarettes and tea. And he asked on one occasion that rather than send sugar would she send saccharine because they were on the move all the time. And he said at Christmas, at New Year he was, the letter came from Holland. And then it came from a bit further in Germany about three or four weeks later. And then a month later than that he said, ‘We’re on the move every day,’ sort of thing, ‘We don’t know who is going to get there first. We couldn’t care less. But it’s probably the Russians who will get to Berlin first.’ So in a matter of a month or two he’d travelled through Holland and through Germany to get in striking distance of Berlin. That was in ’44 sort of thing. Towards the end of the war.
DE: Yeah.
GA: And he made, the two soldiers made it home safely but poor Lesley didn’t sort of thing.
DE: Yeah. And those are some of the photos that you’ve got of him.
GA: Yeah. Yeah.
DE: Yeah. The photo of Lesley’s got a shotgun under his arm hasn’t it?
GA: Yeah. Anybody, came to our house that was from out of the town or city they would really looked forward and loved being able to go out and shoot themselves a rabbit, you know. And we had access to that being [paused] Well, my father was a rabbit catcher for a one or two of the farms and my grandfather was a keeper down on Normanby Estate, he was, sort of thing. All his life. So we was never really starving but we ate rabbits in every way you could think of. You know. Rabbit pie, rabbit stew. Rabbit. Yeah.
DE: So what was life like in the village growing up then?
GA: Well, we, it was fun. I mean the farm yards was our playground. You know, you’d walk a mile to ride back on a horse and cart or something like that. And it’s, in the summertime you all congregated in the harvest field and there was a butcher’s or anybody there with a shotgun shooting rabbits because it was desperately needed in the town. The steelworkers were short on meat rations and everything like that so everybody was really appreciative of, of a rabbit or anything like that they could get as extra. And it was basically all. That was what you made your fun out of sort of thing. You helped where ever you could and you know even at a young age, not at five I don’t mean but you know as you grew up and that and lived and worked on and around the farm. I mean most of your schoolmates were farmer’s sons and things like that so it was a way of life. Has been all my life sort of thing so, which I’ve enjoyed anyway.
DE: Yeah. Was there electricity in the village?
GA: There was just beginning to get. Half the village. There had been a few new houses built just before the war and such like and I was fortunate to be born in to one and, but a lot of the other farm cottages still had no electricity and earth closet toilets that they emptied once a week. The dilly man used to come around and empty the slops out of those and such thing. Which wouldn’t have been a very pleasant job but somebody did it. So that’s sort of how you remember that. And most of the implements was horse drawn. There was one or two tractors beginning to get into the village but not many. But every farm still had the horses and such like. You used to get to ride on them coming back from the field. And things like that were the highlight of the day.
DE: So what was, what was school like?
GA: Flixborough School I quite put up with it. I enjoyed it sort of thing and, you know it was, it was sort of one small classroom with about five or six different years in. There was four in, four in our age group and then there’d be maybe one younger and one older. There would be four or five or six or seven depending on just how it fitted. But we was all in the same thing and we were given different work rotas to go on. Miss Hall was the teacher who looked after us and there was one for the two, the really young ones. There was a Miss Morris with a wooden petition between, in the room. And I think one thing we remember we’d be nineteen [pause] it would be just after the war but we had a really really bad winter in 1947 and Miss Hall used to come from Burton on the school, on the service bus every morning. And we was waiting to go into school there this particular morning and the snow was falling and very deep and it had been drifting. Anyway, Miss Hall never turned up off the, buses couldn’t get through so we all had a slide down the footpath like a sheet of glass and everything like that. About 10 o’clock Miss Hall turns up. She’d walked all the way from Burton. Two or three mile. And she’d dropped down off the road where the drifts were about five or six foot deep and walked through where there was a long wood between Burton and Flixborough and she’d walked there. And there was a pot bellied stove in the centre of the room and that was the only heating with an iron guard around it. And we sat there all day with Miss Hall’s bloomers steaming in front of this pot bellied thing [laughs] because she’d been wet up to her waist nearly. It amused us lads which you can imagine. Lasting memory of Flixborough School that.
DE: Right.
GA: She got through and, we didn’t like her at the time but I must say that she did more for my education than any other teacher did when I amazed everybody by passing my eleven plus and went to Scunthorpe Grammar School. I didn’t do much good there. It was Latin and algebra. I still haven’t found much of a use for it and but then I left there and started on the farm and did a course at Riseholme which I enjoyed. Did my National Service and I’ve been on the farm ever since. So —
DE: So what was it like at, at Riseholme?
GA: Well, I’ve, I enjoyed it because I knew from when I was three or four years old I wanted to be farm working or a farmer and such like and that’s all I was ever interested in. And anything to do with farming I would absorb it. But all this other stuff it, it’s just beyond me. So when I came back to Riseholme and we learned about all the different livestock procedures and the arable and all the new technology that was coming in because in those days the world wanted us to get us off rationing and produce all the food we could. You know. Plough every bit up you can. And, and it’s gone from one extreme to the other. Now, they pay you to grow rubbish, you know with these different set asides and things like that and so called environment things. I don’t know how much land is down to environmental different ways of doing things and there’s still no livestock.
[recording paused]
DE: Just paused and we’re back recording again now. So after, after your time at Riseholme then what happened?
GA: I did my National Service which was everybody did that in those days. And I had no option where I went. I just put down my preference and I was fortunate I got in to the RASC rather than an infantry regiment. And I did driver training after a fortnight in Aldershot I didn’t, I got posted then to Yeovil and we did driver training there and square bashing half a day and driver training all around Somerset and North Devon which was quite enjoyable. Then I was posted up to Retford to train as a tank transport driver. And we did a course there learning how to handle bigger vehicles. And then when the list went up to where you were going to be posted to two thirds of them went to, I think it was Paderborn in Germany. And I was posted to 19 Company which is still, it is now a prison camp between Retford and Worksop but that was 19 Company RASC in 1958/59 when I was there. And we got detailed out. You got a detail and you went out with a Diamond T tractor on a Dyson trailer and to go to either Tilbury or Manchester or Liverpool docks and pick up a tank and then move it to, they called them Central Vehicle Depots. And they were enormous set ups with thousands of vehicles and that. Some, there was Ashchurch and Tidworth on the Salisbury Plain. We took a lot of stuff down to Tidworth and Ludgershall on the Salisbury Plain. It was quite enjoyable. You only did a twenty five mile an hour and so you did about sixty mile and you went from one town to another and lived out of transport cafes and slept in your vehicle and you know you was a free range heavy haulier. That’s what it was and quite enjoyable. And if you thought there were some parades going on in camp that you was going to get back for you broke down so that you didn’t get back in time [laughs] You learned to work the system. But, yeah we did quite a bit of training in Sherwood Forest recovering tanks out of ponds and things like that as part of the training in those days. And then after I came out of the army I started with a young man who’d started farming in Flixborough. Then he got another farm in Waddingham and I’ve been with him ever since. I’ve got my gongs for long service from Lincolnshire Show. I think fifty years service. Fifty five or something like that. So, and even now I just go cut his grass in the orchard once a week and things like that.
DE: Right.
GA: So yeah it’s a life I’ve enjoyed. I would do it again but it would be totally different now.
DE: Yeah.
GA: With the technology that’s took over now.
DE: Yeah. I imagine. Yeah.
GA: Yeah.
DE: So how come you you’ve come here today with, with Helga?
GA: Well, we tried to trace Lesley’s, when the IBCC was opened up we heard it on Radio Lincolnshire and so we thought we’d have a ride over and see if we can locate him. And with the help of the very helpful staff there they found that he was Arthur Lesley rather than Lesley as we’d always known him and they found which tablet he was on. And we went there and put a poppy on it. And while I was there I told the lady there that Helga was at the other end of where all this was setting off from. And she seemed very interested and would Helga give her an interview? And that’s where we started from. How we’ve ended up here.
DE: Okey dokey. Smashing. I’m just thinking is there anything else that you’d like to tell me while the tape is still, still going?
GA: I can’t really think of anything in particular but unless you can prompt me anyway.
DE: No. It’s totally out of sequence because we’ve just been talking about last week but what can you tell me about your memories of VE Day?
GA: It’s, it was a big party in the Parish Hall at Flixborough and everybody’s mums and aunts and uncles they all produced some sort of food, you know. And there was a table full of food and drink and everything like that and it was a joyous celebration for everybody and that would be the Parish Hall in Flixborough where anything that happened in Flixborough was in the Parish Hall or the pub, sort of thing. The pub was open. That was before my drinking time but occasionally they used to put a film show on in the, in the Parish Hall occasionally. There was that one, “Ol’ Man River.” Was it, “Sanders of the River.” I can remember seeing that film. I can’t remember his name. Paul Robeson sung that, “Ol’ Man River,” and that and I can remember seeing that there and one or two other films over the months or years sort of thing and that was the heart of the activity. And it, you know it’s just a small isolated village like all villages were you know and news spread slowly between one village to the other. There weren’t many vehicles about and that. Pushbikes was one of the main means of transport.
DE: Before we started recording you were talking to me a little about the explosion.
GA: Oh yeah. That would be, was it ’73/74? It was when Nypro blew up. I was living and working on the farm at Waddingham as well as looking after the farm at Flixborough, the arable side. But we was chopping sugar beet out at twenty miles away at Brandy Wharf on the Ancholme Bank and we heard this rumble and we thought it’s going to be a thunder storm. Anyway, we carried on there and then when I went up to the house I had a landline telephone in those days and I got a phone call and said, ‘Did you know Nypro had blown up?’ I said, ‘No idea.’ And he said, ‘Is your mum all right?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t, I’ve no idea. I shall have to try and find out what we can find,’ you know, ‘What’s happened.’ And anyway I did a few phone calls. Then I found out that my mother had gone, my cousin from Winterton had been down and fetched my mother who would have been eighty. Yeah. Eighty years. No. She, well in her seventies anyway and she’d been set in the front of the fire. I think she was watching snooker on the telly and that and all of a sudden the soot all came down the chimney and covered everything. And so she went out and got a shovel full of sand and put on the fire and then found out the front door was at the top of the stairs and the kitchen window was laid out on the lawn. And in a bit of confusion and I don’t know just how she sorted it out but sooner or later she got picked up and took up to Winterton to my cousin. But, and then on the Sunday we were allowed in it was, I don’t know it’s something you’ll never ever see again but the sky was black and there was curtains blowing out like a ghost village. You know. There was curtains blowing out of broken windows and everything. Because on the farm where I worked like there was hundreds or a thousand pigs in one place or another and we knew they hadn’t been fed on a Saturday evening so we went down to try and sort something out. We had a generator that we could put on because we’d no electric because we needed that to work the feeding system for the pigs. A liquid system it was with the, the fattening pigs. And these pigs was all up and down passages. There weren’t many dead pigs I don’t think. Maybe some of the very very small ones had got perished because of the infrared lights going out but the bacon pigs and anything reasonable was all running about. But the walls were down and they was all mixed and muddled up so we hadn’t any way to, we just poured this food on to the floor anywhere and everywhere we could and let them help themselves. So it was a terrible job. All the tiles was mixed in with the grain and so you couldn’t grind the next crop to feed up because we did all the milling and mixing. And so there was no electricity. We had to buy in food ready made sort of thing for them. And a lot of hard work to try and get things any, back to any sort of normality. And then it took months and months to get finally sorted out. And Mother’s house, the blast lifted rooves and put them back wrong and all the windows had blown in or blown out and it was, can’t believe what devastation it was you know.
DE: So how far away was the explosion from your mother’s house?
GA: It was just down the hill from my mother’s house. You know. Less than a mile sort of thing. And when you imagine the damage was happening four, five, six miles away and the row of houses that was downhill it devastated them. You know, not structurally, the walls hadn’t collapsed but they was beyond repair sort of thing. They didn’t think it worth repairing them. And I say it took absolute months to get, everything had to be redecorated and all the windows put back in and rooves re-roofed and it took terrible, terrible, months, years anyway to get sorted out again. And on the farm and that it was the same with all the farm buildings and that needed all re-roofing. And it caused a lot of work and worry. I think it was the largest peacetime explosion there’d been wasn’t it? Yeah. Then they knocked it all down. Cleared the site and rebuilt it. And then it was redundant in a few years and they knocked it down again. That was progress for you wasn’t it?
DE: Well, smashing. I think they’ve finished next door so we’ll wind that up. Thank you very much for —
GA: Right.
DE: For giving us your time.
GA: Of interest to somebody then.
DE: I’m sure it has. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Gordon Atkinson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AAtkinsonG180802
Format
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00:24:42 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
Gordon Atkinson lived in Flixborough, Lincolnshire. As a young boy he recalls seeing aircraft gathering over the River Humber in the evenings ready to fly out on bombing operations. In the morning he watched them come back, some with bits dropping off them and others flying on fewer engines. He also described seeing the red sky at night after Hull had been bombed. V-1s were sometimes seen and heard. He says that at times it was quite frightening, but you had to get on with life. During the build up to D-Day in 1944, thousands of troops were seen in the area practising for the landings, and later for the advance across Europe. His mother had three Canadian cousins, who came over during the war. Two were in the British army and one in the Royal Air Force. Arthur Lesley served as a wireless operator/air gunner in Halifaxes from RAF Linton on Ouse. The two army cousins survived the war, but Arthur was lost over the North Sea returning from an operation. Gordon describes life in the village during the war with plenty of fun around the farms, rabbit shooting to add to their food rations, and the VE Day celebrations in the village hall. Only about half the houses had electricity and most had outdoor closets which were emptied at regular intervals. After the war he completed his education in Scunthorpe before going to Riseholme College to study agriculture. After undertaking his 1958-59 National as a tank transporter driver, he returned to farming as his lifelong career. He also describes the explosion of the Nypro plant at Flixborough in 1974 and the effect it had on his mother’s house and the farms in the village.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nick Cornwell-Smith
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Flixborough
England--Lincoln
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945-05
1947
1958
1959
1974
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
childhood in wartime
Halifax
home front
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
RAF Linton on Ouse
V-1
V-weapon
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/552/10402/LMaddockLyonR2205669v1.2.pdf
1dcb206504c9fe86e71aeb2f698cef0e
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
Maddock-Lyon, Roy
R Maddock-Lyon
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MaddockLyon, R
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. An oral history interview with Roy Maddock-Lyon (- 2023, 2205669 Royal Air Force), his log book, service material, silk escape map and an album. He served as a flight engineer with 10 Squadron from RAF Melbourne until he was shot down on his 18th operation over Denmark 14 February 1945. Two of his crew were killed but he evaded with the help of the Danish resistance.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Roy Maddock-Lyon and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-21
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.
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
Roy Maddock-Lyon's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LMaddockLyonR2205669v1
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners, flight engineers for Roy Maddock-Lyon, flight engineer, covering the period from 12 June 1944 to 2 May 1946. Detailing his flying training, operations flown and post war flying duties. He was stationed at, RAF St Athan, RAF Rufforth, RAF Melbourne, RAF Linton-on-Ouse and RAF Wethersfield. Aircraft flown in were, Halifax, C-47 and Oxford. He flew a total of 18 operations with 10 squadron, 2 daylight and 16 night. Targets were, Essen, Cologne, Gelsenkirchen, Munster, Sterkrade, Duisburg, Hagen, Osnabruck, Bingen, Hannover, Bohlen and baling out over Denmark on operation 18 on 14 February 1945, gardening. His pilot on operations was Flying Officer Grayshan. He evaded and returned to duty on 27 February from Sweden.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Denmark
Germany
Great Britain
Sweden
England--Essex
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Bingen (Rhineland-Palatinate)
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Hagen (Arnsberg)
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Germany--Osnabrück
Germany--Saxony
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Germany--Münster in Westfalen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1944-10-23
1944-10-24
1944-10-25
1944-10-28
1944-10-30
1944-10-31
1944-11-06
1944-11-18
1944-11-21
1944-11-28
1944-11-29
1944-11-30
1944-12-02
1944-12-03
1944-12-06
1944-12-22
1944-12-30
1945-01-05
1945-01-12
1945-01-14
1945-01-15
1945-02-13
1945-02-14
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
10 Squadron
1663 HCU
1665 HCU
aircrew
bale out
bombing
C-47
Cook’s tour
evading
flight engineer
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Heavy Conversion Unit
killed in action
mine laying
Oxford
prisoner of war
RAF Carnaby
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Melbourne
RAF Rufforth
RAF St Athan
shot down
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/998/10522/PWardEM16010003.1.jpg
7ba5a0a004f56544976eb6e599c7b411
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ward, Mary. Album
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-14
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
Ward, EM
Description
An account of the resource
42 items. The album concerns the work of 517 Squadron Meteorological Flight at RAF Shawbury, RAF Chivenor and RAF Brawdy. It contains photographs of aircraft and staff at work and on leave.
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Top left. Head and shoulders photograph of Ivor Jones, in uniform, captioned 'Sq Ldr Ivor Jones 1941 Linton on Ouse', ''The Colonel' had been previously Indian Army'.
Bottom left. Photograph of Mary Brown, civilian clothes, seated in a field of long grass, captioned 'Mary Brown 1944 Silverstone', 'WAAF 20 June 40 - 2 December 1946', '1940 RAF Driffield, RAF Pocklington RAF Linton', '1940 - 44 RAF Linton on Ouse', '1944 RAF Linton RAF Silverstone RAF Shawbury', '1945 RAF Shawbury RAF Brawdy RAF Chivenor', '1946 RAF Chivenor HQ Coastal Command RAF Northwood'.
Top right. Cutting showing crews at a briefing, printed caption 'Briefing for a daylight raid by No 35 Squadron; Wg Cmd Collings can be seen standing at the back, pipe in mouth, whilst Doug Hogg, to the Wing Commander's left, studies a target map over a shoulder', ' RAF'. Hand written caption 'March 1941', 'Intelligence Officer RAF Linton on Ouse Sqn Ldr Ivor Jones "The Colonel" (Bald head) Cpl Mary Brown worked for Ivor Jones at RAF Linton from 1940 - 44'. 'From Halifax at War Brian J Rapier'.
Bottom right. Cutting of head and shoulders picture of Leonard Cheshire in uniform, printed caption '21 Wing Commander L.G. Cheshire V.C., D.S.O. and Bar, D.F.C.'. 'Master bomber, over a 100 operational missions. 8 Sept 1944'. Hand written caption '1944 Cheshire was at Driffield in 1940 Linton 1941-42'.
Format
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Two b/w photographs and two newspaper clippings on an album page
Language
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eng
Type
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Photograph
Text
Identifier
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PWardEM16010003
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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England--Yorkshire
England
Great Britain
Great Britain
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-03
1944
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-03
1944
Title
A name given to the resource
Bomber Command people
35 Squadron
briefing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
ground personnel
Master Bomber
RAF Brawdy
RAF Chivenor
RAF Driffield
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Pocklington
RAF Shawbury
RAF Silverstone
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/837/10827/PGoldbyJL1701.1.jpg
a45bc6d8a3e3b396aa60a0e197184a52
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/837/10827/AGoldbyJL171025.2.mp3
eeb8f152cb68ea23e18042b8b5151712
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
Goldby, John Louis
J L Goldby
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with John Goldby (1922 - 2020, 1387511, 139407 Royal Air Force). He was shot down and became a prisoner of war in December 1944.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by John Goldby 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
2017-10-25
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
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Goldby, JL
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is David Meanwell. The interviewee is John Goldby. The interview is taking place at Mr Goldby’s home in Keston in the county of Kent on the 25th of October 2017. Ok, John. Well, if you’d like to perhaps kick off. Tell us a bit about where you were born and about growing up.
JG: Yes. I was born in Bexley, Kent in 1922. The next thing, the following year the family moved to Sidcup and my home until I joined up was in Sidcup. I went to what was then called the Sidcup County School before that was then turned into a grammar school and I went, started there in 1931 and I stayed there until the end of the summer 1939. From there on I, until I joined up I worked for a private bank, Brown Shipley and Company in the City of London. And I worked for them until I joined up in May 19 — 1941.
DM: What, when you, what prompted you to join the air force as opposed to going into another service?
JG: Well, my reason for the air force was I had a friend who was at the school who was about a year older than I was and as soon as he could join anything he joined the air force and became a Spitfire pilot. I thought that’s just the thing. One, one great advantage is if something happens to you when you’re at ten twenty thousand feet up there’s a chance of something might come to your rescue in those twenty thousand feet. Whereas if you are shot on the battlefield that’s where you’ll lie. And if you fall in the water in certain circumstances in the Navy that’s where you’ll end because the water is very cold. I stayed with the bank until such time as I, as I was actually called up because until I was eighteen I wasn’t allowed to go. But when the time came in 1941 I joined and I was, had been recorded as being fit for either pilot or navigator training. Because at that time it was the beginning of the expansion of Bomber Command to the four engine aircraft which meant there were now there was a bomb aimer and a navigator and as it happened the extra body and above that was a flight engineer.
DM: Where? When you say you signed up and then you were called up?
JG: Yes.
DM: To go and train. I assume that was the next thing.
JG: That’s right.
DM: Where did that happen? Where did you go for that?
JG: They were, the receiving wing as it was called was in Babbacombe in, in Devon and I went down there on the 31st of May 1941. After a couple of months or so then started ground, with air crew ground training. Morse code and all that sort of thing. Aircraft recognition. The sort of basic things which would then enable me to go on to flying training. In fact, some of my ground training was up here at Kenley which was a fighter aircraft airfield and was involved in the Battle of Britain or had been by the time I got there. And that was a number, there were quite a lot of these actual operational stations which housed training. Ground training for aircrew. Eventually, having done ground training I was then allocated a position in Air Observer School for training, as they were called then air observers. And the one, and then they were allocated on the basis of alphabetical order. And there were five of us in on the list whose initial was G. And the five of us who’d been looking forward to going to either South Africa or Canada or somewhere exotic like that found ourselves going to the Isle of Man. And I thought what a jolly place to be for the cold winter because that’s where I started training in October 1941 and I stayed there until May 1942. And then it was to Operational Training Unit. And in those days Operational Training Unit, the individual aircrew got together and formed a crew. It was virtually sort of go and find someone who you liked, feel you would like to fly with. It wasn’t mandatory as far as I know who you were allocated or I was and then people were added of course. A pilot who was in army uniform and in fact he had opted to change to aircrew which of course you could do if you wanted to go aircrew. And that’s another thing with the police. The police were allowed to leave and join up for aircrew duties. And so we had, we had a lot of police in our intake if you like who’d done all sorts of jobs in the police. And I flew, we used to fly in pairs on navigational training. And the extraordinary thing really for navigational training we were flying Blenheims which were actually operational aircraft. And it was the fastest aircraft I think I flew in the whole war. That’s — and I flew with a chap who had been a policeman in Glasgow. Actually, he was a mobile policeman. Anyway, the bombing training was from Hampdens, both of those aircraft were of course twin-engine. And then, and air gunnery we flew in, again in Blenheims firing at a drogue. And the training there lasted from the October ’41 to May ’42 and then back to this country. And then in the June on we went to [pause] can we stop it for a moment?
[recording paused]
JG: Still training. An Operational Training Unit which was at Stanton Harcourt which was a subsidiary to, or satellite to RAF Abingdon. When having or while we were there my pilot went on the first thousand bomber raid in, in May ’42 as a sort of, as a second pilot. Then in June, on the 25th of June ’42 we flew as a crew to Cologne in a Whitley. That was on the three days before my twentieth birthday which was the 25th of June 1942. We flew on the 25th. Did I say 25th? The 28th of June is my birthday.
DM: Right.
JG: Did I make a mistake there?
DM: That’s ok. So your birthday’s the 28th of June.
JG: 28th
DM: You flew on the 25th.
JG: The 25th
DM: A few days before. Yeah.
JG: Having finished there at OTU we then went to RAF St Eval. And the policy at that time was that crews that were now finished OTU, certainly from 4 Group went down to do a number, or several months’ worth of flying in Whitleys in, on an anti-submarine role. An anti-submarine role.
DM: So, St Eval is in Cornwall. Is that right?
JG: Cornwall.
DM: Yeah.
JG: That’s right. We, we used to fly ten hour sorties from there and when we came back the next day we were absolutely clear. We didn’t do anything that day. In fact we couldn’t probably hear anything that day but because the conditions of course in the Whitley are pretty cramped. But we had to do the ten hours and the following day was a free day. The next day we were briefed on what the flight was to be the following day. And that was the pattern. And you had a free day, briefing and then the next day you flew. I did, as far as I can recall — one of the problems I have is that my, I never retrieved my logbook following becoming a POW when all my stuff was taken and distributed. So, one way or another I didn’t ever get my book back and I’ll say a bit more about that later. Anyway, after that, after our period down there in Cornwall we came back up to Yorkshire to the, to a Conversion Unit on the four engine aircraft. And that was when I joined or after that period in a, in the Marston Moor was the Conversion Unit in Yorkshire. And we flew then with, now with the extra crew the [pause] I suppose we spent about a month there and then as a crew we went to RAF Linton on Ouse and joined 78 Squadron which was at that time commanded by Wing Commander Tait, T A I T. Known as Willie Tait and who ended his career, I suppose it would have been when he took on the final sortie against the Tirpitz. He, I don’t know — there was a programme on last night. Was of the 617 Squadron and the, and the nine aircraft that flew on this final sortie and demolished the Tirpitz, it was about the fourth or fifth time they’d done it. Had not had a big enough bomb which of course had to be designed by Barnes Wallis who was the author, if you like, of the bomb, the bouncing bomb. Anyway, Willie Tait was a bit of a frightening man. He was not popular because he was so blooming strict and didn’t fraternise really with other aircrew. And it was particularly noticeable because Linton on Ouse was shared between 78 Squadron with Willie Tait and 76 Squadron with Leonard Cheshire and they were so different it’s hardly true. So, we arrived there in October and we started operations. Starting with what we used to call, or was called gardening. That’s mine laying. Which counted for only one operation. People disappeared on those things so how they could justify going down for, on a half an op, I don’t know. And I stayed there with 78 Squadron until March ’43. That was, that was’ 42. ’43, I had gone down at the end of February ’43. I was commissioned and I went down to London to get kitted out. I came back and I developed a raging throat infection. It turned out to be an abscess and I was put into hospital and I never re-joined 78. I then went on sort of sick leave and eventually I had the tonsils out at the time of my 21st birthday before then going on to the sort of thing that one did at the end of a tour of operations which was as an instructor. And that’s when I went in that year down to Moreton in Marsh flying Wellingtons. I stayed there [pause] I’m getting a bit. Will you turn it off a bit?
[recording paused]
JG: My time at Moreton in Marsh lasted until the spring of 1944. Following that I completed a bombing leader course at the Armaments School at RAF Manby in January 1944. At the end of that I then went to RAF Riccall. This was another of the Conversion Units. Yeah. And from there, after doing the bombing leader course I went from the — to this. To Riccall. RAF Riccall which was the conversion [pause] I’d better have it off.
[recording paused]
JG: Riccall. RAF Riccall, on a refresher course before joining a Squadron. And that’s where I was on D-day. So, by the time I reached 640 Squadron it was the end of June 1944 and that’s where I went to take up the post of bombing leader.
DM: When you went — so you were on your new base.
JG: Yes.
DM: You were now a bombing leader. Did you have a crew?
JG: No.
DM: Or were you a sort of a spare bod?
JG: That’s right.
DM: As they said.
JG: That’s right. Yes. Well, I’ve got in my notes down here. In that position I was supposed to stay. Fly no more than two operations a month which was not very much. And I was the one who selected when I would go and with whom. Sensibly and logically really the ones I went on I was actually taking the place of somebody in the crew who was not able to go on that particular flight. Illness or whatever reason. And I was flying, we were coming up to Christmas and I am sure that I had by that time I had done, I’d flown twelve operations and the one that I was going on was to be my thirteenth actually of my second tour. I decided that I was going to have to do at least one anyway in December. So I selected one on the 6th of December because that was where the usual permanent bomb aimer was ill. So, I took his place. So I was flying with that crew for the first time ever. The only one of them, of the crew, commissioned was the pilot. I knew him because we were both commissioned. But the rest of the crew non-commissioned I hadn’t met before even. And of course I made the great mistake that I’d picked the wrong one. It was, shouldn’t have been a particularly dangerous one but anyway over Germany and this is now where there’s a bit of a gap in what happened because I see I’m actually have been recorded as being shot down. I always doubted that because the manner in which we crashed. There was, we weren’t attacked by anything. And what I believe and I’m hoping I will get one day confirmation of this, we collided with a German night fighter. And the reason I say that is because in the report that I got back from the Air Ministry things apparently a night fighter was lost that night in that area and reported a collision. And the circumstances of the accident lead one I think to conclude that it’s certainly much more likely to have been a collision because from going from the pilot completely under control to immediately losing control and I conclude, and most people think it’s much more likely I think that we collided with this thing and it took our tail off because in no time at all we were in a spin. And as we spun down it was impossible to get out of the aircraft because the, what do you call it force?
DM: The G Force.
JG: G. Yes. Really. You couldn’t lift a hand to get out. And then they, there was this crashing sound which I believed was we were hitting the ground. I thought well this is it but in fact within seconds I suppose it would be only I found myself outside in the fresh air on a dark December night. I had my parachute pack on because I’d already put that on as soon as there was an emergency and I opened that up and then descended by parachute. And there was not a sound or a sign of anything which was connected with the accident. So the aircraft had gone down. I was now floating down. Way behind it I suppose. And I don’t believe that was as a result of an actual physical attack. But being shot down it certainly wasn’t. The evidence points to that I think. I’ve tried to find out more about that. With a bit of luck my elder son who is coming down at the beginning of December is going to review records to see if he can find out any more about it. Or if there is any way one can get through Germany. I don’t suppose there’s anything anyway. They won’t have kept much of that sort of record. But we’ll see. But I’ve always had an open mind about this. So, how I came down I don’t know. But I came down in a flooded field. I didn’t realise at the time but I looked down and saw this expanse of water. I couldn’t make it out because we were nowhere near the sea or any large expanse of water. And I came down. I thought I had broken my right leg. I was holding my leg in both hands, both arms because of the pain and the trousers torn. Blood all over the place. And I went in left leg first and sprained my leg because it turned out to be a flooded field which was not very helpful. Fell over and got soaking wet. I spent a bit of time in some bushes trying to find out what was wrong with me if I could and then sort of get myself composed enough to move on. Eventually I did. I moved on in the direction of some houses. I knew by compass the heading of course. I had no idea where I was on the ground. How far I’d fallen before I opened the parachute. Anything like that. So, I eventually got into a farmyard and into an open cart and I examined my body to see what was wrong and also to get rid of my wet things which were very wet. The only trouble was I was going to have to sort of wring them out and put them back on again. Which I did. And while I was in the cart, presumably members of the farm came out, calling out, ‘Is there anybody there?’ Or what I assumed was what they were after. Of course, I kept quiet and they would go away and enable me then to start my escape. Eventually I got out of the farm. I realised I had just flesh wounds on my right leg. It was nothing really serious but my hands were cut, my face was cut. Anyway, off I went in the early hours of the next morning. The 7th. I was walking down a country lane actually with not a sound or sign of anybody when I was stopped by a guard, an armed guard who I believe to have come from the local Luftwaffe station. Anyway, by now I was a prisoner of course and from then on I spent a bit of time there while they organised my — oh no. What am I talking about? No. I was put into a hospital. It was a civil hospital run by nuns. And the four of us who had survived this accident which was me, the flight engineer, the wireless operator and the navigator we, we were not too far dispersed on the ground when we landed. So that they got us together and then planned, I presume what they were going to do with us. And fortunately for me the flight engineer and I were put into hospital where we were very well treated. The flight engineer was very badly injured. He’d broken all sorts of his body and the extraordinary thing is with him we were in this room together, we talked together all the time because there was no one else to talk to and he had not realised what had happened to him. Where he was. He could not remember anything following taxiing out to take off the night before. The 6th. And he never did as far as I know. But he was in a very bad way and he was still in hospital when I left which was somewhere towards the mid to I haven’t got the actual date of this. January. One day a guard appeared at my door and I was told to dress and follow him in about, at least six inches of snow outside and as this was going to be my first walk following the parachute descent I wasn’t too happy about it. But fortunately he had a bicycle and I was allowed to push it in the manner of the zimmer really while he walked beside me. We went to the local Luftwaffe station and then a few days later two guards arrived and started me on my way down to the Frankfurt. The Dulag Luft Interrogation Centre where I was, everyone was when you arrived there you go in to solitary and they liked to make it as unpleasant for you as they can. The bed was just two or three struts across the frame. A blanket and a pillow and that was basically it. If you wanted to use the lavatory you had to operate a little lever on the inside of the thing, of the room which indicated to the guard outside that you wanted to go. Whereupon they either came or they didn’t which was a bit, could be difficult. So you really had to plan in advance. And then of course once you were in there, you got to the loo as soon as you got there and if you wanted to sit down they shouted, ‘Come out.’ And made it, everything was made unpleasant. The food we had for breakfast we would have coffee, and [pause] I think that’s about it. But there would have been the bit of black bread anyway with nothing much on it. If anything. At lunchtime it would be a watery soup. And then an evening meal was the black coffee again and with bread and a bit of something on it. The heating, the room was heated by a radiator which was, made the room, when it was on it was unbearably hot. During the night they would turn it off so you would awaken frozen stiff. And that was where you stayed until they let, said they’d had enough of you in interrogation. There was nothing much really I could have told and everything that they had, they’d had members of my crew already through there so I was having to be careful about what I said. They said, ‘You were a flight lieutenant bomb aimer. You must have been the bombing leader.’ Which they knew quite a lot about but which I denied but whether they believed me I don’t know. But eventually I was on my way and the, we were after, yeah there was a spell while they gathered a number of people to make it worth shipping them off to a POW camp I suppose. But then we would go from there by train to the POW camp. We had no idea where it was going to be but we were led to believe it was somewhere in East Germany. And we then, we discovered eventually what our destination was and that we were going by train via Berlin. Which we were not looking forward to. But we were in ordinary carriages of compartments with ten in each. We took it in turns to sleep on the carriage rack. Luggage rack. Otherwise you couldn’t stretch out at all. After several days and I’m not quite sure how long actually but we arrived at Stalag Luft 1, and it’s address is Barth. B A R T H. In fact — will you turn it off again?
[recording paused]
DM: Ok.
JG: I’ll go from where we left Dulag Luft following interrogation at about 1 pm on Saturday 13th and arrived at Wetzlar at 6am on the Sunday. Where that is I don’t know but the distance between the two camps was a little over forty miles. Here we stayed until the following Saturday living twenty four men to a room and eating three times a day in the mess hall. It was at this camp we had Red Cross clothing issued. Two — what they were I don’t know, two packets of American cigarettes and a subsequent issue of ten a day while we were there. Most important was the shower. My first decent wash in Germany. On Saturday January the 20th 1945 of course we’re talking about here a party of eighty of us left for Stalag Luft 1 situated at Barth on the Baltic coast. The journey was expected to last anything from four to seven days and we were there and we were provided with a half a Red Cross parcel per men together with a ration of a fifth of a loaf of bread per day. We travelled in a carriage. Ten men to a compartment and the coach was hooked on to those engines and shunted back and forth in the manner of a freight car. We never actually left the carriage throughout the journey. We ate very well but sleep was difficult and we were relieved to hear that we were making good time. On route we passed through Berlin where we had to wait several hours for the next and last connection. It was a sigh, with a sigh of relief that we left the capital and continued on our way. On Monday evening at 4.50 or 4.30 we arrived at Barth. We spent the night in the railway carriage and on Tuesday morning marched to the camp some three miles north. On arrival we had a shower and our clothing was deloused. Later we were issued with mugs but also knife, fork and spoon and palliases and pillows. Once again we slept in rooms built to hold twenty men. The beds they arranged in three tiers. That evening we had a very welcome bowl of hot barley soup. And our first night’s sleep since we left Wetzlar. And that’s that. The rest of it is really conditions in the camp.
DM: Were you reasonably well treated in the camp?
JG: Oh yes. Yeah. They had sort of given up on us really I think. The only thing is one didn’t mess about. If you didn’t, if you came outside your hut after curfew you could be shot. They wouldn’t worry about it. And while we were there I think at least one person was outside when he shouldn’t have been and was shot.
DM: Did you get news of how the war was going? Was there a sort of —
JG: Oh yes.
DM: A bush telegraph or —
JG: Yes. Yes. Well, there were some parts of the camp had radios of course. Secret radios. I don’t think we were ever issued anything by the authorities but we knew exactly what was going on. And eventually we got the news that we — of course Hitler was declared dead at the end of April. And the camp commandant on our side, he was the senior allied officer was a chap, an American fighter pilot and he he came on the communications system and said that the Germans were going to evacuate the camp. And he had said to them, ‘What will you do if we refuse to come?’ And they said, ‘We’ll leave you behind.’ And of course we knew that the Russians were getting very very close and the Germans were of course terrified of these murderous people who they, ahead of the regular organised army came up and just did what they liked. And their behaviour was dreadful. And the population was pretty well scared stiff of them. At the beginning of May, I’ve not, I haven’t got the date of it I think. Or have I? [pause] Yes.
[pause]
JG: Yes. We were following Hitler’s death. Then things were collapsed on the German side quite considerably. But before that, in the March we had, we had the RAF prisoners had a briefing in which we were told that plans were afoot for us to break out of camp. The whole of the camp would break out. The RAF would act as armed guard to the main body of prisoners going back west who would have been American. And as we were going, ‘How do we break out of this place then?’ ‘Arms will be dropped to you,’ we were told. This was the sort of rubbish that came from Whitehall. You know, that sort of thing. Absolute, well as I say complete rubbish. And we came out of the briefing and we were flabbergasted. And I was, walked out with a pilot from 4 Group who had been the pilot of a Halifax which was involved in a head on collision over Cologne. I can’t imagine anything much worse than that. Having a aircraft — and he was the only survivor. But the fun, or interesting thing it was the first occasion he was wearing a seat parachute. Up until then the pilots only had the ordinary pack which clipped on. Whereas, they had, at the end of the war, a bit late, at the end of the war they were issued with a seat pack so that if something happened and the aircraft came adrift [pause] Is it on? Then they would get away with it and it was the first occasion he’d worn it. And of course this was the first occasion he really needed it. You know. He said, well he thought it was rubbish and we were a bit taken aback and alarmed. Because if people were going to the extent of dropping arms to us they obviously wanted us to use them and we, having got that stage in our lives having survived we didn’t want to stick out our necks much longer. Particularly now. It’s obviously at the end of the war. Hitler is now dead and things are going to move quite fast. Anyway, we, we sat waiting for news of our evacuation and it was, nothing seemed to be happening until a group captain from our own side got through to the lines in Lubeck to allied headquarters to find out what was going on. Only to find of course nothing was going on. But as a result of that arrangements were made for the US Air Force, 8th Air Force, the B17s to come and pick us up and take us home. Adjoined, quite close to the camp was a Luftwaffe base which by now of course the Russians moving in it was now part of Russia as far as they were concerned. And no way were they going to allow any aircraft, allied aircraft in there until Eisenhower got behind it when he heard that we were not. He wasn’t going to have for a start any idea that we should break out and march west. It was the last thing he wanted. He’d got enough people rushing around the place. And he didn’t sort of want gash POWs. And so we were to stay where we were. And as a result of that RAF chap getting through to our lines and getting some action how much longer we would have been there goodness knows. And then [pause] now, I’ve got here at the end of the war, our time in the camp with the Germans. Now, having gone that Monday the 30th of April 1945 the Germans have been demolishing detector installations and equipment in the flak school which on this airfield. By the evening most of the items have left the camp and it looks as though we shall be left here in the care of the senior administrative office. Many heavy explosions in the flak school and on the aerodrome around. There was no count on today, parade tonight but the Jerry major appeared to be tired. At 9pm the somebody [pause] Well, anyway, 9pm we were told that from 8am tomorrow, that’s the 1st we would no longer be POWs as the commandant was officially handing over. We had an extra biscuit, butter and marmalade to celebrate. Tuesday the 1st of May — today the guard posts are occupied by Americans wearing MP armbands. That’s Military Police of course instead of the usual old goons which was our name for the German guards. A white flag flies over the camp. The rumours are thick and fast and everyone is wondering when we shall get away. The Russians are supposed to be pretty close. The latest is that they are two kilometres south of Barth. The bürgermeister of Barth is said to have shot himself. At 1pm we heard the BBC news and now at 14.20 we are listening to, “Variety Band Box.” Tonight at 22.15 approximately a Russian lieutenant and either a civilian or Russian soldier arrived. Cheers echoed throughout the compound. We’d been awaiting this for some time. Good Old Joe. The main Russian body captured Stralsund, which is on the coast, tonight, today. Listened to the BBC news. Public House time it to be extended on VE Day. I hope we’re home for it. At 22.30 it was announced that Hitler is dead. I hope it was one of Berlin, was in one of Berlin’s sewers. Perhaps these will capitulate now. Lights on until midnight by order of Colonel Zemke. He was the allied commander I was talking about. Special cup of hot milk at 23.15. More Russians expected tomorrow. Water shortage. On the Wednesday the 2nd the Russians said we were to march out and be packed in preparation to leave at 6pm. One Red Cross parcel issued to each man for the journey. We ate several meals in quick succession to get rid of our [pause] this is the one [pause] yes. We had to get rid of [pause] Red Cross parcel stocks. Share out the ones that we had left. Then we were told to be ready to march in the morning and a little later we heard that the march was not definite. Most of us left camp in the evening to have a look around. Some even got into Barth. Rumours are flying out, hope it’s true, British and Russians are supposed to have linked up in the north. Chaos reigned all day. Poor water situation. German armies in Italy and Austria surrendered to Alexander. Monty’s boys in Lubeck. Russian. Russians in Rostock. Berlin has fallen. Hamburg declared an open city. I’ve been told the airfield is becoming clear of mines. We may be flown out. Hope it’s true and that the kites —
[pause]
JG: I heard earlier today that we’re in contact with London, Washington and Moscow to see what they intended to do. Or for us to do. A colossal [pause] comparatively speaking, announced all day. The water situation a bit better. From midnight tonight we use Russian time. An hour in advance of our present time. Friday the 4th — airfield expected to be clear by 2pm. All Germans in northwest Germany, Holland, Denmark, Heligoland were ordered by Admiral Doenitz to surrender unconditionally. This is to take effect from 08.00 tomorrow Saturday the 5th of May 1945. Saturday the 5th of May — a Russian general inspected our barracks in the morning. In the afternoon Marshall Rokossovsky to some [pause] oh no, came to report with Colonel Zemke. A very tough looking bunch. One of the generals made a speech to some of us in Russian. An American colonel arrived by jeep from our lines and made final arrangements for our evacuation. Wish they would get a move on. Listened to a radio recording of the signing of the unconditional surrender by the German staff. The commentary was by Monty. The 6th. Sunday the 6th — still waiting. The colonel repeated his former broadcast saying things were being done for our evacuation. Monday the 7th — a lieutenant colonel of the 6th airborne Division came to Wismar today to reassure us and we needed some reassuring too that we could expect to be flown out within the next few days. He could not say which day it would be but would definitely be only a matter of a few days. Question — how long or short is a few days? Apparently, we shall be flown back to England. Good deal. Other POWs are still being flown back by Lancs. [pause] Daks and Commandos are being used. Twenty five in a Dak, forty in a Commando. Most POWs have to be helped into aircraft. They were given a shock here. We shall run like stink when the kites come. I’ve heard that tomorrow is VE day and the following day a holiday. I’m bloody annoyed that we’re not going to, we’re going to miss the celebrations and so is everyone else. Saturday, Sunday the 6th of May — saw a Russian concert this afternoon and it was very good. No one or very few understood a word but what the hell. Monday the 7th of May — at the moment, 21.50 Russian time someone, I think it’s Alfredo Campoli, is playing a composition on the violin which I heard once at one of the St John’s socials. St John’s being the Parish church in Sidcup where I come from. It has just been announced that the BBC have broadcast a message to the effect that Stalag Luft 1, Barth, Pomerania has been liberated and the next of kin are being informed. Goebbels, his wife and daughters took poison apparently. War ends after five years and eight months. Unconditional surrender made at 2.41 French time today to Field Marshall Montgomery. Location Reims. Or Reims. Tuesday the 8th of May — I’ve just heard the prime minister’s speech declaring that the European war is at an end. The ceasefire officially takes place at 00.01 tomorrow. Wednesday, May 9th but fighting, except for some of the Resistance in Czechoslovakia ceased on Thursday morning. It is VE day and this morning I spent some time sun bathing on the peninsula north of the camp. I hope soon to be doing the same in England very soon. Listened to the King’s Speech. I guess the family were listening too. Do they know where I am? I wonder. And did they hear the announcement on the radio last night to the effect that we had been liberated by the Red Army. Lancs landed in Germany for the first time and flew back with four thousand five hundred POWs. Come on boys. Let’s get out of here. Wednesday the 9th of May— sunbathing again today. Allied parade this morning. A Russian officer made a speech to us. Same old story. Be patient for a few more days. Plenty of rumours floating around [pause] At 08.00 hours on BBC radio all men at Stalag Luft 1, Barth, near Stralsund, Pomerania, Germany are to remain in the camp and not make for the allied lines. Well, I don’t know whether anyone did. Thursday, the 10th of May — on KP again today. You know, that’s cleaning up the camp. Ten thousand more POWs flown out by five hundred BC aircraft and we’re still here. Colonel Zemke made an appalling speech again tonight. He’s going to get out all souvenirs. The rumour is that all British personnel are going to be taken by transport to Wismar and flown home from there. Also, that we should have been there yesterday. Group Captain Weir is said to have gone to try and get us out. He may have split with Colonel Zemke. I hope so as Zemke hasn’t a bloody clue. Listened to ITMA. Last time I heard it was on Wednesday the 6th December. I was changing in my room for the op and could hear it on someone else’s radio. That was of course the day on which I went down in Germany. Friday the 11th — sunbathed again today. There’s a meeting of the wheels, you know they were the top men, tonight. Final arrangements for our evacuation are said to be the subject of discussion. Group Captain Weir seems to have been arranging with the Russian commander of the area, Colonel General Batov for aircraft to land here to take us out. Colonel Zemke has just announced that aircraft expected here tomorrow or on Sunday. Russian passports are being signed up in preparation. It really looks as if we are going to move soon. Squadron Leader Evans had to fill in forms of interrogation which he signed. This gives us clearance, a clearance chit to be presented on arrival in England which should hasten our departure from the Receiving Centre. A cabinet order said that all POWs are to be with their families within twenty four hours of arriving in England. Length of leave is uncertain. Nearly eighty thousand POWs have been returned to England so far. There can’t be many more. Eisenhower has just repeated his, ‘stay put’ message. The 12th, Saturday the 12th — Group Captain Green on parade this morning said evacuation was to begin this afternoon. Sick quarters are first on the list. Then come the British personnel in the following order and its by blocks eight, nine, ten, eleven etcetera. So we were in a good position. What’s the betting I click for a cleaning job which would mean a delayed departure. At 2pm the first US aircraft arrived at Barth aerodrome. Two Daks for hospital cases and the rest Fortresses. Joe here is in charge, that’s me, in charge of operation [unclear] so I shan’t get away until tomorrow. The rest of the boys in the room buzzed at 3pm. Six lads and I stayed from 3pm until 9pm cleaning up. What a bloody awful job. Managed to get a shower at the end of it. Packed for the morning, nearly losing my fags as the Yanks still in the compound were on the prowl and almost swiped them. Saturday the 13th of May — paraded at 6.30am and after roll call we marched out to the airfield. At 7.30am the first Forts arrived. We were then split into groups of twenty five and as each Fort came around the perimeter track we embarked. That was Sunday the 13th. We were airborne at 8.30am and flew fairly low direct to England having a very good look at Bremen and Hamburg enroute. As we were using Russian time we had to put our watches back one hour to correspond with double British summertime. PBST. We landed at Ford in Sussex at 11.30. This completed the trip I set out on on December the 6th last. It took a bloody long time for my liking. Too long. I have recalled the following dream I had some time during my incarceration. Obviously, it was prompted by my fear that my family didn’t know my fate in the dream. I returned home to reassure the family that I was safe, in reasonable shape and in a POW camp. Having told the family this I prepared to leave, much to their puzzlement. ‘Why,’ they asked, ‘Did you, now home do you propose to leave?’ ‘Because I’m still a POW and my place is in that German POW camp,’ [laughs] I replied. And that took me to the end of the war.
DM: So, that was the diary you kept.
JG: Yes.
DM: When you were in the camp. Yes.
JG: That’s right. And that I didn’t much do much until the last days. Little point really.
DM: So, you obviously then had leave after you got home.
JG: That’s right.
DM: Repatriation leave.
JG: Yes.
DM: When did you actually leave the air force the first time?
[pause]
JG: I don’t [pause] I’m not sure that I’ve got it.
DM: It doesn’t matter precisely.
JG: Yes. It was —
DM: It was in 1945 was it?
JG: Yes.
DM: That you left.
JG: That’s right. Yes. What happened was that after the end of leave, which was extensive I did an air traffic controller course and I ended my days in the RAF as an air traffic controller at Henlow in Bedfordshire. And it must have been September I think. I’m trying to think when I got it [pause] Righto. Thank you.
DM: When you left the air force —
JG: Yes.
DM: What did you do in Civvy Street?
JG: I had a number of jobs. The last one was an, with an insurance company called Friends Provident. They’re still around. Quite a minor one I think. But I had, the first job I had was [pause] air freight. It was a company that dealt with arranging air freight in and out of the country. We were based in Victoria. It was a fiercely boring thing. And —
Other: You didn’t go back to Brown Shipley did you?
JG: No. I often wonder what would have happened had I because Brown Shipley’s still around.
DM: What prompted you to join up again in 1949?
JG: The fact that I was bored stiff and really and I was by now living in what we used to call digs in Reading and coming home to Sidcup at the weekends. And I didn’t really enjoy it much. And so it was when this announcement was made I thought, ‘Oh I can’t do worse than this.’ And if I’m going to go back on my terms because what I want now I want to settle down. If possible to get a house. I want to make some solid progress and get employment which I can guarantee until normal retirement age because I’ve not got much in the way of money. Certainly the RAF would provide the income that I was looking for and if I can get in with my flight lieutenant rank. And also, I actually had the nerve to talk about a permanent commission. And to my amazement that’s what happened. And I’ll never know whether the chap who was by now Air Marshall Sir John Whitley who had been the station commander at, at St Eval in 1942 when I was there and whom I was interviewed by him on the way to getting a commission and I wrote and reminded him of that. Whether it had any affect I just don’t know. I’d like to think it did and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he hadn’t sort of put a recommendation in on my behalf. Anyway, that’s in I went. And 31st of May 1949 and I — my first Squadron. I went having done a number of courses to 1949. Refresher navigation courses. I then went to a course where I went as a navigator to a pilot whose name was Wing Commander Oxley and this was a organised — I’m not sure what exactly it was called but it was at [pause] now —
[pause]
JG: I have to turn this off again. I’m very sorry.
[recording paused]
JG: Obviously then, this refresher training thing I was posted.
[pause – doorbell rings]
JG: To RAF Swinderby at an Advanced Flying School and where we flew Wellingtons and I flew with the pilot Wing Commander Oxley between September and November. In late December of ’49 I was posted to Number 236 Operational Conversion Unit at RAF Kinloss, Scotland flying Lancasters. Until April the 5th of April when I was posted to 38 Squadron Luqa, Malta flying Lancasters on maritime operations.
[pause]
JG: Apart from maritime operations which included various Naval and air force. Naval and air operations, training operations and also on air sea rescue duties.
[pause]
JG: At the beginning of 1953 where I was then posted to Number 1 Maritime Reconnaissance School. And that was at St Mawgan in Cornwall. And during my time there I found myself recruited to take part in the Queen’s coronation and I, for the spell which included the coronation I went up to Henlow. And we were trained in basically marching long distances. And I took part in the actual Review on the 2nd of June 1953. And then subsequently in the July I took part in the Queen’s RAF Review of the — at [pause] well I think it was the RAF Review. The Queen’s Review of the RAF took place at Odiham in Hampshire. And that was [pause] I haven’t got the actual date. Later in 1954 I was posted to headquarters, 64 Group Home Command at Rufforth, York as PA to the AOC. Non-flying apart from accompanying the air commodore and visits. From ’56, September ’56 to the 23rd of January I attended a Bomber Command Bombing School, Lindholme. Navigation training for the V force. In summer that year I was posted instead to Air Ministry, London Air Intelligence Branch. And in October 1960 I was posted as assistant air attaché, British Embassy, Paris. I retired from the RAF in May 1962 and in September I joined Shellmex and BP Limited soon to become separate companies. I stayed with Shell until retiring in June 1982. And that’s really leaves me coming out.
DM: The, near the beginning you were saying that because you were a POW.
JG: Yes.
DM: You didn’t have your hands on your logbook.
JG: That’s right.
DM: And you didn’t get it back. And that was one of the ones that was ultimately destroyed I assume.
JG: Yes. As far as I know if you want to record it.
DM: It’s going. Yeah.
JG: When I came back I made enquiries and I discovered that in October or November 1960 [pause] Either ’59 or ’60. When did I go? [pause] Yes. It would be October 1960. A decree had gone out earlier that year, no in that month, it was certainly while I was in Paris the Air Ministry issued a decree to say that the, there were a lot of logbooks unclaimed and unless you claimed the thing by whatever date it was, I don’t know, they would be destroyed. And so by the time I came back and I didn’t know that, I didn’t get that news while I was in Paris and I can’t, and I’m surprised they didn’t think to tell people all over the place. Or else I just missed it. But anyway the fact is then any enquiries I made just drew a blank. So, there’s no point really. It isn’t, doesn’t exist anywhere unless someone thought oh I’ll have this. But why they would do that I don’t know.
DM: No.
JG: I can’t imagine it’s of any interest to anybody but me. But it’s been a nuisance really because [pause] well just all I’ve got, I’ve got it here but the as soon as I rejoined of course I got another logbook and that’s the one I’ve got. But it doesn’t help looking back at things that happened during the war.
DM: No.
JG: The only one of interest that, it was an event which occurred while I was on 78 Squadron at Linton on Ouse and it’s documented actually in Bomber Command records. It — we took off from Linton on the 11th of December 1942 heading for Italy. So, we were virtually a flying petrol tank with one or two little bombs. Anyway, we took off and immediately one of the engines caught fire and the situation was such that we had to get out of it. Out of the aircraft. Fortunately, Linton is not all that distance from the North Sea, although it is the other side of Yorkshire. And so what we proposed to do, the initial plan was to drop our bombs in the sea or where they could be safely dropped and come back and land. But the situation was getting rapidly out of hand and so it was a question of dropping the bombs first thing and then, if possible to have a crash landing somewhere. However, and as I was a bomb aimer down in the front I had to get rid of the hatch so that we were going to drop out of it. That’s the way we were going to go. But I soon had to tell the pilot, ‘We’re going to be far too low to bale out.’ So, he said, ‘Well, I’ll see if I can crash land somewhere.’ But by this time it was getting worse than that. He said, ‘I don’t know. I think I can reach the sea.’ And that’s what we did. We ditched in the North Sea. Just a few miles out, three miles out from Filey and we all got away with it. There was no, had we stayed much longer of course we could very well have burned up. But we did, we got down in the water and we got picked up. Interestingly enough we were picked up by fishermen who had just landed in Filey and had looked back to see this aircraft going into the sea and turned their boats around and came out to pick us up. And, but some of those poor chaps got some stick because what they should have done because some of them were lifeboatmen they should, they should have gone, and gone out with the lifeboat. So they weren’t very popular when the lifeboat did come out and found out some of their men were actually there having done the job for them virtually. Because we didn’t need any help other than something to take us back to land. Now, I was recently, a few years ago now I was contacted by someone by the name of Paul Bright who had written or was writing actually, he hadn’t finished it — a book called, “Aircraft Activity Over the East Riding of Yorkshire,” which included not only RAF but Luftwaffe things. How he got it I don’t know. Anyway, he had got the records of 78 Squadron and this ditching thing and he [pause] he got in touch with me via the chap who wrote 640 Squadron history and as a result of that I was, gave this chap Paul Bright all the information and he’s included it in his book. There’s the thing, “On a Wing and a Prayer,” about what happened from my time in 78. And I’ve been in touch with him. We’ve been, both T and I have met a number of times when we’ve gone up that way and also because the — we’ve been going up there to the Memorial of 640 and at the same time met Paul Bright. But I don’t know what’s happened. A book which I’ve got a copy of I think. A member of the family must have it but it’s, it’s a most extraordinary detailed book of what happened in the air over the East Riding during the war. And including what’s happened to various air crew including German air crew.
[pause]
JG: And I’m in touch with him every time something significant comes up. Like today for example. I told him about the organisation that was going ahead on behalf of Bomber Command in that area. And I don’t know whether he has been in touch but of all the information I’ve had of course is via Carol and her visits up there.
DM: Ok.
JG: Right.
DM: In September 1944 whilst engaged on an attack on a synthetic oil plant the aircraft in which Flight Lieutenant Goldby was flying was severely damaged by heavy anti-aircraft fire. One engine was hit and rendered useless. Three petrol tanks were holed and a shell fragment entering the bomb aimer’s compartment damaged his equipment. Despite intense physical discomfort and shock Flight Lieutenant Goldby continued calmly to direct his captain onto the target. This determination and skill resulted in a successful attack. This officer has participated in many operations over enemy territory and among his targets have been such heavily defended areas as Essen and Duisberg. He is now engaged on his second tour of operations and in his capacity as bombing leader has been a source of inspiration to his section and has materially contributed to the high standard of efficiency attained. And therefore, the DFC was awarded.
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 Louis Goldby
Creator
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David Meanwell
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
2017-10-25
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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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AGoldbyJL171025, PGoldbyJL1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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01:30:05 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 Goldby was born in Kent but the family moved to London the year after. He was inspired to join the RAF when a schoolfriend joined and became a Spitfire pilot. John believes that it was a mid-air collision with a night fighter that led to his crash. He became a Prisoner of War at Stalag Luft 1. He kept a detailed diary of events leading to his eventual liberation and return to the UK. After demob he was soon bored with Civvy Street and returned to the RAF. He had an interesting post-war career including time as air attaché to the British Embassy in Paris.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Barth
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
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1941-05
1942-05
1944
1945-01-20
1945-04-30
1945-05-05
640 Squadron
78 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
bomb aimer
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
Distinguished Flying Cross
ditching
Dulag Luft
Halifax
Hampden
Lancaster
mid-air collision
observer
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Riccall
RAF St Eval
RAF Stanton Harcourt
Stalag Luft 1
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/924/11167/ALeithJM170112.1.mp3
58862b6cf0fd639127eb573cee163a3e
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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Leith, James McKenzie
J M Leith
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer James Leith (b. 1924 186914 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 429, 624 and 148 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by James Leith and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-12
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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Leith, JM
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer James McKenzie Leith at 2.30 on Thursday 12th of January 2017 at in his home in Fulwood, near Preston, Lancashire. So, Jim, if that’s alright to call you Jim, just for the record please would you confirm your date of birth and where you were born please.
JML: 21 5 ‘24. Bathville, Bathgate.
BW: And that’s near —
JML: Scotland.
BW: Glasgow, Scotland.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Yeah. What was your family life like? You had mother and father at home. Did you have brothers and sisters?
JML: Yeah. Two brothers.
BW: And were they —
JML: And two sisters.
BW: And were you the youngest or were you right in the middle or the eldest?
JML: Middle. Yeah.
BW: And what was your home life like in Glasgow or Bathvale? Was it a nice little village, you’d say?
JML: Yeah. A very good village because my grandfather was the local policeman.
BW: And where did you go to school?
JML: Bathgate.
BW: And did you stay in Bathgate throughout your school years?
JML: Yeah.
BW: And —
JML: I left school at fourteen.
BW: At the standard age.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And what did you then go on to do?
JML: I went working at the local swimming pool. Learning the people on a course of course first to get trained. Then learn people how to swim.
BW: And so you —
JML: Came it came in very handy later on I can assure you.
BW: So you were a swimming instructor in that respect.
JML: Yeah. Well, I was training to be a swimming instructor. Yeah.
BW: Ok. And how long were you doing that for?
JML: Probably two years. Yeah.
BW: And after that did you remain at the swimming pool or did you go on to another job? Did you take a job elsewhere?
JML: I went in the forces. Into the forces after. From being there. The swimming, the trainee swimming instructor.
BW: So you’d have been only sixteen.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And did you join the RAF first or was, did you join another branch?
JML: Well, I was in the Air Training Corps etcetera. Yeah. Stayed with them for, I don’t know. Quite, quite some time. The ATC as it was called.
BW: And were you always interested in joining the RAF then?
JML: Oh yes.
BW: As a young boy.
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: What attracted you to it?
JML: I don’t know. I just, I just liked it. My brother was in the army. My elder brother. He was in the army. And my sister who was older than me as well, only just, was a trainee nurse. So next in the, on the list was Jamie. And I, and as I say I went the ATC and I was quite happy we got into the RAF when the time came. Yeah.
BW: And what specifically did you intend to do in the RAF? Were you initially trying to be a pilot or or —
JML: No.
BW: In the [unclear] or something.
JML: I was just going to be in the RAF and leave it to them. Definitely.
BW: And so you joined before war actually broke out.
JML: I went in the —
BW: Because you were only [pause] Or was it just as war had started? It was ’24, and you were sixteen. Yes. So it would be 1940, wouldn’t it? So war would have started while you were —
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: Just joining up.
JML: Definitely. Yeah.
BW: So, was the, was the onset of war something that compelled you to volunteer more than the interest or was it just everything came together?
JML: Yeah. In general, I joined the ATC. The Air Training Corps. I joined that and eventually got in to the RAF.
BW: And where did you sign on? In Glasgow?
JML: Edinburgh.
BW: Edinburgh.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And what happened from there? Where did they send you for training? Do you recall?
JML: London, funnily enough. From one capital to the other. London.
BW: Do you know whereabouts at all? Or not?
JML: No. Don’t ask me that. No.
BW: Ok.
JML: No.
BW: And so you, did you apply at that time to be aircrew or did you once in the Air Force stick at a ground trade or as a mechanic or something or did you want to go as aircrew?
JML: Aircrew.
BW: From the start.
JML: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Do you recall where you did your aircrew training? Your gunnery training.
JML: Yes. Let me see now. That was under [unclear] Stormy Down, Cardiff.
BW: Stormy Down.
JML: Yeah. Stormy Down.
BW: Ok. Yeah.
JML: Have you heard of that one?
BW: Yeah.
JML: Yeah. Stormy Down. Yeah.
BW: And as an air gunner what aspects of your training can you, can you recall that you had to do?
JML: Well, being in the aircrew and training at Stormy Down I just automatically seemed to slot in and become an air gunner. And we used to fly out over the Bristol Channel towing, towing a drogue behind an aircraft and the air gunner flying in Whitleys.
BW: Whitleys.
JML: A Whitley. I think it was a Whitley if I remember rightly. And the rear gunner there shooting at a drogue as it went along to try and pass the test that your eyesight was good etcetera and you could see alright. Yeah. That more or less was it, I think. Probably there about, I would think at least two months. Maybe even more. Training. Yeah.
BW: And did you do any ground training with the guns at all?
JML: Very little. Very little during the period when we were at Stormy Down because it was all mostly in the air. Firing from the ground came later somewhere else but I’m trying to think where it was but I can’t think at the moment. On a beach somewhere. Somewhere in Yorkshire. Probably at Bridlington.
BW: So from Stormy Down you moved up to Bridlington to do some further gunnery training.
JML: Air gun training, yeah. Definitely.
BW: Ok. And then Dalton and Lyneham —
JML: That’s right.
BW: I believe.
JML: Yeah. That’s, that’s further training there. We went on to aircraft.
BW: And at this stage did you crew up with the guys that you were going to —
JML: No.
BW: Follow through with training?
JML: We just went with anybody.
BW: Ok.
JML: Because most of them were training as well. Yeah.
BW: And from your training as a gunner which seems to have finished at Lyneham do you recall what happened after that? Did you go to a Conversion Unit?
JML: Where did I go from Lyneham? [pause] Yeah. Yeah. We moved on to —where did I move on to? A Conversion Unit. Bloody hell.
BW: That’s alright. If it’s, if it’s escaped your memory don’t worry. But I’m just curious if you met your first crew at the Conversion Unit or whether you met them when you got to your squadron.
JML: That was it. It was a right mixture at the time [pause] Yeah. We crewed up at, yeah. We more or less became a crew eventually at the Conversion Unit.
BW: And can you recall who your fellow crewmates were?
JML: Yes. The first original ones were, there were the three Canadians. The pilot, flight sergeant [pause] now then. Charlie Bois. C H A R L I E B O I S. I think that was how you spelt it.
BW: Ok.
JML: Charlie Bois. And the navigator was Jim Cameron.
BW: Jim.
JML: Jim.
BW: Yeah.
JML: Cameron.
BW: Cameron. Ok.
JML: Canadian. The bomb aimer was Joe Senecal. S E N E C A L. Now then.
[pause]
BW: You have a wireless operator and a couple of gunners in there.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Of which one, one is you.
JML: I’m trying to think of the [pause] I think what was he called? I’m thinking about the flight engineer [pause] Well, I think it was George Messenger. Because he was with us a long time so George was probably there then.
BW: Ok.
JML: Mickey Neville, wireless operator.
BW: Davy Lambert, gunner, along with me. That should be seven, I think.
JML: Yeah. That’s right.
BW: Yeah.
JML: So Davy would be the mid-upper.
BW: That’s him. Yeah.
JML: And where were you based with 429? Do you recall?
BW: Yeah. This is all in my head and it’s just all rumbled up. I’ll get it. I’ll get it in a minute.
[pause]
JML: It’s a bugger, isn’t it?
BW: Do you think it was in Yorkshire?
JML: Oh aye. I never moved until I went abroad. I was there all the time.
BW: There were a couple of bases. One at East Moor and the other at Leeming.
JML: Leeming. That came up. That. Leeming. Leeming Bar it was called in them days.
BW: And what was your accommodation like there? Your barracks.
JML: Oh good. Yeah. More or less nissen huts. Yeah.
BW: And what were your arrangements? Were you all in there as a crew or were you all in there as gunners?
JML: Different. Different. Yeah. The crew, the crews were in the mess together. Not there, not in Bomber Command where I was, no. It was just a mixture.
BW: And did you socialise together as a crew?
JML: Oh, just so so because as I say we were, this was a Canadian squadron so they more or less, they more or less kept together and the RAF lads like myself and Mickey Neville and that. So, we did. We did socialise I suppose. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Because we were always at the at the sergeant’s mess was the sergeant’s mess and everybody mixed in there. Sergeants. Officers went to their own mess. But our crew of course at the time were all either a sergeant or flight sergeant apart from Jim Cameron, the navigator. He was a flying officer. Canadian. So he was the odd one out.
BW: How did you get on as a crew?
JML: Very good. Yeah. Really good. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: How did you all meet? Were you all put in to a large room together to sort yourselves out or, or not?
JML: No, you just, it was actually, probably two. Two to a room at the time. Aye. And at the time, at that time, apart from Jim Cameron, the navigator who was a flying officer all the rest of us were either sergeants or flight sergeants. And of course we were all more or less all together all the time.
BW: Did you get the opportunity to go off base and socialise? To go in to the nearest town?
JML: Oh yeah. Definitely.
BW: Have a few beers.
JML: Yeah aye. I mean, we were quite, quite the [pause] the Canadian lads probably kept together more than with the RAF lads. We more or less kept to ourselves. Mickey Neville and Davy Lambert etcetera. When I think about it now. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: Why do you think that was? Was there, was it a cultural thing?
JML: No. It was just —
BW: Or just circumstance.
JML: Yeah. No, no reason why not. Yeah.
BW: So thinking now about your operations and what you were going to do describe for us how you would be briefed. What sort of things would lead up to the start of a mission and what would you do yourself when you got to the aircraft?
JML: Well, briefing used to take place probably very late afternoon. Depending, depending on the take-off time. And of course each, each section had their own briefing. Apart from when all the crew members were together at the main briefing. Then after the main briefing the sergeants, gunners etcetera went to the gunnery officer. The navigators went to their. So in actual fact the main briefing would take place with all the crew members together at one time. Then after you had been told etcetera where you were going the officer in charge said the gunners or the wireless operator and that would call more or less their own briefing and give you information about what they thought you should do when you got on board the plane. And that was what I can remember anyway. It’s hard to remember. It is.
BW: I know. So, thinking now, at this point you’ve been briefed on your operation and you’re presumably driven out to the aircraft at dispersal. What would you do as a crew from being dropped off? What sort of, did you have any good luck rituals or checks that you would do when you got into your position in the aircraft?
JML: No. No. Not really. When you got on board of course like there was seven of you. Three or four, four at the front approximately. You all take your positions etcetera. Mid-upper gunner of course is middle turret. The rear gunner, myself, in the rear. And then the skipper would call up to make sure you were all in your position and you’d checked everything and you were quite happy. That you were ready to go. He did that with all the crew.
BW: And how did it feel when the engines started and you were on your way sort of thing?
JML: Well —
BW: Taxiing out.
JML: That didn’t seem to bother. It was just like taking off again, you know. The only thing that was going to be a bit different when you crossed the Channel but other than that it was just straight forward. Yeah.
BW: And I believe you had an eventful first sortie. You’d been briefed to go. First operation. You’d been briefed to raid Stuttgart.
JML: Stuttgart. Yeah.
BW: And describe for me what had happened when you’d taken off.
JML: Oh, we’d had an uneventful trip. No trouble at all. Across the Channel, over France etcetera heading towards Germany. We had no bother at all. Occasional flashes of flak somewhere but other than that there was no bother at all until we got near the target area and then it started to brighten up a bit if that’s the right word. We didn’t see any night fighters. Plenty of flak. And then when we got to the target area the flak was very strong and there, unfortunately we were hit and the pilot had to turn off one of the engines because that was hit very badly. And so we’d three engines, so we [pause] he just dropped the bombs where we were which was somewhere near the target and turned around and headed for home. But by that time he’d decided to take drastic action and he cut off the engine altogether so we were flying on three engines and headed for the target. Well, away from the target to get back to England which was a good trip all the way actually. No problems at all apart from the plane seemed to be losing a bit of height etcetera. But other than that we had no trouble at all getting back to the coast. By that time we were, I think we might have been struggling regarding fuel because the pilot had asked the navigator to find out the nearest aerodrome as we were crossing the Channel which he did. And we headed, headed for that particular, that particular aerodrome. I cannot, I can’t think of the damned name of it now. But that’s where we headed for but, and we got there and got permission to land. And the pilot made an attempt to land but as he made the attempt to land another aircraft which I think was a Lancaster was underneath us so we opened up the engines and headed back out over the sea. And unfortunately, I don’t know what happened but a minute or so after we’d attempted to land the pilot was shouting, ‘We’re going down. We’re going down.’ And a few seconds later, I’m still in the rear turret, the plane hit the sea and it, I think it broke up mid-way along, mid-way along the thing but by that time I’d only just got out the turret and was thrown up. Thrown up the plane. I don’t know if I was semi- conscious or not but I found myself in the middle of the aircraft and presence of mind, I don’t know why I stood up. I was standing in the middle of the aircraft. Well, there was a handle and that handle released the dinghy. I probably didn’t realise it at the time. So I pulled the handle anyway and could see the actual dinghy come out the wing and inflate itself automatically. Of course that didn’t bother me because I mean having been used to water in civilian life I wasn’t bothered at all. So, I mean, I scrambled out. I scrambled out the plane somehow and managed to keep pulling on the dinghy to get the dinghy right out. And Davy Lambert, the other gunner had climbed on the wing of the plane and between us we got the dinghy going and Davy got in the dinghy. And then we, I was still sitting on the, on the wing and then I got in to the water itself and started to shout out names etcetera to find out where everybody was like. And eventually we all got in to the dinghy. I was last in because I was quite happy in the water. I wasn’t bothered. Water didn’t bother me. We got them all in to the dinghy and fortunately they, on the land they knew that the plane had gone into the sea somewhere and an air sea rescue launch picked us up within the hour. So it was very very quick. Quick. A very, very quick hour. But everybody was alright. Nobody, nobody was injured even though the, even though the plane was in a mess and as I say we were picked up within the hour so that was it. Our first trip. Brilliant.
BW: And this was November 26/27, 1943.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And presumably you’d come back at night.
JML: Pardon?
BW: You’re still night time.
JML: That happened —
BW: So this has all happened in the dark and the cold.
JML: 4 o’clock in the morning it was. Approximately.
BW: So, it’s pitch black.
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: And freezing cold water.
JML: It was bloody cold. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But as I said water didn’t bother me so I was alright, you know. I was more interested in what was happening to the rest of crew if they couldn’t swim. As it happened most of them could swim so [pause] And the plane hadn’t really broken up like I thought it might have done. So the wing was still there with it. With the, where the dinghy was. And we were all quite, well, I wouldn’t say quite happy in the dinghy but at least we were all in the dinghy and very quickly picked up by the air sea rescue lads. Pitch dark mind you. But we were making enough noise for them to find us. But it was no bother.
BW: And so I’m assuming that the rescue launch was using a searchlight to sweep the sea to look for you.
JML: Sea. Right.
BW: And it was only from signalling or shouting while you were in the dinghy that they could try and locate you.
JML: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because we’d no lights or anything. No. Nothing at all.
BW: Amazing.
JML: Yeah.
BW: So, what happened when you got on board and were taken back to base? Were, were you debriefed at all any further or —
JML: Well, we, as I said it was right down south. I can’t. I can’t remember any debriefing to tell you the truth. I can’t remember any bit of it because obviously we’d landed at this place down south when we should have been up in Yorkshire. So, we stopped there anyway. I think we stopped there. A little bit of a stop there that day and I think it was the next day [pause] that’s right. We were only there a day and then we were, made our way back to Leeming in Yorkshire. By train of course. Got the train in to, got the train into London and then we headed back home over to, to Leeming. Yeah. I think that was it anyway. Near enough.
BW: And did any of the senior officers wonder where you’d been?
JML: They knew. They must have got notified like that, over what, I can’t remember the registration. It doesn’t matter. There were [pause] no. I’m just trying to — anyway, they knew anyway that something had happened to us and that we were alright. And I can always remember that I had it and I can’t find it. I think it was, I think it was 6 Group, I think, if I remember rightly. The Canadians. 6 Group. And when the, when the Group paper came out the next day or a couple of days later I can see the headline now. It had it across it. The headline of the paper was well [pause] all the Canadian squadrons had a name. We were, we were the Bison Squadron. And on the headlines of the paper in red, “Bison boys launched on maiden trip.” That was the first trip we had done and in the paper that was the headline. And it gave a, what had actually happened to us, you know and what annoys me is I have an old typewriter upstairs and up to a few years ago I’d got the newspaper itself. I got the front page of it from wherever it was like. We all got one I suppose. I kept that for years. That’s what I was trying to find. And on the old typewriter upstairs I made a typed copy of it. Of what it said. I can’t find it. So that that was our only trip with Bomber Command.
BW: But you became a member of the Goldfish Club as a result.
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Did you get a badge?
JML: It’s there. It’s the yellow one. The smallest.
BW: So this is like a what we now say is a credit card sized.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Piece of card that says on it Goldfish Club Membership Card 1942 with the emblem on and details you as, “Sergeant J McK Leith. James McKenzie Leith qualified as a member of the Goldfish Club by escaping death by the use of emergency equipment on 27th November 1943.” Fantastic. And the design of this card, it says is based on the unique waterproof card issued during World War Two.
JML: Yeah. I can’t remember who sponsored that. I can’t think of his name. One of the richest men in Britain.
BW: I can only think the Duke of Westminster but there’d be others of course.
JML: I can’t remember his name.
BW: The sig.
JML: We got though —
BW: The signature on it is Charles Robertson.
JML: Aye. He’s the one organised the thing, isn’t he?
BW: Robertson.
JML: You got a payment you know from it. This chap I’m talking about.
BW: Right.
JML: You got, you got seven days leave after you ditched and you got paid by whoever it was that started this Goldfish thing. What was he called? Bloody hell. Anyway, he was one of the, he was one of the richest men anyway and he, I think you got seven days leave and you got seven days pay which he paid. That’s if I remember right properly. I don’t know if you’ve heard that before or not.
BW: I haven’t but I’m sure you’re right.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And so you arrived back at Leeming and you’re all dried and back to normal.
JML: Oh yeah. Not, not long back to normal.
BW: And what happened? What happened next?
JML: Oh dear [pause]
BW: Did you continue any other operations or sorties with the Bison Squadron?
JML: They decided, when I say they decided, they got there the squadron commander, a wing commander at the top decided that the pilot Charlie Bois, he was called [pause] it was, that’s right we were still fit to fly the Halifax. He wasn’t very tall, wasn’t Charlie Bois. Fairly small. That’s the pilot I’m talking about. And anyway, they decided that he was still alright for flying. But about a month later we, we were we had some time off actually flying. And then we got [pause] It would be about a month before we were picked to go on another. Another bombing raid. I can’t remember the date. The details. But the [pause] got on the plane at the dispersal point and somehow or other as we left the dispersal point, by the way this is, we were still into November December and it’s gone dark of course at four or 5 o’clock like, you know. And somehow or other at Leeming there was two squadrons. We were the Bison Squadron and the other squadron was the Lion Squadron. I can’t remember the number of it but it was the Lion Squadron. And on this particular day we were going on this other flight which would have been our second flight. As we taxied at our dispersal point an aircraft from the Lion Squadron coming down the [pause] I can’t describe it.
[pause]
Now, this aircraft from the Lion Squadron coming around the perimeter track, and we coming, coming out of our own dispersal point and this aircraft from the, the Lion Squadron hit our aircraft as we left the dispersal point. Very [pause] really damaged the planes and mind you we all scrambled out and we were all right. And the lads from the Lion Squadron they were alright as well. But the two aircraft were a right mess. So that, that flight was cancelled completely. And after that I don’t exactly know what happened but that Charlie, as I said he wasn’t a very big bloke he was taken off flying bombers. I don’t know who decided it, but somebody decided he’d be better flying lighter aircraft so he was taken off the squadron and what happened to him after that I’ve got no idea. But the RAF lads that was myself, the mid-upper gunner, the wireless operator and, no that’s, that’s right. We three RAF lads were sent to another unit and I think it was Dishforth. Dishforth. Either Dishforth or Driffield, one or the other to await being crewed up with another pilot, navigator, bomb aimer. That’s it. Yeah. Now then, as I say it was either Dishforth or Driffield but it doesn’t matter. That was another Conversion Unit and we went there in, we were now in to December. I don’t know why but for some unknown reason we three, Mickey Neville, Davy Lambert and myself were at that unit for oh a long, long time. I think they’d forgotten about us. But eventually [pause] I’m just trying to imagine how we got crewed up again. I can see it all but [pause] Anyway, we got crewed up again but I just can’t remember. I can remember the pilot. Pilot Officer Proud. P R O U D. Another Canadian. And I think we must have still kept the three other Canadians as well. But thankfully time was flying past.
JML: You must have been in the unit well into the spring of ’44.
BW: This is what I’m trying to remember. I’m trying to remember exactly how it came about. As I say we got this, this bloke called Pilot Officer Proud. I’ll never forget his name. I was just trying to remember where. [pause] Anyway, to cut a long story short Pilot Officer Proud hadn’t flown on any operations at all. So we went to Linton on Ouse. Does that ring a bell?
BW: Yes. That’s in Yorkshire.
JML: Yeah. That’s right. We teamed up with Pilot Officer Proud. That’s it. More or less with the same, the same crew as previously apart from the pilot. But the crew stopped the same. Right. I’m trying to think of is it, did I say Dishforth?
BW: You said it was, it was either at Dishforth or Driffield. And I think there was a Conversion Unit at Dishforth. But you then moved from there once you’ve met your new pilot to Linton, Linton on Ouse. So it sounds like you’ve been assigned a new pilot and are ready to be transferred to a new squadron.
JML: I’m trying to think which one it was actually. 429 Squadron. 429 624148. What you find in there? 429.
BW: After December ’43 at Dishforth it was 426 Squadron for the remainder of the war. And then at Linton.
JML: Linton on Ouse.
BW: 426 must have moved from there. From Dishforth to Linton as well. So if you’ve gone from those two airfields it’s possible you’ve been with 426.
JML: I’ve got them here.
[recording paused]
BW: So you met and crewed up with Pilot Officer Proud again.
JML: Correct.
BW: And he was from 408 Squadron. That’s what you’re saying.
JML: No. That’s where we got him but he hadn’t flown on any operational trips when we crewed up with him. We’d only done one but he hadn’t done any at all. Right. Now, he went on an operation as a second pilot with 408 Squadron. Now, where they were going I don’t know but they never came back. It was lost with all the crew including Pilot Officer Proud. So we never flew any operations at all with Pilot Officer Proud unfortunately. I had a hectic time for a bit. Flying.
[pause]
JML: Now, why have I put that there?
BW: So, Pilot Officer Proud went up on an a operation as a —
JML: Second pilot.
BW: Second pilot and never came back.
JML: Yeah.
BW: You then returned to Dishforth. To the holding unit.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And your new pilot who you met was — ?
JML: Must be Lawrence.
BW: Lawrence.
JML: Toft. T O F T.
BW: And was he an officer?
JML: No. Not then he wasn’t. He was a flight sergeant.
BW: Flight sergeant. Ok. And so you’ve now got, you personally have moved onto your third crew.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Now. And what happened with Toft? You called him Tofty. Is that right?
JML: Lawrence.
BW: Lawrence.
JML: Or Lawrie. Yeah.
BW: Did you do much training with him?
JML: No. Because he had already done three trips I think with, back to the, what did they call the squadron earlier when we ditched in the sea. He came from that squadron.
BW: 429 Bison.
JML: 429. Yeah. And we went to Dishforth, wasn’t it?
BW: Yes.
JML: What, what, when was that? What?
BW: That would be spring 1944.
JML: What was that with?
BW: So you were there several months between the holding posts.
JML: I went with him.
BW: And it was a while because you thought they’d forgotten about you all. And you then would have been assigned your crew roughly Spring 1944.
JML: Yeah. As I say we got Tofty. That’s right. Then we went [pause] Yeah. We got Tofty.
BW: How would you describe him? What sort of a person was he?
JML: Very clever. I did try to think. Mickey Neville, Davy Lambert, myself. That’s the three of us. I’m just trying to fit in the other. He was actually Canadian that one.
[recording paused]
BW: So your crew now.
JML: Yeah.
BW: If I read these names out to you. Flight Sergeant A J Toft.
JML: That’s right.
BW: Flight Sergeant Johnston.
JML: Johnston. Yeah.
BW: Sergeant T S Jones.
JML: That’s him.
BW: Sergeant G H Messenger.
JML: George.
BW: That’s George Messenger.
JML: George Messenger.
BW: Sergeant Mickey Neville.
JML: Mickey Neville.
BW: M R Neville.
JML: David Lambert. Yeah.
BW: And sergeant D P —
JML: That’s the one I couldn’t remember. He’s Canadian the [pause] I’ve lost him again. Jones. Tommy Jones is it?
BW: Yeah.
JML: Tommy Jones.
BW: Yeah. Jones. T S Jones.
JML: Bomb aimer. Yeah. That’s the one, that’s what I’ve been trying to think about.
BW: And he was your bomb aimer.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And he was Canadian.
JML: Right. Yeah.
BW: And what sort of a guy was he?
JML: Very queer but can’t account for that. Not queer, queer.
BW: Quirky perhaps or unusual.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And so what was going to be your next mission with them?
JML: We went abroad.
BW: You were sent abroad to 624 Squadron. Is this right? To Libya.
JML: Hmmn?
BW: Did you go to Libya? You say you went abroad.
JML: That’s right.
BW: You were posted to 624 Squadron.
JML: Blida.
BW: Blida, Algeria.
JML: Yeah. B L I D A. Blida.
BW: And this is now special duties.
JML: That’s right. I just couldn’t think of that bloody bloke’s name. Jones. Tommy Jones. Anyhow.
BW: And how did you end up as a crew being posted there? Did you volunteer or were you picked?
JML: Just, were just sent. Yeah.
BW: And what was that base like? What was Algeria like?
JML: It was actually quite good. In fact, very good actually.
BW: Did you fly out there or did you —
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: Travel by ship.
JML: We took a brand new Halifax out to that place. Different to the one that we had but they changed the tail on it. Made it a square tail instead of that way and it was a new one. Brand new. We picked it up at a place called, Hurn is it? Hurn, near Bournemouth. Yeah. We took that with us.
BW: So was this a brand new Mark 5?
JML: Yeah. It would be. Yeah.
BW: Mark 5 Halifax.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And you flew it from Bourne.
JML: That’s it.
BW: To Blida.
JML: To Blida.
BW: Blida.
JML: Yeah. So we got on to special duties instead of Bomber Command.
BW: And what sort of things were you doing on special duties? Do you remember what sort of operations you were tasked with?
JML: Yeah. Either dropping agents or dropping supplies to the French in Southern France.
BW: Did you get to talk to any of the agents at all?
JML: Not allowed. No.
BW: What were your briefings like at this stage then? When you, when you joined this brand new squad, well for you it was a brand new squadron, what were your briefings like now as regards preparation for a mission? What were you told about it?
JML: Well, briefings briefly consist of whether you were dropping agents or dropping supplies and that was more or less, and of course whether you were going to Southern France or anywhere you were going. But at no time were you allowed to have a conversation with any passenger that you were taking because it was all top secret. And that was more or less the briefing. Yeah.
BW: Were you able to find out anything about the agents that you were tasked with dropping or the cargo that you would carry as supplies? Was any of that ever made known to you?
JML: No. No.
BW: So —
JML: Definitely not.
BW: So if the pilot ever knew he wasn’t even able to discuss it with you as crew. If the pilot knew he wasn’t able to discuss it with you as crew then.
JML: No. Definitely not.
BW: And what were these operations like in comparison to the couple that you had flown with Bomber Command? Was there a difference for you as a gunner? Were you, did you feel it was a better environment or less hostile for example or what?
JML: A lot less hostile because —
[pause]
BW: How was it being in the rear of this Halifax this time? Were there, were the missions quieter in that you didn’t fly over heavily defended targets? Is that right?
JML: Yeah, yeah, yeah the, the flights from Blida in North Africa mostly went to Southern France and of course you flew most of them over water of course and once you reached the coast you then had to find where the agents were and nine times out of ten they were in the, in the mountains. And the mountains were the biggest, the biggest drawback we had.
BW: And you were still flying at night on these missions.
JML: They were all night. Night. Yeah. All night missions. Yeah.
BW: And from 624 you moved on to 148 Squadron.
JML: [unclear] Yeah. 148.
BW: Which would be, which would be flying from Italy.
JML: Brindisi.
BW: And doing the same sort of work.
JML: Exactly the same, dropping supplies or agents, yeah.
BW: And from Italy you presumably saw out the rest of your service with 148 Squadron. At what stage were you sent back to the UK?
JML: I’m trying to think how long we stopped in there. We flew back to, to Cairo [pause] to await transport to the UK. And that was it.
BW: And was that 1945? Or would it be after do you think?
JML: No. No. I’m trying to think when we, 1944 we were flying, was that 1945? Would it be ’45 or was it late nineteen — ? Oh, it must have been ’45. ‘44 we flew out of from England, did the tour. Yeah.
BW: And how long did you stay in the RAF after the war?
JML: Not so long. I can’t think when I came out.
BW: Would it be 1946—
JML: ’46, I think.
BW: When you were repatriated and left at, in 1947. Discharged on 28th of September 1948.
JML: As long as that did I wait?
BW: You’ve come back to Wheaton or Kirkham.
JML: Kirkham.
BW: In 1946.
JML: That’s it, yeah.
BW: And that’s when you met a WAAF.
JML: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: What was her name?
JML: Hmmn?
BW: What was her name?
JML: Margaret Iddon. You want her surname.
BW: Your, your girlfriend at the time. In 1946. What was her name?
JML: Margaret. You want her, do you want her —
BW: What —
JML: You want her surname as well. That’s it. Margaret Iddon. I D D O N. Oh well, no, I’m getting confused. Sawford. Sorry. S A W F O R D I think. Sawford. That’s, that’s your mum’s name isn’t it, Margaret?
Other: Yeah. I knew you’d mentioned Iddon and I thought well I’m not in on this.
JML: It’s amazing how I get confused Margaret.
Other: Never mind.
BW: And what happened after? After you were demobbed?
JML: I went working for [pause] as a salesman for Jackson, the tailor.
BW: And how long were you there?
JML: A long time. ‘Til maybe about, probably 1965 or ’66. More or less to retirement, near enough.
BW: And what do you think of the commemorations taking place at the moment Bomber Command? It’s been a while since the veterans have been commemorated but now they’re being honoured, if you like for their service. What do you think?
JML: Well, yeah because we were having this place what’s it called again? I’ve forgotten the name.
BW: Lincoln or Hyde Park. The Memorial at Hyde Park.
JML: Well, I think that’s the [pause] that one at the Arboretum. Is it the Arboretum?
BW: Oh, yes the National.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Memorial Arboretum at Stafford.
JML: Yeah. I’ve been going there for the last ten years on and off. Obviously we’ve got, we’ve got a spot there.
BW: Are you glad the veterans of Bomber Command are being remembered?
JML: I suppose so. Yeah. Because I mean they [pause] I’m just trying to think if there’s a proper thing.
BW: There’s a Memorial in London.
JML: Yeah. Yeah. I got an invite to that but I didn’t go.
BW: And there’s now this Centre in Lincoln.
JML: Yeah. The only other one I know about is this one at the Arboretum which is where the Special Duties have their place.
BW: Alright. Well, that’s, that’s all the questions I have for you, Jim.
JML: Thank God for that.
BW: Thank you very much for your time.
JML: Yeah. Well, I’m sorry I can’t give you as much as I wanted to do, you know.
BW: That’s alright. Thank you very much.
JML: I’m trying to remember things, you know.
[recording paused]
BW: So, this is Brian Wright interviewing Flying Officer Jim McKenzie Leith on the afternoon of Thursday the 12th of January 2017 at his home at Fulwood, Preston in Lancashire. Now, Jim you’ve kindly told me that you were born the 21st of May in 1924 in Bathville near Glasgow and you were the middle brother of five. You had two brothers and two sisters. And that you left school at fourteen and you had been a member of the Air Training Corps prior to joining the RAF in 1940. And following your initial training as airman and then trade training as an air gunner you joined 429 Canadian Squadron in Yorkshire based at RAF Leeming. And you described for me your first sortie when you were returning from a raid on Stuttgart on the 27th of November 1943 and were forced to ditch in the, in the Channel. And you recovered from that. After a period of time on holding squadrons at Dishforth you were then sent to Bilda, sorry Blida.
JML: Blida.
BW: Blida, in Algeria in 1944. And you were first on 624 Squadron and this is a special duty squadron that I’d like to ask you about. You flew a brand new Halifax out. And how did it feel to join this new squadron? Were you aware of the sort of things you were going to do when you arrived in Algeria?
JML: No idea. No idea at all.
BW: And when do you recall your first operations with this squadron? What sort of things did you have to do?
[pause]
BW: You were dropping supplies and agents in to Southern France, weren’t you?
JML: Yeah. Definitely.
BW: You couldn’t talk to these guys who you were flying.
JML: No. Well, we mostly dropped supplies. Very seldom did we drop agents. Just occasionally. But the briefing etcetera was quite plain enough as you were flying, flying across water all the time ‘til you got to Southern France. And then you had to find out the position where the agents were but mostly they were in the, in the mountains and so the thing was to make sure that you got your position right because if you didn’t, depending on the weather would you be able to make your drop or not because most of Southern France there was mountains all around where the agents were in secrecy waiting on supplies coming etcetera.
BW: And do you recall what the pilot had to do or you as a crew had to do on the approach to the drop zone?
JML: It was very important actually approaching there because obviously there was different signals. We did signal which we would flash to the ground and if we were in the right position we got a flash back from the ground. But it had to be matched up with the letter or number or whatever it was you were expecting because obviously there was plenty of Germans around on the ground as well and they got the message that we were sending down which was the letter of the day. Which of course changed by the way at different places. And of course the Germans would try and find out and flash a letter back hoping that it was the same as the one we were expecting and we would drop the goods. But nine times out of ten of course the letter we got flashed back was the right letter. But occasionally there were times when you got a different letter. And of course you knew right away that it was the wrong area and you would definitely not drop any ammunition or anything else, or agents depending what you were dropping that particular day.
BW: And were there occasions when you didn’t get the right signal?
JML: Oh, definitely. You’d get the wrong, the wrong letter of the day, you just ignored it.
BW: And did you experience any ground fire let’s say from the Germans? Were they, did they attempt to shoot at you if they thought you were going to approach?
JML: Very very, very occasionally.
BW: And did you have to fire your guns back at them?
JML: Very seldom. Very, very seldom.
BW: And do you recall what sort of height you would be when this was taking place? Were you at low level? Or were you —
JML: The drop, the drop zones were very, very difficult because as I said nine times out of ten they were in the mountains and depending on the weather etcetera it was very difficult to judge the height of the mountains. And especially in the Pyrenees where most of the agents were in hiding. Very very difficult.
BW: And on the times when you had to drop agents by parachute were you able to speak with them at all?
JML: No, nobody was allowed to talk to any of the agents in the area. In the plane or out the plane. It was taboo. Not allowed.
BW: And so you never knew the names of the people you were —
JML: Definitely not.
BW: You had on board.
JML: No.
BW: I understand some of the agents were occasionally dropped in handcuffs because they had potentially been in prison. One veteran from 624 told me of an incident where that happened. Did that ever take place with you at all? No.
JML: Definitely not. No.
BW: And what were the facilities like at Blida?
JML: The what?
BW: What were the facilities like at Blida?
JML: Oh, quite, quite good. Quite good. Some of them had tents. But we and our crew were very fortunate. We’d quite a good billet. A nice wooden billet.
[pause]
BW: How long were you with 624 Squadron? Do you recall?
JML: I would say three months. Three months. Maybe four.
BW: And you and your crew had been posted to the squadron from your previous unit in England. So none of you had volunteered for special duties.
JML: No. No.
BW: You were just posted as a part of a routine squadron.
JML: Definitely.
BW: Were you given any extra money? Were you paid any extra for these?
JML: No.
BW: Operations. No.
JML: No.
BW: And were you trained or given any briefings on resistance to interrogation if you were forced to land or were captured in France?
JML: No.
BW: After your service with 624 you moved on to another special duties squadron, 148.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Where were they based?
JML: Brindisi.
BW: In Italy.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And you were, where were you flying missions to in in Europe from this base?
JML: All the [unclear] countries, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece. All around All around the Balkans.
BW: And the same question I suppose. Were you ever able to learn anything of what these operations involved in terms of supplies? The type of supplies you were dropping or agents.
JML: Not really. No. The only time we were advised on ammunition etcetera was special operations to Poland, and Warsaw where the uprising was taking place and they needed, they needed ammunition of any description.
BW: Can you tell me what you understood of the operation that was briefed to you about this? What were you told about flying to Poland on this particular occasion? This would be August 1944.
JML: Yeah. Well, the uprising was taking place but, but they were fighting a losing battle because of the number of Germans that were actually occupying Warsaw at the time. And the [pause] they were very short, the Polish Resistance regarding food and ammunition etcetera. So it was very, very difficult.
BW: And do you recall how many flights you had to make in support of the Poles in Warsaw?
JML: I think we made four trips in all to Poland itself especially during the month of August forty — it would be ’44, would it?
BW: That’s right.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And was it noticeably heavier in the aircraft because of the load you were carrying or —
JML: No. No. Definitely not.
BW: How would they carry out this sort of drop? Were the supplies positioned in the bomb bay?
JML: Yeah. Normal. Yeah. Carried them instead of bombs. And in the interior. The interior of the plane as well. Yeah. It was very, not much room at all in the plane because it was always packed with either kit bags or [pause] well, and it depended how much we could take apart from what was in the bomb bay.
BW: And your pilot was a Lawrence Toft.
JML: Ahum.
BW: What do you recall of him?
JML: Lawrence was a very, very quiet fella. Very quiet. But what he did say it made you think that he knew what he was doing and he had great faith in the rest of his crew because his crew had great faith in him.
BW: And did you feel on these missions that it was any more dangerous than what you would have done flying over Germany?
JML: The trips to Poland, especially to Warsaw were very difficult because we were flying in to a city and flying in very low to make sure that what we were carrying dropped in the right spot because if they weren’t dropped in the right spot the Germans could get to them before the Polish partisans. Very difficult.
BW: And over the city you would be getting signals from the rooftops instead of —
JML: Yeah.
BW: Of the country.
JML: And we were flying very, very, very low. About three hundred feet above the city. And most of the partisans at that particular time in Warsaw were more or less short of ammunition, short of food, more or less short of everything.
BW: And I believe there were enemy troops positioned on the roofs of the city.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Firing at you as you approached. Is that correct?
JML: Oh definitely.
BW: What do you recall of your sight of the city when you were flying over it? What kind of things could you see?
JML: There’s lots of parts as well. The city itself in parts was just a mass of flames. Some parts of it wasn’t but most of it, and there was a lot of activity. You could see the gun flashes and I think most of them were from the Germans fighting the partisans on the ground. There wasn’t much activity in the air. Quite a bit sometimes but mostly it was on the ground.
BW: And was your target Napoleon Square?
JML: That was it, the centre of Poland.
BW: And so the three or four trips that you made were they over a week or over a couple of days or —
JML: A week. Yeah. A week to ten days, definitely. Some, some were right into the heart of Poland. The city itself. A couple of them were on the way in. Where the partisans were doing their best.
BW: Did you see any other supply aircraft at the time?
JML: No.
BW: Were you flying —
JML: No.
BW: With other aircraft from your same squadron?
JML: There were other aircraft supposed to be there like we were there but I never saw any other planes.
BW: And were you ever, was the aircraft you were in ever hit by ground fire at all? Do you recall any of that?
JML: Oh yes. Hit by the flak. But only very light. Yeah.
BW: Did any of it come near you?
JML: No.
BW: And were any of your fellow crewmen hit at all or injured?
JML: No. There was no hits, no injuries fortunately. Yeah.
BW: So you came back from these operations pretty well unscathed.
JML: More or less. Yeah.
BW: And there were no issues with the aircraft when you landed. Nothing had been disrupted.
JML: Oh yeah.
BW: With the undercarriage for example.
JML: Oh yeah. Yeah. There was marks and that on the plane that had been hit by anti-aircraft fire etcetera but nothing, nothing serious.
BW: Could you feel it when the aircraft was hit?
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: And what was that like?
JML: That was only light. Very [pause] how can I can’t describe it? It was very very light anti-aircraft fire.
BW: Presumably like machine guns or rifle fire and things like that. And were you debriefed in the sense were you given information about how successful the drops had been at all?
JML: Oh yes. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: And what sort of things were you told?
JML: As regards the drops etcetera the actual drops that were done were very successful. There was quite, quite a number of aircraft took part in these special drops. I think in one night, I think it was sometime in August, the squadron did lose over a, over the two nights I think they lost four aircraft. Which were either shot down on their way in or shot down on their way back but they lost four.
BW: Did you know any of these crews?
JML: No.
BW: Were you able to befriend or did you get to know any of the other crews while you were stationed at Brindisi?
JML: Not really. We more or less stuck to ourselves, you know. When you’ve got seven of a crew, you know we were all quite friendly.
BW: And were there any other squadrons based with you at Brindisi at the time?
JML: Not, not on Brindisi. There was a [pause] there was a Polish squadron there as well but there wasn’t there wasn’t many of them. Just a few. I can’t remember the number of it but they were based at Brindisi the same as we were.
BW: Were they flying Halifaxes like you?
JML: Yeah.
BW: It must have been quite important for them to be flying supplies into their own, into their own country.
JML: Oh, very much so. Yeah.
BW: After the uprising had finished were you continuing to fly with 148 or did you stop at that point?
JML: No. No. We started, carried on. Back to dropping supplies into Northern Italy where the partisans were and also still supplying Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania which were still occupied by the, by the Germans.
BW: Did you ever land in these places to offload supplies or not?
JML: No. We had, had two or four small aircraft which were stationed at Brindisi and they would. They would fly in to take a couple of secret agents in and land on a bit of land where they could get out and then the small aircraft would take off again and come back to Brindisi.
BW: Were they Lysanders?
JML: Yeah.
BW: The small ones.
JML: That’s the ones.
BW: Did you ever speak with any of the pilots there?
JML: No.
BW: Or crew.
JML: No. No. It was very hush hush.
BW: And once you’d flown these missions and I think it went up until the end of ’44 when the squadron ceased what happened then?
JML: I think just before the end of the, around about Christmas time etcetera we, we were told that we had now done x number of hours which was a tour of operations completed and we as a crew we were being stood down. And we were being sent down to Cairo for a rest period.
BW: How long were you there? In Cairo? Do you know?
JML: Oh, I’ve no idea. Probably a couple of months or so, I think.
BW: What are your memories of your time with the squadron in 1944 and in Cairo when you were off duty?
JML: Yeah. There was four of the crew were still together and myself, Davy Lambert, Mickey Neville and Larry Toft. We, we four were together in Cairo. What as I say happened to the other, the other three I don’t really know.
BW: Because your other three were Canadians, weren’t they? You had Flight Sergeant Toft who was your pilot.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Flight Sergeant Johnstone.
JML: Yeah. He was a Scotsman. Yeah.
BW: Sergeant Jones. Tommy Jones —
JML: Yeah.
BW: Was Canadian. Sergeant George Messenger.
JML: He was a, yeah engineer.
BW: And as you say Sergeant Mickey Neville and —
JML: Davy Lambert.
BW: Davy Lambert.
JML: Jock Johnson, the Scotsman he’s, he stopped with the squadron. Why I don’t know but Jock stopped there. And I’m trying to think what [pause] oh, and George Messenger. He stopped with the squadron. That’s the two isn’t it? They would have stopped with the squadron but they wouldn’t be allowed to fly for a certain amount of time because they’d to have what they called a rest. A rest before they started on their second tour. But other than that I lost. I lost. What Jock Johnston or what George Messenger did I’ve no idea. We other four were kept at Cairo for quite some time. And then Lawrence, the pilot was told that he was going to start flying Dakotas. So we didn’t really know whether he was very happy about it but that’s, that left three of us. And we three were posted home. We had to stop in Cairo ‘til we got information to pick up a ship and prepare to, prepare to sail home.
BW: And would that be 1945 when you —
JML: ’44. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. That would be January/February. That’s it, yeah. Definitely.
BW: And do you recall where you were sent to? Where you arrived back in the UK?
JML: I think we landed at Liverpool. Definitely.
BW: And from there I understand you were posted to Kirkham camp near Blackpool.
JML: That’s right. Eventually. Yeah.
BW: And what happened while you were there?
JML: Just, that was, that was the, while we were there the war finished completely. And it became a demob centre.
BW: And you stayed in Lancashire because you met a young woman.
JML: Stayed there awaiting to get demobbed. Yeah.
BW: But you then met a young woman.
JML: Yeah. Aye. Margaret. Yeah.
BW: And so your relationship with her continued and you were married.
JML: Yeah.
BW: But only after a very short time. How long?
JML: I don’t know. Probably six months or something like that. Time I was there we got married. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: And you didn’t fancy staying with the RAF.
JML: No.
BW: And what, when you left did you go on to do then?
JML: I worked for the — what did that come under?
BW: Were you a salesman?
JML: Yeah. I was a salesman but I’m trying to think what I did. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I became a salesman. I worked for the Burton Group. That’s the best way to put it down. As a salesman.
BW: And did you ever go back to Scotland? Did you ever consider resettling to Scotland?
JML: No. No.
BW: And so you’ve lived and worked in the Blackpool and Preston area for the rest of you time after the war.
JML: Yeah. Until retiring. Until retiring. Yeah. Definitely.
BW: And do you still attend the reunions for your squadron? Do you meet up with your friends?
JML: Aye, we have done until the last twelve months or so but I’m afraid that we’re only got down to two or three. That’s all. They’re the ones that used to go to [pause] what’s it called? The aerodrome.
BW: Elvington? Elvington?
JML: No.
BW: Was it an airfield near here?
JML: No. I’m talking about —
BW: Or the Arboretum.
JML: Not the Arboretum. No. Bloody hell, it’s wild, deary, deary dear. Down near, down near Wolverhampton that’s still going. What’s that big aerodrome?
BW: Cosford. Cosford?
JML: No.
BW: Near Wolverhampton. No.
JML: No. It’s still going there. The aerodrome’s still going. They all land there now. Everything lands there. That’s silly that I can’t remember that. Deary dear.
[recording paused]
JML: Did we say Brize Norton before?
BW: Yeah. At Brize Norton.
JML: Their number is 4624 so they adopted us.
BW: I see.
JML: And the [pause] and they used to go there every twelve months for a reunion.
BW: Until they decided it was —
JML: Well, it got —
BW: Elevated to an operational base and higher security status so it prevented you going.
JML: Stopped us going. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Right.
JML: And your latest award was the Legion d’Honneur. Is that correct? You received the medal from France.
BW: Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh aye. Yeah. That’s on there somewhere.
JML: When did you receive that. Was it last year?
BW: I got it through the post but you could have it presented so when we ended the trip to [pause] oh bloody hell.
Other: The Arboretum.
JML: What’s it called? The bloody place where we got it.
Other: The Arboretum.
BW: Where?
Other: The Arboretum.
JML: The Arboretum. Aye. Yeah.
BW: So you had a little presentation while you were there.
JML: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Good.
JML: There was only two of us. You could have it presented or you could have it sent. But Joe, you know, this [unclear] it was his idea that while we were going to the Arboretum that we would have it done then but you didn’t need to do that. You’d just said you’d have it like and you’d get it. The only one I’ve spoken to that got his medal was Stanley. He lives right down south. He was a dispatcher as well you know and he had his presented by the local [pause]
BW: And was he on your squadron as well?
JML: Oh aye.
BW: But you never met him while you were serving in Italy or Algeria.
JML: No. I didn’t know him. No.
BW: Ok. That’s all the questions I have for you Jim. So, thank you very much for your time.
JML: It’s alright.
BW: For your recollections.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Very much appreciated.
JML: We had a good trip to France didn’t we?
Other: Yes. We did. Yeah.
JML: Bob and I and Margaret.
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
JML: Somebody wrote, it must have been some paper. I don’t know which one it was. Wanted to meet somebody from the RAF and that that had done a drop in this place in France. Somebody from, was an ex, I think it was an ex-RAF man himself. Buck. A Frenchman of course. So, Stanley, the one I was talking about, the wing commander’s wife of what do they call it, squadron.
Other: [unclear]
JML: At Blida, somehow or other got in touch with us. The person who had put this advert on to me. Anyway, she and her husband and the one I just mentioned, Stanley were trying to find out who actually made the, made the drop. Anyway, we couldn’t find out because as we said it was top secret unless you knew the special names and that etcetera. But anyway they decided to go so Bob and I and Margaret plus Sally Ann and her husband and Stanley went to France to this village.
Other: Sigoyer, it was called.
JML: Sigoyer, that’s right love, you know. It was unbelievable. You’d thought we’d won the war, won the war on our own wouldn’t you. The way they looked after us.
Other: Yeah. They did very good.
JML: It was brilliant. That was three years ago now since we been there.
Other: Maybe more. Four now.
JML: Pardon?
Other: Maybe four.
JML: Maybe four. Yeah.
Other: They took us they took you to one of the canisters that had been dropped.
JML: Oh, aye. Definitely. Yeah.
Other: To the Resistance.
JML: Yeah. It was, it was a good trip was that. Yeah.
Other: The mayor of Gap and all the fire, firemen and all the services from the, from the town and the village. All came out and sang and they had a commemorative service.
JML: Took us in a truck. Another truck.
Other: [unclear]
JML: Another truck or what they called it, didn’t they? Up the mountain.
Other: Yeah.
JML: To where the actual drop was done.
Other: Yeah.
JML: Where the men used to hide. Yeah. It was very interesting.
BW: I bet you’d have rather been in the aircraft though than on the ground with the Resistance though, wouldn’t you?
JML: Oh. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. The, the girl that received the message, this, talking 1943 probably ‘43 maybe ’44. The BBC used to send messages out in code, and this woman who was the owner of the hotel, wasn’t she love? The daughter it was. My age now. But when she was, I think she was either fourteen, fifteen she picked the message up on the BBC that there was going to be a drop. It’s all in code you see. A certain a night, you know. So she was there, this lady. Told us all about it, didn’t she? Can’t remember what the code was. It doesn’t matter.
Other: I think it was something like the leg has fallen off the chair.
JML: Oh, that was it. Aye. It was code anyway.
Other: Something like that.
JML: Yeah. And it was ready for picking up or something like that. That was the code for that area.
Other: It’s a bit like something off, “Allo. Allo.”
JML: Yeah.
BW: Do you recall the lady’s name?
JML: Oh, no. No. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: So that’s, that would be a very unique experience to have met somebody who you dropped supplies to.
JML: Oh aye. I mean they took us in this four wheeled drive thing up the mountain as far as you could go. We had to walk the rest of the way and showed us exactly where the drop was made. And we were high up of course but in the valley below the mountain there were some caves and that’s where all the stuff was hidden away from the Germans. It was very interesting. Really interesting. Yeah.
BW: And they managed to survive in conditions like that?
JML: Yeah.
BW: Under occupation.
JML: Yeah. You’d have thought we won the war on our own the way they treated us. They were fantastic. Bob and Margaret still keep in touch with the school teacher. Get a card from her every now and again. Yeah. Oh, they really made a right good do of it.
BW: Brilliant.
JML: But the [pause] when we went to the France as a group, the special duties, they made a big song and dance about it. It was good. It was quite a [pause] there must have been about a dozen. A dozen or more went on the thing, but Brize Norton, the aerodrome, they supplied a guard of honour. Quite a, quite a guard of honour. And that was, that was well, the village itself were alright. They gave us all a medal of some description. I don’t know what it was. From the village. And we got the — what do you call it?
Other: Freedom of the town.
JML: Freedom of the town as well, you know. Gave us a medal for the freedom of the town. I’d like, I’d like to have gone back there as well but I’m getting too old for that sort of thing. Travelling. Old age catches up. Yeah.
BW: Right. As, I say that’s, that’s all the questions I have for you, Jim. So thank you very much again for your time.
JML: I’m sorry I couldn’t find —
BW: That’s alright.
JML: More of the stuff I thought I’d kept for you to see.
BW: That’s alright. Thank you.
[recording paused]
JML: And we just got on, we got on the river. And we just flew low following the river. We knew the river went into Warsaw after we’d made our way across [pause] what are the bloody mountains called? On the way in to Warsaw. After that it was very very, well, all hilly and that but somebody told us, one of the Warsaw blokes said, ‘Just get as low as you can on the river itself,’ which is the Vistula, ‘And that will take you right into the heart of Warsaw.’ So, well Laurie the pilot, as soon as we had crossed the mountains just put the nose down and got as low as he could and followed the river right into the heart of Warsaw. Yeah.
BW: So this was how you found the target?
JML: Yeah.
BW: I think, are they the Tatra Mountains because one of them, are they the Tatra Mountains in Poland. I think. But anyway, you come over the mountains, drop the nose, drop the aircraft down to presumably —
JML: River height.
BW: Fifty or a hundred or less.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And then after a certain distance because of course you’re following the river a little bit you see the outskirts of the town and you count the first of a series of bridges up the river.
JML: That was us. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: Do you recall how many bridges? Was it three? Four?
JML: I think it was the third bridge but I’m not very sure you know. Yeah.
BW: Find the third bridge and turn left.
JML: And then that was the heart. That was the heart of the city. Yeah. Yeah.
BW: So, you, as the pilot was flying in obviously straight and level over the river he’s going to have to climb to make the turn over the, over the bridge. Otherwise he’s going to dip the wing into the river, isn’t he? So —
JML: Yeah. Well, what Lawrence did he, he knew what he had to do his job so what he did instead of dropping the parcels etcetera, etcetera, etcetera he didn’t. He carried on a bit further up the river because he knew where his target was. And when he turned around to drop the stuff in he knew then, what he told us about, he was on his way home. If he dropped the things on his way in it would have meant he would have to turn and then turn around and head for home. But Lawrence didn’t. He carried on, came back to the target area, flew over the target area, dropped what he had to do and he was on his way home then and I could, that’s what I said, I’m in, I’m in the rear turret as we were leaving and it was just a mass of flames. The city itself. I could just see it, you know. Yeah. But that’s what he did and that was, that was why we got away with it, you know because a lot of them got, when they got in got shot down unfortunately over the target area.
BW: So this is because the Germans or even the let’s say pro-German forces and possibly even the Russians knew which route the supply aircraft would come in.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And so Lawrie was avoiding that.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Flying further up the river.
JML: Just went straight on. Yeah.
BW: Made the turn over the city.
JML: Yeah.
BW: Instead of over the river.
JML: Yeah.
BW: And came straight over the target, made the drop and was straight out.
JML: On his way out.
BW: As opposed to having to turn over the target.
JML: Yeah. Yeah.
BW: That’s a smart move.
JML: It was a smart move. Definitely. Yeah. But there was a lot of politics involved in that part. The story goes that, well it’s in writing that Stalin wouldn’t allow the RAF planes to land in Russia. So whether that’s right or not I don’t know but that’s the story. That’s the story anyway and that’s why they lost so many bloody aircraft. Instead of being able to just go in, drop the bombs, turn into Russia and drop. Go on Margaret.
BW: And that was the profile you flew each time on those drops was instead of following the expected route you fly further up the river and make the turn later.
JML: That’s what Lawrence did, anyway. Yeah [pause] She’s off again. Aye.
BW: And even though it was at night you were able to see vividly the flames and flashes over the city.
JML: Terrible. Yeah. Yeah. Terrible. Well, we were flying that low, you know. I mean in Bomber Command you’re twenty thousand feet in the air. Fifteen thousand feet in the air. We were just above the drop. I think it was three hundred feet. I think it was. Either three hundred or four hundred feet and then we dropped the, dropped the stuff. Yeah.
BW: Right. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with James McKenzie Leith
Creator
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Brian Wright
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
2017-01-12
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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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ALeithJM170112
Conforms To
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Pending review
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02:11:41 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
James McKenzie Leith was a swimming instructor before he joined the RAF. He trained as a gunner and was posted to 429 Squadron at RAF Leeming. On their first operation their aeroplane was damaged and they attempted an emergency landing but this was interrupted and they ditched in the sea. James deployed the dinghy and directed the crew to safety. He became a member of the Goldfish Club. His second pilot went on his second dickie trip and was killed in action. They got another new pilot and were deployed to 624 Squadron on Special Duties and then on 148 Squadron also on Special Duties dropping supplies and agents into occupied areas. When dropping supplies during the Warsaw Uprising James had a very close view of the burning city.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Algeria
Egypt
France
Great Britain
Italy
Poland
North Africa
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
Algeria--Blida
Egypt--Cairo
England--Yorkshire
Italy--Brindisi
Poland--Warsaw
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1942
1943-11-27
1944
1945-08
1944-09
1945
148 Squadron
429 Squadron
624 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
ditching
Goldfish Club
Halifax
RAF Dishforth
RAF Leeming
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Stormy Down
Resistance
training
Warsaw airlift (4 August - 28 September 1944)
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/937/11294/ALyonJK180202.1.mp3
741ac5d555a5640deb1186b8e219f3a1
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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Lyon, Jack Kenneth
J K Lyon
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Jack Lyon (1917 - 2019. 903044, 62667 Royal Air Force). He flew three operations with 58 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-02-02
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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Lyon, JK
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB; My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 2nd of February 2018, and I am here in Bexhill with Jack Lyon, to talk about his life and times, now he’s aged a hundred. So Jack what is your, what were your first recollections of life?
JB: Well I think a baby in a pram, and I remember going past a hoarding in Sydenham and I must have dropped something, yeah that’s my first, I was only about five years old I suppose then, apart from that I-
CB: What did your parents do?
JL: Sorry?
CB: What did your parents do?
JL: My father worked in the Smithfield Market, connected with the wholesale bacon trade, that sort of thing. He was a clerk in, George Bowles Nichols was the name of the firm. It had a, you know, a stake in Smithfield Market but they didn’t deal much in meat, mainly in products like ham and that sort of thing. George Bowles Nichols it was, he was a clerk in there. And he was a, oh right from a young child he had a, he was, had a bad health, in fact he had three brothers and they all did except one: they had a hereditary disease which gave them this hump back sort of thing. He nevertheless managed to work, to travel up to London every day, until in 1932 he had a, well he had a, and he died in 1932, anyway, of this, it was while we were on holiday my memory, in this town of Cleve. He didn’t die there, but he was in a very bad way and we only got home, a few days later he died. Well that was, what did I do then.
CB: And you lived in Sydenham then.
JB: I, we was living in Sydenham, and I attended Brockley County School. I’d passed what was the equivalent of the eleven plus from a, I began my school at five years old, in a, they call a church school I think it cost me, cost my mother about a shilling a week to get to, for this, a good education though, very good. I was going to say I passed this, the equivalent of the 11-plus and I went to this Brockley County until, well, I left school at sixteen and I went to work with a London gas company, the South Suburban Gas Company, which had an area extending from Lewisham right down to Tonbridge. I worked in their admin department. At the same time I was studying night school and, let me see that takes us up to, oh yes the, I left, I passed that what’s called the 11-plus and I was at the school and then the South Suburban Gas Company, I joined that in February 1934, and at the same time I tell you I was night school at a place in Knights Hill and I remember on the 30th, sorry on the 30th November 1936, somebody rushed in and said the Crystal Palace is on fire and of course that was the end: we watched that happen. Great pity because it, well it had, anyway I continued to work. In 1939 when I was still working for the South Suburban, I was studying night school as well - accountancy and that sort of thing - I passed stage one of the Royal Society of Arts bookkeeping, and the tutor was, worked for Shell and he poached me. He said, ‘you’re, you have quite good knowledge of accountancy and that sort of thing, would you be interested in transferring from the gas, from the gas company to Shell?’ Well I thought about it, and financially it didn’t, in fact it was slightly worse off I had to pay my train fare to London, but I thought well, it’s a good thing to be a small fish in a very large puddle and you couldn’t get much larger than Shell, could you? It was world wide then, Royal Dutch Shell, and I agreed. In fact I joined Shall about the 1st August 1939. I remember Shell opened an account for me with Lloyds Bank, 39 Threadneedle Street, where they banked themselves; they opened this account for me. But as I say, at that time we were working in St Helen’s Court and there was another famous RAF person also working there, Douglas Bader. He, when he lost his legs in a flying accident, he was invalided out of the service and he joined Shell as a management trainee, I remember that. Well, as I say on the 1st of September, Shell began, operated their wartime programme and that involved closing the London office. So they said well Mr Lyon we shan’t require your services during this present emergency, but in the meantime we will bring your salary up to parity with, what until it’s parity with what you’re earning now, and [emphasis] at the end of the emergency you will be free to rejoin the company if you so desire. Well that’s what, on 5th, war was declared on the 3rd of September, wasn’t it?
CB: Yes.
JL: That was a Sunday, wasn’t it.
CB: It was.
JL: On the 4th of September, I and a friend of mine, we made an effort to join the army because we had a connection with the Royal West Kents. They used to invite us to their annual, the Aldershot Tattoo, and we used to be entertained in their sergeants mess so we decided to join the army, but when we got to Parish Lane, Penge where their office had been, it was closed! [laugh] I suppose part of the war, we said well that’s a funny way to run a war but still, that’s it, there’s nothing we could do about that. And the next day, the 5th of September, somebody said oh they’re opening an RAF recruiting office at, in the Yorkshire Grey pub so we took a 75 bus from Sydenham High Street to there. We were examined and my friend was rejected because he had flat feet. I said he would have been more apt if he’d been joining the army, but still, that’s the way they work. I was accepted and I was told to go home, get overnight things and come back and I would be taken to RAF Uxbridge. I did that and, as I say, I was examined and accepted for, in the air force. They asked me then what trade I would like to be in and I said well what can you offer me and they said well cook and butcher well that didn’t ring any bells with me so I said hmm what else, and they said you could join the secretarial branch. Well I’d been pushing a pen for the last five years and in those days I think I want a change. They said well what about aircrew? I said well what about it? They said well if you complete your training satisfactorily you’ll be automatically promoted to the rank of sergeant, receive twelve and sixpence a day I think it was, plus so much flying pay, so there was really no contest was there. And that’s how, I passed the medical for flying and I was given a uniform which I must, was told to wear at all times because I was still actually in the air force. I was given two books to study. One was called mathematics for engineers and the other one was practical mechanics. Neither of them had much bearing on flying training, but there it was. Now this was the phoney war. I went back to my house, we were living in, oh, we had a little flat, my mother and I had a little flat in, just near the Sydenham Road, well as I say the phoney war dragged on until the 30th of December 1939. I had a telegram, “proceed to number one initial training wing, Downing College, Cambridge,” and that is where I went. Now the course was supposed to last for six weeks. In fact it dragged on to nearly four months. The reason was there were still no training facilities available. It had its up side. We were billeted in the, well what used to be the students home in, when they were there because when they were students there in Downing College, some of the colleges did have students as well, but we didn’t have that, we were permitted to use the clubs, that the College’s silver, yes, and we took turns at serving and washing up. So as I say, that relieved the monotony a bit. But this dragged on until as it were, what they say the nemesis, on the 10th of June, 10th of May 1940 the Germans invaded the Low Countries, Holland and Belgium, yes. I was, I was on fire picquet that night and the admin had been headed by a, well I must go back a bit. Before the second world war, Brigadier Critchley, his name was, was chairman of the Greyhound Racing Commission. Now when the war started he was given the rank of Air Commodore and he recruited quite of his old associates for various posts. Our adjutant was a name of Shaffey and I believe in peacetime was a tennis coach, he came and he was in a terrible state, he said LAC – we’d been promoted to LAC by the way after a number of weeks, which meant our pay was a bit better, Leading Aircraftman - what do I do with this LAC Lyon? I said well you must call, as soon as it’s light you must have a general, a roll call of all the students, all the would-be airmen, check for deficiencies in kit and that sort of thing, and the instructions were: ten recruits and each, name, not by name but by number, to various RAF stations, not necessarily air training stations and I and nine others were posted to RAF Kinloss which was not, at that time it was called 45 MU I believe, there was no flying directly from there, because as I say it was mainly material. Well we made the journey up, I had to stay, we stayed overnight I remember in the YMCA in Edinburgh, we managed to get a billet there. We travelled on the next day and we arrived at RAF Kinloss to be viewed with a certain suspicion because at that time it was stories of nuns in parachutes, coming down by parachute and all the rest of it, we were not exactly given a heroes welcome. However, they found us a billet where we could lie our heads for the night and after a day or so they received some sort of confirmation of our status and we were trained in air station defence. I think we, they, the weapon we had was interesting: it was a 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon which had to be what they called “cocked” before it could be fired, the great thing is not so much the strength, dexterity because the story was if you lingered a bit you could lose a few fingertips, however we were trained in the use of it. And we were going to have a read out, two read outs, five of us in each, in each one, but the cannon was, overnight was requisitioned for service in the south of England where it was thought would be far more useful in the event of an invasion. It was replaced with a, I recall it was a 1912 Lewis, Lewis gun with a pan for ammunition.
CB: A drum.
JL: And even then it was a bit of a situation. We were told we must not open fire under any circumstances without consulting the Station Defence Officer. Well first of all we didn’t know who the Station Defence Officer was and even if we did we had no means of contacting him. So therefore, as I say it was perhaps a good thing that our skills were not called into account. This went on for a few weeks and the only outstanding thing I can remember is that one night, or one morning, we woke up to find on a stretch of uncultivated area in the camp were prone figures. They were guarded by normally armoured personnel and we were instructed not to attempt to approach these people in any [emphasis] circumstances. Well, they were in fact refugees from the evacuation of Dunkirk: they were up there because they were spread all around the country, they didn’t want too many in the same place, bad for morale. They stayed there, one night they disappeared and that was that. Not long after this, I was, we, yes, I and one or two others were posted to RAF Elementary Flying Training School at a place just outside, where the beer, Burton. Burton, that’s right, you know, there’s a sign he’s gone for a Burton, well that’s there. Burton on Trent. I was trained as a, in those days all aircrew were first of all trained to be pilots. I failed the pilot’s course – so the failure rate was quite high, something like thirty per cent - and then I was asked what I wanted to do, they said well the only question is becoming a navigator bomb aimer. The senior, the officer in charge of training there, tested my knowledge of mathematics, it was not a big test, it was comparatively simple, just sort of fourth fifth form geometry and that sort of thing. I satisfied him I was intellectually capable of becoming a useful navigator and bomb aimer and then I was then posted to RAF Manby, Number 1 Air Armament School, at a place near Louth in Lincolnshire, where we went through, wait a minute, no, no, one of them, sorry I’m jumping the gun, I was posted to RAF Prestwick, in Scotland for a navigation course. That went on until, that’s right, we completed the course in I think it was September 1940, and I was then posted to, wait a minute, that’s right, I was posted from Prestwick to this one, this Number 1 Air Armament School in Louth in Lincolnshire, that’s right. I satisfactorily completed that course and I was called to the Station Commander, or Training Commander in charge of aircrew training. He said, ‘LAC Lyon, in view of your passing out at the top of the class and your past service record you have been awarded a commission,’ pending what they used to call well, you know, gazetting, whichever, whatever the wartime equivalent of that was, where I would be promoted to sergeant, and I was posted then to, oddly enough, RAF Kinloss! But by that time it had become Number 19 Operational Training Unit, well, it gives you, it tells you, the name tells you what it did. That’s right, this, this was in, this would be about November 1940. I completed the course in early January and let’s see, I went to, oh yes, that’s right. Nothing particularly, well, you cut all the bits and pieces short. The course was completed in, oh yes, in about, I think it was, March of 1941 I was called to the admin office in Kinloss and said that your commission has been confirmed. I was given a week’s leave to get myself a uniform and that sort of thing and then I would return for operational training. I bought my uniform, I managed to stay with a family I knew, their name was Truss, I think it was, and he was an engineer and he was working actually I didn’t know turned out it was the largest, there was an article about it the BBC Channel 4 some time, it was the largest armaments factory in the whole of the country. I didn’t know the extent of it then, but he was employed there. I got my uniform and whatnot and returned to RAF Kinloss and after, in a few days, I was posted to RAF Linton on Ouse which at that time was, it had, it was unusual, a brick building very good accommodation. It was built in the intermediate war years. It also had the other squadron was, they had Halifax, they were being converted to Halifaxes but they were not operational. So that’s right, I stayed with them and returned. Right, well I completed at RAF, at RAF Linton on Ouse I remember I was taken a very bad cough and cold and I remember the medical officer said, ‘Oh, Pilot Officer you have a nasty sounding bit of congestion there.’ And within half an hour or so I was ensconced in this local nursing home to be treated for this congestion. After about ten days there I think, I was released and my training continued. Right. Now, here we come to our, first of all I was to join with a man named, was it Flight Lieutenant Walker, who I think he had the nickname Johnnie, well he would wouldn’t they, that name, but then that order was countermanded for some reason unknown to me, the rumour had it that he was getting a little too fond of his namesake, sort of rumours that are rife in war time. I was then teamed up with a crew the first pilot was Sergeant Roberts. I was the only commissioned member of a crew. Now I don’t know what you know about, can you see any particular reason that that would cause difficulty, you probably don’t now, but it did then. As I was commissioned and they were not I could only converse with them socially or otherwise, in two places: either in a crew room or of course in the aircraft itself, otherwise it was actually forbidden to associate with me as commissioned officer to associate with non-commissioned personnel on the camp area, so it did make things a little awkward, didn’t it. Very unusual situation, that. Anyway, on the, was it on the let me see there, the 1st, of, was that, would be May 1941 we were allocated a new aircraft and told that the, in the crew room, we were told that the target was marshalling yards and adjoining railway station in Dusseldorf, Germany. Right, and we were going to do a pre-flight air test, as you were operations rules insisted. We were in the aircraft waiting to start and well, Roberts, the captain, started the engines but calamity intervened: there were no chocks in the wheels, under the wheels and the aircraft rolled forward and collided with what I think was called a Huck starter.
CB: Oh dear.
JL: No one weas injured but the propeller blades of one engine the Whitley, they were, it was a Whitley 5 was the actual classification of the aeroplane. Well, there is, chaos reigned and it just about did because, I didn’t mention, but shortly after my arrival early at RAF Linton on Ouse, one night there was an air raid. Now I looked around and there were no instructions of what to do in the event of an air raid, I thought well, what do I do? I thought it was a question of Jack you’ll have to play it by ear and wait and see what happens. Suddenly there was an almighty bang! My bed lifted off its, it seemed about lifted about a foot in the air and came down well what do I do? If I rush out to find a shelter I may be going the wrong way. I thought no, I’d better stay put, so I did. The next morning I got up and I went into the Officers Mess and there was no hot water, well that was not unusual, what I didn’t know, overnight a shelter had received a direct hit and quite a large, I think about twenty airmen were killed, including the Station Commander, so that was not a very auspicious beginning to my stay at Linton, was it? Anyway, I did, I, well nothing I could do there then, just hold on. We, I, the station was in a really, a terrible, the pilot was confined to quarters, told he would face a charge of gross negligence and we were told that we would not be flying that night, so we returned to, the rest of the crew, returned to our quarters. Not two hours later there was a change once more. Group, you see it was Headquarters at 4 Group, Group wanted a full number of aircraft involved, no exceptions. They said you, we have allocated you another aeroplane. You must be ready within two hours for take off and your pilot will be Sergeant Roberts. Now there’s a volte face isn’t it, one day he’s considered not fit to fly and next moment it’s all over and he’s fully qualified to fly as captain again. Well, that aeroplane that they gave us should never, in my opinion, should never have been used. We’d only, we took off with the rest of the squadron, but after about only an hour and a half flying, the port engine began to overheat and the, Roberts could do nothing about that, we had to reduce speed, it meant we cut our speed by about ten knots. That in itself was not particularly of great concern, but what was far more important was that we couldn’t get above ten thousand feet. Now the previous briefing the recommended height had been fourteen thousand so theoretically we could have been knocked out with one of our own bombs, but I don’t think that that’s very likely. There was no, well there wouldn’t be any fighter aircraft, they were also using anti aircraft fire, in any case, I think all the fighter squadrons in that part of Germany had been withdrawn and were sent to the, what would be the east front in Poland and regroup and practice for the, what the plan, what was it called - Operation Barbarossa – which was due to and took place on the 21st of June, yes 21st of June 1941 so there were no. Well we, I, we flew on this and almost immediately [emphasis] we were caught in that blue light which locks on to you and it is so dazzling you cannot see your own instruments, it’s so, it’s, you’re virtually as good as blind. We, I released the bombs at what I considered, though I had no idea really where it was, but I knew we’d got to get rid of them, they went down, and we immediately turned and I gave, I gave Roberts a course for home, although we never had any time to check the variation from magnetic to compass course, but let’s hope it was alright. But not long after we turned on for home, the port engine caught fire! The extinguisher didn’t work so therefore we flew on. Now, then the pilot said to me, ‘look Jack I can’t contact the rear gunner. Do you think you could crawl along the fuselage and see whether he’s all right?’ I said, ‘yes I’ll try.’ I opened the door behind the wireless operator and I was immediately assailed by a cloud of fume and flame. I really thought my, my time was up. I didn’t feel particularly frightened, I don’t know why, but then of course the adrenalin snaps in, doesn’t it. I seized an oxygen mask, took a few gulps of it, and Rob looked around, and he said, ‘oh my gawd, abandon aircraft.’ Now, it so happens that the exit is, in that particular aeroplane, was right beneath where I was sitting, so I had to be the first one out otherwise I’d block the exit for the remainder of the crew. I opened the hatch, I jumped, I don’t actually remember pulling the cord, the release, parachute release cord, I obviously did otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here, would I? I came to and I could see by that time the aeroplane below me and it was like an enormous [emphasis] torch in the sky, the entire plane was burning. Now how this happened, I don’t really know, but that was a fact. I saw it hit the ground with one tremendous kind of smoke and flame. I landed, and it was a windless night, so much so that the canopy covered me. I looked, I got it off and I looked around. Now I’d either landed in what was a probably a recreation ground, or what might have been a sports field, but I think it was a recreation ground. I know in the escape books they scurry around and bury their, bury their parachute. Well, you needed a power, power digger to make any impression on that soil: it was hard as a rock! But within less than a minute a German soldier turned up and well he didn’t, although he didn’t say it, had he done so I’d have been inclined to agree with him. “For you the war is over.” Well I wouldn’t have got far in the old fashioned fleece lined flying boot with no proper heel to it and in British battle dress, so there was little I could do but accept it. Now, this one, I could have walked in front of him and he could have walked holding on one hand on his rifle and the other hand his bicycle, so we accepted that the only other alternative: I sat on the cross bar and he did, we proceeded on a bicycle. Now either way, he stopped. Now it was, I wasn’t quite sure at the time, but depending on whether Germany had double summer British, double summer time, but it was well past midnight, he knocked on the door of this house, at that time I could understand a fair amount of German because I’d been studying German at night school, but that’s another, that’s another. He said I have a wounded British officer here, I’d like you to give him a little help. The lady produced some warm water. Head wounds always bleed a lot although they’re really only superficial and this was only a superficial cut, she bathed all the dried blood away, and believe it or not, she also made a cup of tea. Tea not coffee. I thought that was very impressive and I knew enough German to say vielen danke, kneidiger frau: thank you dear lady for your kindness. We then proceeded on for the rest of the journey to a town called Goch, G-o-c- h, not far from the Dutch border. Now for some reason that I never discovered, I did not end up, oh, first of all the policeman, he said give me your pistol, I said ich habe keine pistol, I have no pistol, which I didn’t, the sort of thing I didn’t want to be lumbered with that. He thought maybe a bit odd but he accepted it and that was it. I didn’t spend that night in the cells, he put me in the telephone exchange of all places. And all night, it was a manual exchange in those days, you hear the thing going up and down to finding its correct slot to go in to, anyway I can’t say I slept much but still, that was, I was dry and I’d saved my life so I couldn’t really grumble. The next day the, a Luftwaffe officer turned up and he said would you please come with me, and together with, at some stage or other, we picked up the rest of the crew so I must have had, I think, a slight case of concussion, but anyway, we ended up, he took us to the Luftwaffe base at Duisburg, and he said, ‘oh by the way, your comrade, the rear gunner is quite safe, but when he landed he broke his ankle and he is receiving treatment in a clinic near here, but he is otherwise he’s safe and well.’ And now believe it or not, these, they were extremely polite these Luftwaffe officers, very high standard of education I’d say, in fact some of them could speak English; some of them had spent time in England. We were entertained in the officers mess. There was no attempt made to extract information from us. We talked about cricket or the weather or something like that, and then they said, well we now have to hand you over to a representative of the German Air Force POW body and we went, we, they duly took us in hand and we went by I think it must have been a sort of a mini bus I think, yes it must have been. It wasn’t a, wasn’t a truck, it had seats in it, I know. Well, where do you think they took us? Believe it or not they took us to Dusseldorf and we got out of the thing there, and we stood on the platform. There was absolutely no sign of any damage whatsoever. [Emphasis] We were not the object of any kind of well, abusive attention from the Germans. They looked us up and down and took no, virtually no notice, in fact we had, it was a corporal with us, and he came back with some sticky buns for us. Well, so that was the, from we entrained at Dusseldorf and we travelled to Frankfurt, that is Frankfurt on the Main, the river Main, which at that time was the prison, the Luftwaffe prisoner of war body as what they called the Dulag dursrstadtlager’s transit camp. Now we, when we reached this transit camp, this is where we, they put me in the, I suppose they did with the other, rest of the crew as well, in the interrogation cell, which was really not much different from a second or third rate boarding house the only thing is there were bars over the window. Now before we’d had no instructions to what to do in event of being taken prisoner, of course they do it now, but they didn’t in those days, in 1941. But anyway, a Luftwaffe major came in and he gave me a form to sign and he said if you complete this, your details will be sent immediately to the Red Cross in Geneva and your relatives or whoever you’ve asked to be notified, will know within forty eight hours that you are safe and well. Now, we had [emphasis] oddly enough, been briefed about this. It wasn’t anything to do with the Red Cross in Geneva, it was actually prepared by the German Intelligence Service. I read it and I said, ‘I regret, Herr Major, I am not allowed to divulge some of the information that you require.’ And he accepted this without argument: that was that. And the next day I was released into the compound there. Well of course they had got far more on their hands to worry about than a rather insignificant crew. The last Sunday I think it was, in May, which used to be called Whit Sunday, there was a break out, there was a tunnel, the permanent staff at the gulag had been building this tunnel which they broke on I say, on the Whit Sunday. All were subsequently recaptured except for Roger Bushell, and that’s another story. So you might well say that I wasn’t the only failed bomb aimer, was I? We know that now. Anyway we travelled by normal train from Frankfurt, after Frankfurt. There were some guards there, but they were, they didn’t make themselves too obtrusive. We arrived at a place called Barth, which was the site of Stalag Luft I. Stanlager all that means is it’s a permanent camp, Stan means permanent, as opposed to Durst means transit. So that’s all. That was Stalag Luft I we found ourselves in. Now at the entrance to that I went one way because I was a commissioned officer and the rest of the crew went the other because they were not, because at Stalag Luft I there was an NCOs compound as well as an officers compound and that was in fact the last I ever saw of any of them. Any of them. Peculiar isn’t it, never mind. We were only there, well I stayed there until about April of 1942 and that was when Stalag Luft III was opened. The journey there was uneventful. We got to Stalag Luft III and I was allotted a, well a billet obviously, a room, [sigh] how much more of this do you want from me?
CB: Just keep going. We’ll stop for a break. I think you deserve it. So, you said you were shot down on the 3rd of June 1941.
JL: Correct. Yes.
CB: You had been in the squadron since, for a couple of months, by then.
JL: Oh, no.
CB: Three months was it?
JL: I think it was.
CB: April.
JL: So much happened, air raid and whatnot. I think it was about the mid April when I got to Linton on Ouse, yes.
CB: And you talked about the crew, but in the air, what was the cohesion like?
JL: Well, we could fraternise.
CB: Were you all on christian name terms in the aircraft on operations? When you were flying?
JL: Well, the only one I knew quite well was Robbie, that’s all, the pilot. I don’t remember. If they told me I, it didn’t sink in.
CB: No. Then you already mentioned, that in, outside the flying period, if you were, time, if you were going out and socialising, that was different.
JL: Some of the better class, you know the real, the nice hotels in Linton on Ouse, didn’t like too many non-commissioned ranks in there, they were fussy.
CB: They only wanted the officers in.
JL: They only wanted officers, yes.
CB: Yes. I suspect times changed quite radically later.
JL: Oh, they must have done.
CB: When the heavies came. Yes.
J: They must. But in the early days it was a, it was strict, I was given, no doubt about, I was given strict instructions I was not to fraternise.
CB: Yeah, that was the early part of the war.
JL: They were very particular about it in those days, the air force.
CB: Right. And because you were shot down so soon into your tour, you didn’t have a lot of time to get to know your crew well, did you.
JL: I had very little time, Robbie was about the only one I knew.
CB: Yeah. Fast forward again into Sagan, Stalag Luft III. How was that organised? You had the officers and NCOs. But in the officers’ side.
JL: There was an officers’ compound, and an NCOs compound.
CB: And in the officers compound, how did that work?
JL: Actually I went in to a the, they were quite small huts, and there were only two more in the room that I was in. I was billeted with a man with, a chap named Jules Silverstone, who was in fact Jewish and also this chap Pop Green, who in fact had served in the first world war. He was a, interesting history, at the beginning of the first world war he held a commission in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry.
CB: Right. We were in that. We were in that.
JL: Really. Yes well, he had a commission in that but he later transferred to the Machine Gun Corps because the Germans hopelessly outclassed us in that, in those, in weaponry. He survived the war, but he was told that he was only allowed to fly on training missions, but being that sort of man he probably got himself on an operation and he was flying in a Hampden and they were shot down, and he survived, without, he wasn’t injured, and as I say I was billeted with him. He said that Passchendaele was the worst he had ever [emphasis] encountered. People died there not in action, but in a mass of filth and slime. He said it was, it was appalling. What happened was, he said the Germans withdrew to higher ground and left us in these swamped trenches. He said, as I say, he hated it. And of course, well he, [laugh] he was the only man who was rather sorry when the war ended. The reason was he’d have to go home and rejoin his wife whom he hated the sight of, [laughter] and last I heard of him he was running a taxi service in Bray.
CB: Any reason why he hated his wife?
JL: I don’t know, but he did. He didn’t go into that. [Chuckling]
CB: Yes. What, you said there were three others. So you had Jules Silverstone, Pop Green, who was the other?
JL: Jules Silverstone. His father was a solicitor in Birmingham, but he didn’t follow in this father’s footsteps, he moved heaven and earth to join the RAF. Now I think he was, at age, I think he was thirty four. He was too old to join as pilot or navigator, he had to be classed as a gunner. So, that was it, he was a -
CB: Was an air gunner.
JL: Pilot Officer Silverstone, gunner. Interesting him, because he knew all about this stuff they used to call window, the one that, when they released it, it had black, black on one side and a sort of reflective surface on the other. It played hell with the tech -
CB: With the radar.
JL: With the radar, yeah. And it wasn’t, he said they won’t use it, he knew this, he said but they won’t use it till they’ve found a reason to overcome it. And it was in fact, it wasn’t used until that raid on Hamburg, that firestorm they created.
CB: On Hamburg.
JL: Hamburg. In 1943. Yeah.
CB: Who was the third person with you?
JL: Sorry?
CB: Who, you mentioned two people, who’s the third one?
JL: There was only Pop Green and Silverstone. Three in the room.
CB: And you. Oh, just three in the room, sorry. Yeah, okay.
JL: They were quite small huts. There were only, I think there were only four, only four huts in the officer’s compound, certainly not many. I tell you what we, did happen one day, do you remember that story of the one who got away?
CB: The German.
JL: The German, yeah. Well he turned up, he was in, dressed in ordinary German uniform, he was a major, major, and I remember seeing he was on the doorstep to one of the huts chatting to a man named talking to Squadron Leader Mac Dunnell [?]. Of course he was, actually, the German, he was shot down during the Battle of Britain wasn’t he.
CB: Yes. Yes.
JL: That’s right. And of course Mac Donald [?] was part, flew a Spitfire I think. They were chatting quite friendly, and he was not accompanied by any other German personnel. he just wandered around chatting to people.
CB: Amazing.
JL: He had a sad ending, he was killed in a flying accident. He was testing new fighter apparatus I think, but he had engine trouble or something, he was lost at sea, never found, they never recovered his body, in November 19, oh, 1940 41. That was the one that got away.
CB: Off the Dutch coast.
JL: Yeah. He was there.
CB: Well. he escaped in Canada.
JL: There was obviously, you know, a bond in the, between the two air forces at that time, later on they didn’t, but there was in the early days.
CB: A Chivalry.
JL: Yeah. Chivalry. That’s it, chivalry of the air.
CB: Extraordinary really.
JL: So well that’s my story. Long before, Douglas Bader, who was, he was taken prisoner wasn’t he.
CB: Yes.
JL: When, something, either his plane collided with another one, anyway but he was taken prisoner.
CB: He was shot down.
JL: Whether he was shot down or not.
CB: By one of his own people, he was shot down by one of his own people it turned out.
JL: Ah well that’s. By one of his own people?
CB: Yeah. They met in prison and the chap had to own up.
JL: Oh, I met him personally.
CB: But he didn’t admit.
JL: Because he was also Shell.
CB: Yes, he was.
JL: Well anyway, That was a. When he was in the camp he used to play golf, he would try to. And because of his, he lost his legs you see, I mean his prosthetic legs,
CB: Yes.
JL: I think they replaced them, they threw them out or something like that. He would sometimes fall over but god help you if you went to assist him, you know he would swear at you, he was determined to get on his feet unaided. Anyway, he had a bit of a falling out with the powers that be there. Because he didn’t like the way they were treating the guards and whatnot as if they were friends not enemies. it was decided he would be better off in another camp and the last I saw of him, well not the last, the last in the prisoner of war camp I saw him, he was being escorted out, he turned it into his own advantage inspecting as if these as a company.
CB: Oh you saw hm doing the inspection did you? Of the guard.
JL: He was inspecting the, yeah. That’s typical Bader, isn’t it. Now! I retired, I left the air force in something like well, October 1945 but I remained on as a, I was paid by the air force till I think it was January ’46 and very soon after going to, where did we work to? Very shortly we, I was asked if I wanted to go to Venezuela because Venezuela still had most of its wells, oil wells and I agreed, and I was, I went out to, we didn’t go out on a ship I went out on a tanker SS Luscia, Luscia I think she was. She was imbalast so she rocked about a bit I’ve never been seasick or any other sick in an aeroplane. We finally docked at Aruba, in, which belonged to, was a Dutch possession then, Aruba, in the West Indies and I was only there for a night and then we got a, I was flown to Maiquetia, which was the airport for Caracas. Caracas itself is about five hundred feet above sea level, the capital of Venezuela. I was, from Maiquetia I travelled by a bus on a road which they say was built by convicts in the Gomez, when Gomez was a dictator of Venezuela, you could sometimes look down and see where you’d been ten fifteen minutes before. I reached Caracas, or I might say that they charged me, I had to have what was called a certificate of identity, and I had to pay for it in the local currency. They took a, all I had, was a, I had an English, I had a five pound note I think, they gave a stamp and it was probably worth about one tenth of that in the local currency, the so-and-sos. That’s how it happened. When I got to Caracas, I found a billet in the Hotel Majestic and I knew enough Spanish, I’d, interesting while I was in the prisoner of war camp I had lessons from of all people Tom Kirby Green, why he should be a good Spanish speaker, mind he served with the Republicans, didn’t he, in the war in Spain.
CB: In the Spanish Civil War.
JL: Lord Haw Haw announced it, didn’t he, yeah. So that was that, yes. I had enough Spanish to say I’m in the employ of Shell, they were called the Caribbean Petroleum Company then, they didn’t, Shell, enter into the name although they used the, what it is, the, oh it’s a scallop isn’t it, that’s the Shell sign isn’t it, the scallop, and oh I think it was the afternoon of Christmas Day, a chap named Swinson turned up, he said, ‘Oh Lyon, I’m glad to find you,’ he said, ‘I know you, we were advised you were on your way but then we sort of lost track of you.’ But then of course I served in the, on what they called internal audit, that is not, not, as opposed to the exterior audit, was actually Price Waterhouse in those days. They did the proper auditing of Shell’s possessions there, I went round to these depots making sure their equipment and whatnot was properly registered and that sort of thing. It was quite interesting work. Well, while I was there, who should, that was having travelled down to the fields the main producer in the Maracaibo, while I was there on this what they call internal audit, who should turn up but Douglas Bader. Now he was on a, well they say he was just, reviewing his position, he was visiting, but what he was really was doing he was trying to push the company to try to use British aero, aircraft rather than all American, and I was introduced to him as: ‘oh this is Mr Lyon from our head office in Caracas.’ And he said, ‘oh, hello there.’ I said, ‘but sir, we’ve met before haven’t we. He looked, I said, ‘last time I saw you, you were acting as a kind of inspector of a -.’ ‘Oh my gawd yes!’ And we kept in touch quite a lot afterwards, I’ve known him for quite.
CB: Did you?
JL: Yes. Bader, so.
CB: How did you find him, outside Stalag Luft III?
JL: I got on with him very well. He certainly wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but he had a, he was shrewd. One of the airfields in the concession area, was at a place called Mushi de Suleman [?]. It’s at five thousand feet and in the hot season the pilots were having great difficulty in taking off because of the rarefied air. Now in those, this was the days before computers, I didn’t get a, I got a file across my desk one day, and this was, Bader had seen this problem that they had and he had written in the margin, “let them take off with half tanks”, and he knew that in emergency they would still have enough to reach wherever necessary to safety and yet still travel with only half a tank. He did very well as a, in Shell. He finished as the President of Shell Aviation with a private jet to fly. So he did very well there. But he certainly, he had this, being able to see the, you know little bit further through a brick wall than most people. I had great admiration for him. But I agree he wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I always got on with him quite well. Yeah.
CB: Where did you go from there?
JL: Sorry?
CB: Where did you go from there?
JL: After I returned home by 1950, April 19. By the way, I flew the Atlantic in, at a time when there weren’t many transatlantic flights. I was staying in Montreal at the time, I had some relatives there and I was booked on this, it was little more than a souped up DC4, the aircraft we flew in. We were due to call only at one place: Halifax, but I remember the pilot made a special landing somewhere, he wanted to pick up, I think they were Catholic priests I believe, the look of ‘em, there was snow on the ground, I think we were lucky to take off again, but anyway we did. But flying at that, of course in those days you only flew at probably about twelve thousand feet, something like that, looking on down this unbroken mass of well pine trees I suppose, you wouldn’t have stood a dog’s chance of anything if you’d had to make a forced landing in a plane in there. Anyway we did we, I got home and 1950, in April 1950 and I, [pause] I met my future wife. Now, now I had known her as a schoolgirl because I was friendly with [chuckle] her half uncle, it sounds like carbuncle, doesn’t it [laugh] but he was a half uncle because they’d been, the father grandfather [unclear] had married twice, but that’s all I, we met again and well we decided to get married, Hazel and I. Our, our union, we didn’t do too bad: sixty three years exactly because she died on our wedding anniversary.
CB: Did she really.
JL: In 19, sorry, 2013. So we’re not bad was it.
CB: Fantastic!
JL: So , and then I, well I continued with working. I had the opportunity to leave about the end of. You see they formed what they called Iranian Oil Participants which was agreement hammered out with the Shah as he was then and when they kicked out Masadic [?], he agreed that concessions could be opened by this consortium of oil companies, and there was the BP had a forty per cent interest in it, the major oil, American companies had another forty, Shell had fourteen percent and the Company Francaise de Petroleum the remaining six per cent. That was how Iranian Oil Participants, and I was senior financial, financial assistant in, seconded to Iranian Oil Participants and I held that post for seventeen years. At the end of it I was getting a bit tired of it. I had a man that I’d no respect for: a man named Hoppen. Let’s say he shafted me once, he fed me to the, he tried to feed me to the lions that’s it; fortunately I was set, I had no respect for him after that. He said, ‘I’m not going to make you redundant, Lyon.’ I said, ‘thanks very much, I don’t want to be called redundant, I think I’ve done a pretty good job for seventeen years. Thank you.’ All I asked was that they brought forward the, at Shell you retired at sixty, that was before, and then there was also a reduction made for overseas service which I had, so it would only mean bringing forward my pension date by three or four years, not too much to ask, but that served me well because you see it’s an index linked pension.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Now, my monthly salary is worth, worth much more that I was actually paid when I retired.
CB: Yeah.
JL: So I made the right decision there.
CB: You did, yes.
JL: Staying with, staying with Shell. So I have some things to worry about but money is certainly not one of them.
CB: What made, what brought you down to Bexhill?
JL: Ah! Shortly before I retired, I’d lived in St Leonards. We had a, I had, we had a small bungalow in what they called the Links. It was actually originally it was a golf course, because I, it wasn’t being used as a golf course then but nothing else. I used to walk across this links to West St Leonards where I picked up the train for, used to take me to Cannon Street. But so, that brings it well, I’ve been with them ever since.
CB: But you decided to leave St Leonards and come to Bexhill.
JL: Oh yes, well, I made the right decision there.
CB: What made you do that then?
JL: There wasn’t much there for me in the air force: a failed navigator. I mean. They don’t even have them now anyway do they?
CB: Well, It’s different.
JL: No, no I made the right decision there. I knew I would. No, I couldn’t go wrong.
CB: You mentioned air force again. Going back to your flying times in the Whitley.
JL: Yeah.
CB: What navigation aids did you have in those days? We are talking about 1941.
JL: Well you had a thing called a CFC, whicb you set your, you set your, the course you would want to follow, and then you fed in what the, the wind direction, and you fiddle around with it and that gave you your course to fly. They did have, you could have, some of the Whitleys, not the one I was shot down, didn’t have one, they had an astrodome.
CB: Oh yes.
JL: So if you’d been trained in the use of the [unclear] mill, polar, star charts you could theoretically fix your position by air, star sight, but certainly the one we flew in, the old one they trundled out, that didn’t have one, didn’t have a - there was only one exit there, and that was downwards.
CB: Oh right.
JL: So that was the only navigation instrument we used to rely on, and dead reckoning as they called it.
CB: So in the daylight you could more easily see where you were, but flying at night, what did you do there?
JL: Oh yes it was. I did in fact, have use of, while I was waiting for this, at Cambridge, Downing Cambridge, Downing College Cambridge, I used to read Air Publication 1 2 3 4 and this was the navigational training of a pilot,
CB: Right.
JL: Because we were all supposed to be trained as pilots to start with in those days, they didn’t have different courses then. I was able to use it one day because I know we took off and the mist came down, I was pretty certain we were drifting off course, well it did tell you what to do. You flew halfway to your, half the distance that you’d previously calculated and then [emphasis] you gave the pilot orders to fly twice the distance that you were, you think you’d been going off course, twice that distance and that should give you a course to your original. It really, all you’re doing is flying the two sides of an isosceles triangle, and I tried it and we did, and out of the water, out of the thing, saw this, it was just an island.
CB: You’d got it right.
JL: So it certainly, it worked, I know.
CB: This is doing the maximum drift calculator isn’t it.
JL: Sorry?
CB: This is the maximum drift calculation.
JL: Yes, it’s for, they call it pilot navigation.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Yeah, oh yes. Because he couldn’t take bearings and all that sort of thing could he. As I say, it’s a simple, simple, it’s just geometry really, that’s all you’re doing, flying the two sides of an isosceles triangle. Yeah.
CB: So how many ops did you do before you were shot down?
JL: Only a couple, that’s all.
C: Right.
JL: We had to, they call them nurseries, they were using them to bomb an occupied port like Calais or somewhere like that. How they arranged it so that the, you weren’t dropping bombs on German and French civilians I suppose they had some means of contact in, I didn’t know what it was but that was all, a couple of those and this was just our third trip, that’s all.
CB: How many aircraft were there in the squadron?
JL: That I don’t really know. It was not public information anyway.
CB: And when you went out on a raid, on an operation, did you go with other aircraft or did you go as individuals, as singletons?
JL: Each one took off, you got the, from the Control Tower you get the take off clear, that’s it, one by one.
CB: But you weren’t in any kind of formation or cohesive?
JL: Oh no, it was only Americans that did that, formation flying. Oh no, quite impossible at night.
CB: Yeah. And before you went on the op how did the briefing go?
JL: Well as I say, it was quite clear. The marshalling yards, and the adjoining station: Dusseldorf. That was in the briefing, that was the target.
CB: But they got you all together in a room where everybody was briefed together did they?
JL: That was, yes, well not the second time, we were only given about a couple of hours’ notice to, there was no second briefing, we were just told to fly the original course. Yeah.
CB: Were, when you went off on the ops were all the crew together or were the briefing only for the pilot and navigator?
JL: Well, the pilot and navigator, myself, or bomb aimer I was acting as, we were there and the second pilot, and of course, but the rear gunner was at, well where he should be, the rear gunner. What he, you see he was getting, he was getting fried, there’s no doubt, because the whole aeroplane was on fire and we didn’t know it.
CB: Ah!
JL: So he, what he did, he just rotates his, rotates his, turret, pulls the ripcord, and the airstream takes him out, clear of the, the Whitley was built so that you were clear of the tail, the rear gunner was clear of the tail, twin tail, it just pulls him off and that’s it, that’s what he did, yeah, but as I say he broke his ankle, that’s all.
CB: So all the crew survived.
JL: All the crew survived, yes.
CB: And all of them were captured.
JL: All of them were taken prisoner, yes.
CB: Taken prisoner. What about after the war, first of all how did you get back? Were you flown back or did you come on a ship? Or what happened?
JL: Well at the end of the war, I was here wasn’t I.
CB: No, but you were flown back were you? Or did you come back by ship?
JL: Oh I see what you mean! Well, we by the I think it was the 1st of May 1945, we heard a bombardment and we guessed that was to cover the crossing of the Elbe by the British forces. The next day, the 2nd into the, we were billeted in a farmyard, well we were told that it belonged to a German, well he was in the tobacco business we heard, I don’t know how true that it was, but anyway, the accommodation was fine, we managed to get, it was good weather then, quite warm, no problem there. Into this compound the, came a, there was a British light armoured vehicle. There was a Captain I think, and a corporal. He didn’t say it to me but apparently he said to somebody, I believe there are quite a number of POWs here, and they said yeah, about six hundred if you look around. And that was the end of the war. What we didn’t know was, that as of the 30th of April all German forces in North West Germany surrendered to the British. Well they obviously, they’d rather surrender to the British than the bloody Russians wouldn’t they, that’s what they did. So actually the war ended in that part of the world a week before the main alliance. So, I remember the guards, they neatly piled their arms as you should do and that and they went off to what was called the cage, which was, that was the name the British gave to it, where they, and then they’d be taken ordinary prisoners of war. We’d only been there a short while and a convoy of American Mac trucks turned up and we were loaded on to these and this convoy set off. We got to a place called Rheiner, where we exchanged the American transport for British, well they were only yes, British RSC vehicles and we finally, we crossed the Elbe, I know. They had, well they had one of these revolving things and all the searchlights on, the idea because the war was still on theoretically, as protection as we crossed the Elbe. We, that’s right, we stopped at Luneburg, which was the place a week later the official German surrender took place, and they flew us on, then they drove us on next day to this Rheiner, this airfield at Rheiner. And we waited and we, I was flown home, most of them were, in the, it was a Douglas DC3.
[Other]: Dakota.
JL: They called it a Dakota. And we landed at Dunsfold in Surrey I think it was, where they gave us tea and biscuits you know, the Women’s VS, and we were really then rushed high, as quick as possible up to RAF Cosford which was the gathering centre for POWs, and there we were stripped bare, I don’t think, I never had any, they were thinking of lice. Actually, interesting thing I never saw a louse all the time I was in Germany, let alone getting infected with them, lice so that was. We used to get showers occasionally, but that was, that was certainly not getting rid of lice, it was merely to get a bit of, clean ourselves. We had a quick turn around. I was given fresh clothing, battle dress only with an officer’s stripe on it and I was home on the 9th of May 1945. We were living, my mother was living in Wallington. She had a flat which was a house owned by a relative. Wallington it was, yes.
CB: In Surrey.
[Other]: Surrey.
JL: Yeah, in Surrey, yeah. That was it, that’s my war story.
CB: So how did you actually get to the Elbe? Were you in the Long March?
JL: Oh, I, you look at my book, I never called it a march, it was a, I called it the long walk home.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Yeah well, in those days the incurable optimists thought that when the Russians turn up: oh they’ll be brothers in arms and we’ll celebrate their victory with liberal tots of vodka. [Laugh] We didn’t think that! We refused to countenance the story that Hitler, and he did actually give this order, all, all commissioned personnel, ex-prisoners of war to be shot. But fortunately in those days his writ didn’t extend much beyond his bunker. So we refused to accept that. The one that we thought would happen and in fact it did that we would be put on the road and have to leg it to wherever we were supposed to be going. That is why I used to do at least five circuits a day on foot.
CB: In the camp.
JL: In the camp, yeah, in preparation for this, and of course it paid off. It wasn’t, the Germans never pushed the pace. The only thing is, our first night I couldn’t find any covered accommodation. Everywhere I went I was politely told to shove off [laughter]. No room at the inn. So I crawled into a great pile of hay, or straw I suppose it was really, covered myself entirely and I went to sleep and next morning I got up and I was all right. From then it was really dead easy, because a thaw had set in. These people who had built themselves sleighs – they were useless. Similarly those people that had got trollies, they were useless because they didn’t have any hard wood for a bearing, it went through and that was their trollies and their sleighs were useless. I went, I just plodded on. I had a little suitcase I remember, made of fibre. The first, the second night, after the, when I settled down to the straw or hay, or whatever it was, we were billeted in the stable. I believe it was actually, the stable was owned by General von Arnim. The man who replaced Rommel when he was repatriated on grounds of ill health, wasn’t he. I don’t know, that’s the story, it belonged to General von Arnim. Anyway, I was bad enough to get a dry place to sleep. I admit I was a bit close to the horses, but I don’t think they’re any particular menace. I was awakened by a terrific bang! I thought oh my goodness that’s a shot first of all, isn’t it. I thought no, not a shot. I looked, I was using my little fibre suitcase as a pillow, and there was a bloody great hole in it, it was the hoof of a, it must have been within inches of my head! [Laughter] But from then on it was dead easy because the, we stopped at a place called Spremburg. Now there was a glass factory operating and it was still working. We managed to get a, I did manage to get a bit of a wash down and the girls were decent enough to look the other way. I managed to get myself a bit of a clean up. From there we went on to a place called Spremburg, which was a rail head. Now here our column was split in two, why, I don’t know. One, we were loaded on to, on to, they weren’t cattle trucks, they were the old fashioned you know, these Eschable carourdon [?] variety from the first world war, we were loaded in to one of these. The others they went to a place called Luckenwalde, I think was, actually that was liberated by the, by the Russians, and from all accounts they weren’t too well treated to start with by the Russians until they found, were sure who they were. But we were lucky, we were loaded into this. Well, it was crowded, yes I grant you, but the real reason was that we were in pitch dark, everybody wanted, for some unearthly reason to sit as near the door they could. I don’t know if they think it was suddenly going to open and they were going to be wafted away to safety, but they wouldn’t move. When daylight came we were able to sort ourselves out. Now I grant you the toilet facilities were not all that good, but no worse than a ordinary soldier in the field in action has to cope with, a sort of open latrine, and above all, I’ve virtually I’ve experienced worse crowding in London’s underground. So it wasn’t all that bad. We trundled along, we, I remember we did a very slow stop-start circuit of Berlin, course there was a raid going on at the time. We arrived then at a place called, what was it, oh it was a little village, small settlement, not far from Bremen. We, it was, I remember we stopped outside this camp, and look up at it and miserable rain was coming down, there was this thing over the door, well it didn’t, we used to always used to say it was a “Work Makes You Free”, and we used to say “work yourself to death”, but it looked a pretty dreary and unuttering place and we went in to this. It was called Marlag and Milag Nord and it was designed, by the name you could tell, for Royal Marine and Merchant Navy officers: Marlag and Milag. And there were, we were a little concerned because we thought this camp is empty. Where have all these Marine, Naval and Marine officers gone? And we got a horrible thought they might be in some mass grave or other. However, it wasn’t true, they had been moved, when, where and why I’m not actually sure. But when we got inside, well if we had any clothing, warm clothing we were lucky, or dry clothing we put it on. It was a nothing, not a camp I’d recommend but it was, at least it was dry and there was, we had adequate food. There was a certain thing, belief that we were short of food, well I can assure you we never were, we had more than we could do with because the Red Cross parcels were being delivered by since the rail system was on the blink they were coming in by truck and they were, they were dumping parcels by the side of the road by us. Well I couldn’t carry, well most of us did, took out things like chocolate and tea and coffee and things like that, the rest of it. We offered them to the guards but they wouldn’t, neither would the civilians, I suppose they still might be pounced upon by die-hard SS, SS army, the army SS not the civilian SS. In fact one, one night we were billeted with these SS Waffen, Waffen SS, they, weaponed I mean, armed SS and we did, well always had a low profile but these chaps were very willing to chat to us. They got somehow idea that it wouldn’t be long before we joined forces with them and then finally put the bloody Russians -
CB: Out of Germany.
JL: Where they should be. Well it was, well, actually the second, as I say, if the first leg of the, our all expenses tour of north Germany was bearable, the second was a doddle. It was fine weather. Warm enough to sleep outside, in fact sometimes we walked through orchards white with blossom, not with snow with blossoms and we, there was no attempt to force the pace, but what did happen on the way, we stopped, in all the, four, nearly four years I was a prisoner of war I never suffered not even verbal abuse, let alone physical, never, but this particular, we did have a bit of trouble there, it was more directed at personal about us, in general. In fact the civilian population we got, they tried to you know, reach our ranks, the Germans just turned bayonet and rifle, pointed and don’t you dare come any closer. Well we moved on and then we thought we heard an explosion and we saw smoke arising from this. We thought it was the town that had been attacked, and we, you know as they say well it couldn’t have happened to nicer people. I’m afraid it wasn’t that, it was our column [emphasis] that had been attacked! By a, I think it was a Canadian Squadron Leader flying a Typhoon. He, he must have been blind, because this, it couldn’t possibly been a, it wasn’t a, looked like a German unit of any description but anyway I’m afraid he did and there were quite a few people killed on there. And that to my mind I think was the only, some, I’ve read in terms of hundreds something, hundreds killed on this so called long march, it’s just not true. The only other fatal casualty was a chap named Large I think it was, he had a ruptured appendix but there’s no reason to say he wouldn’t have had it anyway, it wasn’t caused by the conditions and that was that. We reached, we reached the place called Stade, was the southern side of the Elbe, and oh one thing I did see while we were at Marlag and Milag Nord, I saw a V2 fired, not many people have seen that. There was a bit of a rising ground and I happened to be on it and then suddenly I saw this, this thing, this great rocket, with this great burst of flame as it rised slowly and slowly and slowly, and it appeared, of course that was as much an optical illusion, it held itself out and it turned to get its bearing and by that time it couldn’t reach Britain, so probably the target was Antwerp, but that’s I saw a V2 fired and not many people have seen that. Anyway, we got to this Stade place and the Elbe ferry if you please, was still not operating normally, it was, and there was a, there was a boot repairer there, some people’s boots needed a bit of attention, mine were all right, but anyway he did what he could. We crossed the Elbe and we arrived at a place called, oh, just outside Hamburg. You come up a cobbled street, which we had, quite steep and we were then met by what, I, was the most horrible thing I’ve ever come across, a migration of slugs! Can you believe this, they were marching up on a broad front. There was absolutely no way of avoiding them. Blankenese, was the name of this little town, that’s the name of it: Blankenese. We tried to pick our way, very, very carefully and thank god I managed to keep on my feet, otherwise if I’d fallen can you imagine the state I’d been in. Well from then on it was, it was easy going and as I say, we got to this, this open, this tobacco man’s, well he was, farm and from then on it was the journey home. But I’ll never forget, oddly enough we saw a reverse, I mean a thing so beautiful. I’d never seen it before. It was a, I didn’t tell you, hadn’t told you that in September of 1942, I and a number of others were for some reason which the Germans had and they didn’t bother to give us the details, we were transferred to a place called Offlag 21B. Now Offlag meant it was an officer’s camp, that’s all. 21B. And we stayed there through a rather dreary time, the winter, until we moved in April, but I came back and I didn’t go in to the north compound I went back to the east compound for some reason or other. Why I don’t know, and actually I didn’t move into the north compound where the tunnel was being dug until September of 1943. How are we doing?
CB: You’re doing well. One final question. What happened to the guards after you’d walked all this way? Did they just surrender or did they leg it or what did they do?
JL: Oh yes. Well they were only part of this. They’d realised, they heard they were all German forces had surrendered and they were only too pleased, they just neatly piled their arms and that was that. They knew all right. And they went off to go, to be taken in what we called the cages to a British prisoner of war camp. Some of them actually, when I lived in Salcombe in South Devon many years later, there was a chap there used to run a driving tuition, he’d been one of these there and he’d stayed in England.
CB: Funny.
JL: So he didn’t have too bad a time.
CB: Well Jack Lyon, thank you for a very interesting conversation.
JL: My pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Jack Kenneth Lyon
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
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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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ALyonJK180202
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Pending review
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02:03:03 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
Jack Lyon was a navigator/ bomb aimer and a prisoner of war for almost four years. Born in 1918, he was employed with the London Gas Company as a bookkeeper until August 1939 when he transferred to Shell. At the outbreak of the war, Shell closed their London office and Jack enlisted in the RAF on the 5th September. He was attracted to the extra privileges that aircrew received. Initial training commenced in late 1939 and elementary flying training in June 1940. Being unsuccessful with pilot training, Jack completed navigator training at RAF Prestwick, followed by armament training at RAF Manby, and operational training at RAF Kinloss. On completion of training, Jack was awarded his commission and posted to RAF Linton-on-Ouse. Being the only commissioned member of the crew, Jack found the opportunities to socialise restricted. Having only completed a few operations, Jack and his crew had to abandon their stricken aircraft. Separated from his crew, Jack was arrested by a German soldier cycling past who, faced with a long walk, decided the easiest way was for Jack to ride on the crossbar. Stopping at the first house they came to, the soldier arranged for Jack’s wounds to be attended to, and he was given tea and cake. Initially billeted in Stalag Luft 1, before being transferred to Stalag Luft 3 in April 1942, where he remained until early 1945. Douglas Bader was also billeted there, and Jack witnessed the famous incident when Bader inspected the German guards before being transferred. Early in 1945 with the advancing Russian army getting near, Jack participated in what became known as “The Long March”. Following the German surrender, Jack returned home, and following demob, returned to continue his career with Shell.
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Barth
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Poland--Żagań
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1941-05-01
1941-06-21
1941-06-03
1942-09
1943
1945-05-01
1945-05-09
aircrew
bomb aimer
navigator
prisoner of war
RAF Kinloss
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Manby
RAF Prestwick
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1001/11341/BHiltonPHiltonPv1.2.pdf
4df75a71f26ae98e9ae65a7e04afb7fd
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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Joseph, David
D Joseph
Description
An account of the resource
22 items. The collection concerns Flight Sergeant David Joseph (1576383, Royal Air Force) and contains his decorations, log book, memoirs, correspondence and a list of prisoners of war at Stalag Luft 4. He flew operations as a pilot with 76 Squadron from RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor until his aircraft was shot down on 18 March 1944 on an operation to Frankfurt and he became a prisoner of war. The collection also contains a letter to Mrs Ramsay about the loss of her son, Flying Officer Kenneth Ramsay and photographs of his final resting place. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Brian Joseph and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />Additional information on Kenneth Grant Ramsay is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/223173/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-05-22
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Joseph, D
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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[Blank front page of booklet]
[Page break]
Written by Paul Hilton.
[Underlined] CHIEFY [/underlined]
On the night of 1st June, 1942, Bomber Command mounted the second of the now famous thousand bomber raids on Germany. The night before, amidst much publicity, we had taken part in the first thousand raid on Cologne, my first as Captain of a 4 engined Halifax.
All 35 Squadron (at Linton-on-Ouse) returned safely that night and we all felt that at last we were doing something positive to help the war effort.
The Germans were somewhat taken by surprise and our overall casualties were low considering the number of aircraft taking part.
On 1st June our target was to be Essen in the Ruhr valley with Krupps as the pinpoint.
Tremendous excitement and enthusiasm was general with ground crews as well as aircrews and we all attended briefing and prepared for the take off with hopes for another successful show.
In due course we were taken to our dispersal point in the usual trucks where we unloaded parachutes, harnesses, charts etc., and duly went through the run up and check procedures. We had air tested our aircraft that morning and everything was still functioning satisfactorily, so in due course form 700 was presented to ne for my signature by the LAC of our ground crew.
I signed and then with all four engines running we started the slow crawl from our dispersal point towards the end of the main runway.
We must have moved about 50 yards when one of the ground crew ran in front of us furiously waving two torches. I pulled up smoothly, strict RT silence of course, and soon someone shouted up through the front escape hatch “return to dispersal.” We managed to turn the heavily laden Halifax and return, where I was told to switch off engines. Flight Sergeant (Chiefy) McKay, a dour little Scot then appeared and told us we had a glycol leak in our port inner engine. How did he know?
[Page break]
- 2 -
He said he could smell it. He had just happened to be walking behind our aircraft when he caught a whiff. No doubt, we couldn’t go.
I was furious, how long to fix it. Not tonight, too bad.
The rest of the Squadron were all taking off and disappearing into a black sky, and soon all was quiet. We trooped back disconsolately to the Sergeants Mess feeling very dejected and sorry for ourselves. Once again, our Squadron operated without loss, only this time we had missed out.
On reflection, however, we would almost certainly have lost that engine either during take off or very soon afterwards and the thought has often gone through my mind, would a 20 year old pilot with just 400 hours in his log book have coped with an aircraft full of fuel and 6,500 lb of HE and incendiary bombs. I know I would have tried a landing had we managed to get airborne, but who knows.
I can’t remember if I thanked “Chiefy” for almost certainly saving us. I don’t think I ever bought him a drink in the Mess. If he is still around I should like to do it sometime. You see we didn’t have much time, we were shot down the next night, so perhaps it didn’t matter much after all.
[Page break]
[Underlined] Gone for a Burton [/underlined]
Early in May 1942 I returned to my old station “Linton on Ouse” in Yorkshire, where I had previously served with 58 Squadron on Whitley Vs. I had been with “58” from October 1941 until they joined Coastal Command at St. Eval in Cornwall early in April 1942. At this point I elected to convert to Halifaxes at “Marston Moor” near York and managed to get posted back to Linton where I joined 35 Squadron.
With 58 I had survived the winter as a second pilot, sitting helplessly in the right hand seat for five operations and in March had successfully completed the customary two “Nursery Trips” as Captain.
During May I was crewed up and together we did a number of cross countries and other details working up towards the big thousand bomber raids starting with Cologne on 30th May.
Both my parents lived in Seremban, Malaya and with the entry of Japan into the war, they had been forced to make their way with other Europeans to the Island Fortress of Singapore. The surrender stunned us all and I had anxiously awaited any news of my parents whereabouts.
I had lived through the winter at Linton and had no illusions as to our chances of survival on Bomber Command. Both 58 and 35 had had their share of losses. Of the course of six pilots at Driffield just after Christmas on a blind approach procedures course, I was by then the only survivor.
Singapore had fallen in February and the chances of either of my parents reaching safety by now seemed somewhat remote but with the complete lack of news there was nevertheless a remote chance that one or the other might still turn up.
I thought in that case, particularly my mother might need some financial assistance which would ultimately be my responsibility. If I was around, I would be able to arrange a dependant’s allowance, but in my absence, this might be a bit difficult.
[Page break]
- 2 -
I decided to seek the advice of the Squadron Accounts Officer and had an interview with the Flying Officer Assistant i/c Accounts. He listened to my unusual story and was obviously at a loss to comment. He was used to straightforward questions with answers neatly tabulated in his little book or covered by the syllabus of his Chartered Accountants examinations and seemed reluctant to pass this on to higher authority. He paused for a while and then at last drew himself up in his chair and with great deliberation said, “Well Sergeant, if you are afraid of going for a Burton, why don’t you make a will?
My total assets, £25 in the Post Office Savings Bank and a broken down Austin 7 in the car park, seemed unlikely to be much help in the support of either parent for any length of time and I felt that further discussion was unlikely to lead anywhere so I thanked him kindly and took my leave.
I intended bringing the matter up with “Welfare”. I believe we had someone in that capacity, or more to the point, Wing Commander Marks or my flight commander, Sq.Ldr. Peveler. I knew either of these two would have raised the roof, but I determined to await an appropriate moment.
I had often wondered what “gong for a burton” was really like and very soon on the night of 2nd June I found out.
Incidentally, neither of my parents were in need of any help I could have given them. My father stayed the whole time in Changi Jail, Singapore, but Mother nearly made it. She was on board one of the last ships to leave Singapore, the “Vyner Brook”, a small coastal steamer loaded with refugees which was bombed off the south east coast of Sumatra. Mostly women and children, they were all interned in camps at “MuntoK” and “Palembang” where more than half of them, including my mother, succumbed to the rigours of malnutrition and tropical diseases.
Bomber Command crews had a slim chance of survival whilst actually flying but once we became “Kriegies” (POWs), thanks to a comparatively civilised enemy and thank God also for the Red Cross, most of us lived to tell the tale.
[Page break]
[Underlined] Curse my luck. [/underlined]
Not many of us fighting on the Allied side ever thought we would welcome the sight of advancing German troops. In my case, I reckon they arrived just in time to save my life.
I was pilot of a “Halifax” returning from a raid on Essen in the Ruhr valley on the night of 2nd June, 1942 when we were unfortunately jumped by three JU 88 night fighters. It was a clear night with a full moon, our exhaust flames must have been clearly visible for a considerable distance and the fighters soon made short shrift of both our inner engines. Our two gunners put up a spirited fight despite the unequal battle between out 303 rifle bullets and the enemy’s canon fire, but the action was inexplicably broken off, leaving us limping homewards on our two outer engines.
We were just sorting ourselves out when alas our starboard outer developed an internal glycol leak, whether it was overstressed or due to enemy action we shall never know, but this meant the end and I had to give the inevitable order, “Bail Out”.
We were a bit low by then and when my turn came, the thought of ditching on what looked like a patch of swamp or water seemed my best chance. I turned off course towards this area but very soon found this to be ground mist obscuring a row of trees and some houses. Too late, I was on the point of a stall and mushed into a house. The starboard wing was ripped off at the root and the remainder of the aircraft spun around in a flat cartwheel through 180 degrees. I was in fact thrown backwards in my seat.
I must have been unconscious for a second or so as when I came round, the port outer engine had just caught fire. I then had a violent struggle with the escape hatch over my seat. It moved at last and then I managed to crawl out onto the top of the fuselage and jump down onto the port wing. The dinghy was inflating and I just had enough presence of mind to grab the package of iron rations as I passed.
[Page break]
- 2 -
My first reaction was to get clear as quickly as possible, there were still several hundred gallons of high octane too close to the burning engine, so I started running towards the cover of the trees I could see almost alongside in the moonlight.
I ran between two of them and was just about to go along the road that they were bordering when there was a piercing scream of “Halt” from right behind me. Almost immediately I was prodded with a viscious [sic] jab from a rifle muzzle in the small of my back.
A terrified lone German sentry had just escaped being hit by the Halifax which by now was nicely ablaze and too darned close for safety. My captor didn’t seem to be aware of our imminent danger and continued prodding and screaming in a hysterical manner. I wondered where his trigger finger was. The safety catch would certainly be off and guns, I was always taught, were dangerous and shouldn’t on principle ever be pointed at anyone. My greatest fear was that he would let the darned thing off by accident. He was so excited that anything could happen. He might do it on purpose, “The Englishman started to run”, no one would disbelieve him. Perhaps his family had been bombed in Cologne three nights before. Such thoughts raced through my mind. The fire was getting hold of the port wing and I knew all those gallons of high octane were bound to go up at any moment. Any minor explosion would make him jump and pull the trigger inadvertently. The prodding and screaming continued, how long could this last, my all too short twenty years seemed almost over. A pity, I had so much to experience and done so little. This was the moment of truth. I felt so helpless and had no control of the situation and this was when I really knew what fear was. I was hot but the sweat running down my back was cold. A minor bang, one of the outer wing tanks had blown up and another prod. I was still there, but how long could this go on. Suddenly a torch shone in the distance and I heard some shouts and saw another torch. Fortunately my sterical [sic] captor saw and heard them too, and the tension began slowly to ease, eventually after what seemed an eternity, I was surrounded and someone had the sense to move us all away to a safer distance. Just in time, the main wing tanks went up with a muffled roar and we could all feel the blast of heat. My original captor melted into the background. I never even saw him but could hear his excited story being related in the distance.
[Page break]
- 3 -
I stood for a while with my liberators and we watched the remains of the Halifax burning furiously. A fearsome sight, one I hope never to get too close to. I remember one of the troops found my parachute harness and “Mae West” life jacket which I had dumped in the field in my haste and I was then led off to the local barracks. I was later to find out this was in St. Leonard near Brecht in Belgium, right in the middle of an intense curfew area, literally crawling with German troops.
I was taken inside and led to a standard German army double tier bunk bed, complete with wood wool palliasse, a type I was to get to know so well over the next three years. I suppose I must have been suffering from a certain amount of shock as I lay down, boots and all and went out like a light.
I didn’t have time to curse my luck at having been shot down, but later I came to realise that far from being unlucky I had in fact survived a whole succession of miracles in the short space of less than half an hour.
[Page break]
[Underlined] FOR YOU THE WAR IS OVER [/underlined]
By now we were some way inside Germany en route from Cologne to Frankfurt in a corridor type railway coach. We were free to wander along to the toilet and our three guards had completely relaxed. They undid their belts and left their revolvers lying on the seats. After one visit to the toilet I actually sat for some time on one of these weapons and only moved off because it was somewhat uncomfortable.
I was dressed in the usual clothing, battledress, submarine sweater and, of course, the inevitable flying boots, the old green canvas type, fur lined, in which one shuffled along as if wearing oversized carpet slippers. The thought of being able to walk any distance, let alone run from a train in broad daylight, was quite out of the question.
When first captured in Belgium the story was quite different. I was pounced upon within minutes of stepping from the blazing wreckage of the Halifax, and the local German army unit and the Feldgendarmarie kept a very close watch on my every movement. They handed me over to the Luftwaffe in Antwerp airport who continued the process. Sitting on a toilet seat looking at a jackboot keeping the door open is an unforgettable experience and quite puts one off the job in hand.
Our guards on the train were flying types, one Feldwebel (Sergeant) and two Obergefreighters (sort of Corporals). One spoke a little French and with him I tried to carry on something of a conversation. I learned he was a Navigator and had recently seen service on the eastern front. He and his comrades would get a couple of days leave near home after escorting us to Dulag Luft, the reception and interrogation centre at Frankfurt.
The time was early June 1942. The Germans were at the height of their success. Tobruk had recently fallen and their troops were at their furthest points in the Caucasus. Our position was not encouraging. Singapore had
[Page break]
- 2 -
fallen only four months previously, but we still endeavoured to keep up the appearance of high spirits, even though we knew we were in for a long wait. Sooner or later the obvious remark had to come. My navigator friend grinned from ear to ear and said, “For you the war is over”. I smiled back and said, “Yes, aren’t we lucky, but for you it has not yet started.”
[Page break]
[Underlined] GOOD APPETITE [/underlined]
We always called him Cyril. This wasn’t his real name but that of the chap with whom he had swopped identities. I was one of the large mob of new Kriegies brought in to Luft 3 Sagan just after the thousand bomber raids on Cologne and Essen in May and June 1942. We were housed in 39 and 40 Blocks, but somehow a few old Kriegies from Lamsdorf, the big Army Stalag, had been pushed in with us. Most of the batch from Lamsdorf were swop overs.
When Goering decided to bring all the RAF Kriegies together at Sagan, quite a mixed bag was collected and Cyril was one of these. What his real name was I have quite forgotten. It was unpronounceable. He was from Israel, ‘Palestine’ in those days, and he had served in the British Army, Military Police I think, and was captured in Greece. I believe he was born in Riga but had emigrated to Palestine when quite young. He already spoke a number of languages, Russian, Polish, German, French and, of course, Hebrew and Yiddish. Only English seemed to have escaped him and so, finding himself among British soldiers was a blessing in disguise. He soon set about the task of learning the best of English with all the necessary Anglo-Saxon descriptive adjectives. When I knew him these were apt to get somewhat out of context, especially when he got excited, with comic results.
I an effort to learn better English he decided to swop identity with an RAF navigator. As a private soldier he had to go out on working parties and at Lamsdorf many RAF sergeants swopped over to get out of the camp with the obvious possibilities of escape.
At Sagan, Cyril made the best [sic] use of the library, such as it was, and was soon one of the best read among us. I was also trying to learn German and Cyril was always a great help. He had a great sense of humour and was able to tell a joke against himself.
[Page break]
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English, it would appear, is about the only language that does not have an expression equivalent to “Bon Appetite” or “Guten Apetit”. We only have “Cheers” or “Bung Ho”, or some other equally fatuous expression before we drink, but, alas, nothing before we eat. Whilst in his early days at Lamsdorf, Cyril was endeavouring to say the right thing to his British Army comrades and one day noticed one of his friends just about to start on a bowl of soup. He quite naturally made a literal translation of “Bon Appetite” and said, “Good appetite my friend”. His friend stopped short, looked up and said, “What do you mean ‘Good Appetite’? Of course I have a ****ing good appetite!”
[Page break]
[Underlined] 40 HOMMES 8 CHEVAUX [/underlined]
It would be interesting to know just how many thousands, nay, millions, of troops, prisoners, internees and others have travelled, some on their last journeys, in this famous four wheeled French rail wagon in both the last two wars. I can well remember our trips from Heydekrug (East Prussia) to Thorn and later from Thorn to Fallingbostel during the summer of 1944.
The side doors were opened wide and each end was crossed off with barbed wire spread over wooden frames. A small door or gate was built in for access.
Three guards occupied the central area, about one third in total, and 24 prisoners were confined to each end. Space was somewhat limited and we all lay heads to the outside with a pile of feet in the middle. No toilets were provided. On long trips prisoners had to wait until the train stopped and were then allowed out in batches to operate in the countryside. The two trips I remember were relatively short and there were no stops for calls of nature, however, during daylight we were allowed singly to come through our little holes in the wire and pass water along the line through the side door, hanging on to the vertical rail on the side of the wagon.
I recall the journey from Thorn to Fallingbostel was by night and at first light the queue started. This became a verbal process among us and my turn was some way down the line, by which time I was nearly desperate and had built up a good head of steam. At last it came and I scrambled through the hole and clung on to the vertical rail with my right hand, with my left I feverishly undid the remaining metal trouser buttons (they were always popping off, no zips in those days), and started literally groaning with relief.
At this point or shortly before, the train had been slowing up and to my horror (I was still a bit embarrassed), I saw that we were slowly approaching a level crossing on the outskirts of a German village. About
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thirty citizens of Hitler’s Reich were patiently waiting to cross and I passed slowly by, just out of reach, still in full spate.
I noticed no reaction from my hosts, so I can only assume that they were used to being shown respect by their captives in this manner. Needless to say, my embarrassment soon passed and I enjoyed my unique point of vantage. I even had an almost uncontrollable urge to give a Nazi salute which I thought would be appropriate, but of course, my right hand was fully occupied in holding on to the rail at the side of the door. A pity, I felt this would have completed the performance.
[Page break]
[Underlined] “Welche Nummer” [/underlined] (What Number)
There are few more morale shattering sounds than that of a heavy cell door shutting behind you and the bolt going clonk in the lock. There is something positive and very final about it and it gives one a feeling of complete helplessness. There you are, it’s no good banging on the door, no one will take any notice.
It was early autumn 1943 in Stalaf [sic] Luft 6 Heydekrug in East Prussia near the Baltic coast. One particular morning an unusual number of ‘Ferrets’ (security troops) in dark blue overalls with all their tools had descended on our barrack block. They were proceeding to turf us out and to tear the place apart. I don’t know what they were looking for, a tunnel perhaps, but they meant business. In the initial confusion we were all milling around and I happened to be close to a table where a lot of the tools had been laid, hammers, crowbars, jemmys, saws, screwdrivers and a large pair of pliers. I took a fancy to the pliers and when no one was looking they quickly disappeared into my trousers pocket. Unfortunately, when I grabbed them they were open and in my haste they clicked shut. One of the Ferrets heard this, looked round and started asking his friends whether any of them had picked up his pliers. I took this as a cue to get lost and started to saunter out of the block. I looked for anyone I knew to off load but before I could get a dozen paces away out of the door I was grabbed and hauled up before the security officer, Major Peschel. He growled something which I suppose meant “Lock him up”, and there I was in the so called “Cooler”.
The cell was six feet wide and nine feet long. It had a double bunk bed with a complete set of boards but no palliasse, a stool and a metal jug for water. The tiny barred window had a “Lichtfanger, a wooden partition on the outside allowing a view of sky or a small area immediately beneath the window.
I sat down on the stool for a while to assess the situation. I was there for I knew not how long, so I supposed I had better make the best of it. I was allowed to send a note into the camp for a few things,
[Page break]
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tooth brush, razor, knife, fork and spoon, and a couple of books. One was a German Grammar which I was steadily ploughing through. Now here was a chance, I could really get some useful work done and might even get some help from my jailers.
There were about half a dozen other inmates in the twelve cells and one soon learned how to make contact and to know the ‘drill’ or mode of life. The legendary W/O John Snowdon was already there doing one of his numerous stretches, so advice was readily available.
The cooler was a rectangular building with only one entrance. The guard room was just inside the door. A corridor with six cells on either side had a toilet at the far end. I forget what type and a fire bucket of sand near the toilet served as a post box. Only one inmate was allowed out at any one time apart from the half hour daily exercise when we walked around in a large circle, well spaced apart.
When you wanted to visit the toilet you knocked on your door. The duty guard would come out of the guardroom and shout “Welche Nummer” to which you had to reply (in German of course) the number of your cell. In my case “Sieben Bitte” (seven please). He would then say “Komme sofort” (coming) and go back and fetch the key to your cell. He would then have to hang around while you operated, no doors or partitions, and when complete lead you back to your cell and by then someone else might be waiting to take their turn.
The cooler was outside the main compound but in the so called “Vorlager” an outer area but still within the main outer barbed wire fence. Our own medical officer had pronounced the cooler water unfit to drink so we had to have bottled water from the main camp cook house. To this was added milk and sugar and tea or coffee. It was understood that the guards helped themselves which was allowed for at the cookhouse. Food was another problem. We were supposed to be on bread and water with one day of normal food in every three. Sometimes if the guards were willing. A prisoner on his good day would be sent in enough food to feed the others as well. It depended on the guards. There were two shifts of 24 hours each with an “Unterofficier” (Corporal) and two or three men.
[Page break]
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One of these shifts I remember well. We didn’t see much of the Corporal, but I got to know “Bruno”, a thick set chap with closely curled hair and “Franz”, a tall, gangling, untidy type with spectacles somewhat out of line. He had no pretensions as a soldier. It wasn’t for the sake of cigarettes or any other form of bribery but Franz and Bruno both wanted a quiet life and seemed to respond to common courtesy. Impatient inmates who shouted abuse and banged on their cell doors generally had to wait while those of us who “cottoned on” got the best service, or at least the best of what was going. As I was trying to learn German I was soon learning all the best polite phrases and making good progress through my grammar book.
As the cooler emptied somewhat (the population was always fluctuating), the service improved. We dropped to about three inmates and by then Franz used to knock on my cell door first thing in the morning and I would say “Come in” and Franz would hand me my coffee in bed. With a cheerful “Guten Morgen Herr Hilton” we would converse for a while, any news, the weather etc. We both seemed to know instinctively that this was the sensible way to behave. It cost nothing and generally made the best of a bad job. We were not alone in this. At another time in the same cooler I heard tell of a German guard trying to learn English who was taught to say “Good morning, Sir. Your coffee, Sir.” I never managed that, but to both Franz and Bruno I was always Herr Hilton, even though they were both considerably older than I. But alas, all good things come to an end. One night the Heydekrug tunnel broke and unfortunately only five or six managed to get away, the remaining thirty odd being dug out and pushed straight into the cooler with us.
Chaos reigned for a day with up to four to a cell until all were documented and the majority sent back to the main camp to await their turn for the customary sentence of fourteen days.
For the rest of my time in the cooler we stayed two to a cell. No more coffee in bed and I was now subjected to a companion who talked incessantly.
One had to wait ones turn, quite a long time on occasion, for the inevitable trip to the toilet. On one of these poor Franz quietly apologised to me for the deterioration in the service, but hoped I would understand.
[Page break]
[Underlined] The Hero’s Return [/underlined]
Appearances do seem to have a marked effect upon the way one is treated through life and the healthy, robust figure usually commands respect. The invalid or under-nourished, on the other hand, has often to struggle to keep his place in society and to attract any attention.
I had just returned from Germany after three years as a P.O.W. I was one of the first batch to be released and we had gone through the RAF reception depot at Cosford rather before they were ready for us. Although they had done a surprisingly good job, they had nevertheless omitted to order enough badges of rank so the first of us, mostly Warrant Officers due to automatic promotion, were sent home on leave in Airmen’s tunics and greatcoats with no badges on our sleeves. Not that we cared much for that but these things seem to make a difference in a somewhat class conscious society.
I was released early in April 1945. Most of our camp were marched eastwards towards the River Elbe, but because I had spent most of the winter in our camp hospital with a chronic form of bronchitis and a bout of pneumonia thrown in, I was left behind in our camp hospital. My 6ft. 2 inch bone structure was carrying an all up weight of about eight stone with a “Belsen Horror” like expression to match. RAF Cosford clothing stores had done their best, but I was never an easy one to fit anyway.
I left Cosford on leave with new kit but also as much of my old kit as I could manage to salvage which had survived the delouser. I think we were done at least three times, clothes and all. DDT was squirted up sleeves and trousers with reckless abandon until I was quite raw in many sweaty and tender areas.
I passed through London and deposited my considerable collection of kit at the Services left luggage office on Victoria Station. I wanted to visit the hairdresser in the catacomb under the station. A haircut was long overdue, “these things were important then”.
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I settled in the chair for the first proper haircut for some considerable time. I thought that this was also a special occasion and I would be having to kiss a number of female relatives within the next two hours or so, so on completion of the haircut I suggested a shave. The barber stroked my 23 year old chin contemptuously with the back of his hand and said, “You don’t need a bloody shave.”
To this day I have still never had a shave at a barber’s.
I crept back to the left luggage office and started to load up my two kit bags and haversack only to hear a loud Australian voice, which could be heard halfway across the station, “Why don’t you hang your ( ) out mate”, a well known coarse service expression meaning if you load up like a horse why not dress like one.
In the compartment of the train to Haywards Heath I was obliged to listen to the sad tale told by an ATC officer of a young clerk who had recently been jailed for masquerading as a Wing Commander, complete with DSO’s, DFC’s etc., and who had given thrilling lectures to factory workers and ATC squadrons. It was considered by all to be a huge joke and such a pity the poor lad was jailed. The authorities certainly lacked a sense of humour.
I am afraid I couldn’t comment. I had known too many real ones, mostly now dead, and if anything I felt sick. I crouched further into my featureless greatcoat and when we arrived at Haywards Heath I loaded myself up again like a horse and crept quietly home.
[Page break]
[Underlined] CORNED BEEF [/underlined]
I had just arrived back from Germany and was unpacking my kit. Apart from being equipped with new clothing from Cosford, a specially organised reception centre for ex-POWs, my belongings were meagre. I had a half kit bag of new gear and a small army rucksack which I had acquired just before leaving Thorn the previous August.
I took out the few items brought from Germany, tin mug, fork and spoon, toothbrush etc., and a small tin, 1/2lb I believe, of Corned Beef. I can’t remember when I first got hold of this tin, sometime during the last autumn when Red Cross stocks were still available. These petered out during the winter and we had been subject to very small issues for some time, leaving us on German non-working civilian daily rations, i.e. 400 gm bread, margarine and jam to cover this, and about 1/2 litre thin swede soup (pea soup Sundays).
Being a careful sort of chap I usually had a few odd bits left over, a small tin of jam but not much else. Once opened, a tin of meat had to be eaten and I had managed to hold on to the corned beef for the last emergency. I remember eating one in the cattle truck ride from Thorn to Fallingbostel, digging the meat out with my pocket knife and gnawing at a piece of hard bread. My reactions were to do that again, but I then thought ‘Why, here I am back home in civilisation, I can’t behave like that now’, so I took the tin downstairs to the kitchen and handed it to my aunt.
I was staying with my father’s two sisters, one was married with a daughter a little older than myself. Despite the war time shortages, my relatives always kept up appearances and did their best to live in proper style. The next lunch time was no exception.
The highly polished dining room table was, as usual, set with place mats and lace doilies. The sub [sic] shone on the cut flower vase and the two sparkling cruets. Each place set with two, or was it three, knives, forks,
[Page break]
serviettes in silver rings, the lot. Salad was the order of the day with the usual salad creams, vinegar etc., and then, somewhat to my surprise, a large plate was produced upon which stood in solemn state, a small naked piece of corned beef. My long treasured tin had been breached at last.
My uncle, an engineer, took great pride in his ability to carve and was always meticulous in the sharpening process. I remember this day he paid particular attention to a long corrugated knife which he then used with great dexterity on the tiny lump of corned beef. Wafer thin slices soon started to fall to one side and at last these were dealt out rather like cards.
At this point my cousin came into the room and exclaimed, “Corned beef, Mummy! Where did you get that?”. “Paul brought it”, was the prompt reply. Here my other aunt joined in, an ex-nursing sister and sometime deputy matron with a voice and manner to match, “Paul brought it! Good heavens, we haven’t seen corned beef for months.”
Like most ex-POWs I was suffering from so called “withdrawal symptoms” and I was quite unable to add anything to the conversation. My throat contracted and it was some time before I was able to swallow. My thoughts at this point were ‘What’s the use.’ I soon forgot this incident and only remembered it about ten years later when I was able to regard it with some humour.
[Page break]
[Blank back sheet of booklet]
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
Flying Stories by Paul Hilton
Description
An account of the resource
Nine accounts of flying activities during the war.
Additional information about this item has been kindly provided by the donor.
'David Joseph's son Brian met Paul Hilton in the 1980's through work, and he was wearing a prisoner of war tie. In conversation it became clear that Paul had some common experiences with David's, and a meeting was arranged. They had been in the same camps and on some of the same forced marches, had many common memories, but had never previously met.'
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Paul Hilton
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
20 typewritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany--Essen
Belgium
Belgium--Antwerp
Poland--Toruń
Lithuania--Šilutė
Germany
Lithuania
Poland
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Bad Fallingbostel
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BHiltonPHiltonPv1
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
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Anne-Marie Watson
35 Squadron
58 Squadron
bombing
bombing of Cologne (30/31 May 1942)
dispersal
displaced person
Dulag Luft
fear
ground crew
Halifax
Ju 88
prisoner of war
RAF Cosford
RAF Driffield
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Marston Moor
Red Cross
sanitation
shot down
Stalag 8B
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 6
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/177/11356/LBattyPH220759v1.2.pdf
14a45ff205dd3cf87ee5b5b106fa8586
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
Batty, Philip
Phil Batty
P Batty
Description
An account of the resource
19 Items. The collection consists of one oral history interview with Philip Batty (b. 1925). He discusses the death of his older brother Dennis early in the Second World War, his wartime service with 50 Squadron at RAF Sturgate as a wireless operator/ air gunner, and his long post war career. The collection also includes a number of group photographs of airmen after training, photographs of aircraft in southern Africa, his log book and propaganda material.
Publisher
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
2016-10-14
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Batty, P
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
Philip Batty's flying log book for navigators, air bombers, air gunners and flight engineers
Description
An account of the resource
Flying log book for navigator’s, air bomber’s, air gunner’s, flight engineer’s for Philip Batty, wireless operator, covering the period from 7 February 1944 to 31 October 1949. Detailing his flying training, post war flying and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Madley, RAF Staverton, RAF Dumfries, RAF Husbands Bosworth, RAF Winthorpe, RAF Sturgate, RAF Linton, RAF Weathersfield, RAF Tarrant Rushton, RAF Silverstone, RAF Heany and RAF Thornhill. Aircraft flown in were, Dominie, Anson, Proctor, Wellington, Lancaster, Halifax and C-47. He flew 4 Dodge operations to Pomigliano and Bari with 50 squadron. He also carried out paratrooper, supply drops and glider towing with 297 squadron.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
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
LBattyPH220759v1
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
Italy
Zimbabwe
England--Essex
England--Gloucestershire
England--Herefordshire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Italy--Bari
Italy--Pomigliano d'Arco
Scotland--Dumfries
Zimbabwe--Bulawayo
Zimbabwe--Gweru
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1945-08-21
1945-08-25
1945-09-07
1945-09-10
1945-09-13
1945-09-15
1945-10-02
1945-10-04
1945-10-08
1945-10-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
1661 HCU
1665 HCU
297 Squadron
50 Squadron
85 OTU
97 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
C-47
Dominie
Flying Training School
Halifax
Halifax Mk 5
Halifax Mk 7
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Proctor
RAF Dumfries
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Madley
RAF Silverstone
RAF Staverton
RAF Sturgate
RAF Tarrant Rushton
RAF Weathersfield
RAF Winthorpe
training
Wellington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1105/11564/PRoseHP1801.1.jpg
ad6f5f49ca330c1caf60a4e83c743b08
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1105/11564/ARoseHP180222.2.mp3
2c049fdb339502cf5b435f4fb4b0f6cc
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
Rose, Hayden Philip
H P Rose
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Philip Rose (b. 1924, 1654274, 185661 Royal Air Force). He flew operations a flight engineer with 426 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of 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
2018-02-22
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
Rose, HP
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GR: Right. This is Gary Rushbrooke for the IBCC on the 22nd of February 2018 and I am with Flight Lieutenant Philip Rose at his house in York. Philip, just when was you born sir? What was, what was your birthdate?
HPR: My birthday is the 27th of July 1924.
GR: 1924. And did you, we’re in York, did you, was you born in York? Did you grow up around —
HPR: No. I was born in, in South Wales.
GR: Oh right.
HPR: And joined the RAF in 1943.
GR: 1943. Yeah.
HPR: PNB. Which is pilot, navigator, bomb aimer system. I then remustered to flight engineer. Then went to St Athans to be trained.
GR: Yes.
HPR: Completed my, my training there. Then I was waiting for a crew so they sent me to [pause] where was it? I’m trying to think of the name of the place. Anyway, I was sent there for two weeks. Oh, Isle of Sheppey.
GR: Oh yeah. Yeah.
HPR: Unfortunately, a terrible place to go because that was where the people who were, decided they had a lack of moral fibre and they were stripped of their, of their brevets and what have you.
GR: That’s where they went. Yeah. If they’d been lack of moral fibre. Coming away from their base.
HPR: That’s right. They were out to the Isle of Sheppey. Then they were, you know they would be marched out.
GR: So they had people training there as well?
HPR: They, I don’t know whether they, no. I wasn’t.
GR: No.
HPR: I was only waiting for, for a crew.
GR: But even so you’re waiting there.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: And you’re seeing these people.
HPR: Absolutely.
GR: And we won’t come to that.
HPR: Yeah. So, you know they were stripped. They just said, ‘You’re not, you’ve been found guilty of lack of moral fibre and the sentence is that you will be stripped down to AC2s again.’ So they just used to pin their stripes on them, tear them off, tear their beret off and say —
GR: Yeah.
HPR: That’s it. You’re back to, back to the cookhouse sort of thing. So that was that. I was there. Then a crew arrived from Canada. My crew. We met up then at Riccall. The Heavy Conversion Unit.
GR: Heavy Conversion Unit.
HPR: At Riccall.
GR: At Riccall. Yeah.
HPR: Did our six weeks training there on Halifaxes.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And then joined the squadron. 426 Squadron at Linton On Ouse.
GR: At Linton. Yeah.
HPR: So we did twenty one trips. We were shot down on the twenty first.
GR: Oh right.
HPR: Trip to, as I say to Wanne Einkel.
GR: So, before we come to that we’ll backtrack a little bit. Mum and dad. Did you have any brothers and sisters?
HPR: I’ve got, I’ve got brothers. I’ve got two brothers and two sisters. I did have.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: They’re all dead now. My one brother —
GR: Was you, where was you in the pecking order? Older brother. Younger brother.
HPR: I was the, I was the youngest.
GR: You were the youngest. Yeah.
HPR: I was the youngest. The rest of them were —
GR: Yeah.
HPR: All older than me.
GR: So, schooling was in South Wales.
HPR: Yes. School was in South Wales. I went to the Rhondda County Grammar School. Matriculated from there.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And that was and then went in. Had a bit of [pause] went to work with a, in a factory for a while.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And then three of us who were, we were all working in the factory decided to go and join the RAF. So we went to Penarth which was in South Wales.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Which was the attestation centre, and joined up. And that’s how I started off. And then we got posted to first of all to St John’s Wood.
GR: Yes.
HPR: In London.
GR: So you joined up in 19 —
HPR: 1943.
GR: 1943. Oh, so 19 — yeah.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: What work was you doing in the factory? Bearing in mind the war would have been on.
HPR: Technical. Technical work.
GR: Just yeah.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Yeah. Administration work.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: So it was a company called Simmonds were making special things for the Air Force rather. For the RAF.
GR: Oh right.
HPR: So —
GR: And were, daft question because obviously you were if there were three of you in that factory.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: And even though the factory was doing things for the —
HPR: That’s right.
GR: War work. The RAF.
HPR: You were allowed to volunteer then.
GR: That’s right.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: We all volunteered.
HPR: Yes.
GR: And each of them, one of them became a pilot, one of them became a navigator and I became an engineer.
HPR: Right.
GR: And did the other two survive?
HPR: As far as I know. Yeah, they survived.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: I don’t know where they, what’s happened to them now of course.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
HPR: They’re just gone.
GR: But at the time. Yeah.
HPR: Their own sweet way, sort of thing.
GR: So at the time, yeah you were in the factory. You decided right —
HPR: Yeah.
GR: We’ve all got to join up and join the RAF.
HPR: That’s it. So we all went to Penarth and joined up at the same time. The same day.
GR: Same day. You all went together.
HPR: That’s it.
GR: Oh. wonderful.
HPR: Got through, got the [artist?] did all the usual work that they do, you know. Maths, English and all the rest of it.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And they said, ‘Oh, you’re ok.’ They said to me, they give you a recording when you’re doing that and they play the earphones on and said, ‘Why do you want to be a pilot? Why don’t you be a wireless operator?’ And I said the one thing I didn’t want to be was a wireless operator. They said, ‘Why not?’ ‘Well, you’ve just had a recording with, you had this dit dit dit da da da. And just say are they the same or are they different?’ He said, ‘You had an eighty seven percent on it so you must be good.’ I said, ‘I just did it. I’ve forgotten about it,’ you know. ‘It all went queer and I just said yes. Oh, that’s, yes. No. Yes. Yes. No. And it just happened to be but — ’ I said, ‘No. I don’t want to be that.’ So they said, ‘Right. PNB.’ And then off to London.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: To St John’s Wood.
GR: Was you, was there any gap in between? So once you joined up they didn’t still —
HPR: Oh yes. There was about, they give us a small badge to say that you are RAF Reserve.
GR: Yes.
HPR: About two months.
GR: Yeah. Because there’s some veterans I spoke to said, ‘Oh, yeah they sent us home and we were waiting six months.’
HPR: Yeah.
GR: And we were waiting nine months.
HPR: I waited about two months.
GR: That’s not bad.
HPR: And they gave me a little badge to say that, you know you’re in the RAF.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Virtually. But we’re waiting.
GR: Yes.
HPR: So if anybody said, ‘Why the hell aren’t you —
GR: Yeah.
HPR: In the army.’ Or, ‘Why aren’t you —
GR: Because you’re walking around in —
HPR: Yeah.
GR: Yeah. Nobody bringing you a white feather or anything like that.
HPR: That’s it.
GR: So, yeah. So, you were, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. What did you think of St John’s Wood?
HPR: A tremendous place to be but I can remember the one thing about it was the fact that you had all your inoculations, vaccinations virtually at the same time, you know. Outside going up the fire, fire steps of these flats we were in and then being injected in both arms.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And that was it sort of thing. Then we were doing all sorts of things. You know, maths, English and all the rest of it and they said they decided I would be an engineer rather than a pilot. So that was it.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Then I was posted down to, as I said to St Athan. I did my training there. Then joined the, the crew eventually. Having been to see the poor people being stripped of their, their —
GR: Just I find it a strange place.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: To send somebody.
HPR: To send somebody. Absolutely. But it was not only myself. It was quite a few.
GR: No. Yeah. But, yeah any of you to be there and think what’s going off here?
HPR: That’s right, because I got pretty friendly with one chap who had been strapped. His name was Brotherton I think if my memory serves me and he was, flying. He was a wireless operator and he said that he’d had enough. He’d been, he’d flown for about twenty, twenty sorties.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And they said he was lack of moral fibre. He said, ‘I’m quite prepared to go up and fly on flying boats or anything else,’ but he said, ‘I’m not on there anymore.’ So he said, ‘I’ve had enough.’ They shot him. Anyway, they stripped him.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And he went. I don’t know. He was very good. But I remember he was a very good pianist and he used to entertain people while he was there, you know. On the piano and what have you.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And in the NAAFI.
GR: I presume you knew what were going off.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: What did you think?
HPR: Well, I thought, you know I was really sorry for them because these guys they were obviously, you know not a hundred percent in themselves. You could tell that. They were sort of shadow of themselves almost.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: But you said, well you know, ‘It can’t happen to me.’
GR: No.
HPR: We hoped. And that was it.
GR: Yeah. Because obviously, yeah you’re speaking to somebody who has done twenty missions.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: And this is something you’re going to go and do.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: And then you’re listening to him and —
HPR: Yes. Lack of moral fibre and that’s it.
GR: Yeah. We’d have different words for it these days but —
HPR: Yeah.
GR: I’m interrupting. So, yeah. So after that you, how did you meet the crew because obviously when it was like all British crews —
HPR: Yeah.
GR: They used to put you all together in a room and you’d walk around.
HPR: That’s right. Well, we —
GR: Talk to people and —
HPR: We were put in a place called, a manor which is just north of York here. We had a room there. Aldwark Manor.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Aldwark Manor was where we were billeted. We met up there actually. We, and we spent a few days together talking about things and we all seemed to be gelling out ok. And then we were posted down to Riccall.
GR: Right.
HPR: To Heavy Conversion Unit.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Then we went back to Aldwark Manor because that’s where we were going to be billeted when we were flying from Linton On Ouse.
GR: Right.
HPR: So that —
GR: So was you given to the crew?
HPR: Yeah.
GR: Or did the crew approach?
HPR: Yeah.
GR: So you just, you were given a crew.
HPR: That’s right. Oh yes.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Well, we were, I was introduced to the crew.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And they, they really vetted me.
GR: Right.
HPR: Rather than me vet them.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
HPR: And they said, ‘Well,’ you know, ‘You seem a good guy, you know, seen what you’re doing and all the rest of it.’ And we got on remarkably well together as a crew, you know. Excellent.
GR: I think you told me the wireless operator was —
HPR: Yeah.
GR: Also British.
HPR: The wireless operator. That’s right. But he’d already joined them.
GR: Right.
HPR: Prior to me going there. He [pause] his name was Twyneham. So, he was from London and he was, he was working in the City somewhere in London before he came, and he went back to that after the war. I can remember. The rest of them came from, most of them, all of them came from all of them came from Canada. The wireless operator was, he was British. The mid-upper gunner was from Saskatchewan. He came from a wheat farming community there. His family were farmers. Johnny de Luca was working for the government in Toronto. Bob, the navigator he was in business in Toronto. And the, the bomb aimer was from Montreal. He was French Canadian. He was the joker in the pack if there ever was a joker. He was quite a, quite a character. So that’s how the crew was formulated.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And as you say we then started down at Riccall. Having finished there started on 426 Squadron at —
GR: Linton.
HPR: At Linton on Ouse.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: That’s the [pause] saying the, the [pause] That’s where he, is the —
GR: Oh right.
HPR: That’s, that’s the skipper’s [pause] skippers burial. I wasn’t there unfortunately. I was away on holiday.
GR: Right. Yeah. We’re just looking at a photograph. Is this, is this in Holland?
HPR: It’s Holland.
GR: Yeah. He’s buried in Holland, is he?
HPR: Yeah.
GR: So, what was your first operation? So obviously you got to Linton.
HPR: The first, first operation we did was in Metz.
GR: Right.
HPR: We bombed Metz. It was the first operation we did, and we did a series of operations from all over.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: From St Nazaire.
GR: Any thoughts on the first op? As in —
HPR: Well, yes.
GR: Not apprehensive but —
HPR: That was interesting.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Because that first op we were late in returning. We didn’t see any particular flak or anything but we had a lot of reports when we came back that a lot of them had had a fairly hectic time.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: But we were fortunate. We were a couple of minutes late sort of thing getting back and we didn’t really see a lot of it. But we saw the latter end of it but we weren’t worried about it ourselves.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: So that was it.
GR: So, yeah. It went well. Yeah. And that was it. You were in the system.
HPR: We were absolutely in the system. Exactly.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And then —
GR: And this would have been the summer of 1944.
HPR: That’s it. Yeah. And then we carried on then right through.
GR: Can you remember when your first operation was? Would it have been —
HPR: I can’t remember exactly the date.
GR: May. June.
HPR: June it would be.
GR: June.
HPR: It would be June. Definitely. Yes.
GR: So did you do some of the what they called the Normandy bombing runs?
HPR: Yes. Oh, yes.
GR: Yeah. Yeah.
HPR: St Nazaire.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: All those sort of places.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: We did all those bombing runs.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: D-Day. You know.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: So then after that as I say we eventually landed up in this, at Wanne Einkel, in —
GR: This was about, this was about your twentieth mission.
HPR: Twenty, this was the twenty first.
GR: Twenty first.
HPR: Twenty first mission.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And that, as I say we did the bombing run. We were hit. The —
GR: Hit by flak.
HPR: The flak, yeah. Oh yes. It was predictive, predictive flak actually because you could tell because we were on a fifteen thousand feet.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And flying straight and ready for the bombing run. I shouted, you know, ‘Bomb doors open,’ and away. Bob said, ‘Bombs gone away.’ You know.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: That was it. We turned off then having as we were turning we got hit. The outer, port outer engine was hit. I feathered the engine. Put the fire out but we were hit by flak again. The skipper was hit in the leg. The bomb aimer was hit. His nose. He broke his nose. And then there was the, we got it, the aircraft back as far as Dordrecht in Holland.
GR: In Holland. Yeah.
HPR: And we were going to bale out as I said. We. The first out was the rear gunner who said, ‘Keep it straight and level so I can get my ‘chute.’ His ‘chute was in, was obviously not on his, in his turret.
GR: No.
HPR: It was outside his turret.
GR: He had to come back to the fuselage to get it, doesn’t he?
HPR: He come back. Yeah. He come back.
GR: Yes.
HPR: Pick up his chute, put his chute on and dived out. Mid-upper, the mid-upper gunner was the second. Bob, the navigator went. Then Twyneham the wireless operator and then Bill, the bomb aimer went. And I was the last out. I helped to get the skipper back to the rear of the plane. Put a hand on the handle of his chute.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Said, ‘Off you go,’ and kicked him out.
GR: Yeah. You pushed the pilot.
HPR: I followed him out.
GR: You pushed the pilot out.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: Then you were the last one out.
HPR: I followed him out. The aircraft was losing height all the time and it crashed just outside Dordrecht. We found out eventually that a part of it they found is now in a museum or was in a museum in Dordrecht. Which was the wing of the aircraft was in there. And I was, I landed on the outside, on the outskirts of, of Dordrecht. Eventually met up. I met the bomb aimer, the navigator and the air gunner. Rear Gunner. All together. They marched us into Dordrecht.
GR: Was you picked up straight away?
HPR: We were. Yes, I rather funnily enough the chap that picked me up spoke perfect English. He said, ‘Good afternoon,’ and I was bloody flabbergasted as you can well imagine. But he was telling me he’d been working for a German shipping company in Liverpool before the war.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: He was a corporal in the German army.
GR: Oh right.
HPR: And he’d worked in this, for a German shipping company in Liverpool docks. So they marched me, ‘Raus [unclear] they said. Well, there was, well we knew that the bomb, we were told that the pilot had had his legs blown off and he was dead when they reached the ground. But there were two others who were missing. That was, one was Twyneham and the mid-upper gunner was Ken Dugdale. The last report we had there was somebody had landed on the church at Dordrecht and had been hit by rifle fire. We eventually found out that that was in fact Ken Dugdale.
GR: Right.
HPR: He was put into hospital in Dordrecht at the time. Eventually they picked up Twyneham in a field outside Dordrecht. They’d brought him in and then we were all put in, into the local jail at Dordrecht in Holland. And eventually the, we were shipped from there by a rickety old bus to Frankfurt on Main.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And there we were held in the, the German headquarters there and interrogated by two officers. One who purported to be, had worked, also been educated at Oxford. So he reckoned. By the way we never found out whether he was. Spoke perfect English.
GR: How was you treated in between?
HPR: That’s right.
GR: In between, ended up in the local jail.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: To get into Frankfurt. Were you treated well?
HPR: No. No.
GR: No.
HPR: We got nothing really. All we had was a slice of bread.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Black bread and a cup of soup.
GR: But you weren’t mistreated.
HPR: No. We weren’t mistreated.
GR: No. No.
HPR: No. We were just [pause] except when we were, we were so tired we were told by the guards to get up and —
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Prodded with rifles but nothing —
GR: Nothing. Yeah.
HPR: Particularly untoward. But none the less it was a bit scary.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Then as I say we were taken by —
GR: Because by that time in 1944.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: I know of certain bomber crews.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: American and British that were murdered basically. They were you know if they were captured by some of the civilians.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: Especially if they were near the places they’d bombed.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: Then the, and the authorities used to turn a blind eye. That’s why I was asking if —
HPR: Yeah. Well, the biggest problem we still had our parachutes with us. They still, we had to carry our parachutes where ever we went.
GR: So you stood out like.
HPR: We’d stand out. That’s right. When we got to Frankfurt then we got a little bit of flak from the local people.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Because we had to march up to get to get to the railway station in Frankfurt and we got a bit of flak from the people there. They were spitting at us and telling us this, that and the other, you know. Terror fliegers. So, eventually we got to the German headquarters at Frankfurt. We were interrogated there as I said. Then we were moved on from there and eventually landed up in a place called Dulag Luft.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Which was just outside Frankfurt. And we were there for quite a while. Then eventually from there we were shipped out to —
GR: Luft 7.
HPR: Poland.
GR: Yes.
HPR: That was at Stalag Luft 7.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: In Bankau near Breslau.
GR: So, that would be around about October time, wouldn’t it?
HPR: That was.
GR: Shot down in September.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: October.
HPR: That’s right,
GR: Yeah. October. November. I was going to say how was prison life but I presume you weren’t in the prison camp long because did they then start, as the Russians were advancing did they take you out on what became known as the Long March.
HPR: Yeah. What happened was we were in there. Stalag Luft. That’s [pause] the first camp we went to. That’s a map of the —
GR: Oh, right. Thank you. Yes. Stalag Luft 7.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: Bankau, Silesia.
HPR: The first camp we went to was a temporary camp because that hadn’t been completed. We were in just little huts.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Which were only about seven foot high and about, you know twenty four foot long. Then we went to that camp eventually when it was completed. And it was said that nobody would ever escape. Escape from there sort of thing. But nobody did. We didn’t. We were there until —
GR: Because in your own mind was you aware the war was coming to a close?
HPR: Well, yes. We were. We were getting reply. Reports from UK. We had two guys. One who was shot down the first day of the war.
GR: Right.
HPR: And he was a wireless operator and he was a very clever lad. He managed to get, he’d got a phone. A telephone, telephone wires and eventually managed to get a radio signal and he was, he was giving us reports.
GR: Reports. Yeah.
HPR: Virtually every day of what was happening during the war. He was an excellent guy. The padre was there also who was a nice, a very nice chap. I’ve still got the bible that he gave me there, and I’ve carried that everywhere. I’ll just show it to you.
GR: Show me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
HPR: I’ll get it for you.
GR: Yeah. And I’ll just pause the —
[recording paused]
GR: So we’re just looking at a Holy Bible that was presented to Philip by the —
HPR: He was the padre.
GR: The padre. Victor —
HPR: He was acting padre. He was —
GR: Victor [Coops.]
HPR: Yeah. He became, he became a full time vicar afterwards.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: After the war.
GR: Yeah. So the Holy Bible with a stamp inside it that says Stalug Luft 7. Incredible. So, so when was you taken out the camp and put on the Long March?
HPR: Yes.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: That was on the —
[pause]
GR: It would be January time.
HPR: 17th of January.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: 17th of January and I was on that Long March twenty one days or thereabouts.
GR: For about, so for about three weeks. Where did you end up then, Philip?
HPR: We ended up eventually at Luckenwalde.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Which was [pause] the camp number was camp three and we were there then. There were fifty four thousand in that camp which was really required to keep about ten or twelve thousand.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: So we had no, no beds. No nothing. Just palliases. Wooden —
GR: Straw beds yeah.
HPR: Well, yeah.
GR: I presume, I presume you was in, because you were shot down in September.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: You was in quite reasonable physical condition.
HPR: Yeah.
GR: Unlike some of the chaps who had been there three or four years. Were they —
HPR: That’s right.
GR: Were they —
HPR: Yeah.
GR: Thinner? And —
HPR: Well we, I, we’d all lost weight obviously on the march.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Because we had very little food.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: It was only a question of a cup of soup a day. A slice of bread a day. Maybe one spoonful of sugar or whatever.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: One cup of coffee which was horrible. Ersaz coffee made of acorns.
GR: Acorns.
HPR: That’s right. And I lost, my weight came to around six stone twelve when I came home.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: So, I was about eleven stone when I, when I, when I got shot down.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And we, not only myself but everybody else.
GR: Yeah. So in a period of seven or eight months.
HPR: Were in the same situation.
GR: Yeah. It’s a very big weight loss.
HPR: Very little food.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: We were at this camp for, as I say there were fifty four thousand of them there. Russians, Poles, Germans, err Russians, Poles, Czechoslovakians all sorts of nationalities.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: The Russian’s camp itself was separate from, from the main camp. Then eventually as I said the Russians overran us in, when was it? May.
GR: Yes. End of April.
HPR: End of April.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: That’s right.
GR: It was the Russians who took over the camp wasn’t it?
HPR: The Russians —
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Took over the camp completely. Then we heard that the Americans were on the other side of the Elbe.
GR: Yes.
HPR: They were advancing. We got word to them to say where we were. They eventually brought trucks up. Fifty trucks to take all the, all the American and the British prisoners out of the —
GR: Out.
HPR: Out of the camp. The Russians refused and as we were moving on they fired us over the tops and with rifles, they said, ‘Nobody leaves this camp until we get an exchange of prisoners.’ Fifty four thousand prisoners in exchange for all these other prisoners that you’ve got. The Russians were, the Russians in the Russian side of the camp were released by the Russians and told, ‘There’s a rifle. Off you go. Kill as many Germans as you can.’ And outside the camp was one gun post which had six German army guys there. They went out and they said, ‘Bring back proof that you’ve killed them.’ They brought back six heads.
GR: God.
HPR: And said, ‘There we are. We’ve killed them.’
GR: Yeah.
HPR: For ourselves we tried to get on but as I said they told us we can’t get. So we were in that camp now until well I didn’t get home until June.
GR: So, how did you eventually get out the camp? Was it —
HPR: We eventually —
GR: The Russians just let you go or —
HPR: Eventually they transferred so many prisoners in exchange.
GR: Right.
HPR: They transferred them over on the Elbe.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: The Germans and the Russians and they allowed us to leave. We then, they then took us from there back into Frankfurt, then on to, I flew then from, they took us down to Holland and we flew back home to Tangmere.
GR: Tangmere.
HPR: In Sussex.
GR: What aircraft did you fly back on?
HPR: Dakotas.
GR: Dakotas.
HPR: That’s right.
GR: I know they were using Lancasters, Dakotas and American B17s, so —
HPR: That’s right. Yeah. Dakotas.
GR: You got a Dakota.
HPR: Flew on Dakotas back to Tangmere and the first time we, the first meal I had, I will always remember was fish and chips in Tangmere. That was the blessing.
GR: Yes.
HPR: While we were in, in Holland with the Americans we were fed with very good food obviously. With bacon and eggs and —
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And pineapples and goodness knows what. Excellent I must say. Then we eventually came home. I had a slight bit of flak in my left leg which had played up a bit. It was still weeping and what have you. They decided that first of all they were going to put me into hospital. There was, I said I didn’t, I wanted to go home first if I could because I had no, I had no knowledge of whether my family were alive or whether they were dead or what happened because only one, they only had one letter from me after I became a prisoner of war to say that I was a prisoner of war. To confirm that. But no other mail had got through. So eventually they let me home with details of what had happened to be given to my doctor and he treated me. Then after three weeks I went back to Cosford Hospital. They looked at it and said it was ok, it was fine. I could go back on leave. I had another three weeks leave. They were trying to treat us because we were undernourished. The only way they could give us extra rations was by giving us rations that were normally used for WAAF’s pregnancies. That was double rations.
GR: Double rations.
HPR: And so I was having two lots of bacon, two lot of meat, two lots of beef —
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Two lots of butter etcetera etcetera to build up. So eventually I then got posted back to Cosford. I did a course there. I stayed in the RAF.
GR: Yeah. Were you back, when you came back from prisoner of war camp —
HPR: Ah huh.
GR: Did you learn then that all the others had come back with you? So the rest of the crew apart your pilot did they come back at the same time?
HPR: Oh yeah. They all came back.
GR: Did they, were they in the same camp by the way?
HPR: They came back virtually at the same time.
GR: Oh right.
HPR: But were disbanded into the RCAF.
GR: Oh course. They would have been sent back to Canada, wouldn’t they?
HPR: That’s right.
GR: Yes.
HPR: They went back to Canada.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And then, as I said I came back home here. As I say they all went back to their jobs except Bill Sloane went back to Montreal, but then he went on to America. He decided to go down to America. We lost all trace of him. The rest of them we, we kept in touch with for a while. Bob Walters died of, he had cancer. He died about ten years ago. The next one who died was [pause] Ken. Ken Dugdale. Mid-upper gunner. He died of cancer in Saskatchewan. Twyneham stayed. He was alive until four years ago. He died in London. Who else was there? Bob as I said. Bill Sloane went on to America so we —
GR: Yeah. Lost track of him.
HPR: Lost all trace of him. There was myself still here. And Johnny de Luca.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Obviously of Italian parentage.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: He died two years ago.
GR: Two years ago.
HPR: He had a blood disorder.
GR: Oh dear.
HPR: Which they couldn’t cure.
GR: Did you stay in the RAF?
HPR: I stayed in the RAF until 1948.
GR: Oh, ’48. Right.
HPR: Went back to Cosford. I went to training to do a equipment officer’s job. I did it at Cosford for a while. Then they came along and said, ‘Right. We’re sending you on a bomb disposal course.’
GR: [laughs] What a thing to do.
HPR: So they sent me on a bomb disposal course and I was then employed getting rid of phosgene and mustard gases by firing them with sten guns. Blowing them up. Burning them.
GR: What a way to do it.
HPR: Yeah. So then they said, ‘Right. We’re getting you posted now to a place called Cottam, which is just outside Driffield.’
GR: Yes.
HPR: And that was a bomb disposal unit. They had bombs. Two hundred, four hundred pound bombs all over the place there. So we had to, well we was selling these to Iraq and Iran. We were repainting them and sending them off after the war to Iraq and Iran. So I was in charge of this unit there and eventually I applied for a permanent commission. They offered me a short service commission of four years. And I said no. This is ’48 and I said, ‘No. I’d rather it’s either a full commission or I’m out.’ So then, it was then I came out.
GR: Right.
HPR: 1948. Although, if I’d stayed in the guys who also applied for, for a short service eventually got a full —
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Commission because they were short of officers in the 1950s. So, I came out. Then got a job in one of the utilities with is the Electricity Boards.
GR: Back in Wales.
HPR: Back. No. First of all in Yorkshire.
GR: Right.
HPR: In Driffield.
GR: So you decided to stay in —
HPR: In, well in Hull really.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And then I transferred from there back to Wales.
GR: Right.
HPR: And I got a job with the Electricity Board in Wales. From there, I stayed with them for about three years and a guy came along and offered me a job with a company, an American company called Kelvinator making refrigerators. So I joined them as a sales rep. Left then after about three years. Got a job with Phillips Electrical who were forming a new group for white goods. So I became an area manager for them and eventually left them after seventeen years. They headhunted from another company called MK which made electrical switches and sockets. Became a sales manager from then. Then they asked me to go to South Africa. So I went to South Africa for two and a half years to, as a marketing manager and eventually marketing director for them in South Africa.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Sold the company in South Africa which they wanted me to do. Came home and then retired.
GR: Right.
HPR: Then somebody came along and said, ‘I’ve got a job for you.’ I said I didn’t really want a job. ‘Oh, we’ve got a job.’ So I went to work then for the government on marking, checking marking of GCSE exams.
GR: Oh right. Yeah.
HPR: In Harrogate.
GR: Yeah. So you was living up in this area by then.
HPR: Yeah. Finished up. I finished up here.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: Became the, as I said I have a house in, before I came here I had a house in Askham Richard.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: And do you know, so before that we had a house down in, I worked for, when I worked for Phillips I worked in London with them.
GR: Yeah.
HPR: At, so I had a house in Horsham for three years.
GR: So you moved around a bit.
HPR: So I’ve been around a bit.
GR: A wonderful life. Yeah. Very very good. So how are we doing? Yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Hayden Philip Rose
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Gary Rushbrooke
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
2018-02-22
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.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ARoseHP180222, PRoseHP1801
Format
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00:41:20 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Netherlands
Netherlands--Dordrecht
Germany
Poland
South Africa
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Poland--Tychowo
Description
An account of the resource
Hayden Philip Rose was born on the 27th of July 1924. After leaving school he worked in the Simmonds factory office before joining the RAF in 1943, training as an engineer. His brothers also joined, becoming a pilot and a navigator. Upon meeting his crew at RAF Aldwark Manor they were posted to RAF Riccall where they trained on Halifaxes, before joining 426 Squadron at RAF Linton-on-Ouse.
On their 20th operation, they were hit by anti-aircraft fire upon which they bailed out near Dordrecht, and the pilot was killed in action. The crew were then held at German headquarters in Frankfurt for interrogation and eventually sent to Stalag Luft 7. He reports that when the Russians reached the camp they gave them rifles to kill as many Germans as they could. They took back six heads to prove that they had killed them.
He flew back in June 1945. After three weeks leave, he completed further training before being posted to RAF Cottam, where he stayed until 1948. Rose recounts his life after demobilisation, including working in South Africa and keeping in touch with his crew.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Tilly Foster
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1945-06
1948
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
426 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
bombing
Dulag Luft
faith
flight engineer
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Riccall
RAF Tangmere
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/547/11783/PWynneH1825.1.jpg
2695d69ffdc319eadc27dd83dd8e46ac
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/547/11783/AWynneH-AtkinsonG180508.2.mp3
2f104dfd844ef6b76a21ae95d8ac858f
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
Wynne, Helga
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. Includes family photographs and two oral history interviews with Helga Wynne (b. 1926) who reminisces her childhood in Kiel, the death of her future fiancé when the train he was travelling on was bombed, and her coming over to Great Britain in 1948.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Helga Wynne 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
2018-08-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wynne, H
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
HH: This is Heather Hughes for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive and I am in [ buzz] Flixborough with Helga Wynne and Gordon Atkinson, and it is the 8th of May 2018. Did I get all of that right? I think so.
HW: Yeah.
HH: Helga, thank you so much for agreeing to tell your story to us.
HW: Yeah. You’re welcome.
HH: Because I think it’s a remarkable story. So, if we could start with your very very early life. Would you like to tell us where you were born and when and something about your family?
HW: Yeah. I was born on the 10 7 ‘26 in Germany. In Kiel, and we lived right in centre in town. We lived about four or five years and then my father went to outskirts from Kiel and built a house. So that is where my life really began. In there. So —
HH: So, was your dad, what was, what profession was your dad?
HW: So my, my father in his younger days he was a sailor and he joined when he was fourteen years of age.
GA: On sailing ships that, wasn’t it?
HW: On the, yeah.
HH: On sailing ships.
HW: Yeah. And he never went back. That was in Danzig. It, it called —
HH: Gdansk.
GA: Gdansk.
HW: Gdansk. Yeah. In Poland.
HH: In Poland. Now. Nowadays Poland. Yes.
HW: But when he was born it belonged to Germany so that made him a German. So after that he got married and like I said already he built his own house. There were twelve children of us. Nine girls and three boys and I’m the ninth in the line.
HH: And in terms of the three girls, the boys and the girls where are you in the whole —
HW: Yeah. That was a big house what he built.
HH: And, and were you the youngest altogether?
GA: No. You were number nine didn’t you say?
HH: Or just the youngest girl?
HW: I more or less was one of the youngest one.
HH: Ok.
HW: The fourth youngest. Yeah.
HH: Ok.
HW: And of course, I had no brothers in the war because one brother who was deaf and dumb so they didn’t take him, and the other two were too young so, but I had all brother in laws in the war and several of them of course they got killed. And one day in my younger day I was in the kitchen with my mother and all of a sudden the door ripped open and the Nazis came in. So, we were frightened to death. We wondered what it was all about and they wanted to see my father. And so, my mother said, ‘Alright. He’s out.’ He was a shipbuilder. Told them where he was and they went and fetched him. So, they came back and he had to show the certificate that he was born in, in Danzig. What they called Gdansk but when he was born it belonged to Germany so that made him German so they were satisfied. They saluted and went out and took my father back. But I must say when first Hitler came in we were very poor. You know, at that time my father was out of work at that time but they looked after us. They brought us food. They brought us coal. And that’s how he got that job. So, he had his good points even if he had his bad ones. So, of course when I was fourteen I had to start working and I went on the farm. And all, all young girls before they started profession they had to go on the farm or they had to go and live with a family to see what life is all about, what they’re going to do when they get older and I chose to go on the farm.
HH: Was that, was that a long way from where you lived, Helga?
HW: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. And of course, I had a bad accident there. I was, we were going to feed the cows and it was a loft and go in the loft to get the straw down for the cows and while I was running over it I, it, I walked over a bale of straw and that covered the, the loft like and I didn’t know. Of course, I fell through, landed on my back and if it wasn’t for the bale of straw I could have been dead but that actually saved my life in a way so —
HH: So, did you land on a bale of straw?
HW: Yeah. Yeah. But I still damaged my spine and that.
HH: And did you have medical attention?
HW: Yeah. And I was in hospital for a few weeks and I was in a plastic jacket for six months. Of course, when I got over all this problem I started, I went to, went to Kiel, in town to a Children’s Hospital as a student. And of course, one day we had a what do you call it — ?
GA: Air raid do you mean?
HW: Yeah. Air raid. Yeah.
GA: You’re jumping forward now.
HW: And we were all sheltering in a cellar. Well, it wasn’t really a cellar. It was halfway above the ground and halfway under but the Children’s Hospital, they all had children in there under the age of fifteen. And they all more or less scarlet fever, measles and things like that. It was a private hospital.
HH: And that was in Kiel.
HW: Yeah. That was in Kiel. And —
HH: Ok. So, when did you start working in the hospital? Was it before the war?
HW: During the war.
HH: So, you started work there —
HW: Yeah.
HH: During the war.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah, and of course they first they throw phosphor bombs like. All the building was on fire and I was on fire duty like but they wouldn’t let me go up to do anything because we knew the next lot of bombers was coming in with the heavy bombs. So, anyhow, we got all set looking after the children, the bombs dropped in and I got buried. So, luckily in the next room there was two students and they managed to got me out.
HH: They managed to get you out.
HW: Yeah. But next to me was one of the doctors and they couldn’t get her out.
HH: They didn’t make it.
HW: No. The burning steps came on falling. Falling on her. Anyhow, after when I got all over that I met —
HH: Now, when you say when I you got all over that did that take you a while to recover?
HW: Well, it did. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been —
HH: So were you, did you have —
HW: Off sick and that. Yeah. Yeah.
HH: You were. Ok. Yeah.
HW: And then I met my late fiancé.
GA: That’s jumping quite a bit.
HW: Yeah. And —
GA: After the, after the —
HW: Yeah —
GA: Bullets had stopped flying when she met Harold. You know what I mean? It’d be after 1945.
HH: Yeah.
GA: Yeah.
HH: But, but you first, you, you had met somebody who was in the German Navy.
GA: Yeah.
HH: Is that right?
GA: You missed that out.
HW: Yeah.
GA: You missed that.
HW: Ok.
GA: Going to Westphalia.
HH: So, tell me about your fiancé.
HW: This is what I get to now. I met him and he was, he was on the ship called Prinz Eugen and it got bombed badly so all his mates got legs and arms off and he said that was too terrible to see so he decide to go to a submarine. He said, ‘I’ll either be killed or be alive.’ So, this is what happened.
HH: How did you meet him, Helga?
HW: He was in Kiel. In, in his—
GA: Kiel was a Naval base.
HW: Yeah. A Navy base. Yeah.
GA: They met —
HW: Training younger sailors like. Anyhow, I got, after a time I was three months pregnant so we decide to get married but it was very difficult, the war being still very heavy. So I went to Westphalia, near the Dutch border to his parents and that’s when we was going to get married. He came on a short leave, only for two days to get married and go back but while we were on the train together it got attacked by a plane during the night. I think it was American plane. Just one among and it fired machine guns.
HH: At the train.
HW: Yeah. And of course, we stood so close together how I didn’t get hit I don’t know. It just ripped my coat and the bullet went into him and killed him. So, two days later we should have been married but it didn’t come off. And anyhow —
HH: Yeah. That must have been really difficult for you.
HW: It was very very hard. Yeah.
HH: How did you cope?
HW: You do when you’re young don’t you? And you know you had to. Life goes on, doesn’t it?
GA: Did you, you stayed with his mother in law at that time, did you? Just after that tragedy.
HW: Did what?
HH: Did you carry —
GA: Did you stay with, with your mother in law?
HW: Yeah
HH: Did you carry on staying with his parents?
HW: Yeah. I had to because the war was really, they was all coming in in Holland and that and, in fact they came in Holland and then on the Rhine and that was near the Rhine where his parents lived. Of course, he got, he got buried there where his parents is because that’s where he got died. And the war finished there in March. Well, it was still going on in Kiel so I couldn’t get back home. So, I went back after the, you know everything was settled in June. I came back. Of course, I had a baby by then and no father to look after it. So, but his parents were quite well off. So —
HH: And did they, did they, did they look after you and the baby?
HW: Yeah. And he’s still there. We’re in touch. He keeps coming to see us. He’s married over there like.
HH: And what’s his name?
HW: Willy, after his father.
HH: His father’s name was Willy as well, was it?
HW: Yeah. Wilhelm. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
HW: And I’ve, one of my brother in laws he was on the Scharnhorst so he, he got killed of course.
HH: Yeah.
HW: And another one he was only six weeks on the mine sweeper and they run on the mine and he got killed. And another brother in law he was in Hamburg visiting like, my sister and the bombing was going on and he got buried somewhere but nobody ever found him.
HH: So, that must have been just terrible for, that your, for —
HW: Yeah.
HH: For the parents —
HW: Yeah.
HH: Who lost all of those sons.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you see, they are brother in laws but not my own —
HH: Yeah.
HW: Brothers you see.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
HW: And then my other one —
HH: How did your parents cope with that?
HW: They, they never spoke about that.
HH: They just didn’t speak about it.
HW: No. No.
HH: They probably just couldn’t.
HW: No. This is it. Yeah.
GA: Did your, did your mother drove a tram didn’t she? Didn’t your mother drive a tram?
HW: Yeah. My —
HH: During the war your mum —
HW: Yeah. She was a tram driver in Hamburg.
GA: Was your, was your younger sister set in the foot —
HW: Yeah.
GA: The footwell of the tram.
HW: She had one of my younger sister. She was only a year old. She used to sit her in a corner while she was driving a tram. Of course, it wouldn’t be allowed today.
HH: No. But what else could you do then?
HW: Yeah. That’s true. Yeah. You see. To earn a living, isn’t it? You have to help.
HH: Gosh.
GA: Your father was working in the Krupps ship building yards.
HW: Yeah. Of course, that all got bombed badly and so on but —
HH: Did your father survive?
HW: Oh yeah. My parents survived the war because, but he died I think a few years after the war from cancer like and my mother lived twenty years after that on, on her own.
HH: Gosh.
HW: Of course, she sold the house then and went to finish within a home like.
HW: When I met my late husband that was in 1947.
HH: And where was that?
HW: And that, he was a paramedic in Kiel. And we’d been out to a dance and that’s how we met. It was a few months later we got engaged. And then 1948 he brought me over to England and we got married and I think I was one of the first girls in Scunthorpe who got married to an Englishmen because crowds of people come to watch us.
HH: Gosh.
HW: Because I was German, you see. Yeah.
GA: That was at Burton Church, wasn’t it?
HW: Yeah.
HH: And that was at Burton Church.
HW: I got married in the Burton Church and the buses even stopped and looked and took photographs and it was —
HH: So, it was quite a celebrity wedding.
HW: It must have been. Yeah. And I couldn’t figure why but I realised later that I was more or less one of the first one in Scunthorpe who got married to an Englishman.
HH: Gosh.
HW: Anyhow, we got, I got three sons.
HH: You had three sons together.
HW: With Harold. Yeah.
HW: And of course, he, he died in 2000. He had cancer. I nursed him in bed for nine weeks. It was hard but I looked after him ‘til he died.
HH: And how did you find, how was it from your point of view as a German woman coming to live in, in Britain at that time?
HW: Well, when you’re young and in love you don’t see anything different. You’re just happy. I’ve never really been homesick. I’ve been very happy. I had a happy marriage.
HH: But you were made welcome, were you?
HW: Yes. His parents, yeah made me very very welcome. I couldn’t have been looked after any better. They thought the world of me.
HH: And where did they live? Your parents in law.
HW: They lived at Thealby. Not far from here.
GA: About three, four miles, you know?
HW: Yeah. Yeah. They really replaced my own parents. They did. Yeah. Because they never had any girls I was the only girl in the family so of course I would be welcome.
GA: They met your mum and dad, didn’t they? Did Harold’s dad, didn’t, did Harold’s mother or was it just his dad, yeah his dad went to Germany?
HW: Yeah.
HH: Did the families meet?
GA: Yes.
HW: Yes. Yes. I, we went to Germany. Twice we took parent in laws with us and my father in law enjoyed it so much he went on his own with a friend and stayed with my sister.
HH: Fantastic.
HW: And really enjoyed it. Yes.
HH: Brilliant.
HW: Of course, we went nearly every other year with the children like. So —
HH: To keep in touch with your family.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. So, they were in touch. And then with my late, with my eldest son of course they met him and they’ve been over here quite a few times.
HH: Have they?
HW: Yeah. And they still come. Yeah. They are coming again next month.
HH: Lovely.
HW: Yeah. And of course, then a year and a half ago I broke my leg.
HH: Oh.
HW: And of course, it put me back a bit in the wheelchair like. And Gordon looks after me like with doing our best what we can. Several, I broke my ankle. Got a pin in it. I broke my arm while I’ve been here. I broke my big toe. So, I’ve had quite a few breaks, haven’t I? Yeah. I had my eyes done. Cataracts. And now they’ve found out that I’ve got what do you call them? Floaters.
HH: Oh, those are horrible.
HW: Yeah.
HH: I’ve had those.
GA: Yeah.
HW: And they won’t operate because they said after they do it it wouldn’t do any good.
HH: No.
HW: So therefore —
HH: You just have to wait.
HW: Yeah. I’m gradually going blind now. Yeah. Because it’s really getting bad.
HH: Well, you know what my mother says? Old age is not for the faint hearted.
GA: It is. Indeed, it’s not.
HW: That’s right. And I have to use my magnifying glass for everything now.
HH: Yeah.
HW: But I —
HH: Tell me a little bit about your life between 1948. I mean your husband worked where?
HW: Yeah.
HH: Harold.
HW: He worked, he worked at the steelworks.
HH: In Scunthorpe.
HW: Yeah.
HW: He was, in the army he was in the medic.
GA: A medic. The Royal Medical Corps.
HH: So, so did —
HW: Yeah —
HH: Did he, he was demobbed was he?
GA: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. He was demobbed and then he sent for me.
GA: It was basically National Service he did, wasn’t it?
HW: Yeah.
HH: Oh, National Service.
HW: Just for two years.
HH: Ok.
GA: Just after the war you see.
HH: Just after the war.
GA: ‘47 48.
HH: Right.
GA: Something like that.
HW: And course —
HH: So, then he, he finished his National Service.
HW: Yeah.
HH: And then, and then went to work. Met —
HW: Yeah.
HH: Met you, married, you got married and then he was in the steel works.
HW: He was in the medic in the, in the Army like. He could, he could have carried on because they wanted him in Scunthorpe but the wages I’m afraid wasn’t very good.
HH: No.
HW: And the steelworks it was better.
HH: Much better.
HW: So he went to the steelworks.
HH: And you?
HW: As a smelter.
HH: What did you do when he was away at the steel mill? Looking after children?
HW: Yeah. This is, well I was only here a year when we had the eldest son like.
HH: And that was, what year was your oldest son born?
HW: We got married ’48. He was born —
HH: ’49.
HW: ’50. Yeah.
HH: Oh, ’50.
HW: No.
HH: ’50.
HW: ’50, yeah. Yeah.
HH: And the other ones? What years were they born?
HW: Two years later. Well, I’m afraid I lost him six months ago. He passed.
GA: 12th of August last year, wasn’t it? When he died.
HW: Yeah. He passed away. He had lung cancer and, yeah, I’m afraid.
HH: And that was the middle son.
HW: Yeah. That was the middle one.
HH: And then the youngest one?
HW: The eldest one lives in Wales.
HH: In Wales.
HW: Yeah. I’m afraid it isn’t very good news there because he’s got cancer in his throat.
HH: Whereabouts in Wales do they live?
GA: Near Swansea.
HH: Ok. South Wales.
GA: South Wales.
HW: Yeah.
HH: So it’s quite a long way away.
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
GA: Oh, a long way. Yeah.
HW: It is. Yeah. Well, he came about two weeks ago.
GA: Yeah.
HW: Didn’t he? They keep coming up like but of course it’s a long way. I mean he’s got three children and they’ve all got family. So I’m a great grandmother to six others.
HH: Six. Six times a great granny.
GA: Yeah.
HH: That’s wonderful.
HW: Yeah. Three. Three times grandmother.
HH: That’s wonderful.
HW: Yeah.
HH: So, you, you have a very large family.
HW: Yeah. Oh, yes and they come regularly to see us. Yes. Yes.
HH: That’s great.
HW: It is. Yeah.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
HW: But they all live apart. Nobody near us like. They live in Goole and oh one lives in [unclear] doesn’t he?
GA: Yeah.
HW: The other one in Hull.
GA: Katie. She’s in Hull.
HW: Yeah.
HH: Yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s families today.
GA: Yeah. Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
HH: I mean it is remarkable I think that you have been so settled here for so long in the same house.
HW: Yeah.
GA: To work.
HH: Sixty seven years.
GA: Ever since you’ve been here you’ve always worked on the farm doing the potato picking and —
HW: I always worked on the farm.
HH: So, you went back to farm work which is how you started.
HW: Yeah. Yeah.
GA: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. In, whatever children went to school I went on the farm to work. I used to drive the tractor.
HH: Fantastic.
GA: Every farm had a team of ladies out of the village that did the potato riddling. Picking —
HH: Amazing.
GA: Sugar beet and things like that.
HW: Yeah.
GA: And that’s what you —
HH: That’s quite hard work.
GA: Oh yeah.
HW: Yeah. But I was tractor driving so it was easier. And I even saved a little boy’s life.
HH: How come?
HW: Well, they had a swimming pool there on the, on the farm like and while I was coming —
GA: It was —
HW: Back with the tractor these little kiddies come running and said one of the boys fell in water. So of course, I jumped off the tractor and run straight to the pond and there was a big sheet over the top and I said he couldn’t be in there but then we ripped the sheet off. The foreman and I ripped it off and luckily right in front of me he come up and he was all blue and that. Unconscious.
HH: Well, that’s where your nursing experience —
HW: Yeah.
HH: Would have been really helpful.
HW: Yeah. It did. I gave him the kiss of life and brought him around. We wrapped him up in blankets and somebody rang ambulance up. Of course, I had to get home and get changed because I was soaking.
HH: Wet.
HW: Yeah. Yeah. That was something. Anyhow, a few years later I met the mother and I asked how the little boy was going on. She said he was going on fine but he had a lot of ear complaint.
HH: Oh.
HW: Yes.
HH: Yeah. But he was alive and well.
HW: But he was alive. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
HW: Yes.
HH: Yeah.
HW: Yes. It was at the time the front page, wasn’t it?
GA: I think it was. Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
GA: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. The foreman —
HH: So, when did you stop working on tractors then Helga?
HW: I was, I was nearly seventy when I still went potato picking, wasn’t I?
GA: You used to help me. Yeah.
HW: Not picking but on the machines sorting them. I was nearly seventy and I was still on the farm helping. I enjoyed it. It was outing, plus extra pocket money as well.
HH: Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
HH: Yeah. You’ve had a very eventful life.
HW: Yeah. I presume I had.
HH: Yeah.
HW: But I enjoyed it whatever.
HH: And do you still keep in touch? Have you got any of your siblings still alive?
HW: I’m afraid all my sisters and brothers all died. I’m the only one left.
HH: Oh, so you’re the last one.
HW: Yeah. One went —
HH: Gosh.
HW: One went to Australia. That’s the youngest one and the others all stayed in Germany. One was married to a Greek but she came back to Kiel with her husband and family. But they’ve all passed away I’m afraid.
HH: Gosh.
HW: So, I’m the only one left.
HH: Well, that’s remarkable.
GA: You’ve one or two nieces and nephews that you still —
HW: I’ve got quite a lot of few nephews and nieces.
HH: And you still, you still keep in touch with them.
HW: One or —
GA: One or two of them anyway. Yeah.
HW: One or two.
GA: Yeah.
HW: Because there’s so many I could not keep up writing to them all.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
HW: And if you’re on telephone it becomes quite expensive, doesn’t it? To ring them.
HH: Indeed it does. Especially because you’ve got your own large family too.
HW: Yeah. Well, this is it. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
HW: Yeah. I’ve got my own family over here so they come first.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Do they know your stories? Does your family know your stories? All these stories?
GA: Yeah.
HW: Well, they would do, wouldn’t they? Yeah.
GA: Yeah.
HW: But —
HH: So you’ve talked to them about your life.
HW: Yeah.
GA: Briefly.
HW: Yeah.
GA: Given them bits and pieces over the years.
HW: Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
HW: That’s it. Yes.
HH: Yeah. It is a remarkable life.
HW: I did. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
HW: But it’s like I said I enjoyed the good so you had to take it bad if it comes
HH: Yeah. But you lived through some very difficult times in the world.
HW: Yeah. Well, that was during the war that was hard. When, when I met my late husband we were actually nearly starving because that week I met him we was a whole week never had nothing to eat at all. And I went to see him where he was in the hospital like and I just collapsed so —
HH: Because of hunger.
HW: They said, yeah, he said, he went to his mates and said, ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with the girl. She collapsed.’ So, he said, ‘I’ll tell you what’s the matter. They’re starving.’ ‘No. No. No. She would have told me.’ He said, ‘They wouldn’t,’ he says, ‘They’re too proud.’ So of course, he got one of the cooks to give me some dinner.
HH: And that helped.
HW: And, yeah it did. Yeah. And after that he did Black Market with cigarettes and soap and different things.
HH: To get food for you and your family.
HW: Yeah, because I lived with my sister. She lost her husband and she had three little children so we were all in the same boat. So, he looked, brought food for them as well which is —
HH: Yeah.
HW: Was very very nice.
HH: So, what, what did you think of, what did you think of Britain when you first arrived?
HW: I couldn’t find much different really. No. Because I mean people had their own houses and garden the same like they have in Germany.
HH: Could you already speak English?
HW: Not a lot. No. Harold, he spoke very good English and I learned, I learned it rather quickly because you’ve got to.
HH: So, did he speak German?
HW: He spoke German. Yes. Yes, and —
HH: So, that’s how you communicated.
HW: Yeah. Because I lived with mother in law and it was hard sometimes. She used to say, ‘Set table.’ Told me fetch some plates. Of course, I brought no end of things in. ‘No. No. Plate.’ You know. Eventually you got to —
GA: She taught you English money didn’t she and how to shop? Sent you into the shop.
HW: Yeah.
GA: And stood back, you know. Didn’t she?
HW: She, I had to go shopping on my own like. And when I couldn’t tell them what I wanted I used to point. And I wanted some cotton in the market once and I knew how much it was because I quickly learned about the English money. I thought well I have to learn that quick. Of course, when I got my cotton that lady gave me short change. So, I come out and I said to mother in law, ‘This is not right,’ I said, ‘I should have —' so and so. So, the following week the same happened again. So, mother in law told, told that lady then so she said why didn’t she tell me? And the same when we went in, in one of the shops, in the chemist, I wanted something and I said to mother in law, ‘What do I say?’ And she told me in English what I had to say. Of course, I went in and could I have so and so. And they all looked and said, ‘What did you say?’ So, they made me repeat it again. Of course, I changed my tune and they still didn’t understand so I had to repeat it again. So, I came out and told mother in law. I said, ‘They don’t understand what I said.’ So, she said, ‘What did you say?’ So I told her. Well, she said, ‘They should have understood that. Come on I’ll go in with you.’ So, she went in with me and explained. Why? They said, ‘Oh, she had such a lovely accent we liked to hear it.’
HH: So, they were just making you say it over and over again.
HW: Yeah. Anyhow, I didn’t mind after that but I thought at first well shall I ever learn the language?
HH: Yeah.
HW: But —
HH: Do you ever get the chance to speak German now?
HW: Yes. Yeah. When they ring up from Germany of course I speak English and at odd times, the odd word you forget but it, naturally it comes back. Your mother language always comes back, doesn’t it?
HH: I think so.
HW: Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
HW: Same when I write a letter. You know, I can write without any problem.
HH: Yeah. It’s amazing. Yeah. And Gordon now you’ve got an interesting connection with that part of the war as well with your uncle.
GA: Yeah.
HW: Was it an uncle? So tell us about your —
GA: My mum’s —
HW: Tell us about your —
GA: My mum’s cousin it was.
HW: Oh, it was your mum’s cousin.
GA: Cousin’s sons it would be. Yeah.
HH: So, tell us a little bit about that.
GA: Well, it was I think about 1913 or so that my mother’s cousins sold up in Scunthorpe, Ashby and lived with my mother’s parents and such like for a, and such a time and they sailed from Liverpool, I think it was Liverpool on the Empress of Ireland and emigrated to Canada. And this was only sort of a year or two years after the Titanic disaster and it was six months before they got to find out for definite but the Empress of Ireland sank in the Gulf of St Lawrence and, but it turned out that my mother’s cousin had landed in Canada. I don’t know whether it was Toronto, Quebec or where it was but, and the Empress of Ireland had smashed in to a coal ship in the Gulf of St Lawrence and sunk with about hundreds of lives on it. But it was six months before they found out and that was the start of these three lads that came over during the war you see. Because I think Leslie who died in the air crash would be twenty four when, when he died so that would have put him, you know born you know, I haven’t work out the exact numbers out but you know, 19 —
HH: Yeah.
GA: ’15, something like that wouldn’t they? And there was Leslie, Hughie and Frank. Two came as soldiers in the Canadian forces and Hughie was in the Canadian Air Force.
HH: Air Force.
GA: And —
HH: And he was at Linton on Ouse.
GA: Linton on Ouse where he flew from. Yeah. I’ve got, I’ve written off to Cranwell to get his full record but it’ll be another few weeks before we, we receive those, I think but —
HH: So, you learned all of this from your visit to the IBCC. You didn’t know.
GA: I knew. I knew, my mother knew he’d flown from, she thought it was an airfield somewhere near Newcastle.
HH: Yeah.
GA: You know.
HH: North.
GA: Because all this east coast is, is just littered —
HH: Yeah.
GA: With bomber airfields, isn’t it? If you know what I mean. And to the best of her knowledge he’d flown out there. She didn’t know whether it was a Lancaster or, it turned out it was a Halifax. And I still haven’t found out what he was but we thought he was a rear gunner but we don’t know for certain. We’ll probably get that clarified when we get the Cranwell details back but, and presumed lost in the North Sea and that’s all she ever knew. And she said, ‘I would like to know where he —’ you know. And I’ve never been able to find out or ever gone in to such detail. And then when we went to this Canwick Hill, you know, the bomber thing there the lady helped us there find it on the computer and we saw it on the thing.
HH: On the wall.
GA: On the wall and everything and got more detail and then got all that detail printed off.
HH: That’s great. So, his name was Arthur Leslie Horton.
GA: Arthur Leslie Horton. Yeah. And he was in the Thunderbird Squadron I think, wasn’t he? At Linton on Ouse.
HW: It is a lovely place, isn’t it?
GA: Yeah.
HH: Did you enjoy your visit?
HW: Yeah. We went to the, what was it?
GA: Where the video and all that is.
HW: Yeah.
GA: That was —
HW: Well, that brought memories back to me.
HH: Well —
GA: You know, when we saw all these you know on the ceiling. On the —
HH: The thing is that, you know one of the things that we were trying to do in that exhibition was to tell the story from both sides.
HW: Yeah.
GA: Yeah.
HW: This is it.
HH: As a way of achieving some measure of reconciliation. But listening to your story Helga you are, your family and your own story is a story of —
HW: Yeah.
HH: Reconciliation in and of itself.
HW: It don’t matter —
HH: You know, you are a walking model of reconciliation.
HW: It doesn’t matter what country you come from they all got mothers haven’t they? And we’re all born the same way.
HH: I think that’s the important thing is that too often people are made out to be heroes or villains but actually they are humans.
GA: Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
HH: And we all have human emotions, don’t we?
HW: This is it. Yeah.
HH: And we all have, feel pain.
HW: It’s just different nationalities, isn’t it? That’s all it is.
HH: Yeah.
GA: The ordinary, you know the ordinary soldiers on either side they would shake hands with one another, wouldn’t they? Didn’t, didn’t your mother have a friend who had how many sons killed?
HW: Yeah. My mother’s friend had eleven children. She had, no twelve, she had one girl and eleven boys and they all went in the Army and got killed bar one. And the one what was life was deaf and dumb and all the others got killed. And when I went over with my late husband she took me to see her and she hugged my husband and said, ‘You can’t help the war.’
HH: Yeah.
HW: ‘You are like us,’ she said.
HH: Yeah.
HW: And I really felt that. That she really welcomed him.
HH: Yeah. Which is —
HW: My father actually didn’t want me to come to England because leaving home and all that but when we came over and back and forward he was quite happy to see I was happy and —
HH: That’s good.
HW: And particularly when he met the parent in laws as well.
HH: Which is great.
HW: Yeah.
HH: Yeah. And you were a friend of Helga’s late husband, Harold.
GA: Yeah. Yeah, Harold was —
HH: Did you work together?
GA: Yeah. We helped one, yeah we both had country pursuits in common. He was a rabbit trapper, you know. In the war rabbits was the diet of most people you know with having ration books. Rabbits weren’t on that. He worked as a rabbit catcher very early. I mean his —
HW: Well, your parents and Harold’s parents were —
GA: Yeah. Yeah.
HW: Friends, weren’t they?
HH: Oh gosh.
GA: Harold’s, Harold’s grandmother lived next door but one down the village. You know, just a cottage just across the road. So, we’ve known them all, well you as well haven’t we, ever since that time and that.
HW: Yeah. They all lived down the —
HH: A long time.
HW: Yeah.
GA: Being on the farm and that, Harold had long weekends off and he used to come over and stay over with me didn’t you and such like because it was, I’ve enjoyed working on the farm. I’ve been on the same farm ever since 1960 if you know what I mean.
HH: Gosh.
GA: And it’s been a way of life and you worked fifty, sixty hours a week and such like and you’re quite happy to do it.
HH: And what, and what jobs have you done on the farm Gordon?
GA: Well, we’ve had pigs, cattle, sheep. We’ve had all sorts of livestock and, and the arable work. I’ve done all that you see. And Helga’s helped like when we were doing like we used to have to chop sugar beet out and Helga has helped me doing that haven’t you?
HW: And looked after the —
GA: And Harold’s helped me in the garden.
HW: On the —
GA: And such like. He loved gardening and he helped me there sort of thing. We helped one another.
HH: Well, you’ve still got a beautiful garden.
GA: We’ve tried our best to keep it a bit nice, yeah.
HH: It’s so pretty.
GA: Yeah. Yeah.
HH: It’s so pretty. To come in and see such a pretty garden.
GA: Yeah. It’s just coming to the end of the bulbs and that. It’s next, the next couple of three weeks and it all gets changed to summer bedding and such like.
HH: Yeah.
GA: Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
GA: Yeah.
HH: So, you are still working on the farm?
GA: Only a few hours a week sort of thing. Just go and —
HH: But still you are.
GA: Trim the grass and things like that. Yeah. Yeah.
HH: And how far away is the farm?
GA: Just down the, in the village there. Yeah. Oh, it’s been a way of life but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing. I did what I wanted to do all my life sort of thing.
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
GA: But when we was, you know when that photograph was taken and that we used to stand out there and see these thousand bombers going out.
HH: You remember that.
GA: I remember them all coming up there because I should be, I should be five when Leslie visited us. I remember him clear as anything playing ball with me in the back garden and such like. And you don’t realise all the things that’s going on but, but you used to see these bombers going. I think they used to come up from Suffolk, Norfolk and go out over the Humber with a fighter. You know, squadrons of fighters.
HH: They probably used the Humber for navigation.
GA: Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
GA: And then you used to see them coming back in the morning. Some with only one or two engines going and things like that. Limping home and that. And obviously we didn’t know how bad it was but we never realised how many didn’t come home and that.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. Losses. Terrible losses on both sides really.
GA: There was, wasn’t there? Yeah. Yeah.
HW: When they came over Kiel we used to watch them come over like and we used to shoot at them but when they got a bit close we had to go in the cellar quick.
HH: And you had, you had warnings did you with sirens?
HW: Yeah. We did. Yeah. About half an hour before time. Of course, we had shelters to go in to.
HH: What were the shelters like?
HW: They wasn’t bad at all. Mind you we had no bombs near the common but in the hospital where I was when they dropped three bombs there, just the three hospitals, they dropped three bombs there and there was a big shelter only five minutes away from there and they reckoned it just rocked but nothing, you know, got disturbed.
HH: In the shelter.
HW: So, they must have been pretty strong. Yeah.
HH: Yeah. Because I’ve seen pictures of some of the shelters in Germany that were quite tall. So, were these underground ones that you are talking about?
HW: No. They were on top or they were underground as well and on the top?
HH: And they were. Oh, ok.
HW: Yeah. High underneath as well.
HH: Ok. So, they went down underground.
HW: Yeah.
HH: And they were up.
HW: Yes, there was a few —
HH: I understand.
HW: A few hundred people in them. Maybe a thousand or so. Yeah. Yeah. They were very strong. Yeah. Some of them in Hamburg are still there. They managed to get windows in and I don’t know what they are using them for. Flats or what. I’ve no, no idea.
HH: Goodness.
HW: It’s amazing, yeah.
HH: So when was the last time you visited Germany?
GA: When we went on that cruise wasn’t it?
HW: Yeah. Yeah, about —
GA: We went, well Harold died in 2000, didn’t he?
HW: Yeah.
GA: We’ve been here. We’ve been on several cruises and there was one, we’ve been out to the Baltic. We did the Baltic and one calling places was Warnemunde, wasn’t it?
HW: Yeah.
GA: And you got in touch with some of your, well Willy and that and also Herta’s son.
HW: Yeah.
GA: And such like. How many of us was there at —
HW: Twenty three.
GA: Twenty three of them. Not, you know about an hour’s car drive from Warnemunde. We met at one of her niece, her great —
HW: My nephew’s house.
GA: Nephew’s house.
HH: That’s wonderful.
GA: And about twenty three of her relations were there and that.
HW: For a day like.
GA: And then they took us back to our cruise ship that was docked there.
HW: And we had a day outing and we’d chosen to see my nephew. Well, all the other of the cruise ship went to see Berlin but I wasn’t interested in going to Berlin.
HH: You wanted to see your family.
HW: Yeah. Well, that’s it. Yeah.
HH: Fantastic.
HW: Yeah. We had altogether ten cruises, didn’t we?
GA: I think. Yeah. We have done between us. Yeah. So —
HW: So, we had a good life after all.
HH: And the next cruise?
GA: No. I think we’ve —
HW: No. I’m afraid I won’t be managing anymore. I’ve got a heart problem as well so I’ve got to be very careful now what I do.
HH: Well, it’s wonderful that you were, you went as far as the IBCC.
HW: Yeah.
HH: So that’s jolly good.
HW: Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
HW: Yeah.
HH: And I’m glad you enjoyed your visit.
HW: Well, we did. We enjoyed —
GA: It was very —
HW: What we’d done. Yeah.
GA: Yeah. Really good. Yeah. Took your, not your grandson’s wife and your great grandson, didn’t we?
HW: Yeah.
GA: Have you got a picture of them there? Where was them pictures that you took? I don’t know where they are now but —
HW: Which was them?
GA: When Luke and Liz were there.
HH: You, you all went together, did you?
GA: Yeah. Yeah.
HH: What did they think of it?
GA: Oh, they was really thrilled with it, weren’t they? Yeah. I don’t know if I’ve got that —
HH: Oh, well, that’s wonderful. Well, thank you very much for talking to, to us, both of you, Helga and Gordon. Thank you for sharing all of these stories with us. They, they are remarkable and we feel very privileged to have them for our archive. Thank you.
HW: Yeah. Thank you. That’s all.
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 Helga Wynne and Gordon Atkinson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Heather 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
2018-05-08
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
AWynneH-AtkinsonG180508, PWynneH1825
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
00:47:51 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
Wehrmacht. Kriegsmarine
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
Description
An account of the resource
Helga (00:00-34:00) was born in Kiel in 1926. Her father was a sailor, who then worked at Krupp shipbuilding yard; her mother was a tram driver during the war. None of her brothers were called up, either because of age or disability. Mentions Hitler and daily life in pre-war Germany. While working on a farm she injured her back, was hospitalised, and then worked at a children hospital in Kiel which was bombed. Helga then met a Kriegsmarine serviceman and were going to get married. The train they were travelling on was attacked by an allied airplane which killed him but spared Helga. In 1947 Helga met Harold, a Royal Medical Corps paramedic who served in Kiel. They resettled in England and got married at Burton in 1948, an event which stirred much curiosity. Helga was welcomed by Harold’s family in Fieldby, and they also met Helga’s family in Germany. Harold worked at Scunthorpe steel works; she worked on a farm until retiring at 70. Harold passed away in 2000. Helga elaborates on the meaning of reconciliation, recalls the difficulties learning English and the reaction of villagers at her ‘lovely accent’.
Gordon (34:00-47:51) discusses family members emigrating to Canada and returning during the war. One served at 426 Squadron at RAF Linton on Ouse, a rear gunner on a Halifax who was lost in the North Sea. Gordon discusses his friendship with Harold and recollects seeing Bomber Command aircraft flying out and coming back during the war.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kiel
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Lincolnshire
Canada
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Graham Emmet
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
426 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing
childhood in wartime
ditching
Halifax
love and romance
perception of bombing war
RAF Linton on Ouse
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/656/15058/LWilsonJ1486634v1.1.pdf
0e9b78e07dd37d9a2ee74a5919353528
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
Wilson, Joseph
J Wilson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wilson, J
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Joseph Wilson (1923 - 2019), 1486434 Royal Air Force), his log book, identity card and a photograph. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 102 and 76 Squadrons before being posted to 624 Special Duties Squadron where he dropped supplies and agents to the resistance in Southern Europe.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Jenny Wilson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-29
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Joseph Wilson's observer's and air gunner's flying log book
Description
An account of the resource
Observer's and air gunner's flying log book for J Wilson, covering the period from 12 July 1942 to 26 March 1945. Detailing his flying training, Operations flown and instructor duties. He was stationed at RAF Penrhos, RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Pocklington, RAF Rufforth, RAF Linton-on-Ouse, RAF Holme-on-Spalding-Moor, RAF Tempsford, RAF Blida, RAF Sidi Amor, RAF Tocra, RAF Brindisi, RSAAF Youngs Field and RSAAF East London. Aircraft flown in were, Blenheim, Anson, Wellington, Halifax, C-47 and Oxford. He flew 6 night operations with 102 squadron, 9 night operations with 76 squadron and 32 night operations with 624 special duties squadron. Targets were Essen, Nurnberg, Munich, Stuttgart, Krefeld, Mulheim, Wuppertal, Gelsenkirchen, Cologne, Montbeliard, Remscheid, Corsica, Srajevo, Split, Sofia, Salonika, Marseilles and Toulon. His pilots on operations were Sergeant Giffiths, Sergeant Heaton and Flight Sergeant Povey.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Mike Connock
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One booklet
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Log book and record book
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LWilsonJ1486634v1
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.
Algeria
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
France
Germany
Great Britain
Greece
Italy
Libya
South Africa
Algeria--Blida
Bosnia and Herzegovina--Sarajevo
Croatia--Split
England--Bedfordshire
England--Yorkshire
France--Corsica
France--Marseille
France--Montbéliard
France--Toulon
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Mülheim an der Ruhr
Germany--Munich
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Remscheid
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Wuppertal
Greece--Thessalonikē
Italy--Brindisi
Libya--Tūkrah
Scotland--Moray
South Africa--Cape Town
Tunisia--Sidi Ameur
Wales--Gwynedd
North Africa
Tunisia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
1943-03-03
1943-03-05
1943-03-06
1943-03-08
1943-03-09
1943-03-10
1943-03-11
1943-03-12
1943-04-03
1943-04-04
1943-06-21
1943-06-22
1943-06-23
1943-06-24
1943-06-25
1943-06-26
1943-06-28
1943-06-29
1943-07-04
1943-07-05
1943-07-09
1943-07-10
1943-07-15
1943-07-16
1943-07-30
1943-07-31
1943-09-17
1943-09-18
1943-09-23
1943-09-24
1943-10-18
1943-10-19
1943-10-20
1943-10-21
1943-10-22
1943-10-23
1943-10-24
1943-11-03
1943-11-04
1943-11-12
1943-11-13
1943-11-16
1943-11-17
1943-12-03
1943-12-04
1943-12-05
1943-12-06
1943-12-10
1943-12-11
1943-12-16
1943-12-17
1943-12-20
1943-12-21
1944-01-08
1944-01-10
1944-01-11
1944-01-12
1944-01-13
1944-01-14
1944-01-19
1944-01-20
1944-01-22
1944-01-23
1944-01-28
1944-01-29
1944-01-30
1944-01-31
1944-02-13
1944-02-14
1944-03-05
1944-03-06
1944-03-07
1944-03-08
1944-03-10
1944-03-11
102 Squadron
1652 HCU
1663 HCU
20 OTU
624 Squadron
76 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
Air Observers School
aircrew
Anson
Blenheim
bomb aimer
bombing
C-47
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Me 109
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Penrhos
RAF Pocklington
RAF Rufforth
RAF Tempsford
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
Wright, John Alfred
J A Wright
Description
An account of the resource
21 items. The collection concerns John Alfred Wright (1913 - 1986, 563242 Royal Air Force). It contains items associated with his marriage to Kathleen Burchell (Kay) several photographs, and notes about his service at RAF Graveley.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John M Wright and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-30
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
Wright, JA
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[underlined] JOHN ALFRED WRIGHT. [/underlined]
13 STIRLING STREET
BUCKLAND
PORTSMOUTH
BORN 4/5/1913 – 1915/16
109 STATION ROAD
COPNOR
PORTSMOUTH
1915/16 – 1929
JOINED R.A.F.
APPRENTICE AT RAF HALTON.
15/1/1929 – 12/10/1948
THE OLD MANOR HOUSE
PAPWORTH ST. AGENS
HUNTINGDON
1944 – 1945 (10 MONTHS)
109 STATION ROAD
COPNOR
PORTSMOUTH
9/1945 – 1946 (9/12 MONTHS.)
16 JENKINS GROVE
COPNOR
PORTSMOUTH
1946 – 1950
65 DELHI STREET
FRATTON
PORTSMOUTH
1950 – 1953
234 LOCKSWAY ROAD
MILTON
PORTSMOUTH
1953 – 1987
[page break]
[underlined] JOHN ALFRED WRIGHT. [/underlined]
[underlined] ENLISTED IN ROYAL AIR FORCE – [underlined] 15TH JANUARY 1929
[underlined] DISCHARGED [/underlined] 12TH OCTOBER 1948
[underlined] SERVICE NUMBER – [/underlined] 563242
[underlined] SERVED AT:- [/underlined]
3YRS 15/1/1929 – 5/1/1932 RAF HALTON, BUCKS.
2YRS 9M 5/1/1932 – 1/10/1934 RAF CALSHOT, HANTS.
2Y 7M 1/10/1934 – 6/5/1937824 (FSR) SQDN – H.M.S. HERMES.
VISITED – PORTSMOUTH, GIBRALTA, MALTA PORT SAID, SUEZ CANAL, ADEN, COLOMBO, SINGAPORE, HONG KONG, AMOY, WEI-HAI-WEI, CHINWANGTAO, PORT ARTHUR, KOBE, NAGASAKI, KOGOSHIMA, DAIREN, CHEMULO, TSINGTAO, SHANGHAI, ILOILO, MACASSAR, BALI, SURABAYA, SINGAPORE, COLOMBO, ADEN, SUEZ CANAL, PORT SAID, MALTA, GIBRALTA, PORTSMOUTH.
3Y 8M 6/5/1937 – 7/1/1941 12 SQDN HE. (IN THE FIELD)
5/1937 – 5/1939 “ ANDOVER - HANTS
5/1939 – 9/1939 “ BICESTER – OXON
9/1939 – 12/1939 “ BERRY-AU-BAC – FRANCE
12/1939 – 5/1940 “ AMIFONTAINE – FRANCE
5/1940 – 6/1940 “ ECHEMINES – FRANCE
6/1940 – “ SOUGE – FRANCE
6/1940 – 7/1940 “ FINNINGLEY – YORKS.
7/1940 – 8/1940 “ BINBROOK – LINCS.
8/1940 – “ THORNEY ISLAND – HANTS.
8/1940 – 7/1/1941 “ EASTCHURCH – KENT.
1YRS 7M- 7/1/1941 – 8/9/1942 35 SQDN RAF LINTON ON OUSE – YORKS.
2YRS 6M. 8/9/1942 – 3/3/1945 35 SQDN RAF GRAVELEY – HUNTS.
[page break]
[underlined] H.M.S. HERMES. [/underlined]
NOV. 1934 PORTSMOUTH
GIBRALTA
MALTA
PORT SAID, SUES [sic] CANAL,
ADEN
COLUMBO (CEYLON)
[deleted] JAN [/deleted] SINGAPORE
4/1935 HONG KONG.
AMOY
7/1935 WEI-HAI-WEI
CHINWANGTAO
[deleted] 5/1936 [/deleted] PORT ARTHUR (ROYJUN)
[inserted] 5/1936 [/inserted] KOBE, [inserted] 5/1936 [/inserted] NAGASAKI, [inserted] [deleted] 5/193 [/deleted] [/inserted] KOGOSHIMA, [inserted] 7/1936 [/inserted] DAIREN
CHEMULO (KOREA)
[inserted] 8/1936 [/inserted] TSINGTAO – [inserted] 10/1936 [/inserted] SHANGHAI, [inserted] 10/1936 [/inserted] AMOY
[inserted] 1/1937 [/inserted] ILOILO (PHILIPPINES)
[deleted] CELEBES ( [/deleted] MACASSAR – (CELEBES)
BALI
SURABAYA (JAVA)
SINGAPORE
COLOMBO (CEYLON)
ADEN, [deleted] POR [/deleted] SUEZ CANAL
PORT SAID
MALTA
GIBRALTA
[page break]
22/7/1940
1/1/1943
8/6/1944
1/1/1946
[page break]
MENTIONED IN DESPATCHES
22/7/1940
1/1/1943
8/6/1944
1/1/1946
6/5/1937 [underlined] 12 SQDN [/underlined] ANDOVER HANTS.
5/1939 BICESTER OXON
8/1939 BERRY-AU-BAC, FRANCE
12/1939 AMIFONTAINE, FRANCE
JAN/FEB 1940 DET. PERPIGNAN
5/1940 ECHEMINES, FRANCE
6/1940 SOUGE, FRANCE
6/1940 FINNINGLEY, YORKS
7/1940 BINBROOK LINCS
8/1940 THORNEY ISLAND HANTS.
8/1940 EASTCHURCH, KENT
9/1940 /9/1942 BINBROOK, LINCS.
[deleted] [underlined] H.M.S. HERME [/underlined] NOV 1934
GIBRALTA
MALTA
PORT SAID SUEZ CANAL RED SEA
ADEN
[inserted] 1934 [/inserted] COLUMBO (SRI LANKA)
[inserted] 1/1936 [/inserted] SINGAPORE
[inserted] 4/1935 3/1936 [/inserted] HONG KONG – AMOY – [inserted] 7/1935 [/inserted] WEI-HAI-WEI, CHINWANGTAO
[inserted] PORT ARTHUR (RYOJUN) 1936 – DAIREN – 7/1936 [/inserted] JAPAN – KOBE, NAGASAKI, KOGOSHIMA [deleted] CHINWANGTAO
CHINA – WEI-HAI-WEI, CHINWANGTAO [/deleted]
KOREA – CHEMULPO
CHINA – [inserted] 8/1936 [/inserted] TSINGTAO, [deleted] AMOY [/deleted] [inserted] 10/1936 [/inserted] SHANGHAI, [inserted] 10/936 [/inserted] AMOY
PHILIPPINES – [inserted] 1/1937 [/inserted] ILOILO
CELEBES. – MACASSAR
BALI
JAVA – SURABAYA
SINGAPORE
COLOMBO
ADEN, PORT SAID, MALTA, GIB. [/deleted]
[page break]
JOINED RAF. 15/[deleted]1/129 [/deleted] 1929 [underlined] NO. 563242 [/underlined]
[deleted] JOINED [/deleted] RAF 4/5/1931 19YR 9M.
3YR 15/1/1929 RAF HALTON
2YR 9M 5/1/1932 CALSHOT
2YR 6M 1/10/1934 824 (FSR) SQN HMS HERMES
1M 1/4/1937 [deleted] 12 [/deleted] H.M.S. HERMES
3YR 8M 6/5/1937 12 SQN HE. IN THE FIELD
1YR 7M 7/1/1941 35 SQN RAF LINTON ON OUSE YORKS.
2YR 6M. 8/1942 “ RAF GRAVELEY HUNTS
10M 3/3/1945 SHQ. GRAVELEY.
10D 14/1/1946 LPDC
15D 24/1/1946 ACSEA
1YR 2M. 11/2/1946 H.Q.(U) NO. 1 GROUP NO. 1 COMMUNICATIONS FLIGHT PERSHAWAR
2W 29/3/1947 BRD WORLI
5W 15/4/1947 UK.
2M 20/5/1947 IPHU
3M 5/7/1947 8042SE
5M 15/10/1947 ASWDU THORNEY ISLAND.
5M 26/5/1948 ASWDU HQ. BALLYKELLY
12/10/1948 DISCHARGE.
AIRCRAFT APPRENTICE [deleted] 31/12/31 [/deleted] 15/1/29
AC2 13/130
AC1
CORPORAL 1/1/39
TEMP SARGEANT [sic] 1/12/40
TEMP F. SARGEANT [sic] 1/9/42
SUBSTA F “ 2/47
LS & GC MEDAL
1939 – 45 STAR.
DEFENCE MEDAL
WAR MEDAL 1939 – 45
[page break]
10M 3/3/1945 – 14/1/1946 SHQ. RAF GRAVELEY – HUNTS.
10D 14/1/1946 – 24/1/1946 LPDC – INDIA
15D 24/1/1946 – 11/2/1946 ACSEA – INDIA
1YR. 2M 11/2/1946 – 29/3/1947 H.Q (U) NO. 1 GROUP – NO 1. COMMUNICATIONS FLIGHT, PERSHAWAR, INDIA.
2W 29/3/1947 – 15/4/1947 BRD, WORLI. (TRANSIT CAMP) INDIA BOMBAY
5W 15/4/1947 – 20/5/1947 U.K.
2M 20/5/1947 – 5/7/1947 IPHU.
3M 5/7/1947 – 15/10/1947 8042SE
5M 15/10/1947 – 26/5/1948 ASWDU. THORNEY ISLAND. HANTS
5M. 26/5/1948 – 12/10/1948 ASWDU HQ. BALLYKELLY, N/IRELAND
15/1/1929 – AIRCRAFT APPRENTICE
13/1/1930 – AC2.
- AC1.
1/1/1939 – CORPORAL
1/12/1940 – TEMP SARGEANT. [sic]
1/9/1942 – TEMP. FLIGHT SARGEANT. [sic]
2/1947 – SUBSTANTIVE FLIGHT SARGEANT. [sic]
LONG SERVICE & GOOD CONDUCT MEDAL
1939 – 1945 STAR
DEFENCE MEDAL
1939 – 1945 WAR MEDAL
MENTIONED IN DESPATCHES –
22/7/1940
1/1/1943
8/6/1944
1/1/1946
[page break]
12 SQDN
HAWKER HINDS – 1938 – FAIREY BATTLES
35 SQDN
HANDLEY PAGE HALIFAX, 3/1944 – LANCASTERS.
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 Alfred Wright's life story
Description
An account of the resource
Brief but detailed notes of John Alfred Wright's life and Royal Air Force service, places he lived and the dates, stations that he served at, ranks held, medals awarded.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Eight hand written pages
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
MWrightJA563242-180130-010001, MWrightJA563242-180130-010002, MWrightJA563242-180130-010003, MWrightJA563242-180130-010004, MWrightJA563242-180130-010005, MWrightJA563242-180130-010006, MWrightJA563242-180130-010007,MWrightJA563242-180130-010008
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
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
35 Squadron
Battle
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Lancaster
RAF Bicester
RAF Binbrook
RAF Eastchurch
RAF Finningley
RAF Graveley
RAF Halton
RAF Linton on Ouse