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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1693/27255/AOtteyRA200807.2.mp3
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Ottey, Ralph Alfrado
R A Ottey
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2020-08-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Ottey, RA
Description
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Four items. Three oral history interviews with Ralph Ottey (b. 1924) and a photograph. He was born in Jamaica and volunteered for the RAF. After training in the UK, he served as a driver with 617 Squadron at RAF Coningsby and RAF Woodhall Spa.
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HH: Okay. Today is the 7th of August 2020. I’m Heather Hughes for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive and I’m in Boston to talk to Ralph Ottey, a veteran of Bomber Command. RAF Bomber Command. Ralph, thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview. it's very exciting to have met you. Can, for the purposes of this interview would, would it be possible to talk us, to talk a little bit about your early life in Little London, Jamaica and then we'll come on to talking about your experiences during the Second World War serving with RAF Bomber Command and then we'll talk a little bit as well afterwards about how you came to come back to Boston and how come you are still here.
RO: Yeah, yeah.
HH: Okay.
RO: That’s fine.
HH: So tell us about your early life in Boston.
RO: Yes, well —
HH: In Jamaica.
RA: I was, well christened Ralph Alfredo Ottey. Really after my grandfather who was Ralph James Ottey. That's how. I was born in the little village of Little London in Westmoreland, Jamaica. British West Indies. Yeah. On the 17th of February 1924. I went to an elementary school in Little London. A Wesleyan Methodist Church School. And my, I was brought up by my grandparents Ephraim and Sierra Williams who were both prominent members of the church. I did fairly well at school and all the prospects were for me to become a teacher. I had, you had to pass an examination in Jamaica at that time called the Third Year Examination and then you can then apply to go to get a place at Mico College. The only training school for teachers, male teachers in Jamaica at that time. It is now a university.
HH: Is that in Kingston?
RA: That is. That is in Kingston. Which is a hundred and fifty miles away from. At that time it would be like fifteen million miles away from Little London to King, to Kingston. However, due certain circumstances at sixteen and a half I left the school. I passed my, what you call the third year Jamaican exam which gave me the right to apply for a place at Mico. But you couldn't get into Mico until you were nineteen. So I had two and a half years to read up. But then I was a, I was a pupil teacher being paid by the school thirteen shillings and four pence per week [laughs] That was. That was my pay that. Yeah. However, I left. I left there because I went to go to work for my uncle who had a bakery in Savanna-la-Mar. Savanna-la-Mar is the capital town of the parish of Westmoreland and my family is a very, quite dutiful family in, in Savanna-la-Mar. The first mayor of Savanna-la-Mar was an Ottey. Uncle Guy Ottey. So I was well, so I went to work for my Uncle Guy and I worked for, that was 19’ nearly the end of 1940. I was just over sixteen years old and, and I stayed with him for two years. But I always — they, they always want me to be this teacher but at the back of my mind what I wanted was to be a air gunner in an aeroplane. To shoot the Germans down. That’s, that’s all I wanted.
HH: Why?
RA: Well, because of Churchill. I used to know all of Churchill’s speeches. I, oh I managed the war with Churchill. I was disappointed when he didn’t consult me about these things that I had [laughs] And that was my thing in life. They were planning for me to become a teacher and so on. What I wanted was to be in the war. To be flying in an aeroplane shooting down Germans who were bombing London, you see. That was my life.
HH: It's, it's so interesting that you wanted to fly and in a, in an aircraft —
RA: Yeah.
HH: Shooting down Germans rather than, for example being at sea or in the army. Was there something very specific about the RAF?
RA: Special. The RAF was my thing because my father used to say to me, ‘Now, if you want to help in the war why don't you join the Jamaica Military Artillery?’ He said, ‘You have big guns and you're not even seeing the enemy. That's what you should be doing. Why you want to — ’ And I just treat it as a joke because the old man’s idea to be behind this machine gun shooting down Germans. Especially 1940 when the Battle of Britain, you see. That's what I, that was my motive. So I stayed with, I stayed with my uncle for two years. 1942. Then my father who was working with ESSO because the Americans had acquired a right to build bases in Jamaica and they were building a base near Kingston and my father was working for this big oil company and he got me a job with the base. The Jamaica base contractors. That lasted for about six, seven months when they finished building the runways so they laid off people and so and so . I went back to, to Little London because where the base was built was a hundred miles from Little London. So I went back to my grandparents in Little London in 19,’ at the beginning of 1943 and I got a job as a clerk in the local covered market. I used to go around and give people tickets and collect up money. And I, but my thing was the RAF, you see. It never never far away from me. Then suddenly, you know, yes they had a Census. 19’. A National Census in Jamaica in 1943. And I became a census enumerator so some of those stories about Little London I gained by going around doing the Census. So I know all the villages and the people in the villages and so and so. So I did. I did that and then I got, in 1943 [pause] yeah, that's right. I finished up 1943 then I went back to [pause] back to my uncle in Savanna-la-Mar. And I wasn't there very long when there was a notice in the [pause] the, the RAF was recruiting. That was interesting so I applied. I went. Took the exam. Didn't hear anything. Didn't, didn't hear anything from them for months. Then suddenly they said, ‘Come and sit the exam.’ So I went and sat the exams. Then like everything I didn't hear anything from them for a long time. Then suddenly they said, ‘Oh, well we're ready for you now. You have to come and take — ’ I passed the exam because I had to take a proper exam to get in the RAF. Did you know, not just for flying. You had to —
HH: Yeah.
RO: You took the RAF test, you see. So when, when this call came I went took the exam yes let's, got, got through that. And suddenly they say, ‘Oh, yes we want you.’ So we, I it went to another base in Jamaica which was a naval base at Port Royal which was a RAF camp on that base at that time. And I took the physical. Got through. Got through that all right and was given the RAF number, so and I I, they ask you, ‘What would you like to do?’ You know. So, of course, I said, ‘Oh, I want to be [pause] to shoot Germans down.’ Well, they say, ‘Oh, well you know,’ they said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. They said, ‘Your English is quite good so we'll put you down to be called a wireless operator/air gunner.’ Just the job as I thought. So I was signed up in the RAF to be trained as a wireless operator/air gunner and waited for a few months. Then they said, ‘Oh yes. We're ready for you now to go to England.’ So we, in the middle of the night they wake us up, put us on a boat and we went to a camp called Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia. American camp. The first time in my life I ever had anything to do with segregation because on this camp, a massive camp at a place called [pause] Oh God I forget the name of it. A camp. Camp Patrick Henry after the great American. Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia. And we stayed here for a few, a few weeks. And then suddenly we were based. We went on the biggest convoy. We went up to New York to catch a ship there and we went up [pause] I think we went on a ship that finished up. The Esperance Bay. Something like that they called it. We finish up being on this boat on the first convoy to come back to come to arrive in England during the, the invasion of France. While we were at sea the invasion took place. And this a massive convoy. Every day you're crossing the North Atlantic. Every day you are at the same place just surrounded by ships and you have their practicing shooting. And I I was very interested in the guns. Firing and so on. But one of the interesting things was, oh when you're young you do not, you're not bright enough to um to sense danger. We were at the bottom of the ship you see and at night they used to lock us in because we were untrained, you see. And if there was any possibility of people getting off, the people who were trained were [pause ] but we, we didn't, didn't worry one bit. Yeah. I think all that would happen to somebody else it wouldn’t happen to me. So it did. It didn’t happen. Never happened to us. We arrived at Liverpool and the first happy thing that really happened was that we were the only, we were the ship where the British servicemen were on [pause] most of them was Americans you see. These massive convoys. So they made the way to the port of Liverpool for British servicemen took off. So we were the first ship to dock at Liverpool.
HH: Great.
RA: That, and when we got there we were met by a Jamaican admiral. Admiral Sir Arthur Bromley, I always remember he was born as an Englishman born in Trinidad and he came, and I and remember the first thing he said to us, he said, ‘Is George Hadley with you?’ Because George Hadley was a great cricketer. I’ll always remember that. Oh, ‘Is George Hadley with you?’ But George Hadley was elsewhere. So we got off the ship and we're not supposed to know where we were going you see. But somehow the grapevine said you're going to Yorkshire. Right. So there was no we went through these stations and so on. There's no names on the stations. That kind of thing. So we finish up at a place called Filey, in Yorkshire. RAF training school. So we went to Filey and we spent thirteen, thirteen weeks being trained there. Doing the military training thirteen weeks.
HH: Were most of the people at Filey from um the Caribbean? Were there other people as well at Filey?
RA: Oh yes. Oh yes. There were lots of Jamaicans who and, and from other places. British Guyana there.
HH: Okay.
RA: And Trinidad. And we were West Indians. Yeah. And so we went to, we went to Filey and we were in, had another interview all over again. And this, I sat down with various officers so now, ‘I see you, you, you want to, you’re down here to be, you’re gunner and wireless operator.’ I say, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well, unfortunately the way the war is going we don't, we don't have that kind of job anymore. You're either you're either an air gunner or you're a wireless operator. But we have plenty of, we have plenty of those. But what, seeing as your English is,’ that’s what I said to him. He said, ‘Seeing that your English is quite good I think they way you can serve best is you could be a motor transport driver.’ So you know that was it. Well, I’m in the service.
HH: Were you disappointed?
RA: I had to do what — eh? What?
HH: Were you disappointed?
RA: Oh course. Very disappointed. I mean.
HH: But it probably, it probably meant that you would survive the war.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh yes. I I wanted to be in the thick of, in the thick of it so [pause] but of course then I took the oath so there I couldn’t say to this officer, ‘I’m not going to do that.’ He said, ‘That's what you, what you serve. You'll be good at that. So you will be good at, you’ll be good at this. We, we, we need people who, with good English.’ So they were, we did thirteen weeks.
HH: At Filey.
RA: At Filey. And on the passing out one of the people who, West Indian notables who came you know how later on. Yes. I was, because I didn’t keep my mouth shut I was part of the guard of honour. And how this thing happened was this, this sergeant who was training us saying to us that, ‘We are going to have, in the passing out there will be Colonel's Oliver Stanley who is your Colonial Secretary will be coming.’ And I said to him, ‘Well, corporal he isn't our Colonial Secretary. He is the Colonial Secretary.’ ‘Ah.’ So he said, oh he called me mister, he said, ‘Oh. Oh, Mr Ottey,’ he said, ‘Oh, since that you're so you're right but seeing that you're so bloody clever you will be on the guard of honour.’ Which meant a lot of extra training to be, so I realised that , to keep your mouth shut up.
HH: Yeah.
RA: So I was on the guard of honour to meet Colonel Oliver Stanley, the Colonial Secretary. And they were suddenly in the line Louis Constantine was one of the West Indian notables Again, I don't know why to me. He came and spoke to me. He came and spoke to me. He asked me where I was from. Jamaica sir He said, ‘Who brought you up?’ You know. Who? Your family. I said, ‘I was brought up by my grandparents in a little place called Little London.’ And so he said to me, he says, ‘You'll be spending a lot of time in England. He said, 'The English people are very fair,’ he says, ‘And I’m telling you this as one who have taken a hotel who put a colour bar on me because they had Americans there. And I’m telling you that if you, if you behave in England as you behave in the village where you come from, where your uncles and aunties are there you'll be quite alright in England,’ he said, ‘Because,’ he said, ‘English people are fair.’ He said, ‘Whatever happened they are fair-minded so you just do that. Just behave as if you're in the village and your uncle and grandfather also are there.’
HH: And did you? Was that your experience? Is that? Did — was that your experience?
RO: Yes. You see that, that's what he, that's what he, he said to me and so I always remember, I remember that that that I should don't get excited about what's going on. ‘Just behave as you would in Little London.’ He said, ‘Respect elders,’ because you had to in Little London. Respect elders and and so on. So you're a part of it. So that's what, that's what I did and as, as great fortune will fall on somebody I came down to the village from Filey into the town. It was a holiday place and I was in a café, in a little cafe and a little girl [pause] she was about, she was nine years old at the time came up to me and said, would, have I any foreign stamps? She said, she said she was a philatelist or something. This big word and I didn't know what it was really. She was a stamp collector. And had I any foreign stamps? You see. So I said, ‘Well, I haven't. I've got some at the camp because I have letters waiting for me.’ When I get on with the other boys. I said, ‘Well I haven't got any handy but I have some at the camp and I have people in my billet who have at the same. So I will get them for you. When are you going?’ I said. ‘Oh, we are here for a fortnight,’ she said. ‘Anytime you come,’ So I said, ‘Well, next time I'll be able to come out would be — ‘’ at such and such a time and we'll meet. So she took me over to meet her parents. Arthur [pause] Arthur and Lillian Pearce from Scunthorpe. Right. So I met them and I brought the stamps and we had a chat and they invited me to have a cup of tea with them and so on. Then just before, just before she says, ‘Have you,’ Aunt Lil said, ‘Have you, have you any family in England?’ I said, ‘Oh no.’ She said, ‘Well, we’re making you an offer, she says. Why don't you have us as your family and you cannot always come at 157 Cliff Garden, Scunthorpe to spend your holidays.
HH: Lovely.
RA: So from there we get Uncle Arthur and Aunt Lil and this little girl Pat. They called me family. That's where, when I got married they acted as my parents and we —
HH: Did you get married near Scunthorpe?
RA: I got married in Scunthorpe but that's a a later story.
HH: Yeah.
RA: And I I of course I left Filey. Passed out. I didn’t, I expected that I would do, do well at shooting because I loved it but I didn't do as well as I, that I thought I'd get a prize but I didn’t. I was disappointed because I thought I did fairly well but there were chaps who were better. Much better than me. So I left. I left Filey. Yes. I did. I put a story in I didn’t tell you. I missed that, that. They had an exhibition. A West Indian, a West Indian painting exhibition in Sheffield and there again I was part of the guard of honour.
HH: So you got to go to Sheffield.
RA: I went to Sheffield. Marched through the town to the, this Cutlery Hall where we met the Lord Mayor and had, and had something called Yorkshire pudding. Which was a bit disappointing because I was waiting to have a pudding. I was ready to have a pudding and it didn’t turn up. This was a little thing that was [laughs] But anyway we marched through the city and met the Lord Mayor and so on. Went to this exhibition thing. Then I got posted to a place called Little Rissington in Gloucestershire.
HH: Now, in your, in your in your memoir, “Stranger Boy,” you talk about how a corporal accompanied you to Little Rissington.
RA: Yes.
HH: Why was that? Because normally when you were posted somewhere else you were just told to get there on, on your own. But you were accompanied by a corporal.
RA: We, I was taken to um, to this place by, but it was, it was the usual RAF thing, or service thing. He lived around that place. So it was a perk for him to escort us. So he was —
HH: Okay.
RA: He got the chance to get home.
HH: Okay.
RA: I know that now. I didn't realize that but he he took us. There was a party of us you see. About six or seven who was sent to Little Rissington, and I spent my time at Little Rissington. Then I went to Blackpool and Blackpool was an exper, was an experience there. Yeah. n So I got I got involved with American colour prejudice for one incident there and I was rescued. I think I was rescued by a Scotsman who, there was about three Americans to me. I was with a girl. I was. I used to meet her. Me and another English chap used to meet this girl and we used to, we were only friends. We used to go to the amusement places and so on but this time this English chap wasn't, wasn't there and these Americans decided that they were going to beat me up you see. And there was this English serviceman who saw what was happening and intervened and said, you know ‘I can't see what your, your own ways but if you're going to get at him you're going to get through me first,’ you know. Like so they backed off. But that was a thing, you see. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
RA: But so I, but I learned something in, in Blackpool. I went, I used to, when we get plenty of, we were billeted you see. we didn’t have camp I used to go in town and I went into a jewellery shop. And this chap was very keen to find out about me you see. Then he said to me, he said that he was Jewish, you see. I’m Jewish.’ And so on. So I said to him, ‘Why is it that people are against Jews? So, he says, ‘It’s a long story.’ I said, ‘In Jamaica Jews are just white rich people and that's all really. They're white. They're rich. That's it.’ And, and he said to me, ‘Well it's a long story,’ he says, ‘It started from ancient times when Christians weren't supposed to be usurers. And most of the people with money and the king's and so on used to have a Jew who he used to borrow money and so on. So he says, ‘We Jews, we built up a, between his good states with the Jews between each other and so we, we got in the business of usury because that Christians would, yeah. And he said, he said that's what the cause of it that that there’s antipathy about Jews really.’ We get into a position where we have handling money.
HH: Yeah.
RA: Yeah. But I mean I didn't know. I didn't know that.
HH: Interesting.
RA: I didn't know about that. So I learned. I learned something. I learned something there.
HH: You did.
RA: After, I I passed out as a driver — they did thirteen weeks, you know.
HH: That was at Blackpool.
RA: No. No. No. Blackpool. I only spent a few weeks at Blackpool.
HH: Okay.
RA: Then they transferred us to number one RAF Transport School down in Wiltshire. Melksham in Wiltshire. And we, I spent thirteen weeks there and I passed out as a AC1 in driving. And I did. I could drive. Name it I could, I could drive it, you see. So I was alright. Then I was transferred. No. I became [pause] I was on my own then. They just, I got my pack and my tickets to turn, to come to RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire. There's nobody taking me there. I had to work myself from from Wiltshire to London to get to that's when I could have done with the help to get on there to go to a place called East —
HH: Kirkby.
RO: East Kirby. It was the nearest, the nearest [pause] No I didn't go to — no to go to Boston. I had to go to. Coningsby. That's right. I got, and I got as far as, I got to London alright and crossed station. Got on the train. Got to Peterborough. Get me get my connection to Boston. I got to, I got to Boston and nearly got into a fight. I got off the train and there wasn't any [pause] there wasn't any any, any trains there. You had to wait for a transport from the camps to take us. So I was in with an older, more experienced airman and he said, ‘Oh well, we’ll go in that pub there and wait ‘til the transport come from the camp at Coningsby.’ So we got in there. As soon as I went in — trouble. There was a chap [pause] spoke to me in Spanish, you see. And I, I said to him in Spanish, the little Spanish I know whatever I said intended I’m a black man. And he got me by the throat. Not being allowed to move. I couldn't understand why. Where? How I said it meant that I, ‘I don't talk to you.’ Which was, all I was trying to tell him that I understand Spanish but I can't have a conver, I wasn't good enough to converse with him, you see. Yeah. But he was, he was going to beat, beat me.
HH: You, were you rescued?
RA: Oh yes. There was another airman there. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ And that calmed him down. As usual with the RAF I got on the wrong bus. Instead of getting on the bus to Coningsby I got on the bus to East Kirkby. So I got to East Kirkby and they said, ‘You don't belong here mate.’ I can’t do, ‘But It's too late now,’ They fixed me up with a bed and next day they put me on a train and I got to Coningsby. Got to Coningsby. They say, ‘Oh we don’t want you here. You’ve got to go to RAF Tattershall Thorpe which is next door.’ So off I went. Booked in. And so I got through. There's a system where you have to book into the medical. When I finished that I found myself, and acquired a bike because it was a highly dispersed camp so you had to have a bike. So I had a bike. I went to the MT Section to report to the MT Section. And there was a Jamaican there who was at the camp before me and he, he tipped me off. He says, ‘You are the last one who come here so what's going, going to happen? He's going to give you the dirtiest job in, in the section.’ But he said, ‘You want to accept it as if it's a gold mine.’ You say, ‘Yes sergeant.’ You know, ‘Quite all right. No, no problem,’ you know. Truly a [unclear] So the first job I got in the RAF after doing six months of training was to drive the sanitary waggon. So, ‘Yes sergeant. That's quite all right with me.’ You know. So I i I did that for about four weeks. ‘Quite alright.’ Followed what my Jamaican friend tell me to do. Then Sergeant Colwaine said, ‘Hey, I have a job for you.’ Right. ‘Yes sergeant.’ He said, ‘You're going to be the Chauffeur for the senior armament officer.’ It’s a gold mine. So I got this job to drive the senior armament officer in 617 Squadron. I was attached. I didn’t know about 617 Squadron then.
HH: When did you? When did you become aware of 617 Squadron’s fame?
RA: It’s when I, when I start working with the squadron. So I became the driver for the senior, the senior armament officer, 617 Squadron.
HH: That's quite a job.
RA: Quite. Well, I thought I was on my feet. Not only that. Because it was a lot of what you call down time I realized that in the air force if you use your [pause] you can get training. So I, I signed up at the college to do book-keeping and accounts because I had a lot of waiting time. I just drive the officer there and wait on him and in that time I’m reading and writing up my answers and so on. So I spent quite a bit of time doing learning about bookkeeping and accountancy while I was driving the, the officer around. Driving all over the place. And then of course I get to know about the aircraft.
HH: Did you ever encounter any of the air crew?
RA: Oh yes. Of course, I met the aircrew. They were fantastic. And some of them was my age. You see I was just twenty. Well, some of them were just twenty. They were lads like me And so I got to know them and I got to go. To get inside the aircraft and know all about.
HH: Did you ever get to fly?
RO: I oh I went on a flight. They encourage you. They encourage you at that time if there's a possibility where they're doing an exercise and if there's a pilot you get a flight, you signed up, so I did. And my why flight was they were going to [pause] they they're doing about they had done the bomb, the raid on the dams already before that. But they used to fly up around Yorkshire, you know. They have some lakes. And they used to. And I went on a flight. But they encourage you. They encourage you to do that if you're ground crew and you're near. They encour, they used to encourage you to to, to get at it.
HH: To experience it.
RO: Yeah. But while I was with the, the squadron I learned a lot about the Royal Air Force because of association. I wrote a lot about it. I learned to respect the Royal Air Force. And the camaraderie, you know, being comrades, and in 617 we always used to you learned that the order of things in life was. There was god almighty. There was Winston Churchill. There was Bomber Harris of Bomber Command. There was Group 5. And 617 Squadron. That was how they drilled it in to you and that's how I lived. So while I was, and while I was attached to the squadron I I other than driving the the chief around, armament officer I did other jobs like, oh I could drive a Coles Crane. I did driving what they called a Queen Mary. Yeah. It's you know those big wings on a bomber. They have a workshop in Lincoln and you had to take them for any repairs to Lincoln. I was good handed I drove a bow, what you call a petrol bowser filling up aircraft. I also drove a [pause] equipment which is a, it's a boat and and a cart. Well, you see they had a bombing range. They had a bombing range.
HH: Close.
RA: Near Wainfleet. And this, this vehicle used to be able to take the targets out and if the tide catched up it became a boat and we've lost one or two where it got caught. Caught out there ready for the tide. Yeah. So I used to, I used to, used to drive that out to take the targets out to and so I had a very wide experience in driving all sorts of motor vehicles. Motor vehicles. Which if you follow my story it, when I finished, when I, you know I’m quoting. Yes. So I spent my time at Coningsby.
HH: [unclear]
RA: No at Tattershall Thorpe. And then when the war finished.
HH: Can I just ask you something about those bomber stations where you were based? Is that again reading your memoir on those years I got the impression that at most of the, of those stations there were quite a few black ground personnel. Was that correct?
RA: Yes.
HH: You know. You know.
RA: Oh yes.
HH: There were quite a lot everywhere.
RA: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yes. Oh yes. Every station. Every station there was. Yeah. Oh yes but I I I don't know. I was fortunate in that I wasn't moved about. I, I was at Woodhall. What they called RAF Tattershall Thorpe. They call it Woodhall Spa but it was in the air forces as RAF Tattershall Thorpe. And then when, when the war in Europe finished I was still at RAF Tattershall Thorpe but the squadron was going to, 617 Squadron was going to move somewhere down south. I forget the name of the camp but we were going to go to Okinawa. Right. And I was sent on a course of Japanese aircraft rec.
HH: Oh gosh.
RA: At a place called Strubby in Lincolnshire. So I went. I went. I went on that course and while I was at that course they dropped the atom bomb and then I was scrubbed. And I was annoyed because I wanted to go to Okinawa. Fool. I mean, I don't say I should have known that I should have been glad if they’d posted me to the Orkneys not [laughs] Not Okinawa.
HH: And do you know the dropping of that the first bomb was seventy five years ago yesterday.
RA: Yeah.
HH: Yesterday was the 75th anniversary.
RA: Yes. I was, I was on a course then.
HH: And you were at RAF Strubby.
RA: Strubby. The Japanese aircraft rec.
HH: Incredible. Incredible.
RA: And I, and a incident there I’ll always remember. We, we were trying, using train to fire a twin mounted Browning gun. And we were all there learning and this youngster said to the sergeant, he said, ‘Hey sarge, now what [pause] if I shoot down the plane that pulled the target?’ And this sergeant, who was a comedian as well, he said, Son,’ he says, ‘If you follow the word of command when I give you the word of command to fire,’ because this plane was taking a drogue you see. ‘When I give you the word of command to fire if you hit that plane I will personally see that you become a air marshall.’[laughs] He said that. Because the drogues are apart, only a hundred yards behind the aircraft. So he said, ‘If you shoot that aeroplane down I’ll see you’re all right.’ So that’s what happened. The war, that part of the war finished for me at Strubby. And from then on it was. —
HH: It was winding down.
RA: Oh yes.
HH: The war effort. Yeah. Yeah.
RA: And I became, you know I of course kept on with my studies in. So in the end the the air force, the RAF and the Colonial Office give me a scholarship to do bookkeeping and accountancy. Business Management. So I got a scholarship to go to a college in, in [pause]
HH: Now, had you already, had before you got the scholarship had you already elected to go back to have your training and then go back to Jamaica?
RA: Oh yes.
HH: How many, how many people in your situation decided to stay rather than to go back?
RA: Quite, quite quite a few stayed because the option was open to me. The air force was keen to have people because at that stage we were trained people. So any, any Jamaican who wanted to stay in the RAF was welcomed with, with open arms you see because they trained people getting out into what you call Civvy Street and they you want people like myself who had three or four years in the service too. So I went to college. Did fair. Did fairly well at, at college. Got a diploma. Everything. And went back.
HH: But before you went back you had, you had met the love of your life.
RA: Oh, yes. Yes.
HH: By coming to Boston.
RA: Yes. Yes. Yes. I went to the Gliderdrome.
HH: So you need to tell us about playing cricket and dancing. That's the other part of the story you haven't mentioned yet.
RA: Yes. I got, I was, I got I I was quite I was quite a good cricketer from school. From school I was captain of the school, school team and so on. So I, I fitted very well with the the air force with sports you see. And I I did alright at the cricket in the RAF. In the RAF. And when I came to Boston I I I did. So, so yes I I went back to Jamaica of course. Went back on the Windrush.
HH: You did indeed.
RO: Came back on the Windrush and went to Trinidad and to Port of Spain in Trinidad and there's a, there's a main street in Trinidad. I forget the name of the street. And there's a main street in Kingston. And if you shut your eyes and taken, you could it could be the same place. The people. There were Chinese, Syrians, Indians in that street in Trinidad. Just like, just like Jamaica. So, the West Indians. There is something there's this thing that the same kind of people do thousands of miles away from Jamaica to Trinidad but they are, you know. It’s the same. You walk down the street and the same people. Indians, Chinese, Syrians, Jew, the same.
HH: Yeah.
RA: Some West Indians are really something. And of course we're British. That is a, that is a thing that [pause] I don't know if [pause] it's going from the story but I always see myself, you see as a coconut. You know about coconut. I am the, I am a coconut. I may be brown but inside I’m white because and the, the, the newer, the younger Jamaicans are not like that. They're not like me in that respect in that in growing up as I I wanted the things, the better things in life and the people who had the better things in life were the white people. They had the big house and the cars and the land and so on and that's what I, what I wanted. So deep down I was a, the joke about it was, ‘Oh, you're a coconut.’ But I say, ‘Yes. Yes, I am. I can't help, I can’t help it. I’m a child of my [age] Yes. I’m a coconut.’
HH: But I mean, you grew up when when that was part of the British world.
RA: Yeah, that’s right.
HH: Jamaica.
RA: When the young, the younger Jamaicans are completely different to —
HH: Yeah.
RA: To, to me.
HH: Yeah. They have just known independence.
RA: That's right I I have never voted in the Jamaica election.
HH: Yeah.
RA: You see.
HH: Yeah.
RA: I am, I am your typical Jamaican coconut [laughs]
HH: That's a wonderful story.
RA: Yeah.
HH: Ralph, I’m just going to [pause] So, Ralph we've got to the end of your story of service in the RAF and your return to Jamaica and we're going to conclude this part of the interview by saying it's part one and we will resume with part two and your life back in the UK in the, in the coming weeks.
RA: Okay.
HH: Thank you very much for talking.
RA: 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
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Interview with Ralph Alfrado Ottey. One
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
2020-08-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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00:53:51 Audio Recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AOtteyRA200807, POtteyRA2001, POtteyRA2002
Creator
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Heather Hughes
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
Jamaica
England--Lincolnshire
England--Filey
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
Jamaica--Little London
Jamaica--Kingston
Trinidad and Tobago--Trinidad
Trinidad and Tobago
England--Lancashire
Description
An account of the resource
Ralph Ottey was born in Jamaica in 1924. Brought up by his grandparents, he describes his education and family hopes that he would become a teacher. He left school at 16 and a half but was too young to attend teaching college so worked for his uncle from 1940 to 1942. Ralph wanted to be an air gunner. He explains the variety of jobs he had before attending an RAF recruitment event in 1943. He applied to join but had to wait to sit the entrance exams. He enlisted to become a wireless operator/air gunner. He sailed in a convoy from New York to Liverpool. On arrival he was posted to RAF Filey for 13 weeks basic training. Told that there was no demand for new wireless operator/air gunners he was assigned the role of motor transport driver. He explains that whilst at RAF Filey he met what were to become his adopted parents. He was posted to No. 1 RAF Transport School at RAF Melksham. He passed out as an aircraftman first class driver (AC1) on completing the 13-week driving course. Finally posted to RAF Woodhall Spa he drove a variety of vehicles including petrol bowsers, the sanitation wagon, and Queen Mary trailer. He became the chauffeur for the senior armaments officer for 617 Squadron.
He describes being prepared to be sent to Okinawa, but the war finished before he was sent. He was awarded a scholarship to study accountancy and successfully obtained his diploma. He then returned to Jamaica on HMT Empire Windrush.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Paul Valleley
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
617 Squadron
African heritage
ground personnel
petrol bowser
RAF Coningsby
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Hunmanby Moor
RAF Little Rissington
RAF Melksham
RAF Strubby
RAF Woodhall Spa
recruitment
service vehicle
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/501/22428/ECurnockRMIrvinLL451126.2.jpg
34829fdf608d767f8df23cafc8c972e8
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/501/22428/ECurnockRMIrvinLL470123.2.jpg
738a1f35a34897e293429bb463884b7b
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
Curnock, Richard
Richard Murdock Curnock
R M Curnock
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Curnock, RM
Date
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2016-04-18
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
92 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Richard Curnock (1924, 1915605 Royal Air Force), his log book, letters, photographs and prisoner of war magazines. He flew operations with 425 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Richard Curnock and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
1815605 F/Sgt Curnock R.M.
No 2 Sgts Mess
R.A.F. Station
Melksham
Wilts.
26/11/45
Dear Sir,
It has just occurred to me to write and ask for information as to the position of supplies of Caterpillar Pins.
Being now six months since returning to England I would like to have a pin as the majority of my friends have theirs already.
I remain.
Yours,
A.M. Curnock
[page break]
‘SunnyCroft’
59, Minehead St.
Leicester
23/1/47
Dear Sir,
Having now discovered the letter which enclosed my Gil Caterpillar, I am able to write and ask if one in gold could be purchased through the Club, I believe the price is 30s 3d which I am willing to pay.
Also I wish to thank you for the presented one, which has been admired by all, and with which I will never part.
Yours sincerely,
R M Curnock ex Sgt.
Yours, R. M. Curnock
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
Letters to Caterpillar Club form Dick Curnock
Description
An account of the resource
The first letter asks for his Caterpillar club pin and is dated 26/11/45. The second letter asks to purchase a gold pin, and is dated 23/1/47.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dick Curnock
Format
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Two photocoppied handwritten letters
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
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ECurnockRMIrvinLL451126,
ECurnockRMIrvinLL470123
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Leicester
England--Leicestershire
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1945-11-26
1947-01-23
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945-11-26
1947-01-23
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
aircrew
Caterpillar Club
heirloom
RAF Melksham
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/701/10102/ABeckettPC180317.1.mp3
d8e89c29fd5e9a78d9de74b886763975
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
Beckett, Peter Cyril
P C Beckett
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Peter Beckett (b. 1925 1869405 Royal Air Force).
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Beckett, PC
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DB: Today I’m interviewing Peter Cyril Beckett in his home at Holywell Row. It’s the 17th of March 2018 and the time is 1500 hours. Peter, would you like to tell me a little bit about your life with Bomber Command?
PB: Certainly. Yes. I am ninety two years old, and my name is Peter and I was born in Mildenhall in December 1925. For a long time I had wanted to put in writing my tribute to the amazing fortitude, courage and self-sacrifice of the wartime serving aircrews of Bomber Command 1939 to ’45 jokingly referred to as the Brylcreem boys during the Phoney War and ultimately Bomber Harris’ Bomber Boys. The Command had an abundance of coded slang in place of everyday words. Many incredible facts apply to the aircrew. Firstly, every one of them was a volunteer. There were no, there was no going back on the deal. They were committed. If the RAF didn’t want them they had to throw them out unceremoniously. In all my years I never met one aircrew member who wanted to give up his job. My association with Bomber Command began in 1940, just after I had joined the local Air Training Corps Cadets at my home town in Mildenhall. It was 301 Bury St Edmunds Squadron and I was only fifteen. Our local Air Training Corps voluntary, volunteer officer Flight Lieutenant Parker was a former Royal Flying Corps officer from the World War 1914 to ’18, and with, and was well acquainted with the group captain of RAF Mildenhall, one mile from my home and I had, and I suspect also acquainted with other officers of 3 Group Bomber Command which was also at the RAF station. In any event it transpired that a limited number of Cadets could on weekends facilitate their training and instruction on the station including some station duties. Full marks to our Air Training Corps Squadron instructors. They trained us twice a week at our local school. We got our uniforms, learned the Morse code, did dead reckoning navigation, did square bashing to a high standard. So, it was at the tender age of fifteen but with a war on, and it was 1940 I found myself on RAF Mildenhall bomber station in 1940, having marched from the guardroom at the gate to the parachute section. And among a dozen of my colleagues in the Air Training Corps following some quick instructions on the, on the fitting of parachute harnesses and carrying, and carrying the chute in a pack he, including a warning from the equipment, parachute equipment staff the dire consequences of touching the release handle we then marched, not so smartly this time because of the, of the parachutes to the grassy side entrance to Number 1 Hangar, and were dismissed to wait on the grass while the aircrews inside on duty held their briefing in one of the hangar rooms. I imagine a few ribald remarks about baby minding and a lot of, ‘what next,’ in inverted commas were expressed within [pause] and a few of the aircrew were peering through the anti-blast strips of the windows of the room to see what sort of rabble was awaiting them outside. By the time they came out from the briefing we were lined up either side of the entrance. A motley crew of the long, the short and the tall draped with, with canopy canvas straps. The keenness and the feeling of expectation must have aroused the aircrew and convinced them that there that was no going back and so with good grace individual members of the crew picked three or four dozen of the Cadets to accompany them to the newly arrived driver, WAAF driver’s truck. Some of the lads were too small to make it up to the back of the Bedford QL, especially incumbered with their chute bag and harnesses so a playful, there was a playful heave up from the, by the crews who obviously were beginning to enjoy the diversion. As each dispersal is reached the waggon disgorged, disgorged two or three Cadets with their crew of six or seven members, where some adjustments were made to the Cadet’s safety equipment. Then to entering the Wellington bomber supervised by a crew member. The engines are running up on test and Cadets were told to stand as near the main spar in the centre of the aircraft and shown where to hold on to and to remain there during the taxiing and take off, and to move only when told to do so. Cadets would, cadets were advised to hold their hands over their ears during the engine run up and take off which was not an easy task and holding at the same time. There was no issue of flying helmets or ear guards. And this, this flying each weekend continued all through 1940, 1941, ’42 and ’43. Many hours flying with operational Bomber Command crews. Squadrons stationed at Mildenhall included 149 OJ squadron, number 15 LS squadron, 622 GI, 622 Squadron, 419 Squadron VR. The wonderful aircraft Vickers Wellington, Short Stirlings, Lancasters. All flew in all those aircraft during those years. And there were two station aircraft however in which I never flew and they were the Gloster Gladiators of the Meteorological Flight which flew every morning near dawn in rain, hail or snow to provide a local forecast. The flights, the Cadet flights with operational crews could last anything between an hour to three. Mostly they were known as night flying tests. It was a test to prove every operational, every operational function connected with the aircraft was in full order for the night’s operation. Not always the, was the crew carrying out the air test the same crew to fly the aircraft on operations that night but it would most likely be the case. Through the years I learned a lot from these, these men. After three years I became a Senior Cadet flight sergeant and in wartime there was the ability to grow up quickly. These young flyers were only a few years older than myself, and I could perceive that for all their horseplay between themselves there was a deadly serious attitude. An attitude with, with some rigidly serious rules. Rule one was don’t ever let the side down. Rule two was give your crew one hundred percent support. Put your crew first in all your decisions. And I realised it was because each man believed that it was only his colleagues that could save him from death. This I realised was indeed logical thinking. These gallant, grave men that were called the bomber boys. The pilot’s skill saved the lives of many crews. Witness Middleton VC. Air gunners have shot down numerous FW190s, ME109s, and 110 night fighters about to perform the coup de gras with a bomber. A wireless operator finding a beacon with the aircraft lost in fog even on training missions for example. The navigator who provides a vital plot to avoid enemy flak concentrations. The bomb aimer making a decision for the pilot to abort the bomb run and go around again. To think every bomber crew had a right. It was their crew that was most, that was most essential to their survival. Turning to these cadet flights organised at weekends between 1940 and ’44, not all were night flying tests. Some as I remember were cross country and even local flying. These, these were helpful to new crews from Operational Conversion Units, or even overseas crews new to the station. This suited us Cadets admirably because we loved looking on our familiar countryside bird’s eye view. But more exciting flying was after ’42 and ’43 in the beautiful Lancasters, especially on fighter affiliation. At six to eight thousand feet enter the Spitfire. We are taking turns in the astrodome. We have been searching the blue sky paying special attention to the fluffy white clouds but have seen nothing, but through the borrowed helmet we hear the rear gunner call, ‘4 o’clock high, skipper.’ Prepare [unclear] skipper. Prepare to dive. Left. Left.’ Before we’d done, before we fall I think, shortly before we fall I think I saw a moving dot. How did that rear gunner see that speck? Would he see, what would he, how would he see it in the dark? On a dark night over Germany. Also, not every weekend did we fly. Some weekends we gave support to the ground crew. Ground crews. We rode around on the bomb trolleys towed by tractors and helping with the bombing up was good, good fun in good weather but serving on the airfield in bad weather was tougher. On occasions the whole flight of Cadets were allowed to be present at take-off for a night raid. One such night we were allowed to go to be in the control room of the control tower for a raid on Duisburg [pause] Yeah. That’s it.
[recording paused]
PB: In 1943, April 1943, I was at last able to attend a interview in Cambridge for my application for aircrew to join aircrew in the RAF and I attended an interview and medical in Cambridge. And my result was passing medically fit, A1, for pilot, navigator or bomb aimer category. And now I have to await now before I’m called up to the Aircrew Recruiting Centre. In effect, I, I didn’t much like the waiting game. Forty, forty, all through the beginning of 1943 but was only too pleased that at last news had come through that I was ok to enter the RAF as aircrew. And then on, after another long wait on the 24th of June I did receive my papers for calling, call up papers to go to the Aircrew Receiving Centre in London, and I went to, it was unfortunate that only the week previously the, the Doodlebug buzz bomb threat started in London and had been, the flying bombs had been landing all the previous week. Nevertheless, I was only too pleased to get on the road to the RAF and sure enough I found that we were to be billeted right in the heart of the city at St John’s Wood, a short distance from Lord’s Cricket Ground, on the Prince of Wales Road near Regent’s Park in a empty hotel called Viceroy Court. The situation to be in London in the wonderful city was dampened somewhat by the debris and ruins and bomb damage, but wasn’t helped at all by the fact that very shortly we were subjected to another onslaught of flying bombs which were different to the enemy bombers which I’d heard over in Suffolk which only droned over. These were devils of the sky which cut their motors and then we waited, holding our breath for the blast explosion. But training had to go on and we paraded in the streets for our marching. We marched to the dining, our dining place for meals. We went to the swimming pool for our physical training and also running in Regent’s Park for PT. We had to get used to the, a whistle which meant that we immediately had, if we were in marching, running we had to disperse immediately and lay flat every time that the whistle blew for an air raid alarm. In all we had some narrow escapes with, with the flying bombs landing. One, one particularly in the opposite side of the street where our billets were and my kit bag tied up with all my worldly goods had to be abandoned after the raid because it was full of splintered glass that had penetrated the whole of the kit bag and all my kit was rubbished. And we, we then had to stay there for our training for a further eight weeks with the flying bomb menace day and night which meant that we also had many extra pickets to, to go on duty. Fire picket, pickets spotting on the roof of the hotel and to give warning for others to take cover, and even we had to mount pickets in the military hospital which was in Baker Street. A converted building in Baker Street. All in all, we were looking forward to the end of our eight week course and passing out. Leaving, leaving London in August ’44 the next stop was to be the Initial Training Wing, where we learned further skills and learned further, oh —
[recording paused]
PB: For our next stage of training which was to leave St John’s Wood and the flying bombs we were all trained to, put on train, trains to go to peaceful Yorkshire. What a change from London was the seaside Yorkshire town of Bridlington and its sunny beaches. We were, that we had then to do a course for further training on deflection of firing. Firing guns, and further drilling, and the learning the Morse code, sending and receiving. It was to be an eight, a further eight week course. One we were billeted in civilian empty, or civilian boarding houses on the front. Four of us to a room. The rooms were very sparse. One electric lightbulb was the whole of the furniture in the room and of course the RAF beds. Our food. We received our food by queuing and going to the local Spa on the seafront but we were soon recovering from our experiences in London except for one thing. The Halifaxes, as they landed or took off for a raid, or came home from raids were very disturbing for us. Having been so used to the flying bomb and it’s cut off engine we almost fell out of bed when the Halifaxes came over before we realised it wasn’t going to stop its engine and plunge on us. Apart from that the weather was fine, the shooting on the beach with shotguns to learn us deflection was fun, and apart from one thing, one obvious fault was that I succumbed to, and along with six other airmen to a bout of dysentery which was supposedly caught from an airman who had returned from the far, from the Middle East.
[recording paused]
I finished off in a lovely country house outside Bridlington for convalescence, or for treatment in the RAF sick bay. So, in 1944, October 1944 the course at, at Bridlington for the Initial Training Wing was ended. And having passed out on the, on the ITW we expected to move on further on the flying course but unfortunately, it was not to be because the radio school which was our next step for, for our course for signaller wireless operator air gunner was fully booked up and unable to take any more trainees. So, in the interim period we were to be placed on a course for a ground trade which was going to be a driver’s course on a mechanical transport course for drivers. So, we were to move from Bridlington to, of all places another seaside venue, Blackpool which was where we were to receive further training for, to become drivers of mechanical transports. The, the stay, my sixth day in the hospital as a result of catching the dysentery bug meant that I was with a different flight of, of trainees for this move to Blackpool and during the month of October the whole flight was entrained to, to journey to Blackpool. So, we moved to, the flight moved to, to Blackpool and the accommodation was to be the same as we had experienced at Bridlington in that we also were to be billeted in civilian boarding houses which were empty other than for, for RAF. The RAF having taken over the empty boarding houses and my billet was in Hornby Road in the centre. The training was to be, we understood done with Hillman cars and was to learn to pass proficiency in driving and the course began with driving the Hillman RAF staff car. After four weeks of doing all the tests, and passing the tests on, on driving cars, we were once more on the move and the movement order was given in the middle of November, and on the timing was to leave by the railway station in the dark November evening. The whole flight of thirty to forty airmen marched through the streets of Blackpool, full kit, carrying their kit bags, and in full marching order. Three, in ranks of three. For some reason the local populace, sightseers and holiday makers decided to line the route and give the boys a send-off mistakenly thinking that they were going to be embarking on the second front. Unfortunately, we were only moving to Wiltshire but we marched in full order never the less. So, after marching to the railway station at Blackpool, on board we get with all our kit and we each carrying our loaded kit bags, in great coats. Not the best way of travelling. Not the easiest. The train is absolutely full up with our RAF men and we’ve got a longish journey, a slow journey to Melksham in Wiltshire. Finally arriving at Melksham we’re transported to the, to the RAF Melksham and starting a new driving course which will be more advanced than what we have passed through at Blackpool, and the first introduction comes with the, a bigger vehicle to drive and, but the main interest with most of the airmen is driving the RAF armoured vehicle. A tank like vehicle with only a slit viewing screen from the front to drive by which means the travelling at a terrific speed when you’re only going slowly, and incidentally missing corners or misjudging corners as one of our pupils destroys a wall in Devizes. But everybody carries, enjoyed the course, and most passed it. But we are still waiting to get to a radio school, which is our next objective and proceed with our training for wireless operator air gunners.
[recording paused]
Before leaving the course at Melksham the whole, the whole curriculum had to be gone through and passed on vehicles from small light vans up to Crossley bomb tenders and, and large Bedford lorries. A lot of driving was done in convoys and, and particularly the Crossley vintage lorries were of World War One vintage and had gears that needed double, the use of the double clutch and gate gear so, but that was finally passed and still there was no news of leaving for the Number 4 Radio School to which we were awaiting. So nevertheless, apart from a final test for the practical side of the driver’s course, identifying various engine parts the, the whole flight were presented with a list in Daily Routine Orders of the various postings which would apply while the flight was waiting for the radio course. On inspection I found that RAF Mildenhall was one of the postings that could be applied for and I told my, my particular friend, Skid Archer who I knew lived in Ipswich if he would like to go and join me and get posted to Mildenhall, which would still be in Suffolk. And he agreed to do so and so we both put in for a posting to RAF Mildenhall. and eventually the postings came through. And so again I was to be on the move, this time with my best mate Skid, Sam in brackets, Archer. While posted in Melksham I was, I was confronted with this information that, that I could ask for a posting to RAF Mildenhall and so my friend, my best mate Skid Archer and I both put in and we found the next day that that posting application had been successful. And so, my next move will be back home to Suffolk from Wiltshire, and, and stationed near enough home to go home for a NAAFI break. And so the next move was to RAF Mildenhall. A bomber station. Skid and I both settled down to life at Mildenhall. I found I couldn’t get home as I had expected, every day of the week. The embargo was placed on the personnel if there were operations taking place on that day or that night the whole base, the whole camp were confined to, as they put it, confined to barracks. So to get home from the short distance of only two and a half miles just wasn’t possible and I had to stay on base with my friend Skid. We were, we were billeted in one of the airmen blocks and we had both been booked in at the mechanical transport depot and department. There we had the experience of sitting in a waiting room like a lot of taxi drivers. In with the woolly old sweats who were there and had been there for years just waiting to see what the corporal sitting behind a desk in a, in one side of the room was going to come up with for, for driving jobs for us. And it wasn’t long before Skid was called up and given a, a form to, for the application for transport and the details of which vehicle to have, where to pick up the passenger and where to go. And we found this quite, quite nerve wracking at first because we didn’t know what we would have to go and take out of the, out of the compound to drive, or where we would have to drive it to and if we would know where to go. I was fairly confident that if there was anywhere off base there was no problem. I would know. I would know the whole district but not always would I know where on the base, or on the camp that we were expected to take the vehicles. As the days went by we, it became easier and easier for us. Notably one of the first jobs we had were to pick up explosive bombs from the bomb dump at RAF Barnham and transport them back to the bomb dump at RAF Mildenhall. And of course I knew the way to Barnham but I had no idea what sort of job it would be carrying high explosives. In the end accompanied by an older driver or one of the other drivers I took a Austin flat back bomb tender and drove to Barnham and had to reverse down the embankments to the sidings where the railway wagons were unloading and they unloaded eight or twelve bombs, thousand pounders, high explosives on to the tender at the back. I was amazed to find that the wooden floor of the bomb tender was all that was going to support these heavy weight bombs. And, and I was also amazed that the, the armourers were, that were loading the bombs up made sure the bombs didn’t roll off the vehicle or about the vehicle by hammering four inch nails into the floor, the floorboards of the trailer in order to, to support and keep the bombs from rolling against each other. And, but the, it seemed to work and although the load was very heavy once the bomb, the lorry was loaded we met with all the success we required. Except, following that on that the week or so after when I became quite adept at, at procuring these bombs and securing them I was asked to take a trailer on the Austin tender, also fully loaded with bombs and on the return journey taking a corner in the village of Barnham I found that the trailer had come off with a load of bombs on it and embedded the tow bar into the grassy bank and this caused quite some concern. But the breakdown crane from the base, from the camp came out, and virtually pulled the trailer out and refixed it on, and all was sailing again. The, I didn’t realise how, how dangerous a job the ground crew on the, on the camp in operations, and on operations how dangerous their work was until I joined permanently the armoury section staff as an MT driver. Not an armourer but as an MT driver and realised then the conditions and the danger that they worked under. I was only the driver for the sergeant in charge of B Flight, 622 Squadron and my job was to drive him around night and day all around the perimeter of the of the airfield from dispersal to dispersal and back to armoury sorting all the necessary bombing up and de-bombing work that had to be done. But the conditions in the middle of the night in December were, had to be seen to be believed. Especially one night, especially when things just did not go well. Did not go right. In connection with my new job as driver for the sergeant in charge of B Flight Armoury Section, and the bombing up of the Lancasters of 622 Squadron for operations I realised that every Lancaster had two crews. The crew that were in charge of her in the air and the crew who were in charge of her on the ground. But this particular night the huge black Lanny stands alone after two small vehicles a Hillman car, canvas backed Hillman van and, melting into the darkness a couple of armed guards. Other kites, RAF for planes, kites have returned successfully from the raid and they are at their respective dispersals all around the airfield where lights show their, their ground crews fussing around them. Working on them through the night. But T-Tommy stands in darkness seemingly abandoned. But not quite, we see. There’s an aircrew Cadet, that’s me, driver of the canvas backed Hillman, and the sergeant, that’s my sergeant, the armourer of 622 Squadron and we are peering up at the bomb doors of T-Tommy with a torch. They have, we have been called out to deal with a problem, and unusually on a squadron where the motto is, “We Wage War at Night,” every night operation over enemy territory in [pause] every night operation over enemy territory instigates problems. But this one is extremely unusual. A high explosive bomb, fully primed and fused is resting on the bomb doors only which are three to four inches apart, and give every sign of further widening. The sergeant has checked the hydraulic system would hold the doors but with the weight of the thousand pounder it wasn’t entirely predictable. He decided the only safe answer was to defuse the device. Once the aircrew bomb aimer had selected the bombs and pressed the bomb release the bombs were fused. Each bomb had two fused, two fuses. A tail fuse which operated as the bomb fell through the space and a nose fuse which operated on impact. The bomb was lethal, and by the light of the torch that was held it looked a khaki green ominous monster. As we inspected both ends by the light of the torch, had the land lights and the land lights from tractors diverted away, their lights reflected into our eyes and caused the dark shadows. Dark shadows. A torch was the only answer. We needed a powerful light concentrated on the specific point to, to a specific point. All I had, had to do was to direct the service torch to his instructions. To my relief he decided to commence with removing the tail fuse. It seemed an age to complete and despite the freezing conditions we both had to remove our leather jerkins. We were, we were sweating and had to remove them. It was amazing to see how he worked with only enough room to get his wrists through the gap of the bomb doors and used the tools of his trade. I passed and received them as per, as per his instructions as well as directing the torch. When he finally removed the tail fuse and made that safe, after this time seemed to go much faster as we moved to the nose of the monster. This time when the fuse came out I was given vital instruction to place it in, on the ground with great care which I did very gingerly. The whole operation must have taken two hours but it seemed to me like two days. In fact, at that stage I seemed to be in a daze. I dimly remember everybody moving back behind any sort of cover, and the sergeant being given the doubtful honour of entering T-Tommy and releasing the bomb doors. Also walking over to the monster lounging in its, walking over to the monster laying in its own depression in the tarmac of the dispersal bay. The question is how had the aircraft flown back from Germany with the high explosive thousand pounder rolling on the bomb doors? How had it had made a successful approach and landing without the crew’s knowledge, plus taxiing to the dispersal? Who made the decision not to open the bomb doors which was the normal practice on return to the dispersal after a raid? Why didn’t the sergeant armourer receive some recognition for his courageous action? Why is there no record of the incident in station orders? What was the risk factor of a chain reaction to the explosion of a heavy high explosive thousand pounder bomb exploding among bombed up aircraft, including the station bomb dump and final filled fuel storage tanks? In fact, a conflagration. A conflagration. In such a conflagration how much damage would have occurred to the village and its population? Yeah. After the experience of working on and living with the ground crew personnel on a wartime bomber base such as RAF Mildenhall it became very noticeable to me how important bombing operations with the RAF was considered. Firstly, the security position so that everybody, all personnel on, on the station were, were aware of something big occurring and nobody ever interfered or objected or, or put anything to stop the operation taking place. People could be put under jurisdiction of a court martial if they did anything that prevented the base from supplying the number and providing the aircraft for that operation. It was very, so very important and it was an importance that was felt by every person on the base. Every person on the station. Cooks, parachute packers, fitters, instrument repairers, petrol tank drivers, MT drivers. Everybody had to bow to the god of operations. This, and this occurred every day. Every day, because every night there were the operations from the stations and that applied all through 1940, ‘41, ‘42, ‘43, ‘44 and ’45. Of a driver on the MT transport, for instance that was transporting Window, packets of Window to be dropped by the Lancasters on the forthcoming raid inadvertently reversed the back of his Bedford truck in to the side of the door of the Lancaster and dented the, just two dents either side of the door completely accidentally. He was immediately took to the guardroom and the last thing we knew he was posted away simply because he’d that accident that prevented that aircraft from being airworthy to fly on the night’s raid. Such was the, such was the power of the operation of a bombing mission.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Peter Cyril Beckett
Creator
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Denise Boneham
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABeckettPC180317
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:04:57 audio recording
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Language
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Peter Beckett grew up in Mildenhall village. He attended the local Air Training Corps which enabled him to visit the airfield and take the opportunity to have air test flights with operational aircrews and help the ground staff with their work. He volunteered for the RAF and was selected for aircrew training but while awaiting the signals course to begin he was posted back to Blackpool for driver training. He was then posted to RAF Melksham for advanced driver training. He was posted back to Mildenhall and became the driver for the sergeant in charge of B Flight Armoury. This meant that on one occasion Peter had to assist the armoury sergeant to defuse a bomb that was still contained in the bomb bay of a Lancaster.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944-10
1945
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Suffolk
England--Wiltshire
England--London
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
622 Squadron
bomb disposal
ground personnel
Lancaster
RAF Melksham
service vehicle
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/84/9666/MCluettAV120946-150515-010001.1.jpg
31786785f16d8a4260cdfa30408ccc8f
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/84/9666/MCluettAV120946-150515-010002.1.jpg
7eca54f2bd263664dc80328efa15d649
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Cluett, Albert Victor
Albert Victor Cluett
A V Cluett
Subject
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World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
68 items. The collection concerns Leading Aircraftman Albert Victor Cluett (1209046, Royal Air Force). After training in 1941/42 as an armourer, he was posted to 50 Squadron at RAF Swinderby and then RAF Skellingthorpe. The collections consists his official Royal Air Force documents, armourer training notebooks, photographs of colleagues, aircraft and locations as well as propaganda items, books in German and Dutch and items of memorabilia.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Albert Victor Cluett's daughter Pat Brown and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-05-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Cluett, AV
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Albert Cluett's leave form
RAF Form 295
Description
An account of the resource
Leave form for A V Cluett from 3 Wing RAF Melksham for period 3 April 1941 to 17 April 1941.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-03-26
Format
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Two sided printed form document filled in
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCluettAV120946-150515-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Wiltshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-04-03
1941-04-17
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.
military service conditions
RAF Melksham
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/740/9290/PClachersV1802.2.jpg
7c264d2a73fea7df9a9cbce0fd8f3694
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/740/9290/AClachersV180328.2.mp3
d4e47eec6b0b34d4bca77faff76c6a52
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
Clachers, Vera
V Clachers
Vera Clachers nee Hendrew
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Vera Clachers (b. 1923, 211493 Royal Air Force). She served as an aircraft electrician in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-21
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Clachers, V
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JS: Right. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jim Sheach. The Interviewee is Mrs Vera Clachers. The interview is taking place at Mrs Clacher’s home in Edinburgh on the 21st of March 2018. Mrs Clacher’s daughter Lilian is also present. Vera, thanks very much for agreeing to be interviewed today. Would you like to tell me a little about your life before the war?
VC: Well, going back my father died when I was fourteen, and there was five of us. My elder brother was in, went in to the Army. My second brother went in to the Air Force. And after a while I thought why not? I’m going in the Air Force. So that left mother with two. My sister Noreen and my brother Derek which were quite young and to start off with I doubted but then I thought it’s an experience and I would have had to go into munitions so I went in the Air Force for the experience was good. And then I got notice to go to, I can’t remember whether it was Morecambe or Blackpool to do my training. Then I did a month, I think a month’s training. In that wee while there was a famous picture on, “Gone with the Wind.” So, I managed to see the picture. Then from there I was sent to Melksham because they asked you different trades and they gave me electrician. So, I was sent to Melksham and I was there for nearly a year. I did training, a lot of training, a lot of theory and I was very lucky. I passed out as LACW. Not ACW. And from there I can’t remember exactly what station but I think it was North Coates which, when I first arrived they took me to the section. Two or three young men were there so I sat down and introduced myself and they introduced themselves. Then one of them said, ‘Well, Vera, we’d better show you the golden nugget.’ So, Vera innocently said, ‘I didn’t know there was one.’ But it turned out as you know what it was. It was, it was a great joke.
Other: [unclear]
VC: And from then on first of all they treated me as a woman because I was the only woman there and I wouldn’t say a woman, I’d say a young girl. Played jokes on me, gave me the poorest jobs and eventually I got to do the proper job which was daily DIs, inspecting the electrical works. And I was there for quite a while and, I don’t know how long, I really can’t remember how long I was there and then I was moved on. But I don’t, I can’t remember the stations.
JS: That’s ok.
VC: There I met a young man which was forbidden. He was an officer. We had great fun sneaking out. Then I was introduced, taken to his home, introduced to his father which looked down his nose at me. We spent quite a while in the house but he never appeared again, the father. Then the courtship went on. Took me flying which was an experience. Then eventually he disappeared, no explanation and that was the end of the romance. But I took him home too. Had great expectations but it fizzled out. I continued with my life.
Other: [Got drafted, didn’t you?]
VC: Which was just general duties. Anything that was going. Then I was approached if I would like to play, did I know what the game Shinty was? So, I said yes. So I was put on to the team. Went to play. Was playing, and I was bullying this chap. After it finished one of the men came up to me. He said, ‘Do you know who you were bullying with?’ ‘No. Just a chap.’ It was the group captain. So that was me [laughs] quite a good, another good joke. But apart from that I just continued my service. I taught ballroom dancing. Then unexpectedly they made me a corporal. I think it was mainly for admin purpose and I just went on with my service and the war finished. I think I signed on for a few more months and I was sent to Germany and it was an experience because I was on my own. I lost the kit [laughs] My earings come out. Anyway, it was found and then I had to go to Sylt and that was a long journey over the river, over a river. I was very frightened because I was on my own. And that was about the end. I came out. No. While I was in Germany I met my husband. How I met him I was in the NAAFI. Had an armful of cigarettes and he came up to me and I didn’t smoke. He came up to me. He said, ‘What are you going to do with those?’ And that was the start of a romance. Then I was demobbed, came out, got married. Just stayed in Darlington for a couple of years and then came up here and that’s me ever since. Not very exciting.
JS: What, you said what [pause] what was a normal day of duties? What was the sort of tasks that you were doing?
VC: Right. When aircraft came in we had to go and do a DI which was inspecting the electrical parts with the conduits, and the acid in the battery had to be tested and then the tail lights and wing lights. I always remember the instructor at Melksham used to say, ‘They are not bulbs. Bulbs go in the ground. They are filaments.’ That always stuck in to my mind. And that was the general way because when the aircraft came in, came in, you used to, and in between time you were doing whatever was necessary in the section which was mending things, testing acid. That sort of thing. That was the general day.
JS: So, the the aircraft would be back before you started in the morning then.
VC: Yes. Sometimes, and then during the day at all different times you couldn’t, you really didn’t know what time they were coming in and it was very sad sometimes because aircraft would just land and then burst into flame. And that was the crew. Losing the crew which was always very sad. Of course, you didn’t, you weren’t allowed to mix with officers so you really didn’t know them personally but you knew them by sight. So, it really was, excuse me, sorry.
JS: So, you were working on a number of aircraft or —
VC: Yeah.
JS: Or just a specific aircraft?
VC: Yes.
JS: Right. So, how, how many others doing the same task as you would there be on your base?
VC: Well, there was the wireless operator. There was the mechanics. And then there was the, I forget what they call them. Looks after the structure of the aircraft to see if it was fine. So, it was a matter of about six of you. So, but you had to sort of base it so you weren’t in each other’s way.
JS: How did you get on with the others in, the other ground crew?
VC: Oh, just, you know, ordinary. You know, ‘hiya,’ and a talk or whatever was going on but whatever function was interesting.
JS: And, and how did you [pause] how many other WAAFs were there as well as you doing that role? Or you spoke earlier when you started you were the only woman. Was that common throughout your service or were there, were there —
VC: No. I was the only one because it was the start of training women to do mechanical work so quite wherever, well actually whenever I was posted I was the only woman.
JS: At, you spoke about Melksham which I think is near Bath. Is that right? I think. Melksham.
VC: Yeah. Melksham.
JS: Where you did your training.
VC: Yes. Ah huh.
JS: I think it’s near Bath. I think.
VC: Bath. Wiltshire.
JS: Wiltshire.
VC: Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
VC: Ah huh.
JS: So, in your class there, and your training there was it mixed between men and women?
VC: Yes.
JS: Or was it —
VC: Mixed. It was the RAF and it was rather strange because when I was down there I met a chap who I’d known who had been at [Middleton Monro?] whom I had known at that so it was rather, rather strange. So, you meet. You don’t know where you are. You meet up again sometimes and you don’t.
JS: How did you, how did you find the training? Was it interesting or —
VC: Very interesting. Very interesting. But I’m a, I can’t spell. And I thought it would be about, you know —
Other: Dyslexic.
VC: Anyway, I managed through. I took a dictionary with me.
JS: Good. Good. What, what type of aircraft was it you were mostly working on?
VC: I worked on the bombers. Hurricanes. Hurricanes. Then a smaller one at first. You know, to get used to it. But mostly the four-engined ones.
Other: Lancasters and that.
VC: And when you saw the carriers fetching the bombs it’s a funny experience.
JS: How did you —
Other: [kettle hissing] Sorry, that’s making a noise.
[pause]
VC: Turn that off please.
Other: I didn’t realise it was that loud.
JS: No. That’s ok. Just have to go. You mentioned that you went to Germany. You went to Germany.
VC: Yes. That’s right.
JS: At the end of the war.
VC: Yeah.
JS: And you said that was a, in some ways a frightening experience.
VC: Yes.
JS: Because you were on your own.
VC: Yeah. Yes.
JS: How much, how much of the, the what you might say the damage to Germany did you see when you were there? Were you in cities? Or were you in —
VC: Yes. I was in Cologne. I managed to get to Cologne for the cathedral. There was quite a bit of damage and the people were a bit well naturally offish so, you didn’t go on your own. You had to go in pairs. So, and the boys did some dirty tricks to them. They used to do exchanging with cigarettes. As soon as they’d left they’d phone the gate and the cigarettes were taken off them. So, they did some dirty tricks but I suppose that’s a part of life. But that photo was taken in Germany when I was twenty five.
JS: So, how, how, how long were you in Germany before you were —
VC: I was trying to remember that.
Other: 1948?
VC: I should imagine it would be under a year. It wasn’t long because I didn’t sign on for long really. It was just to have the experience which was very good.
JS: But, but when you were in Germany you were doing the same role.
VC: Yes.
JS: That you had been doing in the UK.
VC: I was on some of their planes that were there which was also ours and a funny experience —
Other: We’ve got pictures there.
VC: How can I explain it? You weren’t welcomed. You weren’t welcomed. Naturally. Looked down their nose.
Other: So, by the time I was born—
JS: It must have been very difficult. Yes.
VC: Yes.
JS: To, to be there but —
VC: It was really, yes.
JS: An experience.
VC: I think that’s somehow I lost my equipment. I thought, you know shouldn’t think these things but you did. Anyway, turned up eventually after months. Nothing exciting really. Just an ordinary life.
JS: But it, it certainly sounds like for you it was a good experience.
VC: It was. A very good experience. Yes. Ah huh.
JS: Super.
VC: It taught me to be independent. Which is a good thing.
Other: Plus, you worked with the men so it was more superior wasn’t it? That’s how [unclear] do you know what I mean?
JS: No. It, it —
Other: You were doing a man’s job there.
JS: It sounds like you were a in many ways a forerunner to what many women do today.
VC: Yes.
Other: [unclear]
JS: You know and an opportunity to be, to be trade trained in a —
VC: Technical. Yeah. Yeah.
JS: Technical sphere. And then to go into a role that as you said you were doing the same job as the other male —
VC: Yes.
JS: Electricians from the squadron that were doing whatever. So, accommodation on RAF bases. So, what was it like? What was the accommodation that you stayed in like? Was it —
VC: Well, you were in sort of long tin huts with the fire in the middle and, I think ten each side. Yeah. There was about twenty of you and there was a special room for NCOs to share. And it was basically up in the morning, across the field, ablutions. General, you know, and it just depends on what you were doing whether you got for a meal at the time that was stated. If you didn’t you had to do without. Not that they were exciting but there was food so that was the main thing. You often got a treat but not very often but often but. Let’s say that it gave me an experience of life for the working class not the, not the officer’s that were waited hand and foot on by WAAFs. Which, and the food which they got was entirely different which natural, they were doing a different job.
JS: So, in your Nissen hut of twenty WAAFs what were the main roles that the others were doing?
VC: Well, there was the waitresses. There was the ones that cleaned. Officers. Then the plotters. So, you weren’t, you were mixed. You weren’t individual of what you were. Yes. And you met ladies. You met ordinary people. Working class people. You mixed and you really met some very interesting people.
JS: And if you went out socially what was the, the opportunity for going out socially and who would you normally have gone out with?
VC: There wasn’t much chance of going out socially. Occasionally shopping but not that you go out very much because you don’t have the money to to go out socially really. As I said we went to, I saw, “Gone with the Wind,” in Blackpool but I think that was the only time I ever went to a film. But it was a good film.
JS: So how did you spend your time when you weren’t working?
VC: Well, I did a lot of embroidery. We did a lot of chatting. And I never used to read a lot but I did. I have done lately. But it was mostly embroidery we used to do or knitting if you’d got the wool.
JS: That’s good. That’s been super. Thank you very much. I’ll just stop this.
[recording paused]
JS: Ok.
VC: This I must tell you. I was picked to be in Ralph, Squadron Leader Ralph Reader’s Gang Show and he did the show, “Air Force Through the Ages.” And it was produced and put in the Albert Hall in London and I was one of the crowd. [laugh] They dressed you up in the old style which, he was a man that had hundreds of men and women in a hangar. One word, silence. Not a word was spoken. He could hold a crowd and he was marvellous. It was a really good experience. It really was. That was one privilege I had. The next privilege I had, I had, I was picked to put in the parade end of the war parade in London and that was two really special occasions. But Ralph Reader was a marvellous man. He really was. The way he could control a crowd and the way he produced that show was marvellous. It really was. It was a great experience.
JS: What year was that? Do you remember?
VC: I can’t remember the year. It must have been towards the end of the war because it was, you know, through the ages. So, as I said, it was a marvellous experience.
Other: What age were you?
JS: That’s great. You said you took part in the Victory Parade.
VC: Yes.
JS: In London.
VC: Ah huh.
JS: How, how was that? How —
VC: That was a great experience. There was just so many WAAFs and so many of each Forces. There wasn’t a lot of us and marching was a great thing, it really was and the reception you got was great. It really was.
Other: Recognition.
JS: There would be very large crowds.
VC: Very large. Very noisy. But you were sort of in yourself. You can’t, you don’t see them. You just see the noise because you’re concentrating on your good marching and your arms are going proper. You had to aim, you know the arms like this. It was disciplined which was good. Very good. And I met some nice people too. Very interesting people. So that was my two main things that happened to me in the Forces.
JS: Very good. Magic. So, was there a party after the parade?
VC: Yes [laughs]
Other: And —
VC: There was. And there was a great after the show in the Albert Hall. A massive place. What an experience. And you had to dress. You didn’t know where you were there were so many dressing rooms, so many corridors but we got there. It really was good. So, I can’t say that I’ve gone through life without any experiences. Nice experiences.
JS: Indeed. That’s great.
VC: Ah huh.
JS: That’s super.
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 Vera Clachers
Creator
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James Sheach
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-03-28
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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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AClachersV180328, PClachersV1802
Conforms To
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Pending review
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Format
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00:27:47 audio recording
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Language
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eng
Description
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Vera Clachers volunteered for the WAAF for the experience and the adventure. She was selected for training as an electrician and was trained at RAF Melksham. She was posted to RAF North Coates. At first she was given the poorest jobs but then began doing the daily inspections on aircraft. When she was off duty she enjoyed embroidery and knitting. After the war she was posted to Germany where she found the local population to be suspicious of the RAF and they went around in pairs. Vera met her future husband in Germany and after demob they returned to the UK.
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Wiltshire
England--London
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
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Julie Williams
ground crew
ground personnel
RAF Melksham
RAF North Coates
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/663/8373/ACarringtonJ170207.2.mp3
501fa00cefda0a59bebe9de4fd707def
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
Carrington, Jane
Jane Waterhouse
J Carrington
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. An oral history interview with Jane Carrington nee Waterhouse (b. 1924 2043217 Women's Auxiliary Air Force) and four photographs. She served as a cook and as a drummer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Jane Carrington and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Carrington, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank, and today is the seventh of February two thousand and seventeen, and I'm in Henfield, Hayfield in Derbyshire, and talking to Jane Carrington about her experiences in the RAF during the war. So Jane, what are the first recollections you have of family life?
JC: We just lived, it wasn't a very particularly happy home for a start, but I don't want that broadcast all over the place.
CB: No. What did your father do?
JC: Well, he was a cotton spinner, which was a very special job in the cotton mills, because you had to work your way up to it, and there's only one spinner, you know, to a cotton mill.
CB: Oh.
JC: And of course the mill closed, that was Clough Mill.
NH: How old were you?
JC: How old, when he was working? I don't know.
NH: School?
CB: So, how many children were there in the family? You, and-?
JC: Three brothers and myself.
CB: Okay, and where were you in the, er, range?
JC: I'm the oldest.
CB: You are. Right. And are your brothers still around?
JC: Three of them are, yes.
CB: All three?
JC: One isn't.
CB: No. Right. So, you went to the local school?
JC: I did.
CB: And how long for?
JC: Until I was fourteen.
CB: Then what did you do?
JC: I was told to go out and find a job. And I landed up at the print works at Strines, and then they told me they didn't want me because (laughs) I didn't like doing the work and had no interest in it. And that was the end of that. I just went from pillar to post. I worked as a cleaning, I've done cleaning, where else did I work Nina?
CB: So, lots of different jobs?
JC: Lots of different, but nothing. Nothing.
NH: Did you work with Gladys then?
JC: (Unclear), with Gladys.
CB: So when the war started you were fifteen.
JC: Nineteen twenty four, I was born.
CB: Thirty nine the war started.
JC: I think I was sixteen.
CB: So you were sixteen. Okay.
JC: Sixteen.
CB: And what happened then?
JC: Do you mean where was I working then?
CB: Mm-hmm.
JC: Well, there was a lady, very old lady, Mrs Pearce, do you remember, Parkhall Crescent, I lived in there, I was supposed to be her companion, looking after her house and cooking for her.
CB: Oh right.
JC: And then of course the war was (slight pause) and I went of to join the WAAF. And she came to meet me, she picked me up at Cardington Camp, took to to Wythall to be demobbed, that lady. I couldn't stand her any more (laughs), I'd had a packet of it.
CB: What made you decide to join up?
JC: (Pause) Just unrest, I suppose, looking to, unsettled. In retrospect. You don't know, do you? When you're young you just, you haven't got the education, you haven't got this, you just-
CB: Okay. And when-
JC: When I came out of the WAAF, I'd worked in the catering office for a while, I got a job in accounts department at Ferodo, where I should have been all the time.
CB: Originally.
JC: And then I got transferred to the North London office at Kings Cross.
CB: Right. So when you were sixteen, seventeen, what made you join the RAF rather than join the Army or the Navy?
JC: Because it sounded more exciting.
CB: Mm-hmm. What else.
JC: I can't think of anything else.
NH: The colour.
JC: The colour, oh, the blue, yes, because as I already told you, everybody always said blue suited me.
CB: Mm-hmm. You like the outfit, did you?
JC: I hadn't mixed in very wonderful company as you know, it was just for me to like. Nothing wrong with people. They were nice people for the most part.
CB: So where did you join up?
JC: I went to enlist at Dover Street in Manchester, 'til they called me to (unclear) roster. Is me voice going?
CB: It's good, keep going.
JC: And there, oh, I went on the train from London Road, as I told you. Never having left the village. And the first to happen was they gave us a sack and a pile of straw, and that was our bed for a week, until they could find beds for us, we slept on the floor.
CB: So where was this?
JC: At Innsworth Lane.
CB: At Innsworth, right. Okay.
JC: Nineteen forty two.
CB: Mm-hmm. And as I say, you were eighteen then.
JC: I was. And then I went to the selection. We've only got vacancies for cooks and ACHGDs
CB: ACH?
JC: General Duties.
CB: Right.
JC: Well, what does that entail? Well anything, cleaning the toilets, sweeping the things, doing this that and the other. And I thought, well, I like making fairy cakes, I'll be a cook. There was a rude awakening for Jane! It was damned hard work.
CB: Was it?
JC: Mm. Six of us cooking for three or four thousand men.
CB: And what about the menu?
JC: I've got that for you. (rustle of paper).
CB: Ok, we'll look at that in a minute. But in general terms, what was the menu?
JC: Well, it's in the book, and I don't remember a lot until I read the book.
CB: Well, what I'm saying is, it's not fairy cakes, so what what were you feeding them?
JC: Oh no, well porridge and bacon, brown stew was a favourite, you might know about brown stew. When I read the books they come back to me.
CB: Yeah, ok. But in general terms, it was good nourishing-
JC: There was nothing wrong with it, nothing whatsoever.
CB: And how did the cooking system work? Because there were a lot of people to feed.
JC: Well, we worked on shifts. That's what you want to know, on shifts.
CB: Right.
JC: I could be walking at the front at Skegness with sand blasting in my face at three o' clock in the morning, for doing breakfast shift. And that shift, erm, clean the kitchen. That was awful, doing those floors, with caustic soda. That's – what are you laughing at? With deck brushes, little hard brushes. Then you squeegee'd it, and then you flip-flopped it. That was a load of flags or something to dry it off. The other shift, and I can't remember the time, I think (pause) we did the evening meal and the prep, see, I'm getting mixed up again.
CB: Keep going.
JC: We cooked the, you know, the dinner. That's it, we cleaned the floor, and then we cooked the lunch. No we didn't, we cooked the lunch first and cleaned the floor afterwards. That was the end of that shift.
CB: Right.
JC: Then the next shift would come on and we'd do preparation for the next day, and whatever. I can't remember much more about that. And that would go on until, oh, six, seven o' clock. Then we had to put the passion cocoa out, don't let that go on your thing, will you. That was big bucket fulls of cocoa, and the airmen who didn't want to go out, came in the billy with their mugs and would take the cocoa. At Skegness we had to go and sit on the beach with cocoa for the lifeboatmen, because they were going out to pick the airmen out of the water. That happened very often. There were great big Thermos flasks. Now I might get this all out of context. Chris, but these are the things that happened.
CB: That's alright. That's fine. I'm quite happy with any of the, any of the remarks. In the background we can just follow the sequence.
JC: Yes. Then I was taken out of there and put in the food factory. Where they made the bread.
CB: Where was that?
JC: Skeg.
CB: Still in Skegness? Yes.
JC: I was on so may stations. What did we do in the food factory? We made the bread, we made the stock pots, we rendered down the bones, and fat. All sorts of things.
CB: Did you keep the fat, in order to use it as dripping?
JC: Oh yes, the fat was sent to the soap factories.
CB: Okay.
JC: Outside each kitchen, from the taps and the sinks, were big sumps, grease traps. You had to go out and scoop it off. Horrible. One Christmas day I can remember the bells were ringing out over the base, and the wireless was on all day long. On Christmas day. And there were six of us, cleaning the grease traps. And we were singing. And we called ourselves Corporal Lombardini's Grease Trap Songsters. I can remember that (laughs). That's just one occasion.
CB: So, what was the main producer of grease, in the cooking?
JC: Oh from bones and fat of animals. I did butchering. I did cooking, butchery, field kitchen, (pause) I worked in the catering office, I worked on the ration wagons, I did practically everything. My last job was in the catering office.
CB: And in the catering office, what was your job there?
JC: Oh, that was interesting. Working out that each man got the right calories, you know, and all the rations. Which are all in this book (taps the book cover).
CB: I know, but the idea of this is so that people can hear what you've got to say, and then they can pick out bits from anything else.
JC: We didn't have to do vegetables, the ACHD's did that.
CB: What vegetable options were there?
JC: Oh, everything, that was available in those days.
CB: Was it normally grown locally, or did they-?
JC: Yes, well, in Lincolnshire, of course, the farmers used to bring stuff in. That weren't supplied by the, you know, the industry.
CB: Including turnips?
JC: Oh aye, plenty of turnips. Sacks of new potatoes, all sorts of things, I can't remember.
CB: Going back to Innsworth, when you went there and you had to lie on the beds, and er, what was the main activity there, were you being taught about the RAF, or, what were you doing?
JC: Oh yes, lectures every day.
CB: And what were they about?
JC: Oh, everything. They even told you how to have a bath. Even though I'd been washing in a tin bath in front of the fire for years. You had to learn how to do a bath. Um, all the general things.
CB: Yeah, but people don't know what those are, you see.
JC: Oh well, hygiene, and drill and discipline, venereal diseases, keep away from that sort of thing, um.
CB: Did they show you films on some things?
JC: No. It was only just lectures.
CB: And how long did that go on for?
JC: Just about six weeks. And the drill, of course.
CB: And after that, at the end of the six weeks, what did you do then?
JC: I was posted to the cookery school at Melksham, and I was there for I don't know how long. Some weeks?
CB: I'll stop it for a few- (noises off) (pause) Now, what I'm back on to , if I may, is the sequence of what happened. So you joined in Manchester, then you went to Innsworth, and because they were caught out without all the facilities thy had to give you bedding which was straw, in a bag actually. But what were the facilities like? So what they call ablutions is where you wash and clean, what were they like? What was it?
JC: Well, it was just a hut from the, you know, from our billet, a row of hand basins and a row of toilets with three quarter doors on. Concrete floors and duck boards. If they hadn't been burnt the night before to keep warm.
CB: Right.
JC: Is that what you wanted?
CB: Yeah, yeah. So what were the purpose of the duck boards?
JC: To keep you off the concrete floor. For comfort, if you please.
CB: Okay. And how many toilets and washbasins would there be in this block, roughly? Twenty?
JC: I don't think that many. Perhaps a dozen or so. Ten to twelve.
CB: You were on a barrack block of some kind, were you?
JC: Oh yeah.
CB: Was it wooden, or was it a concrete hut?
JC: Is was wooden huts.
CB: Okay. And how many in your hut, roughly?
JC: About eighteen, I would think. But on all other camps I did sleep in Nissan huts, on bunks.
CB: Yes. Okay, and was there an NCO in charge?
JC: Yes, in the cabin, at the front.
CB: And what rank would that NCO be?
JC: Corporal or Sergeant, on other ranks, you know.
CB: Okay. Right. So here we're talking about the Woman's Auxiliary Air Force, so all your reporting line was women? So the Corporal was a woman?
JC: Oh yes.
CB: And so it was segregated from the men?
JC: The men daren't come into the WAAF lines at all.
CB: So, they're in a separate part of the camp?
JC: Yes.
CB: Okay. And did you eat together?
JC: Well, in the kitchens you ate in the kitchen.
CB: I meant the WAAFs in general.
JC: We would (unclear) when we could. Because we were supplied from headquarters, because we were permanent staff on the camp, but we did better by just staying in the kitchen where we were.
CB: Right. I'm talking about the training, so in the training area, in this first, while you were at Innsworth-
JC: I wasn't trained cook there.
CB: I know, but in that training-
JC: Oh yes, yes, all the recruits ate together.
CB: And they were separated, you were separated from the men.
JC: Don't remember any men there at all.
CB: Right. Okay. And then at the end, you then went, you said, to cookery school at Melksham. So what happened there?
JC: We were taught our drill there, you know.
CB: At Innsworth? Okay. How did you get on with drill?
JC: I think I marched more than any other WAAF in the RAF.
CB: Oh. Why was that?
JC: Shall I show him why? (rustle of paper).
CB: I'll have a look in a minute.
JC: (Loud rustling) I'd rather you saw that.
CB: Okay, we'll stop. (Noise of tape machine being turned off)
CB: So you were saying you did more marching. That was because, what did you do? (Pause) You did more marching at Innsworth because of -.
JC: No I didn't, that was where I was taught to march. But we'll go back to that when you round to it.
CB: Oh, okay. That's fine.
JC: Because I could march, I was chosen to do that.
CB: Do do what? What was that? What was it called.
JC: It was Group Captain Innsworth Personal Band.
CB: Right. So that's really important, because these, some of these organisations had more activities than others. I'll stop it.
JC: Even though I shouldn't have done it.
CB: So the Group Captain at Innsworth, what was he?
JC: No, it wasn't at Innsworth. This is all out of context now, see. I was at Melksham.
CB: OK, at Melksham.
JC: I worked about twelve or eighteen months in the kitchens.
CB: At Melksham, so where's that
JC: No. That was the School of Cookery, Melksham.
CB: Right. Yes, so lets go to the school of cookery. What happened then?
JC: And I was posted from there as an SACW (unclear) Two to Wilmslow. It was a PDC, Personnel Dispatch Centre, where they bought all the boys in who were to be sent overseas. Thousands of them. And they ring in my ears still. We had to give them their dry rations. They were trained there, and lectured, and all the rest of it. And two 'o clock, three 'o clock in the morning you could here them going down to the station (beats on the table simulating marching), off to Liverpool. How many came back? How many thousands did us WRAF cooks kiss goodnight to? Can you imagine?
CB: Well, I imagine this is the bit that we need to build in to this whole thing.
JC: When it comes to Remembrance Sunday I'd rather sit on my own, because I wonder how many of those boys never came back home. Nobody understands that, do they?
CB: No. That's why we're doing this on the tape.
JC: That was very -
CB: Emotional?
JC: Yes. In retrospect, not at the time.
CB: So, that's the interesting point, isn't it? So at the time, how did you handle the strain of that?
JC: Well, as well as we could. We did it. We had to do it, we did it. There was no argument about it. You did it. We just got on well together, and did it.
CB: And these were all Air Force people?
JC: Oh yes. They were all airmen. Eighteen, nineteen.
CB: And what was their attitude to what they were doing?
JC: Oh, they were upset weren't they? Some of them cried, some of them wanted to be big men.
CB: Had they been away from home before, or was it all new?
JC: No, most of them hadn't.
CB: Right. And did they know where they were going?
JC: I don't know. We WAAFs kept our mouths shut, and we weren't told what we didn't have to know.
CB: But they were being sent abroad, is what you are saying?
JC: Oh we knew they were going, and we knew what time they were going, but we were sworn to not tell anybody.
CB: This is important, yes. And do you know why they were moved, went in the night?
JC: Of course, secrecy. Down to Liverpool docks. We knew where they we going, but we only knew through NCOs and people who'd confide in us, of course. We weren't told officially. (Long pause). That was that.
CB: Good. How long where you there at Wilmslow?
JC: I'm just trying to think where I went from – I was moved a time or two to fill vacancies. One was up at Crannidge where some of the grounded crews were on rest, where I worked for a few weeks up there in a field kitchen. And Leslie Greenhouse was there. Do you remember me telling you about that (aside). (Pause) And I also went down to St Athan for a few weeks, where I fell in a boiler of boiling vegetable marrow (laughs). Yes.
CB: What was the effect of that?
JC: Well, the effect, the outcome of it was very amusing, actually. I was bandaged from here to here and put in sick bay, and prior to that hams had been missing. Nobody knew where the hams were going. But Jane's sat up in bed in the sick bay, and where the food was kept one of the civilian men, workers on the camp, was going through with a bucket, pinching the ham that was hung into the bucket. (laughs) So I did a bit of detective work there.
CB: So he caught in the end, did he?
JC: Oh yes. That's funny.
CB: Yes. Absolutely.
JC: Richard Murdoch was on that camp.
CB: Was he?
JC: Then I was sent back to Wilmslow. And I worked in the catering office then, this time at Wilmslow. Next door to the office where Ivor Moreton and Dave Kaye, have you heard of those? And two pianos, do you remember them? Busy Fingers. They were two airmen.
CB: And what were they doing?
JC: They were working for BBC in Air Force Blue. And pinching my fire! On a shovel, and into their stove. We had fun, as well.
CB: So what was their actual job?
JC: I think they must have been AGCs, I couldn't think anything else. But also at two camps, Wilmslow and Skegness, was Stanley Tudor who played the organ at the Gaumont in Manchester. And he was always missing. You could hear him on the radio, and he was sweeping out at the NAAFI.
CB: And he was a well known organist?
JC: Oh yes. You've heard of him?
CB: No. It's just what you said, only what you said. So, you went back -
JC: That's where the Lincolnshire bit comes in.
CB: You went back to Linc-, Wilmslow, then you went to Skegness.
JC: Yes.
CB: And what was happening at Skegness, what was it?
JC: Again, recruiting, technical training, command. You know Skegness was taken over by the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force.
CB: Right.
JC: All the infantry were in Skegness, the RAF was at Skegness, and the Navy was up at Butlin's. You know about that?
CB: No.
JC: HMS Royal Arthur. Lord HaHa, what was he called, Lord Haw Haw, he said they'd sunk it. And it was Butlin's camp at Skegness. All this is quite true, you know. And that was where I joined this band.
CB: Yes. Right. So,-
JC: He wanted some WAAFs in it, he thought WAAFs should be in it.
CB: Right, but at Skegness, were you -
JC: I was working at the Imperial.
CB: Yes, but were they Air Force people only?
JC: Oh, no. The Infantry were up at the South.
CB: No. Where you were cooking, were you cooking just for the RAF? Or were you cooking -
JC: Oh yes, only for the RAF. You didn't cook for anybody else.
CB: Right. OK.
JC: The Army cooked for themselves. They were a different thing altogether.
CB: So, where were you in the, what hotel were you in?
JC: The South Parade Hotel. I can remember that. Next door (laughs) dare I tell him this one? Every morning, well not every morning, a WAAF had to go out with one of the SB's to do the early calls, to people on early duty. It was pitch black, you know, very early in the morning. I wouldn't sit on the cross bar of these bikes, because I couldn't do it, but one day, in the dark, I went into the wrong mess, didn't I? I'm going up the stairs shouting, 'come on, wakey, wakey, rise and shine', all the rest of it, opened the doors and there were all brown boots, I was in the Army officer's bedroom (laughs). I went downstairs about two at a time. Shall I tell you what I said to the SB, I said, 'hang on to that cross bar, and peddle like bloody hell', I said, 'get me out of this'. And he never reported it. Now he was a decent man, wasn't he? He realised what had gone wrong. I saw this row of brown boots (chuckles). There were a lot of funny experiences like that.
CB: That's it, What else?
JC: At Skegness, Group Captain Insall came in, he'd had this band with him at Padgate.
CB: So what was his name? Group Captain -
JC: Group Captain Insall. His name's there.
CB: Yes. And he was a VC?
JC: He got a Military Cross in the Army, lost his arm. You've heard about it?
CB: A Military Cross in the Army? Go on.
JC: I don't know how he got the VC, but he was a pilot, of course. And that's how I came to be there. He called me the Yorkshire girl, I'm not a Yorkie, but he always referred to me as the Yorkshire girl. I think he did it to annoy me.
CB: Right, right. He was close. Yes. Ok. So, he was commanding the -
JC: The whole issue.
CB: The whole Air Force issue?
JC: No, not the whole Air Force, just the personnel in Skegness, the (unclear) camps there.
CB: Right. And so what did he want? (Pause) He wanted his own band, yeah? So how did you get in to be a member of his band?
JC: I don't know, think they asked us to go and volunteer. Several of us went along.
CB: But was that because you'd done music before you joined the RAF?
JC: No, I don't know anything about music, not even now.
CB: So what were you playing, in the band?
JC: A drum.
CB: Right. How did you learn how to play the drum?
JC: Oh, little wooden things with rubber, you know? Can you imagine? About that big with a rubber circle.
CB: To learn. Who taught you?
JC: This fellow here.
CB: He was the band master, was he?
JC: No, he was the drum. The Leading Tipper. The Pipe Major was the one stood next to Captain Insall, that's Sergeant Watkinshaw. They were bagpipes, makes it even worse.
CB: So you enjoyed that, did you?
JC: Yes. It got me out the kitchen. Many times. We used to play in Bedford. You know, they had Wings For Victory week and what was the one to get money for warships? There's one in the council offices here (pause) oh, dear.
CB: So they ran fund raise events for the war.
JC: Yes, they used to have the parades in Bedford because the Americans were there. Betty married one.
CB: So how did you meet your American?
JC: How did I? I didn't marry an American. I wouldn't have ought to do with them. (whispers) Don't tell Betty.
CB: Ah, Betty married one.
JC: I just, I was frightened of them, actually.
CB: So he went to a number of these events himself, and took his band with him, is that what it was?
JC: No he didn't. He -
CB: He just sent the band.
JC: Whan he was moved from Skegness, Captain Insall, Group Captain Insall, he was taken to Cardington camp, sent to Cardington camp, and he took every member what's on this picture with him, was posted to Cardington camp.
CB: Right. So when was that? Roughly. You'd been at Skegness for a while.
JC: Yes, quite a long time. (pause) I came out in forty six didn't I, so will be end of forty four.
CB: OK. So you moved to Cardington yourself.
JC: That's right. And I was demobbed from Cardington.
CB: And what did you do at Cardington?
JC: I worked in the catering office, I worked on the bread wagon, I worked on the wet ration wagon, I used to go out every morning with two big trucks, two old civilian drivers, and I had six Italian or German prisoners.
CB: POW's. Yes.
JC: I used to go up to Turvey, to collect the rations, you know, sort them in, sort them out when I got back. And there was a Captain from your lot there. Nichola Woods. Don't know if he's still alive. He maybe.
CB: What's his name?
JC: I can't remember. He had a great big moustache like Jimmy Edwards. And I used to ask for cigarettes for the prisoners. 'If you'll come in the rum store and give me a kiss, I'll give you some cigarettes'. (Laughs) So I went in that rum store, and I gave them some cigarettes. They weren't all bad lads, you know.
CB: So you went out in the trucks to get the local produce.
JC: I went out out, yes, every morning, with two big trucks. Which supplied the whole of the camp. Which had five wings, Cardington.
CB: So what was happening at Cardington?
JC: Technical training. Oh, another interesting thing that happened there, when they liberated Holland, all the Dutch boys came to Cardington to be trained in the RAF. That was quite a, well, it was different. We couldn't understand each other at all. And they planted marigolds all over Cardington camp, it was one mass of orange marigolds. If that's of any interest to anybody, which I don't suppose it is.
CB: Well it is. It is, because it's the significant point about, it's their colour, isn't it, of Holland?
JC: There are two Dutch boys here on this photograph.
CB: It's called, the Royalty, is called the House of Orange, isn't it?
JC: It is, yes. And, oh, I know what. That Queen Willomena, I've got that photograph at home. She came to the camp to decorate two of her pilots. And she spoke to me.
CB: Did she?
JC: Yes. And I couldn't tell what she said, but her interpreter said that she said, 'how do you keep up with these men with your little legs?' (chuckles) That's all I know.
CB: Amazing. Yes. And what else, did you, were you demobbed from Cardington?
JC: I was demobbed from Cardington, at Withall in Birmingham.
CB: Right.(Pause)
JC: I'm sure none of this stuff's of any use to you whatsoever.
CB: It's all vital. Just going back.
JC: I told you I'd never done anything interesting.
CB: Going back to the earlier stages, the reason for having this is because people today have no idea what happened in those days
JC: They don't know who we were.
CB: They don't. They don't even know war. So, when you went to Melksham to train for catering; what happened there? What did they do?
JC: Well, lectures, that's where I did butchery there.
CB: So they taught you butchery. What else did they teach you?
JC: Cookery.
CB: And how did they do that?
JC: It was just like going to school, actually, (unclear), you know
CB: Because the military kitchens catered for lots of people, their equipment was a bit different from being at home.
JC: Ooo, two and three thousand we catered, I have catered up to four thousand at the height of the war.
CB: Right. So what was the equipment like, to be able to do that?
JC: Well, there were big boilers. Have you not seen them, you must have seen them. I took (unclear) of that book with all the pictures in, didn't I? Picture of Lady (unclear) and the WAAF Assoiciation. Massive big boilers.
CB: Right. Big ovens, were there?
JC: Oh yes, big ovens. See, that would be the kitchen, and here was the stoker, and here were steamers, I can see the kitchen, there were six boilers, and there some friers, and there the servers, the NCO servers.
CB: And were they running on gas or coal?
JC: No, they were on coal.
CB: Right. So the stokers were putting coal into them.
JC: Yeah, all night along he was there, it was kept going all the time. Supplied the hot water and the boilers and whatever, the ovens. Hard work.
CB: Yeah. And washing up? How was that handled?
JC: That was done by the SHDD's, and they had washing up machines of a kind, great big, with water coming down, they'd tray them up and put them in thingeys.
CB: So, you did butchering, you did cookery
JC: Field cookery.
CB: Field cookery, so what was the technique for field cookery?
JC: At Skegness I used to go up with them, when it was my turn to do that, to Gibralter Point, where there was a shooting range. And two used to go up there, and you had to build a kitchen with biscuit tins filled with sand, make your own oven (coughs), and cook a meal. For the boys that were up there doing rifle training.
CB: So you filled the tins with sand to make the sides. What did you put on top?
JC: Ee gum, I can't remember that that.
CB: Big slab of steel, was it?
JC: Oh no, nothing sealed it. Oh, you mean for the fire.
CB: For the cooking on the top.
JC: I suppose it was grids, grills. I can't remember every detail, you know.
CB: That's ok.
JC: The highlight of the day was the officer would let you use the rifle, so you could lie at side of him and fire the rifle (laughs).
CB: So you became good at shooting, did you?
JC: Only once. I hurt my shoulder, I didn't do it again. (chuckles) Just once.
CB: What would the menu normally be in the morning?
JC: Porridge. Maybe a fried egg on fried bread, or bacon and tomato. It's all there, in that book.
CB: Good. OK. Then for lunch, what did people have there?
JC: It's all there in that book.
CB: Yeah, but what was it?
JC: A lot of brown stew. We did roast beef, you know, and all the rest of it. And pies, we made pies. They were big pies that were cut up, you know.
CB: And what did the vegetables?
JC: I was just telling Nina, there were big troughs, as big as this.
CB: So maybe three or four feet wide.
JC: Five or six of us, maybe more, up, on our knees, making pastry. Rubbing in the fat into the flour.
CB: And was this on large wooden blocks, that you were making the pastry?
JC: It was concrete floors.
CB: Oh, you made it directly on the concrete floor.
JC: No, they were big troughs, big wooden troughs.
CB: But when you made the pastry?
JC: Oh no. Roll it. To roll it we had tables, and bits. (Aside) Thanks Neil, I'm glad you came.
CB: And then put it into the troughs. Yeah. Ok.
JC: No, you took it out of the troughs into a Hobart mixer where you mix- can you make pastry, by the way?
CB: I'll try later.
JC: You put water in to make it into pastry, and then you rolled it out into these big square tins.
CB: And then te food was in, er, various troughs, but how was it dispensed to the troops? They had to
JC: Oh, sorry, sorry. Yes. Well it went into a servery. Hot plates. You must have seen those, surely. You must have used one of those. With big cupboards.
CB: So there were coal fires underneath?
JC: And then someone, one of the NCO's, would shout 'servery', and everyone had to go and make themselves look respectable. To make sure your hair was tied up in the turban, your hands were clean, and you had to show that your hands were clean. And then we had to, whatever, you know, if you were doing potatoes, you did potatoes. You slid it off with a knife.
CB: Did you give them a choice, or did they have what you gave them?
JC: No, they got what they were given.
CB: And after the main course, they had a pudding?
JC: A sweet, yes.
CB: What did they have for that?
JC: Rice pudding, we made rice puddings, Manchester Tart was a favourite, that was back to pastry. With the jam and the custard. There were various things, don't ask me to remember.
CB: Wholesome things, for people that were energetic?
JC: Pardon.
CB: Wholesome. Food.
JC: There was nothing wrong with it whatsoever.
CB: Exactly. And ten for their evening meal. What did they get for that?
JC: Well, I can't remember that. I know, I know, pease pudding and savaloy, that was one. Another was a herring, they'd get a herring. I can see know, we had a big tub at the side, chopping the heads off the herrings. You get used to it, you know. You can get to it.
CB: At Skegness -
JC: Oh, Spam sandwiches. Spam in a sandwich was one. Beans, baked beans. They all came from America, of course.
CB: And because you were on the coast at Skegness, did you get a lot of fish? Or nothing to do with that?
JC: No. There was no fish at Skegness in those days.
CB: Was there fish normally on the menu?
JC: Well, there was Grimsby, I don't remember fish actually, no. Only herrings, that's all (unclear)
CB: Ok. That's for the airmen, did you do cooking in the Officer's Mess as well?
JC: No. (unclear)
CB: Did they have a different menu there, or was it all the same?
JC: Oh, yes. Of course. Of course.
CB: Did you know what the menu was?
JC: (pause) Oh, it's gone.
CB: That's where they had some cakes, was it?
JC: Oh, The Countess (pause), doesn't matter. She was at our WAAF Association, Diane, Countess of Ilchester, you've heard of her? She was a waitress in the Officer's Mess. She used to say, 'I was in charge of the salt and pepper'. (chuckles) She was nice, Diane. She would only be called Diane, you know. Mustn't refer to her as anything else. She was doing a far more menial job than I was doing.
CB: And proud of it.
JC: She was lovely. You know the story about (unclear) went in to the Observer? He'd come back from doing, what do they call it, well he'd been out on a raid, whatever, and he was having a bath, and the siren went, and this is absolutely true, it was printed in the newspaper at his death, and all the WAAF's were in their own air raid shelter, of course, because the sirens had gone, and he ran in naked, the Earl of Ilchester. And Diane was at the back, and she shouted. 'he's mine!'. And he married her. (Laughs) You ask Betty, she knows that story.
CB: So how did the liaison go with men in the Air Force, then? The relationships.
JC: Oh fine. You got some rough stuff, you know, didn't you. Some were a bit cheeky, went a bit too far. I never experienced anything really bad. One Corporal smacked my bottom one day as he walked past, and I picked up a dipper and smacked him round the face with it, and he said, 'You're on a charge'. (Laughs) That's true.
CB: And what happened?
JC: Nothing. He daren't, dare he? That was Corporal Lombardinerie, the pastry bloke. Hmm. He didn't do it again.
CB: We'll stop there for a mo.
CB: So clearly, in the catering system in London there were people who were fairly sophisticated chefs. Did the Air Force use these people to train you?
JC: They used them to work in the cook-house. They used them as cooks, we were all the same. There was two grades. There was a cook or a cook-butcher. One got a bit more money than the other, perhaps it was coppers.
CB: What did the cook-butcher do? That was different?
JC: They could say to you go on cutting meat up or whatever.
CB: Right. So it's knowing how to cut the meat that's the butchering, is it?
JC: Oh yes. We had to, what I couldn’t do, draw the animal, you know, like you see in the butcher's shops. I know how to buy a piece of meat, don't I?
CB: But the animals came in slaughtered?
JC: Oh yes.
CB: But not cut up?
JC: That's right.
CB: Soi that's why the cook-butcher was there, to convert that into the -
JC: We had a Polish butcher there, too. He was horrible.
CB: So did you, bearing in mind that the animal is whole when it arrives, did you do steaks as a result of that? Or chops?
JC: Well if they did that, I never saw any. I think they may have gone to the Officer's Mess.
CB: So the meat was mixed up was it?
JC: That's what I used to collect from Turvey, the wet rations. The dry rations were supplied by the NAAFI, that was the sugar, the flour, the salt. And all the, all the wet rations came from Royal Army Service Corps.
CB: Right. And they supplied the RAF because they dealt with everybody's catering. And what about the hierarchy? So you were working as a chef, effectively.
JC: Cook. They call them chefs now, they've gone all posh now.
CB: Cook, yes. So you were, what rank were you when you finished?
JC: When I finished? Well, I did two courses at Wilmslow for promotion to NCO, but if I'd gone I couldn't have stayed with the band, and I wanted to stay because I was enjoying my little bit.
CB: So what was your rank?
JC: LACW. But I did have a Good Conduct stripe, so now you know I'm (unclear)
CB: Right. That's really good.
JC: (Rustle of paper) There it is, see.
CB: I can see it on your picture.
JC: (Laughs) So I did behave myself a little bit. There's some they never found out about, or heard about, of course (chuckles).
CB: In the kitchen, what was the hierarchy there? There were Corporals, and/or Sergeants?
JC: Oh yes. There'd be so many ACW 2's, so many 1, LACW Corporal, Sergeant, Flight Sergeant, and Warrant Officer, because they were big kitchens, you know. But the Warn Officer would hv two or three kitchens, it wouldn't be confined to the one.
CB: How many people would be in a kitchen, roughly?
JC: You mean really working? Perhaps seven or eight. In the back, where the ACHG is, mostly men, doing the potatoes and all the wet stuff.
CB: The dangerous stuff with the knives.
JC: They were members of this band.
CB: Were they? Yep.
JC: Shall I tell him the other bit? There was a photographer at headquarters in Skeg, no, in Cardington. And this was the day Queen Willomena came to the camp. You can see all the top brass here. And this photographer thought I was a bit of alright. So he took my photograph, so like an idiot I walked into the potato room and said, 'who is the smartest member of this band? Well, I am.' And do you know what they did? They picked me up and dropped me in the potato thing, full of water and potatoes. (laughs)
CB: Not very nice. How did that effect the flavour?
JC: Haven't a clue. (laughs). But that's what happened.
CB: So you then had to put your uniform to the wash.
JC: That's right.
CB: I'm just going to stop again.
JC: Blimey, Charlie. I met my husband at the Royal Air Force Association in Edgware, at the Station Hotel.
CB: When was that?
NH: Was it after the war finished, Jane?
JB: Gosh, it must be nineteen forty nine, because Peter was born nineteen fifty, wasn't he?
CB: Ok, forty nine. And what were you doing there?
JB: I was working in the office at Ferrodo, Kings Cross. Because I couldn't settle back here. And I had a boyfriend who worked in the bank, the National Provincial, an airman. And I went down to be with him, originally. Went to the club because he'd lost all his training, he was apprentice aircrew (unclear), and that's where I met my first husband. And he was an Italian.
CB: What was his name?
JB: John Branner. And his father was the Managing Director of Gamba shoes, Soho, have you heard of them?
CB: I have. Yes. So he always wore good shoes.
JB: Do you know him?
CB: No.
JB: You don't know him, well I can carry on then. They were Roman Catholics, we did like, you think you've fallen in love, don't you, and you get married, and I wasn't good enough for his family.
CB: Because you weren't a Catholic.
JB: Yes. Straight on the head.
CB: And they wanted you to convert, did they?
JB: Unfortunately there was a child on the way, and he left me six weeks before Peter was born, with no home, and half a crown.
CB: Good god.
JB: And they fought me and fought me, and they never got anywhere. And it was all very sad. And it still is sad, isn't it?
CB: Yes.
JB: Then, when Peter was sixteen, his maintenance from that father, oh, I'll tell you what they did, they said he was only earning eight pounds a week, so they put him on the payroll, at the shop.
CB: This is John Branner?
JB: Yes. So they didn't have to pay maintenance. I had two pounds ten shillings a week. I rented a cottage here in this village for seven and sixpence a week, and I brought him up. When Peter was sixteen his maintenance stopped, but Peter was still at college in Buxton, and I needed money to keep him, fares, 'til he was eighteen years on. Well, it went on and on, they kept saying the case wasn't prepared, so my solicitor said, 'well, the thing to do Jane, is to apply to the National Assistance Board,' he said, 'and they will make you a payment, but you'll have to give it them back, because they've got to pay all the back money that is owing to you, obviously'. And, dare I tell him? (chuckles)
CB: Go on.
JB: The man that came stood on my doorstep, he had a suitcase in his hand, and he walked in and said, 'what a beautiful little home you've got here, I'd give anything to live here.' And that man proposed to me the week after.
CB: And his name was?
JC: John Carrington. And (pause), what was it he said?
NH: He'd been looking for you.
JC: He wanted to take me somewhere, I said, 'no', I said, 'I can't go anywhere, I've got a little job that I can't afford to lose.' There was a dentist in the village, and me and my friend who's deaf, and his wife still is, and I used to babysit their three children, look after them. I said I'd got to go. 'And where's this?' An I explained to him where, and all the rest of it. And at night o' clock that night there was a knock on the door (knocks), I opened the door, and there he was stood on the step. 'And what are you doing here,' I said. He said, 'I've come to tell you I've been looking for you for fifty years, and I'm never going to let you out of my sight again. And he never did.
CB: Fantastic.
JC: He was the most wonderful husband. He bought me the most expensive jewellery, (unclear). And he'd been a bachelor, and he'd also served in Burma. He was an Executive Officer in the Civil Service. He was General Christensen's wireless operator on his aeroplane. Three and a half years, wasn't he, in Burma. And life was sweet all at once. Shall I carry on?
CB: Yes, keep going, I want to hear it.
JC: And do you know, that son of mine has never spoken to me since. (long pause) He would walk past me in the street, wouldn't he. I gave him my all.
CB: Did he ever have any contact with his father?
JC: No, he went down. I took him three times down. The first time I took him Peter was three months old, I still had friends, I lived in Mill Hill, with friends, they were still friends. He walked out of the shop with me, and we had a coffee, and he said, 'I'm going to look for a flat, Jane.' I never heard from him again. So I took him again, but his father made sure he didn't see him. And Peter's been down on his own, and they've turned him away. I bought in iPad, that might amuse you at ninety odd, but I did.
CB: Very impressive.
JC: And I found out on that iPad his mother, who caused the trouble, died when she was sixty. He died in twenty three, been dead a long time, his father. And they must have left a terrific lot of money.
CB: Did John Branner marry again?
JC: And they had a house in St John's Wood, London, on erm, what's it called Barrack? Oh I don't know what it's called, well I do know, it'll come to me in a minute, when my mind, it's delayed action. And I found out on the iPad, it's been rented since his death for four thousand, four hundred and forty one pounds a month, so that house must be worth well over a million pounds, mustn't it? And Peter never got a penny. And I think that's wrong. Whatever they thought about me should not effect Peter.
CB: No. What happened to Peter?
JC: Well, I don't know what's happening, Nina knows more about him than me, she lives next to him, don't you?
CB: But he's local, is he?
NH: He lives in Chapel. He's retired now, he was working at Swizzles, wasn't he? He was a foreman there, at the sweet factory.
CB Very distressing. Extraordinary.
JC: It's not good news.
CB: Did John Branner have any brothers or sisters?
JC: No.
CB: Right. And did he re-marry after divorcing you?
JC: No. But, shall I tell you more? It's nought to do with this thing.
CB: No, but it is because it's part of your life.
JC: It isn't my life, it's his life. I found out from my iPad he's living with a Mary (aside) what was her other name?
NH: I don't know, I can't remember.
JC: Tommy Cooper's mistress, whose husband was a composer. They're all in the theatrical. Mary what? Kay! Mary Kay, K-A-Y, Kay. I found out all this on my computer, I mean the iPad.
CB: Amazing. How old was John Carrington when he died?
JC: He was born in nineteen twenty three, and he died in two thousand and three. Eighty, was he, eighty one, eighty two. He was an airman. And I think they took advantage because his father was reporting to the police station every week.
CB: John Carrington?
JC: John Carr-, John Branner's father. My first father in law. And he goes along, and he couldn't have a commission because his father's, do you get the message? So do you know what job they gave him? Bomb loader. I thought that was very pointed. I don't think he should have been, I don't think he was deserving of that. Because he was British, a British subject. He was born, I think on Wardour Street. There you are, that's nothing to do with the -
CB: Well , it's part of your life isn't it? John Carrington died in two thousand and three?
JC: Yes.
NH: No, you're getting mixed up.
CB: I'm going to stop this.
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 Jane Carrington
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-02-07
Format
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00:57:06 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ACarringtonJ170207
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.
Description
An account of the resource
Jane Carrington joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in 1942 at the age of 18. She served as a cook, and volunteered to join the band as a drummer. She discusses her time in the kitchens, the menus and the equipment they used.
Contributor
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Peter Adams
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Bedfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Wiltshire
entertainment
ground personnel
Military Cross
military living conditions
military service conditions
RAF Cardington
RAF Melksham
RAF Skegness
sanitation
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
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
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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
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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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Ward, EM
Transcribed audio recording
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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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWardM151214
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
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/151/1580/PGildersleveG1601.1.jpg
962e75a62a1d0544811bf754c89d96c6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/151/1580/AGildersleveG160905.1.mp3
92b3c008a57715600343bf1fbef3cd7c
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
Gildersleve, Gladys
G Gildersleve
Paul Gildersleve
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. The collections consists of one oral history interview and two photographs all related to Gladys Gildersleve (b. 1924; 2030715 Royal Air Force). She began her training as a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force member at RAF Morecambe. Her first posting was to barrage balloons at Swansea Docks. Gladys eventually re-mustered as an instrument checker and was based at a number of bases including RAF Shenington. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Paul and Gladys Gildersleve and catalogued by IBCC staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-09-05
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gildersleve
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
PJ: My name is Pete Jones. I am interviewing Gladys Gildersleve who was in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. Other people attending are Sandra Jones and her son Paul Gildersleve. It is the 5th of September 2016 and we are in Gladys’ home in Middleton Cheney, Oxfordshire. Thank you Gladys for agreeing to be interviewed for the IBCC. Gladys, tell me about your early years.
GG: Ok. It starts off before the war. I worked in a firm called GC Laboratories and two or three girls got together and said, ‘How about we go and join up?’ One girl wanted me to go in to the Land Army and I said ‘no because I didn’t like the smells.’ I couldn’t stand the smell. So the other girl said, ‘Well I’m going in the WAAF,’ and I said, ‘That sounds like a good idea,’ so we do that and we go to the place to join up. Take your particulars down. ‘You’re fine. You’ll hear from us, go back to work.’ A letter comes. You can’t go because your firm won’t release you. So that was upsetting. A few weeks later the letter came, ‘They’ve changed their minds. You can go.’ So we went up to this place in Edgeware and signed all the forms. They told us when to go, what to do, went back home, packed up, said goodbye to everybody, to work, home, went back ‘Oh it’s the wrong day. Sorry. You have to go home and come back again tomorrow.’ So tomorrow came and we did go and we got taken up to Bridgnorth where we had to collect all our gear, everything I had, coat, they provided underwear, stockings and shoes, everything and then we were joined by the side of a big open land and the mess site was across the other side and this big sergeant said, ‘Once you’ve got your stuff go across to the mess, get something to eat.’ So that’s what we did. We went across and then he shouted at us to ‘Stop!’ That we were walking on hallowed ground apparently. It was the parade ground and we didn’t know it was hallowed and we stood there frozen and then he shouted off, ‘Don’t you dare walk on that again. If I catch you you’ll be on a charge.’ That means we have got to pay.’ And he said ‘You’ve gone so far, carry on.’ Well would you go around if somebody said go across? Anyway, we got something to eat and we did walk all the way back to our billet. The next morning we got sent to Morecambe and it was August ‘42 and the holidaymakers there were having a whale of a time. They lined up along the promenade every morning and I realised why. To watch us learning to march and do our drill and this first day we were marching along and a women touched my arm, she said, ‘The others have gone the other way.’ They’d turned around and gone back and we didn’t hear and we were just [laughs] and I said, ‘Oh we’d better turn around,’ so we turned. The sergeant never came up to us and shouted. And then the next day it was gas capes and you had to fold them right. If you did you pulled the cord and it just dropped down over you but if you didn’t fold it right it didn’t come down and there’s two young girls, silly little things they were, they didn’t fold it right, they had an arm here, it was around their legs, of course we were all having hysterics instead, and we were supposed to be marching at the same time. Then we had to put the gas mask on, the big ones with the big pipe, everyone was blowing raspberries out the side and we’re laughing. The holidaymakers had a whale of a time. They must have, you know, you wouldn’t have known there was a war on at all and we had no lectures, nothing. So we didn’t know what it was all about. We thought it was a laugh you know and we really enjoyed it. And then we had all our injections and everything else and then we got told where we were going to go and you couldn’t choose. Well you could tell her what you wanted to do but they took no notice and they said me and this other girl we were going to be on the balloons. So they sent us to Swansea docks and we, our billet was between Swansea docks and Cardiff docks and the railway run right by the side of our billet so if they decided to bomb there we’d be right in the middle and it was on this great big expanse of land, all black tarmac and black fence up there, not a light to be seen and we got there about mid-day and somebody who’d been allocated as a cook or something was cooking lunch and the sergeant said, ‘Eat your lunch,’ she said, ‘And then we’ll sort out who is going to go on guard.’ She said to us, ‘You two can go two till four. So I thought oh we’d better hurry up and eat our lunch. ‘Not this afternoon,’ she said, ‘It’s tonight.’ The middle of the night. ‘Ooh. I can’t go out in in the middle, never been out in the middle of the night before.’ She said, ‘Well you’ve got to go. You’ve got to do it.’ So we went out and it was pitch black. You couldn’t see a thing. We had a little torch and it just shone a light. We huddled up in a corner and then we saw a light coming across, it was just going across, moving all over the place so we run and hid. We didn’t know we had to challenge them. So we were hiding and it was coming nearer and nearer then this woman called out, ‘Where’s the guard?’ ‘Oh my God, it’s the duty officer.’ This great big tall Italian officer as she bellowed at us. [laugh] ‘Where were you?’ ‘Well we were hiding.’ She said, ‘That’s not what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to challenge me.’ Well we didn’t know. We weren’t told. We were just told to go on guard. So, she let us off because it was our first time and then we had to look after the phone and every so often they would ring the phone and say, ‘Check the tension on the cable,’ so this night we went and I climbed up the winch, in the winch to check and I kept saying, ‘There’s nothing on it. It doesn’t say anything. It can’t be right’. So she come and had a look. No. It still said no pressure on it. So we said, ‘Well we’d better have a look at the balloon,’ and it wasn’t there. It had gone and I said, ‘Well somebody’s got to phone and tell them that the balloon’s gone,’ so she lost the toss so she had to tell them. And they said, ‘Never mind dear. We’ve lost a lot tonight. They’ll send a new one tomorrow.’ So the next day we had to pump this balloon up [laugh] and then they decided they’d finished with the balloons. Then I was allocated as an instrument repairer and went to Melksham. It was like being at school ‘cause you sat on long benches and there was all instruments there in pieces and you’d got to learn what the pieces were and where they went and you had exams at the end of each week and you could move up a class. One class two or class two then class one. I got a one at the end so that wasn’t too bad and then we got sent, I came up here to Edgehill from there. There sometime and then another place [unclear] Great Horwood, oh lots of villages all around here, everywhere around here and then we got moved on somewhere else and when the war finished they said we can all go home so we got on our bikes, rode up to Banbury, never got any money so you didn’t have a ticket so you all climbed on the train coming up to London and at one point they put the guard out on the platform, he managed to get back on, and just walked through saying, ‘Behind. Behind. The one behind had got the tickets,’ and you run then we got back and then you got the feeling they’d finished with you. They didn’t know what to do with you. Surplus to requirements. So we got shifted all over the country. We went up to Rutland, Chester and all places like that. As they started to demob you had to go by initial and it took a year for me to get demobbed and they sent you around and you just keep going, you might spend two weeks in one place, just get to know people and you move on and as one lot were moving out they were then moving the next lot in. Then you might end up when you got back and eventually you got out. You had to go to Birmingham then and then we were told we had to send all our gear back. Couldn’t keep anything of it. Your shoes, tights, the skirts, the tops, everything and yet the men got a suit given them for nothing. And that suit they could keep. All they wanted, we felt they wanted to get rid of us. And then we used to have fun when we were on the planes. We had to get in and check the, all their instruments, make sure they were working properly and check their oxygen. Make sure they were all full of oxygen and their bombsight, you had to check that to make sure it was accurate so they would hit the target. Nine times out of ten they didn’t of course and they always said it was our fault. Never pilot error. It was always our fault but it couldn’t be our fault because you wouldn’t dream of signing the book to say you’ve done it unless you’d done it right. But we used to have fun. The men thought it was fun. We were in there working away. Somebody would take the ladder away so you can’t get out. It’s too far to jump down so you wait till they let you out. Another time they started towing the plane. They towed the plane all the way on the other side while we’re still in it so we had to walk all the way back and our bikes weren’t there, they were on top of a Nissen hut so you had to get someone to get it down off the Nissen hut. There was four sections, A B C and D. We was in D over on that side. We had a Nissen hut for us, and the electricians and another group of people, I can’t quite remember who they were and right behind our billet was a five bar gate. You opened that gate in a country lane and it led right into the village of Shenington, [?] house, a big house on the corner and it was full of airmen and WAAF. She used to do jam sandwiches. She cooked breakfast. Where she got it all from we don’t know but we used to nip down there for a bite or one person would go and fetch the lot back and it was great. We had lots of fun, you know. I think that’s about as much as I can remember. Just going from place to place after that until it was time to come home. So whether or not that’ll satisfy you or not I don’t know. If it’s quite, not quite what you wanted to hear.
SJ: How did your parents react when —
GG: Not bothered. They weren’t bothered [laugh]
SJ: No.
GG: No. But when I read out, my twin sister oh she was a brrr, I told her what I was going to do and I said don’t tell anybody but when I got back everybody knew. ‘We know what you’ve done’ [laugh] and I felt as if I was guilty that I could’ve done it without telling anybody. No. They weren’t bothered.
SJ: No.
GG: But no, but it was good.
SJ: So did you have any superstitions or any lucky mascots?
GG: No. No. They weren’t, it was a training airfield. It wasn’t a combat area.
PJ: Operational.
GG: They were just training them but they sent them off on little bombing missions to, you know to learn what they’re doing.
PJ: Yeah.
GG: Because these cocky youngsters come in, think they’ve got smart uniform and got their wings on their shirt and they'd think they were so good and yet some of them were useless. So, but every time a plane came in we had to go out and check it all and if there was anything wrong with the — one of the instruments we used to have to take it out and take it down to our main office where there were people there that would either repair them or give us a new one to put in, so it was all backwards and forwards and there were so many things you forget what you did because it’s all in the back of your mind, it’s gone, and it’s just all the silly things you did. More the fun. It was hard at times and you were at a loose end. There wasn’t anything to do. Especially if you’re in these little towns and nothing going on and just used to get on with each other and make your own fun.
SJ: What did you do in the evenings then?
GG: Well that was just it. There was nothing to do so we’d either sit and chat in our billets or when we had the NAAFI you could go in there because it had reading rooms, games rooms, all sorts. Separate rooms that you could go and sit over there and there was always tea and coffee on the go, you’d help yourself. But they had, they had some shows come and if it was terrible they would all shout out, ‘More.’ You know, they want more but usually it was terrible. [laugh] But when the NAAFI place was built they used to have big bands come and have dances there and that was good. But Saturday nights well you see, we used to go down to Tysoe village and meet up with the soldiers from Cardington. They’d come across, meet in the Castle Pub, have a drink, then all go across to the village hall to a dance. That sort of thing. That was only once a week so the other times there wasn’t really a lot to do especially if you were in one of these out of the way places like down Swansea docks. We never went off the site. There was nowhere to go because you know it was all just bare ground. But we used to get lifts, when we were at Melksham we used to get a lift on anything that was going in to Southampton or somewhere like that. It could be a funeral car, a fire engine, a lorry. Whatever was going and they would stop and give you a lift, there were no buses or anything. And that’s about it. I don’t remember much more.
SJ: So how long were you in?
GG: Four years altogether.
SJ: Yeah.
GG: Eighteen when I went out and twenty two when I came out. I joined in the August ’42 and the war ended in August and I came out in August ’46. So everything was August. The thing is it took a year after the war before I could get demobbed and there was others behind me. My letter was H so you can imagine how many behind me there must have been. So, I don’t know if they did they same for the men or not. Whether they took them by alphabet but they did us but you got the feeling all the time they didn’t know what to do with you. They were trying to get rid of you. Each place you went they were trying to get rid of you as quick as they could, you know. Move you on. ‘Cause there was nothing for us to do. They were gradually taking down all the planes. They were coming out of use and there wasn’t really anything for us to do. It got a bit boring towards the end. You had to make your own fun you know or die of boredom, you know.
SJ: Yeah.
PJ: Yeah. The air balloons then. Were they filled with gas?
GG: The what?
PJ: You know the balloons then. Were they filled—
GG: Yeah.
PJ: With gas or —
GG: No it was a sort of air stuff. You had to pump stuff in to it.
PJ: Yeah.
GG: I don’t know quite what it was. Sometimes it came on a lorry already done which was a better way for us, but we still just had to still connect it to all the gadgets on the ground all the hooks and things. I had my thumb dislocated one time because the wind blows it and you can see the shape of my thumb now. That’s my war wound. Now I’ve got arthritis in that. Had to go to a medical place to have it seen to and they’d had no training these girls. They’d just gone into the Medical Corps and she strapped it up in a sort of elastic bandage so after two weeks it had to come off. Instead of cutting it as you should do she pulled it bit by bit, dislocated it again. So then she had to fetch the MO then. Panic. And he said, ‘These girls have had no training, disgusting. No training. Nothing.’ So he did it but did a different sort of bandage. He said, ‘When it’s time to come off I’ll see to it for you.’ So he did. You just cut down a strip. I kept saying, ‘You’re pulling it out. I can feel it going.’ So now as you see it’s bulging there and it’s twisted. I could claim damages I suppose [laughs] I’ve left it a bit late I think. [laughs]
PJ: Have you stayed in touch with any of your former colleagues or —
GG: No —
PJ: Over the years.
GG: We all went separate ways. I mean the girl I started off with on the balloons I didn’t see her again until I was moving on waiting to be demobbed and I — but by then she’d got her own group of friends there and you can’t just walk in then and that’s how it seemed to be. Depending on your initial you see. The girl I joined up with, I never ever saw her again. I don’t know where she went. [unclear] So really I was on my own right from the start. You get to know somebody and with them for quite some time and then they suddenly move you and you all go in different directions. Even though you’re doing the same job they send you to different places. One we— where was it, Sealand in Chester special [?] for the RAF and then the Poles came there. They, they even printed their own coupons and selling them. They got caught of course. But the way they ate, they used their fingers. They didn’t use knives and forks. So there was a lot of complaining and they moved them into their own section of the place then, oh put me right off them. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been saying that but [laughs] but when you get to my age you don’t care. If it’s there you’ve got to say it. And that’s about it I think. I can’t think of anything else unless you’ve got questions to ask.
SJ: What did you do when you came out of —
GG: I went back to my old job.
SJ: the WAAF.
GG: I went back to my old job. Because it was a reserved occupation they had to keep my job for me, but I changed my job before. I was making little sort of little anode, a piece of metal and you had to put it on a machine [unclear] flange each end that was part, I don’t know what it was part of but it was all —so I went into the office. Taught myself to type. That sort of thing. So I did better then. They had to give me a job so I got this job and I stayed there till I left to have the children and that was it. So that was very lucky really. Yeah. Yeah.
SJ: Anything that you want –
PG: Didn’t you keep in touch with a friend that used to send you Christmas cards or something every year?
GG: Oh I used to, oh Mabel. That’s right. She left — her boyfriend came home early when the war finished and they let her leave to go home to get married. I used to write her Christmas and birthdays. Then one year the card came back ‘unable to deliver’ and I never ever found out what that meant. I never heard from her again. I can’t understand — it sounds a funny thing to say. Could say gone away or something like that but unable to deliver. It sounds strange. That was up in Yorkshire. Then I thought oh perhaps they’d pulled these places down where she lived and she’s gone somewhere else but then her daughter knew me because she’d come to stay with me. I thought well if something happened she could have, she could have let me know. So often now it comes to me I wonder what did happen to her ‘cause I couldn’t understand the unable to deliver. And I checked the address, double-checked and it was the right address and everything, so what it meant I don’t know. So but that’s the only person that I did keep in touch with. I don’t know what happened to the others. Shame really because you get to know people and suddenly they’re gone but, there we are. Not to worry. Too late to worry isn’t it?
SJ: Did you have any experience of bombings?
GG: Pardon.
SJ: Did you have any experience of bombings —
GG: No.
SJ: Where you were stationed?
GG: No. Not in any of them. I think we might have been too far off their map where they wanted to bomb. Here it would be quite some way in. Away from London and the big things. I mean, we were an open target. Sometimes the Lancasters used to come in when they’d been on a raid suddenly they would come in so we would be loaded with Wellington bombers, Lancasters and everything. Yet you’d never see a plane. You used to stand and watch them go, the Lancasters go out on a trip. Count them going out then you’d count them coming back in you know and this horrible feeling of oh you know there’s quite a lot missing, but none of it got bombed around here. Amazing. Don’t well [?] understand it. None of the stations I went to really had anything. So really we didn’t know there was a war on. Some places they never had any, anything at all. So there we are.
PG: Didn’t you have an experience with a V1?
GG: Oh no that was when I came home on leave. Yeah. I came home on leave and I was standing on the corner of the road waiting for my bus. Got as far as Ealing Common waiting for my bus and this thing went over and suddenly it stopped. I didn’t know what it was and the people at the bus stop, they all run. Where they have gone? Somebody come out, ‘Quick. Quick in here.’ I said, ‘Why? What’s up?’ ‘You don’t know where that’s going to land.’ And all of a sudden boom! I thought oh my goodness me whatever is it? She said that’s a V1. A V1 bomber. I’d never heard anything like, had nothing at all down here, you know. It was a bit of a shock. While I was home I could hear a plane so I opened up the bedroom window hanging my head out and there was all Anderson shelters in the garden and this one plane came and he was shooting at every one as he went, you could hear the bullets going. My mother, ‘Shut the window.’ ‘Why? I’m watching the plane.’ And I thought then what miserable rotten devils to go, just to shoot, it would only be women and children in them and all they did going along and shooting at them which I thought was terrible. I mean where I lived we had more bombing than they had around here. Amazed at — and of course a lot of farmers, I think this house where we got all our food stuff they must have had their own farm where they picked their own food, made their own jam, that sort of thing. That’s how they would have been able to do it otherwise I don’t know how they would have got the coupons to get food, but all these airmen, I mean there were masses of us there and sometimes the place would be bulging at the seams with everybody that was in there, and I don’t expect that even one of them should be there. If there was an inspection there’d have been trouble.
SJ: Where was that again?
GG: That was up here. Edgehill. Or Shenington as they called it. They make out they don’t know what you mean when you say Edgehill because it’s Shenington [unclear] you know. I have to try and remember that it’s Shenington. But no just an old couple, a mother and daughter. They did very well. Everybody was very thankful that they were there, otherwise you couldn’t go off in to the mess just when you wanted to. You could only, when it was your lunchtime. That sort of thing. Some of the food was alright and some wasn’t alright [laughs] but there was always the NAAFI to buy somethings so you didn’t worry. We got by. Yes. Yeah.
SJ: Any other stories you can tell us?
GG: Not really, that I can think of [laughs].
PJ: How long were you working on the planes then? What period of time?
GG: Well, when did the balloons finish? I think they finished about ’43 I think. They weren’t long. Weren’t there all that long cause that’s the only place I went to, the balloons. No. So it would have been from then ’43 till ’46 when I came out? Two or three years. Three years in all.
SJ: When you said they lost some balloons –
GG: Yeah.
SJ: Did they just escape?
GG: Oh yes. It’s such a tension on it that the cable snaps and it just goes. A funny thing, I saw something on the telly the other day. A film about the V1 and it’s coming along, zooming along, and it cuts right through a balloon, and the balloon floats — Oh I said, ‘that must be my one.’ [laughs] Now my daughter’s just got a job working at a place and the name of the thing is printed on a balloon. You can see it flying in the town and she tells this manager at her first interview, ‘My mum lost a balloon during the war.’ He said, ‘I hope it doesn’t run in the family.’ [laugh] I said, ‘Fancy telling him.’ They all know about them. I’ve told them all these stories to the children, the grandchildren — and I have a laugh myself sometimes. I can see the funny side of it you know, and the youngsters today they wouldn’t believe that this old lady went doing these sort of things you know. Things that — never ask for a late pass. You’d just go out and when we came back from dances we used to ride our bikes halfway down, pick them put them on our shoulder, walk on the grass behind the guardroom and then get on again the other end and carry on cycling. That would be about midnight. We weren’t even supposed to be out. But [laugh] I think they must have known. They couldn’t possibly not know could they? That happened every week we used to do that, but as I say you remember all the fun bits and all the bad, boring bits are just gone. Just wiped from my mind. It was over seventy years ago. Seventy four years since I joined up. My God. How am I still here? [laugh] I don’t know many of us are left but people are living longer these days aren’t they? Yeah.
PG: Didn’t you have some friends, some girls who did parachute packing?
GG: Oh one girl, yes they all — one girl was a parachute packer and she volunteered to test her one out that she’d packed. Oh my God she was brave. She went up and she did do a jump with it. How lucky it opened up. [laugh] It could have been a disaster. I don’t think I could have done that. That was a responsibility wasn’t it? To do, to do that up. Well ours was just as bad. If our instruments were wrong, our altimeters and things like that they could have been up the creek but, it was like the bombsight because you have to lay down. It was like a thick Perspex there and a light on it and you got elongated cross. You’d got to make sure that lined up exactly otherwise they’d miss their target which they did anyway so I mean, so it didn’t matter but at least we knew it was right before they went so they couldn’t blame us. No. And then there’s — what was that they had on the wing? They called it a pitot-head. Comes out and it’s a long sort of tube thing. I can’t remember what that’s for but you had to make sure that it heated up alright so whether that was to help with frost on the wings or not I’m not sure.
PJ: No.
GG: I can’t remember now. No. I can’t think of anything else now. My brain’s wearing out or mine’s everyone’s tired it’s having a bit of a rest [laugh] is that good bad or indifferent? Is that what you wanted?
PJ: Well thank you Gladys for agreeing to be interviewed by the IBCC. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Gladys Gildersleve
Creator
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Pete Jones
Date
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2016-09-05
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00:28:42 audio recording
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eng
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Sound
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AGildersleveG160905
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Balloon Command
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Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
England--Lancashire
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Julie Williams
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Description
An account of the resource
Gladys Gildersleve was working for a laboratory when she decided to join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. She began her training at RAF Bridgenorth and at RAF Morecambe. Her first posting was to barrage balloons at Swansea Docks. She eventually re-mustered as an instrument checker and was based at a number of stations including RAF Shenington near Edgehill. She experienced a V-1 bomb when at home on leave. She also recounts an aircraft that strafed near her home.
demobilisation
ground personnel
military living conditions
military service conditions
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
Nissen hut
RAF Melksham
RAF Morecambe
RAF Shenington
strafing
V-1
V-weapon
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/142/1358/AYoungF160720.2.mp3
f72baecf6c3b846bc283a66409b06707
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Young, Fred
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview and a photograph of Fred Young DFM (1583354 Royal Air Force).
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Fred Young and catalogued by by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Young, F
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AS: Okay, we’ll start. This is Andrew Sadler interviewing Fred Young in his home in Offenham in Worcestershire on Wednesday, July 20th, 2016. Fred thank you very much for allowing me to interview on behalf of the Lincolnshire Bomber Command Archive this morning.
FY: Right.
AS: Can I start by asking you about your early life where you were born and when?
FY: Yes, I was born in Birmingham, I spent most of my life down in London, and I’ve been all round the place, continent, everywhere.
AS: Did you have, did you have any of your family involved in World War One, was your father for example?
FY: No my father wasn’t but his brothers were.
AS: And did have any bearing on you becoming going into the RAF in the Second World War.
FY: No, when the, when the war started in ’39 my Uncle Ern who I’ve got a photograph of in there was on The Somme. Anyway he lived in London he rushed over to my father and said, ‘Don’t ever let Freddie get in the army’. [laughs] So I went in the Air Force.
AS: So you volunteered for the Air Force?
FY: Oh yes, yeah VER yeah.
AS: And can you tell me about how you enlisted in the Air Force?
FY: Well I, I [sneezes] I was in a protected job at the time so the only thing I could get into to get into the services was air aircrew.
AS: What job were you in?
FY: I was an accountant in, in the railway up in Somers it’s in Birmingham anyway.
AS: And how old were you then?
FY: I was seventeen, I went in at seventeen put my age on a year and called up in ’41, up to Warrington. I, I was a frail person I couldn’t carry a kit bag to save my life and we had to march from Padigate Recruiting Centre in, in Warrington to the railway station I had a job carrying it so did many others because we weren’t used to manual work like that. And then, then after that was pure training I was posted to Blackpool to do foot slogging and that was I think it was eight weeks there and I stayed in Blackpool ‘cos I went down to Padgate the engineering side of the business and that’s where I learnt my trade in engineering. You can’t better the RAF for training you up, wonderful. We were there quite a long time and then suddenly they cleared Blackpool, because um they sealed Blackpool off because the army were going, had a free town, and they were going out to the Middle East to Al Conlek [?] So we had to get out and we went down to Melksham. We went to a camp in Melksham where the everyone had turned it down the Americans, the Army, the Navy ‘cos it was a Navy area, but the RAF accepted it. We were up to our ankles in water most of the time in the huts. And then we came back again to Blackpool and I remember it well because we were all on parade in the Blackpool football pitch in their stadium, and they were calling out the names of those who were going to go on, ‘cos we were all mixed up, and those who were going to the Far East, and there was quite a lot going to the Far East, but all those in aircrew training carried on down on to the engineering side and they moved down to South Wales to, to finish off aircraft. I, I was down there tuning in the engineering side ‘cos it was not only engines it was air frames, electrics and everything else, it was very good training area. And then we came, we had exams every week and I failed the electrics, I could never get my head round electrics, everything else I was perfect on so I had to drop out and have another week, and all my friends then all went on. I passed the next week now all my friends went on to Halifaxes and instinctually they were all shot down. I went on the Lancasters, so I carried on, on my training on the Lancasters there. That was quite a thing we were pretty well exhausted mentally after all that period of training, ‘cos we never had leave you were constant all the while and eventually they sent us to a training centre keep fit area and they put us through keep fit to get us back to normal if you like, yes. And that was good ‘cos it did got rid of all the fuzziness and then I was a flight engineer. So then we went to stations in 5 Group, am, am trying to remember where it was now, but we went to the, oh Winthorpe, we went to Winthorpe that’s right and there we picked up a crew now the crew had been together on Wellingtons most of the time and I joined them there. So it was getting to know each other and I was the youngest and obviously called “Youngster” it was my nickname right the way through service. So from there we, we did training on Stirlings, and then we did training on Lancasters. I found out that was the worst period of the time really, well I don’t know if you know Newark there’s a church there got a red light on the top because it’s quite near the main runway and we are doing a night final exam flying and we are going up to Hel, Heligoland, and we took off but we didn’t take off, we were going down the runway we had a flight lieutenant who’d just come from America he was an instructor in America, Pilot, and we were two thirds of the way down the runway and we were just going to lift off and he cut all the, all the switches so we crashed to the other end of the runway. We went in the nose, the nose went in the whole distance up to the cockpit. I don’t know what happened to him he was reported obviously, we got away with that one, which was a good sign. Now we had our problems with the navigator, on the next trip we found ourselves over Hull in an air raid at night when we should have been down in Devon, he’d taken reciprocal courses so he was dumped straight away and we got a new one, Hugh. Now Hugh was a British BOAC, Overseas Airways yeah on the Pacific Airline, and he was a navigator there, so he was a good navigator, because they didn’t have radar or anything and he navigated across the Pacific, and he was brilliant, anyway that was Hugh and he joined us. Off we went to 57 Squadron and East Kirkby, they just moved from Scampton where 617 were and they moved there. We then went to, we were there about a week, and then we were called up with as battle stations is on battle and they just put a notice up and there was all the names of the people who were going. And went to the briefing and it was Berlin, which is quite shaky for the first op but we did eleven of them so we got away with it. [laughs] But we were a good crew, we were all rehearsed we did practice an awful lot, we never used Christian names in the air we were always referred to navigator or bomb aimer or so on. And after, we did quite a few initially of the Berlin raids and then we went to Magdeburg. From Magdeburg we went to Hanover and we were working our way round Northern Europe I suppose. ‘Cos you know, I mean they probably told you, we did, you never went straight to a target you went all round the Baltic or down over Switzerland and up, and then we went down to Leipzig and we were held at Leipzig because the pathfinders hadn’t arrived they were shot down and the back-up hadn’t arrived so we were there twenty minutes going round and round Leipzig, and of course people were getting shot down by their fighters. [interference on recording] And then anyway we went through that okay and carried on, we were it was quite a flat tour really. And then we went to oh, trying to think, it was on the Baltic coast, and that was where we had a near mid-air collision. Normally you come out of the target area and you turn to port this chap turned to starboard and came straight at us, because of the angles he obviously climbed out of the way, we went the other way but we got his slipstream and he blew us down into a spin. We spun round going down from twenty three thousand feet and we finally pulled out at three thousand feet we were fighting it. The bomb aimer was complaining ‘cos he was, he was wedged onto the roof of his cabin at the font [laughs] with gravity holding him in there. But we were spinning down we got it straight, ‘cos engineers sat in the Lancaster were always sat next to him, and I, he always let me fly over the seas you know so obviously I’d get a feel of the aircraft, so we were fighting it together, I was on one side of the control column and he was pulling it back and I was pushing it forward like, and so eventually it came up. I asked the navigator what speed we were doing, he said, ‘You went off the clock I couldn’t tell’ [laughs] so we don’t know what it was.’ Anyway Hugh was navigator leader and when we got back to East Kirkby he went to navigation centre, checked all the logs and he found that it was one of our aircraft squadron that nearly hit us, and he of course the language was quite out of this world apparently, I don’t know but they didn’t speak to each other again much. [laughs] Because he, I mean he came out and you know could have caused two fatals, our own and his, and he could have gone down as well. But that was um, there we got, then we had the of course Nuremburg, this is where our navigator was brilliant he, he navigated there and he, there were two targets they’d built a dummy town, did you know that?
AS: No.
FY: They built another town on the other side and people were bombing that because it was the first one they were coming to, and Hugh said, ‘No you’re wrong’, there was a bit of a thing going backwards and forwards and in the end we, we accepted Hugh ‘cos he was unbelievable. We bombed the other one which was the target that was why we lost so many people, they were being shot down on the way across the coast going in and on the way back they were shooting them down over the aerodromes they didn’t count those. The, the JU88’s were coming at the back following the crew that the teams in and shooting them down on the approach. That was something that was kept quiet. But anyway we had that, we had, going, going back again to the, to Berlins they introduced the new flying boot, it was a boot that you could, you could cut the top off it had a knife inside, you cut the top off so you could walk if you got shot down, and the rear gunner always wanted to keep up to date with things and he had them you see, but when you got in your, well I call them his huge outfit, looks like the Pirelli man you know, all balled up. He forced his feet into the boot forgetting he hadn’t got the electrics in his boots because they were ordinary boots for other, other members. He got on the way to Berlin, he got frostbite in his feet and he was, he was crying out, but we said to the nav you know, ‘Where are we?’ and he said ‘We were two thirds from the target there’s no point in turning round and going back there.’ So we continued to the target and all the way back [coughs] and when we landed the medical team were waiting for us and they took him and I think he lost both feet all because he wanted those boots on. Then we got another rear gunner who, who was, his crew was shot down, he was ill and he and somebody else went in his place and they got shot down, so he was spare as they say so we had him, a bit disjointed this but I say as I am remembering it. We went through I say after Nuremburg we got back and we thought you know ninety-six aircraft that’s quite a lot of men and we well thought it’ll be an easy one next then and Mr. Butcher we called him and he sent us to Essen of all places which is in the middle of the Ruhr which is highly defended, so we thought that’s a good one you know you’ve sent us into the slaughterhouse and then back again into another one. So we had that and we went through that all right obviously ‘cos I’m here. We went down to Munich and the route took us down south and Hugh said, ‘Shall we go across Switzerland on the way in?’ ‘cos we aim there and come up and yeah so we did that unfortunately we were so, what’s the word, taken aback by the snow and the twinkling lights of the, of the chalets in the mountains in there a J88 came up and took a piece out of us [laughs] ‘cos we weren’t concentrating and then we found out that it happens to be the J88 training pupils there it was just lucky we had a pupil and not a, not a professional [laughs] otherwise he would have taken us out completely no doubt about it, but they came right across the top and opened the canon [?] and that woke us up again so then we went straight up to Munich. The other one is the Frankfurt we, we, we did Frankfurt run that wasn’t too bad really it’s just a long haul. And then we had the Navy in one day they came and they wanted the RAF to drop mines in the Baltic, and when they told us where it was it was up in Konigsberg right up on the Russian side. Apparently there was a lot of German transport and things in the bay in Konigsberg Bay, Dancing Bay, and they wanted us to mine across the whole lot to stop them getting out until the Navy got there, that was a twelve hour flight so we had overload tanks on in the fuselage and that was quite a long haul that, we did it we dropped all the mines on the drop there was only two squadrons on that there was 57 and 630 the rest of 5 Group weren’t in on it. Then finished the first tour on Maligny Camp, I don’t know if you’ve read anything about Maligny Camp, it’s where it was a big French camp, tank and the Germans took it over obviously and this is where they serviced all the tanks coming back from Russia. And they were building up a division there hundreds of tanks, and repairing them, preparing them for the second front, repel the second front. And we were called in to bomb, we had to bomb at five thousand feet because it was moonlight, we had to, it was, it was quite complicated action really. We were the first to bomb we bombed two minutes past midnight and we got through, unfortunately because 57 squadron went first the Yorkshire squadrons who followed us got caught with all the fighters and the Ack Ack so they took quite a hammering, crashing, but after the war when I went to Maligny the people there had no resentment to us because not one bomb fell outside of the camp. There was a lot of French people killed but they were killed through falling aircraft, and if those tanks, Panzers, had been released on the second front there wouldn’t have been one because it was an absolute division, hundreds, and we did wipe them out completely so, that was the last one of my first tour. And then I went on to training command instructor [coughs] which I found very worrying [coughs] [laughs] you’ve got to have a lot of nerve, a lot of nerve.
AS: So you did one tour and then went into training?
FY: Yeah, I went in as an instructor. And then I got, I said look, I was on Stirlings and Lancasters instructing, which was the pilots used to you know like circuits and bumps, the pilot, the instructor pilot he’d leave the aircraft and leave me with the other pilot so I was in charge sort of thing we did all sorts of funny things. We got I had a Stirling and I was in the second pilot’s seat [coughs] and we were coming in to land at night and he was way off and I kept kicking the rudder to get him back on to get the lights, the green lights, but what I was getting amber and red [coughing] which meant we were all over the place. When we landed and we were told to report because they obviously saw it from the control tower just switching back like this, and, and I had to report and tell them what I saw, made and they sent this pilot for a medical and he was colour blind, can you believe it? Colour blind he was from America, he’d been instructing in America, well being all lit up in America they didn’t have any problems with lights with colours, but anyway I don’t know what happened to him he disappeared. And it was getting, it was getting a bit dicey and then we had at Winthorpe this was, the two main runways at Winthorpe and the other aerodrome were parallel, on to each other, there were two aircraft two Stirlings on night fighter exercise and about twenty odd air gunners in each one, and the one aircraft was taking off and the other one got into trouble and landed on top of the other one so it was absolute mess. It’s in my book all this, and he said I rushed up to the station and the WAFS there, I just don’t understand the WAFS, the medical WAFS, they were going to each one and they’re all charred you know getting their documents off them, but I don’t know how they did it, I still don’t understand it because the smell was terrible, I mean it was like pork, horrible smell all these poor lads they were all young gunners, air gunners. So anyway just after that I was posted back on to ops, ‘cos I asked for it, and they put me on to 8 Group Pathfinders down at Oakington in Cambridgeshire. Now they, that was good I enjoyed that, second tour. I can’t, I was, first op on pathfinders you’re, you’re, you’re supporters you go in first and drop flares and then the master bomber would follow you in and pick the spots. Now we don’t carry a bomb aimer on that op, and the engineer does it I had to go down and I did that dropping on the target area so that it lit up then we went round we came round again and went through again, always went through the target twice, and then we came back. And then the next one we were visual markers VM, now that new bomb by visual on a bomb site, and you did so many of those if you were any good then they moved you up to primary visual, primary er you, you bombed by radar anyway, the navigator did the bombing, he, he pressed the buttons and everything and he had the target on his screen and that’s when we marked that, used to go through right the way round and then go through again and keep doing that until the target finished. Then we had nothing really happened after that of any consequence, I was at, I finished I was a warrant officer, I turned a commission, all commissioned crew except me I was a warrant officer, and I refused a commission, but when I went back to squadron when the war ended, well just a couple of days before the war ended, a station commander asked me to, would I fly with him and we were going down to Africa, so I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go down with you.’ So as an engineer to go down to Castel Benito like Tripoli so he was away two days I don’t know where he went and then we flew back. After that I was his engineer I always flew with the station commander, and he had put me in for a commission and I said, ‘No, I’m nearly demobbed, I shall, I shall be going out.’ I mean I’ve got to sign on you know, I mean I’d done five years I think it was like everything else you think oh I’ve got to get out of this now I’ve had enough, which I did. And I was demobbed, I went to Birmingham, back to Birmingham, incidentally I don’t like Birmingham [laughs] and I got an engineering job obviously ‘cos I’m an engineer, and they opened sales and I went into the sales side. The, one of the directors called me in, in Aston it was, called me in and he said, ‘We’re opening an office in London on sales, would you like to go back?’ I said, ‘Yes please.’ So I went back to London and while I was down there that’s when I got married to my wife and she was Birmingham so she had to make a change. She came down and I was mishmashing around, I hadn’t, mentally I didn’t know what I wanted really, I kept getting letters from the Air Ministry, I’ve still got them somewhere, asking me to go back in with the, with the rank I had left, and I, I, I said, I wrote back in the end saying no I don’t want to go back now I’m just getting used to being out. However, they sent me three letters from the Air Ministry wanting me back but on a short term you know, I wish I’d have taken it now obviously but I didn’t. The other one was I had applied to British Airways, British European Airways, yeah the European side [coughs] and they sent me forms which I filled in, they said, ‘Yes you’re what we want, you’ll have to come down and have an exam.’ Now you’ve got to bear in mind this is 1945 so I sent in the requisition and then they sent back and they said, ‘Well send us the cheque for seventy-six pound to pay for your exam’, I hadn’t got seven let along seventy-six pounds in those days so I had to turn it down because you know I mean there was no guarantee I was going to pass, ‘cos don’t know what the exams going to be like. So that was a game, ‘cos years later out with Hugh, the navigator, he was a British Airways navigator, a pilot, captain, and he said he always looked for me, he said ‘I was sure you were going to come in, sure’ he said, ‘But we never saw you.’ He emigrated to Nova Scotia, and I used to go over there ooh about two or three times a year and stay with him, my wife and I did, and we used to talk it out, we used to go into his den and go into all the various charts he’d got and yeah it was quite interesting. But anyway from there I was in engineering I didn’t know what I was any good at really apart from flying, and then I got a job with a sales company who got a contract to sell spring pressing, I hadn’t a clue on me, I went straight away to night school and checked it all out, it was a Yorkshire firm [coughs] and I found out that they were for some reason, they were halfway to bankruptcy. I used to go up there and it was a small factory and it clicked that was it I, I, I found my knew everything about spring pressing I could sell it and this, that, and the other and I stayed there, stayed there for forty odd years. Then I semi-retired, I did, I was in London based in London, I, I wouldn’t go to Yorkshire but I was based in London, and er, I used to go up there once a month for about a week or two days but then I was usually on the Continent flying out to the Continent, to the, to the French office, the German office and don’t forget there was East Germany then in those days, we had the Communists. I used to go down to Leipzig regularly a Communist area, Warsaw, I used to go all over the Eastern Bloc, it’s you get to know people, different types, I met a woman in a Keller in Berlin, East Berlin and on the, ‘cos you know they opened like a door, and we went in sitting down at the table and anyway she, she said in her English [unclear] and she said, ‘Oh I was from Berlin, I came from Berlin, West Berlin, I got stuck over here we should have never gone to war’, she said. [laughs] Which I thought was yeah, she said, ‘I said we’re all Saxons’, she said, ‘We’re Saxons.’ [laughs] So there wasn’t any animosity there at all. The same with Holland, we did food dropping in Holland, we had to mark the fields out where they were going to drop the food, so we were in first, we was on Pathfinders. The German Army Station there were all in the square all on parade, I can’t remember which one, which place it was now. Anyway we flew across there and our rear gunner said, ‘Can I have one burst?’ [laughs] ‘’Cos they were all lined up for me’, he said. [laughs] I said, ‘No we are on a peace, they’ve given us peace.’ So we followed on and then the light, the thing came on, [interference on recording] there was a chap on a bike and he was waving to us madly as we were coming towards him and of course the bomb doors opened with the marker which is like a bomb and he just fell off his bike you see he thought it was a bomb. Anyway we did all that properly and then we went down to the canals and there was a Dutch boat, you know sail boat and we went right down in front of him and slipstreamed and trailed all the way back [laughs] and they were shaking their fist at us, yeah that’s a bit of humour in it. That was, that was, that one it’s strange on the Second Front they left Holland they didn’t you know free Holland till later, because they flooded all the dykes had been opened, but they were starving [coughs], eating, they were eating rats and all sorts. So it was a mishmash really. So I say when I came out I went into engineering and from there when I semi-retired I moved to Ledbury. So I got a phone call from a competitor I, I used to deal with and he was a, he was the managing director of Solfis [?] and he’d retired and he said ‘I’ve got a company down in Sussex, now I’m gonna retire properly’ he said, ‘But my son’s going to take over, I want you to come down and look after him.’ I said, ‘No you know I’ve had enough.’ And he said, ‘I’ll give you “x” thousand pounds in cash’, and I did the main contract, he said, ‘Come down for six months.’ So I did I went down, I drove down from Ledbury every week and I, they made me a director there I finished up Solfis [?] as managing director and then I was there twenty years nearly. I was seventy when I retired from there, yeah. So you know, jolly good, I was I tell you I had a good life, you see I had my big arguments see with my wife it’s always money, the jobs you do but you don’t get paid for them, because I liked work I didn’t like money came secondary when a load of contracts came up I wasn’t bothered as long as we got the contracts and I signed it. And but that backfired on me when I was seventy you did sign a contract when you retire at seventy so I had to that was in April I remember that. So we, we’d already moved to Sussex from Ledbury so my wife wanted to go back to the Midlands and so we got up here. Now I’m not a gardener, I don’t like gardening, the only reason we had gardeners down in Sussex [background noise] and my wife loves sitting in the garden so I thought as long as we’ve got a green patch to sit in we’d be all right, so I got the stamp type of garden here, which is, even now I can’t look after it ‘cos I’m not interested in gardening doesn’t interest me one bit. [coughs] And from there I went in to Trevor, I met Trevor down the road, the British Legion, he was the chairman of the branch here and he got me involved in the British Legion. I did quite a lot in the British Legion here and then I went into County, I was County Treasurer, I was County Treasurer for about seven or eight years, and then my wife was very ill I just couldn’t spend the time going round to all the different branches and that. And so I retired from there but I kept up the branch here, but then again Trevor and I, he’s ninety on Thursday, we’re going to lunch on Thursday, he’s ninety, I’m ninety-two, he’s a youngster to me so we’re going to dinner. [laughs]
AS: So when you were offered a commission and you refused it that was because you’d have had to sign in to stay for a longer period?
FY: Yeah, yeah, oh yes. I mean you gotta sign in for a period, because then of course you got to remember people were being demobbed left, right and centre, you know particularly the officers side and they, they wanted a stopgap they wanted people in between for ten years just until they got the new people coming through.
AS: So when you did, you did one tour, am I right in thinking that if you did one tour you were then like exempt from doing any further combat?
FY: Oh yes, yes that was the end but I carried on.
AS: So why did you want to go back?
FY: Because I was nervous of being an instructor. [laughs]
AS: You thought that was more dangerous than being shot down by the Germans?
FY: Yes, yes definitely. [laughs] And, I, I thoroughly enjoyed it, I mean I wasn’t, I never, you know on Dresden people, I was talking about Dresden, they want to read the book on Dresden. It was the, it was the centre of the Nazi in Southern Germany, they had two concentration camps on the outskirts of Dresden, they had prisoner of war camps, they were manufacturing Messerschmitt parts for canopies in one instance. So there was quite a lot in Dresden, and though it was the near the end of the war but the Russians were knocking on the door and they wanted you know an easy way in which is what we had to do for them. But it’s, it’s I went to Chemnitz that night which is about oh a hundred miles north of Dresden and we bombed Chemnitz, no nobody said a word about that we were unopposed all the way [laughs] so not a word about that. There’s one or two like that we went to Beirut in Germany that was the only time I felt not sad. I had a South African captain pilot he was South African Army and he wanted to go do an op, so my, my pilot said, ‘Here take my place then you’ve got a team here you’re all right.’ So we were master bomber that night ‘cos the bomb aimer goes, er, there was six hundred aircraft, he called the first three hundred in, it was undefended we almost wiped it off the map, then he called the other three hundred, which he needn’t have done ‘cos we’d already done it, then you know I thought that was wrong, that was the only time I thought it was wrong, the rest of it I’d, I’d no pity. I mean on the first tour [coughs], I’m gonna use some bad language now, [laughs] on the first tour Smithy the pilot the moment I locked the wheels up he said, ‘Right you bastards here we come.’ And he always said that except for once and that was time we nearly crashed. [laughs] So he kept on saying it [laughs], the crew said, ‘You didn’t say it, you didn’t say it’ you see so we did, ‘cos we were only young [laughs], I mean I was twenty when I came out.
AS: So when you were flight engineer on the Lancaster what was your duties when the plane was up?
FY: Oh well I, responsible for everything really up front, the bomb sight, all the fuel make sure the fuel was being used correctly, the throttles right, you know rev counter, the whole bag of tricks really, the I mean the pilot was only a chauffeur [laughs] all he did was point it in the right direction and that’s it, that’s what the navigator used to say. [laughs] [coughs] And the bomb aimer usually was asleep I used to have to kick Alf and wake him up at the target he always used to nod off on the front nothing for him to see in the dark is there [laughs] till we got to the target. Yeah he was good the bomb aimer. But we, I thought I’d go in Transport Command and so I applied at the end of the war and I was sent up to York training but I wasn’t there long because the station commander sent for me to go back he wouldn’t, wouldn’t let me finish that course, laughs] ‘cos he wanted me to stay with him down down at Oakington but we’d moved upward by then. I think the only reason he liked me was because I used to run the football team and he always wanted to play football [laughs], yeah he was, I liked him he was nice.
AS: Did you say you trained on Halifaxes as well?
FY: No, I on Holtons [?], that was when I went to go on Transport Command, it was a Holton [?] they were a converted Halifax, but apart from that I was on Stirlings and Lancasters. I did a small tour on at the time rather on Manchesters which is a deathmell they was, twin engine Lancaster, that had terrible engines kept failing on people all sorts that’s when they dropped them and brought in the Lancaster with four engines yeah. Then it went on to Lincolns, never flew a Lincoln but I went on a course for Lincolns I never, I never flew one [coughs] it’s only a blown up Lancaster.
AS: And what was the chief advantage of the Lancaster?
FY: Oh its, its bomb bay, I mean the amount, we, we take to Berlin twenty thousand, twenty-three thousand pounds, a Mosquito would take four thousand pound bomber, the Americans would take three and a half thousand on a, on a Fortress, they didn’t carry much, they looked rather good on the films when you see all these but they were only five hundred pounders coming out. We had four thousand pound cookie, thousand pounders, we had banks of incendiaries, and sometimes we had two thousand pounders although one stuck it wouldn’t go we had to try and shake it off. It, it, to me it was, it was using the word it was a darling, it, it you were in love with it. It’s the only place if you go up to East Kirkby on their, their anniversary day when they have dinners, I’ve given those up now, but they, the Battle of Britain Lanc always came over and everybody there was taking photos and the men were crying, I was so moved it, it, it’s an aircraft you can’t explain. I mean it would fly on one engine you lose eight hundred feet a minute on one engine, it definitely fly on two I mean ‘cos we, we demonstrated that to America when the Americans came over the hierarchy wanted to go into a Lanc we took them up and he said this American whoever he was I don’t know who he was, and he said, ‘Will it fly on three?’, so we feathered one, ‘Fly on two’, so we feathered one, he said, ‘You can’t fly without an engine?’ I said, ‘No we’re losing eight hundred feet a minute so we better make up our minds about what you want to do next?’ [laughs] So we upped air and got them, got them all working again. But er yeah it was, there was always an amusing part was we used to have a lot of American aircraft land at East Kirkby and Oakington, mainly Oakington, and they were lost they wouldn’t know where the aerodrome was they got lost, there was Whirlwinds, Fortresses, all sorts really used to land there. We used to oh here we go again, but they used to always ask us to go to their aerodrome you see for a, for a drink yeah. So coming back from a daylight trip once and this Mustang pulled up alongside us and he flashed ‘Can I join you?’ And then we Morse Coded back to him ‘Yes’ and he followed us all the way to the UK, then he waggled his wings and he went away. And then we got a phone call to the mess asked us over to his place for a drink [laughs], he said he was completely lost [laughs] but it I mean they’d no navigation you know, it was a fighter with overload tanks. Are you all right?
Other: Yes I’m fine.
AS: So did you find it easy or difficult when you actually were demobbed, when you came back to civilian life?
FY: Yes.
AS: ‘Cos you said you were only twenty at that point.
FY: Yes difficult because you haven’t got a youth, my book is “Where Did My Youth Go?” it’s, it’s finished now it’s on sale. But it was the gap you came out, your suits were up here right, you’d grown so much, you couldn’t believe you’d grown so much. We were allowed after the second front we could have civilian clothes if we wanted so I sent for my suit I couldn’t get in to it, you don’t realise the difference between you know a seventeen year old and a twenty year old. But apart from that yes, it’s, it’s a muddled, muddled world, ‘cos the, quite an upheaval of course because of the you know Atlee was in power in those days, and then I’ve forgotten who followed him oh Churchill, and then somebody else followed him. But I know I’ve still got my passport when I used to go over to East Germany and all I could take was twenty-five pound, I always had to arrange with the German customer to pay for my hotel out there then I’d pay his hotel at this side when he came over. So like the Poles, just the same for the Poles from Warsaw, they used to come over every six months sign the contracts and I’d fly out to Warsaw and sign the contracts that side for the next six months, [coughs], we did an awful lot of business with them. The beauty of that was like East Germany and Poland in particular factories don’t order through people like us they go to a central purchasing bureau and they order the stuff from us, so the orders were absolutely huge without having to go round to the factories you see, we we, we spent two or three million pound each time we go over and we’d have to do that we’d have to go all round the different factories to get it but in Poland they did it themselves for you, it’s different now they’re all split up again now you see. The same in Berlin, East Berlin it was the same there, that was on the it was in a broken down old house on the second floor and the bottom part was derelict didn’t looked like it was going to stand, but on the next floor was the whole of purchasing for East, East Berlin, for East Germany. Amazing things that went on over the, you all thought we had a wonderful time travelling here, there and everywhere, but we didn’t. [laughs]
AS: What’s your feeling of the way the Bomber Command were treated and after the war?
FY: Terrible. Churchill put us on one side, I mean I was decorated, I got a DFM in that time, which was whitewashed you know, nobody, nobody bothered. That is why I think you see Bomber Command is so connected now and joined together because we were so badly abused, everybody else got, Churchill never mentioned Bomber Command once in his speeches, he mentioned the Army, the Navy, everybody except Bomber Command. ‘Cos he, he, he’s the one that sent us there, he got Harris, Air Marshall Harris to do these jobs, and then the moment we did the Dresden job [interference on recording] he pulled out, and yet he was the one who sent us to Dresden, Harris didn’t want to do it. If you read Harris’ book he said it was the worst decision he ever made.
AS: Yeah I have read it actually. Well thank you very much Fred, is there anything else that you want to add?
FY: Ah, memory now isn’t it [laughs] it’s thinking.
AS: Can you tell me about your book?
FY: Yeah, I mean it’s called “Where Did My Youth Go?” And it starts off before the war, not before the war when the war started, I think I was fourteen year old, I left school at fourteen. I was a messenger on ARP and I was a messenger all the way through during the Blitz in ’40 in 1940, we were bombed out there in London, we were told we had to find accommodation with relatives, of course all my father’s brothers and sisters they all lived in Birmingham so we got on to them and they found accommodation for my mother. We couldn’t go because we had to get, in those days you couldn’t change your job just like that you had to get permission from the Government, so we were waiting for that to come through so we couldn’t go up to Birmingham, and we were transferred to a company in the same situation as you. Well like I was on the railways at the time at St. Pancras in the accounts so naturally I was sent back to Moore Street Station [coughs] in Birmingham. So anyway we were, while we were waiting all this the air raids were still going off and my mother sent a telegram, ‘I’ve got a house, I’m trying to get furniture together’ ‘cos we lost all the furniture when we were bombed. Then we got, two days later we got another telegram saying, ‘Don’t come it’s been bombed.’ [laughs] So my mother was an absolute [unclear] she was, she made me go in the Air Force really, I mean I got my revenge there, but she, I, she was in a terrible state when we got there, her nerves, she was pale, oh terrible. Anyway then we got the Birmingham Blitz started when we got back, when we got there. And so I joined the the First Aid and Rescue Squad down in Walsall Heath. Went to the BSA and they were flooded you know all those people were killed in the floods with the bomb. We had the cinema where everybody was sitting there looking at the screen and they were all dead from the blast, all sorts of things that we dealt with on that. Birmingham took quite a hammering it did really, you know. I was, some of the lads there they rescue people, I mean they’d go into you know all sorts of situations and not think about the danger of it they’d do it. So that was, then obviously when the Blitz stopped, things didn’t get back to normal but you got back a bit more of your life you know. It’s you know that’s when it develops from there Moore Street, but I had carbuncles on my neck through no sleep because I was on rescue all night and in the day I was at work, never slept. That’s a lie I did sleep for you know about quarter of an hour or so but during the day I nod off but then you get called out yes, but that’s what kept you going. But it’s, it’s you know terrible and that was because I was run down, I mean the doctor obviously said that, he said, ‘You were absolutely wrung out there was nothing left, and that’s what your body’s doing it’s getting its own back on you’, I said, ‘Thanks very much.’ [laughs] But apart from that, as I say you can’t actually answer that, the question about the reaction after, now I can’t tell you that’s a difficult one really. I used to like dancing, I used to do a lot of dancing, ballroom dancing of course. I used to see all my relatives I’d never seen in Birmingham, meet them all. I had, oh yeah, I was at a wedding. Yeah my cousin down in London, Margaret, she married a Canadian airman, and I never got on with my aunt she always, always talked me down because her daughter was brilliant, and she was good, but I had it stuffed down my throat for about twenty years, I should think how good she was. Anyway it came to the situation where the wedding, and the chap who she married, the Canadian, brought his best man another Canadian and he kept calling me sir you see, and my aunt said, ‘No, no that’s Fred, Freddie, call him Freddie.’ So he said, ‘Oh can’t do that he’s an officer.’ So I got my own back on her, ’cos it took the wind out of her sails. [laughs].
AS: Right well we’ll switch the machine off then and then get you to sign the form if that’s all right.
FY: That’s okay yes. Was it two hours? Oh my.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Fred Young
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Andrew Sadler
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-07-20
Format
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01:07:42 audio recording
Language
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eng
Identifier
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AYoungF160720
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Publisher
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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.
Type
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Sound
Conforms To
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Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Fred Young volunteered for the Royal Air Force at seventeen and flew operations as a flight engineer with 57 Squadron from RAF East Kirkby. He recounts his experiences on several operations including Berlin, Magdeburg, Leipzig, Essen, Munich, Dresden, and Mailly le Camp. After his first tour he became an instructor before returning to operations, with 8 Group Pathfinders at RAF Oakington. After the war he returned to Birmingham and took up an engineering position before moving into sales and settling in London. He retired at 70 and returned to the Midlands taking up an active role in the British Legion, and writing a book “Where Did My Youth Go?” recounting his experiences during the war years.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
France--Mailly-le-Camp
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Essen
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Magdeburg
Germany--Munich
France
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jackie Simpson
5 Group
57 Squadron
8 Group
aircrew
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
demobilisation
Distinguished Flying Medal
flight engineer
Lancaster
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Melksham
RAF Oakington
RAF Padgate
RAF Winthorpe
Stirling
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/125/1253/PBaggJG1605-1.2.jpg
149760a3a475b26c03380740f844505b
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
Bagg, John
John Bagg
J G Bagg
Description
An account of the resource
12 items. An oral history interview with Leading Aircraftsman John Garrett Bagg (b.1920, 1475631 Royal Air Force) and 11 photographs. John Bagg trained as an instrument mechanic before re-mustering as photographer. He served at RAF Finningley, RAF Bircotes, RAF Whitchurch and RAF Sleap.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Bagg 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
2016-09-02
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.
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Initial training at RAF Melksham
Description
An account of the resource
60 personnel arranged in five five ranks, are standing, seated or crouched in front of an hangar hangar door with number 5 on it. John Baggs is in the front row, second from the right.
Additional information about this item has been kindly provided by the donor.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Wiltshire
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
PBaggJG1605-1
hangar
RAF Melksham
training