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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/221/3363/PCampbellKWP1601.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/221/3363/ACampbellKW160604.2.mp3
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Title
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Campbell, Keith William
Keith William Campbell
Keith W Campbell
Keith Campbell
K W Campbell
K Campbell
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Keith William Campbell (1923 - 2019, 423220 Royal Australian Air Force) and a diary he kept as a prisoner of war.<br /><br /> A further collection about Keith Campbell <a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/2083">here.</a><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Keith William Campbell and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-04
2016-05-18
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Campbell, KW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive is with Keith Campbell, a 466 Squadron Halifax bomb aimer during World War Two. The interview is taking place at the War Memorial’s theatre in Canberra. We’re here at the War Memorial for a Bomber Command Commemoration that will take place tomorrow. It is the 4th of June 2016. My name’s Adam Purcell. Keith, we’ll start from the beginning if you don’t mind. Can you tell me something of your early life and what you were doing before the war?
KC: Before the war I went to school [laughs] Silly question. I finished my leaving certificate at school. And in 1939 the war had just broken out and like all youngsters of sixteen I couldn’t get in the Air Force soon enough. I wanted to get in the Air Force because my father had been in the Australian Flying Corps in the First War. So obviously I had to follow his footsteps. And when I became seventeen [pause while coughing] Excuse me. Sorry about that. At seventeen I applied to join the Air Force Reserve, which I did and for the next, oh six or eight months myself and [coughing] excuse me, got a sore throat. Six or eight others learned aircraft recognition, basic trigonometry which was all done at school anyway. And Morse. Somehow or other, we had to get up to ten words a minute in Morse. Initially it seemed an impossible task. The lines seemed to be a collection of dots and dashes. Every sign you saw you reduced it to Morse. However, in due course we obtained proficiency in Morse and the other things like the aircraft recognition. In May 1942 I was duly called up for service at Number 2 ITS at Bradfield Park, Sydney. ITS was an Initial Training School where all raw recruits came to be sorted out and hopefully made into something resembling an Air Force type. There’s also [pause] also the categorisation as to what you were going to be. Pilot, navigator, bomb aimer or whatever. I was selected to be a pilot and was looking forward to going to initial, Elementary Training School. And one morning in the end of, I think it was July or August [coughing] Oh dear. I’m sorry about that.
AP: That’s alright. Have another drink if you like.
KC: On parade the CO came out and said, ‘There’s a shortage of observers in the Canadian schools. Anyone that likes to volunteer will be off to Canada within a week.’ The temptation was too great so I volunteered and we were off to Canada in a couple of weeks. Went down to Hobart where we went aboard the French liner Ile de France which had been converted to a troop ship and sailed across the Pacific to New Zealand where we picked up some more Air Force people. And then our next stop was at Pearl Harbour where we stopped for a day. We weren’t allowed off the ship but we could see the devastation that the Japanese raid had caused to the American fleet. Things had recovered to a great extent but we could imagine just how great the attack was. There was one battleship upside down and it wasn’t a happy sight. Our next call was at San Francisco where [coughing] Oh dear.
[pause]
Where we caught the train from ‘Frisco to Vancouver. As it happened the train we took up was on Thanksgiving Day and on the buffet in the train we were entertained to a turkey dinner. Thanksgiving dinner. Which was a major occasion after the food in the, on the ship which was adequate but quite basic. Arrived in Vancouver and had three or four days to have a look around that beautiful city. Then off to Edmonton, over the Rockies. Caught the train and about four of us got on the back carriage where there was an observation platform. I think we spent most of the thirty six hours going to Edmonton just watching the magnificence of the Canadian Rockies.
AP: I’m just going to stop there for a minute.
[pause]
AP: Now. We were in San Francisco, I think. Catching a train.
KC: Going over the Rockies was a magnificent experience. Bright moonlight night and to see all that snow which we’d never, most of us had never seen before. It was a wonderful introduction to Canada. We arrived at the RCAF station at Edmonton where we spent another week being sorted out and see just where we were going. Who was going to be a navigator and who was going to be a bomb aimer? And subsequently I was categorised as a bomb aimer. And there were others, along with myself caught a train to Lethbridge in southern Alberta where the RCAF training station was situated. Lethbridge was quite a small Canadian town. Very pleasant. And we spent about five or six months there, I think it was, flying Ansons, and Battles, and whatever, bomb aiming and doing a bit of gunnery to fit us for the trials of squadron life. Having spent, finished the course at Lethbridge we were posted back. Back to Edmonton where the navigation school was. We spent another couple of months there flying over the vast expanse of Canadian prairies. If you got lost you just went down and the nearest railway station you read the sign and you knew where you were. We had a wonderful experience at Edmonton. It was a big Canadian city and the Canadian people were wonderful to us. The hospitality was outstanding and we made a lot of friends in Edmonton. After the, finishing our course we went to a Wings Parade. Apparently, this particular Wings Parade was quite an occasion publicity wise. An American colonel had been brought in to present our wings and we all duly lined up at the, in the sports centre. And after much ceremony we were all, each called out and given an Observer’s wing which we subsequently sewed on our uniform. Or if you had a girlfriend, she got the task. The next port of call was to be Halifax in eastern Canada. We had two weeks to get there and what we did in those two weeks was entirely up to ourselves. We had a leave pass, a pocketful of money, comparatively and myself and two or three others decided to go to New York. And we had a ball there. In Australian uniform it was impossible to buy a drink. If you went to a night club you were entertained by the top brass and it was a quite weary [laughs] After a week in New York we thought we’d better start going to Halifax. And on the way, we went to Niagara Falls and had the opportunity to see the Falls and go on the ride on the, oh, Lady of the Lake or whatever the steamer was called. And subsequently arrived at Halifax. Halifax was a very major port for Atlantic convoys and we had to wait there until a ship came that could take us to England. Spent about two weeks in Halifax and the people were very good to us but it was very much a service town. After a couple of weeks we were put on the French liner the Louis Pasteur which had been converted from a luxury liner to a troop ship and set sail for England. Having got out of the harbour I think they just pointed the ship at England, full speed ahead and off we went. Supposedly, and I’m sure it was, too fast for the submarines and we did a very rapid trip and arrived at Liverpool where we got off the ship and onto a train. It was evening. The contrast was dramatic. After the bright lights and plenty of everything in Canada here we were in England. It was dark, wet, foggy and crowded. And dark. Blackout was on. And we subsequently boarded a train and after many hours arrived at Brighton on the south coast where the RAAF had their accommodation for aircrew. Spent a couple of weeks in [pause] at Brighton waiting for a posting to the Advanced Flying Unit which gave us an opportunity to explore the countryside that’s around Brighton which was a very, very pleasant spot. And we availed ourselves of the opportunities to enjoy ourselves. And after a couple of weeks we ended up in a place called Pwhelli in North Wales where we did an advanced training course. Another pleasant spot. Quite a small town. And I think we were flying Ansons there. In due course we finished our training there and went to an OTU at Lichfield which was more, mainly an Australian OTU. They had a satellite station at Church Broughton which was quite nearby. And our course was posted to Church Broughton where we were to do our Operational Training Unit on Wellingtons. As a Wellington crew was five people and we were all bomb aimers a course of bomb aimers, roughly the equivalent number of pilots, navigators, wireless operators and gunners were put in this huge hangar and told go to it. Crew yourselves up. And fortunately, I happened to know one person there so we became a two, two part crew and within half an hour of talking to the other people we subsequently formed a crew. Seems a very haphazard way of selecting a crew for operations but oddly enough it worked out very well. Very few crews proved to be incompatible. We were very fortunate that we were all Australians and we had similar interests so we didn’t have problems. Spent some months at OTU and in our spare time we used to go to, the nearest city was Derby and patronized the local hostelries there. In due course we graduated and posted to the Conversion Unit where we converted from twin-engined Wellingtons to four-engined Halifax Mark 2s. And we spent about six weeks there and did a lot of flying around England which we found a very great difference to flying in Canada. There was fog. There was hundreds of other aircraft. There were, all over the countryside were aerodromes. And we just had to make sure we dodged the aircraft, found where we were and got back to base. Subsequently we did duly finish our training there and were posted to Number 466 Australian Squadron at Leconfield. Well, while we were at Conversion Unit the Halifax, being a four engine bomber, required an engineer and another gunner. The one, the engineer was a twenty four year old English chap and the gunner was a thirty three year old chap from Birmingham. He was the real grandfather of the crew. However, we all got on very well and went to Leconfield where we were allocated accommodation. We were very fortunate, Leconfield being a peacetime squadron and all the amenities that went with it. After living in Nissen huts for a considerable time it was pleasant to be in regular barracks. New Year in, at that stage it was New Year 1944 and we were the new ones on the squadron. We were flying, at that stage, the new Halifax Mark 3 with the radial motors and the rear designed tail plan which had eliminated a lot of the problems which the Mark 2 Halifax had. And after flying in the Mark 3s they were a magnificent aircraft from all points of view. From the pilot and the rest of the crew was very, well, not exactly comfortable but a lot, a lot less crowded than the previous ones we had.
AP: What was your position in the aircraft like? What did it look like? Can you, can you describe the bomb aimers area?
KC: Coming in the entrance to the aircraft near the tail you walked through the fuselage. There was a rest area. Bunks on both sides and two or three stairs up to the pilot’s deck where the pilot sat and there was a second dickie seat which we folded up and allowed us to go down four or five steps where the navigator sat, you know. Compartment. The, rather the wireless operator sat in a compartment just under the pilot. Next to him was the navigator and the bomb aimer was next to him. All the bombsights and everything else, the bomb panel was right at the front and that was my domain. The Mark 2 Halifaxes had a front turret which had been considered superfluous and in place of that there was a plastic front which gave a much better vision and also a Vickers guns which was really only a pop gun. On the squadron the navigational aids were the Gee and we also had H2S and between the navigator and myself he worked, had the Gee and did the navigation and I did the H2S. Which was a very compatible way of doing things. After a lot of local flying and getting used to operational conditions we finally did our first operation. I think it was the end of February, on a, on the first of what were called the French targets in France. This one happened to be at Trappes which was the rail junction outside of Paris. Subsequent operations consisted of quite a lot of trips like that to disable the communications such as bridges, rail junctions, road junctions and any other ways that would impede the ability of the German armies to get supplies both before and after D-Day. My first trip to Germany was to Stuttgart in southern Germany and we went, duly went to briefing and navigators and bomb aimers went off to a separate briefing to do their navigation. Draw up their charts and get things like that underway. And operational meal. Bacon and eggs. Then up with the rest of the crew and waited for the, drew our parachutes and waited for the trucks to take us out to the aircraft. Going to Germany for the first time was quite an adventure. We managed to keep on track and on time and in due course the target was a quarter of an hour away and I went down to the bombsight and set it up with the height, speed and did the bomb drop panel and got ready to direct the pilot. PFF had laid flares which we saw and I directed the aircraft through the bombsight to the flares. And a little to the left, a little to the right and we finally got on course, dropped our bombs and spent the next ten seconds, the longest ten seconds you’ll ever spend flying straight and level and waiting for the camera. As soon as that happened set course for home. And we had a fighter come in to say hello to us. Fortunately, the rear gunner saw him and we went off in a corkscrew and that discouraged him. He had easier ones to find. And we subsequently set course for England and the engineer said that we’d been using too much petrol. So we had to decide just what we were going to do. And when we got over the channel we decided it was much safer to land at one of the coastal aerodromes. So, we landed at, I think it was Ford, where we spent the night. Between us I think we had seven shillings so we went off for one round of drinks at the local pub. We went there and found everyone drinking cider at sixpence a pint. So that was wonderful. We had two or three drinks of cider decided to go home and we found out cider was a very powerful drink. However, we finally made it. We got, went back to the squadron and started on our trips together. I think there were two or three, without my logbook I don’t know who or what, just where we went but we did some more French targets. I think we did a trip to Happy Valley. Another one up to Kiel. And by that time it was the, in March and we were briefed for Nuremberg. And this was our first really major target. Well, Stuttgart was but Nuremberg was further. Further east. And it was, the briefing there was it was cloudy but the target would be clear and we were flying straight to the target from our crossing the coast which was most unusual and a lot of the navigators queried it because we were being too close to the German fighter ‘dromes. However, that was it and on. We pressed on and shortly over France we had a fighter attack and escaped from it but we found we were losing petrol at a very rapid rate. So, we had a conference and decided to turn back which we did and subsequently landed back at base with not a lot of petrol. Waited four or five hours until the rest of the aircraft came back and found what a disaster the night had been. The cloud cover that we were promised hadn’t eventuated. It was a bright moonlight night and all the fighters were up waiting. Flak was just aimed at us and subsequently it was a loss. I think it was ninety seven aircraft over Germany. Plus, the ones that were damaged and managed to stagger home. Fortunately, we did survive that one and I think the next one was to Happy Valley and more French trips and then where was it? Without my log book I don’t remember. But went to a Berlin trip but got to within ten or fifteen miles to Berlin and we were hit by a fighter and got badly damaged. So, we decided to, we decided to go home and, on the way back we lost an engine from fighter attack and we staggered back to base and lived to tell another day. That was another disaster raid. I think we lost seventy one aircraft on that one. That was [pause] but between there and June I did two or three trips a week. And with our six week, we got leave every six weeks which we enjoyed very much. And eventually came the big day. We didn’t, at the time we didn’t know it was D-Day but we were programmed to bomb a target fairly close inside the French coast. Coming back there was an armada of ships on the Channel. You could have jumped out of the aircraft in a parachute and not got your feet wet. There were battleships, row boats, destroyers, paddle steamers. Anything that could float was on its way to the beaches of Normandy. It was a [pause] we did fly over the same place again a few days later when the beach head had been established but it was a very major effort. After that we just continued on our tour. We had about twenty five trips up by then and looking forward to finishing. And on the 25th of July, 24th of July we were booked for a return trip to Stuttgart. So, all the usual briefings and instructions. Had a very uneventful trip into Stuttgart and did our bombing run successfully and kept our ten seconds to get the camera and set course for home. After about ten minutes we were happily flying on, anticipating a, an uneventful trip home when suddenly there was an explosion. At the time I thought it was a flak shell. Subsequently I found out that an aircraft had run into the back of us and the aircraft just exploded. I was in the front, in the bomb aimers position still. Doing the bombing check and as it happened, I had my parachute on. I always used to lean on my parachute but this night I was leaning on it and had inadvertently clicked on with the wriggling around. The next thing I knew I was flying, descending at about ten thousand feet with a parachute above me. And I have no recollection whatsoever of opening the parachute. I didn’t have the handle so somehow the explosion must have opened it and I landed in a field about twenty miles west of Stuttgart [pause] And took off my parachute harness and hid it under a tree with a parachute and took stock of things. I had all my usual escape kit and similar things and waited around to see if I could hear any, any of the other crew. But there was no sign of them at all. Seeing the way I got out I doubt very much if there would be any survivors. As it happened there weren’t [pause] It was about 3 o’clock in the morning. I could hear the other, the rest of the aircraft flying home and to a nice warm bed and a bacon and egg meal. Here was I stuck in a wheat field in, in the west of Stuttgart. Far from home. I spent the night in a forest and the next morning I checked up where I was on the map, or as near as I could. And the only nearest frontier was the Swiss border which was seventy or eighty mile away. So, I made for that. So, I spent the day in the forest and when the evening came I started walking and went through a village and there was a village pump. So I filled up my water bag and had a wash which was very acceptable and had a few Horlicks tablets from my escape kit. I walked. Walked all night and at dawn I found another wood and subsequently spent the day there having a sleep and working out what I was going to do next. I was fortunate in having the new flying boots that had been issued which were detachable leggings on a shoe which was much easier to walk with than the old flying boot. So, I removed all badges of rank and brevet and set off again. I think I covered about 20K that day. Not a long way but I wasn’t hurrying. Trying to keep out of everyone’s way. Even, even though it was night there was, there was still a few people around and the villages which I tried to walk around but sometimes it was much easier to walk through them. The next day I spent hiding up and set off again at nightfall and passed through a village. And a mile past the village a truck came along and passed me and stopped. And he came back and said, obviously he was going to give me a ride. Asked what I was doing there. Anyway, I tried to make out that I was, I was a French worker but he could speak far better French than I could. At that stage I was feeling well down on very little to eat and water bag was empty so I wasn’t too unhappy to be taken into custody. I had three or four bits of chocolate over from the, that I hadn’t eaten and in the truck was his, another man and his little daughter. So I gave this kid a couple of bits of, pieces of chocolate and he was most impressed. When we came through the village he stopped, went to the local pub and bought us all a bottle of beer. So, it was a very good investment with two or three blocks of chocolate. Subsequently I was handed over to the local police and they called in the army and I was officially a POW.
AP: Alright. That’s, we got up to that stage. Can we maybe backtrack a little bit? You were talking about an escape kit. You were talking about an escape kit that you had.
KC: Yes.
AP: Obviously when you found yourself ejected from the aeroplane it was with you. Whereabouts did you actually have it?
KC: Oh you just carried it in your battle dress pocket.
AP: Oh ok. So, it was only a little thing.
KC: Little.
AP: Yeah.
KC: Well, a box about five by seven inches and about an inch deep and, which fitted inside your battle dress.
AP: And what sort of things were in it?
KC: Horlicks tablets [pause] very basic food stuffs. Some chocolate, not to enjoy but to [laughs] to survive on. And [pause] I’ve forgotten now. It’s so long ago.
AP: Maps and things like that as well.
KC: Oh, maps and a compass.
AP: Yeah. Did you have one of those special compasses that were hidden in a button or hidden somewhere or — ?
KC: Had a button compass.
AP: Yeah.
KC: I also had a little hand compass which I always carried.
AP: Very cool. You were saying as well you, about fifteen minutes before the target you’d go down into where the bombsight was and set it up.
KC: Set it up.
AP: And all that sort of thing. What did you do for the rest of the flight?
KC: I worked the H2S machine.
AP: Where was that physically?
KC: That was next to the navigator.
AP: Ah.
KC: And as I had not a lot to do it was a lot more practical that I did the H2S and he did the navigation. Getting all the fixes. It worked out very well.
AP: What did you, what did you think? Can you remember much about the H2S and what it looked like? And —
KC: All the H2S was, it was a machine, a dial about eight or nine inches diameter and it gave a profile of what was underneath. It had a long range and a short range and once you learned how to read it, it was a very desirable navigation tool. Especially on coastal areas, of course. It had a very sharp delineation between the sea and the land. Flying over land such as southern Germany it could pick up any lakes. It also picked up cities and towns as a darker green on the lighter green of the screen. Once you learned how to interpret it, it was a very useful tool.
AP: You also mentioned a couple, or there was at least three times there you mentioned being attacked by fighters. What does a corkscrew feel like for a bomb aimer?
KC: A corkscrew, in a four engine bomber you’re thinking of a Spitfire. It just goes high, right or left as the case might be, nose straight down, and round and round and pull out and go the other way and hope you’ve lost him. And if you haven’t lost him keep on doing it.
AP: Keep doing it [laughs] It would be quite, quite strenuous for the pilot I imagine.
KC: Oh, it was. The [pause] where they was over the target area if you, if you saw the fighter and went into a corkscrew he’d go and find someone who hadn’t, or hopefully hadn’t seen him.
AP: They were looking for, for easier prey. How did you cope with the stress of flying on operations? What did you do to relax?
KC: It was stressful. I think I coped very well.
AP: What sort of things did you do to, to handle that, or to deal with the pressure? If anything.
KC: Went to the local. And the local dances. The theatre. The pictures. And any entertainment that was on at the squadron when we weren’t flying.
AP: Alright. You’ve mentioned pubs and the local a few times. What, for Leconfield let’s just say, or any other pub that you can remember what did the pub look like and what was in there? What sort of things went on?
KC: Well, the nearest town was Beverley which was a market town and it was quite a big town. We got to know a few of the locals and we used to go to the, the Beverley Arms. Found ourselves a corner and some compatible people. Had a few drinks. Sang a few squadron songs and enjoyed ourselves. At that stage most of us had bikes so it was quite an adventure getting from the local back to the squadron. Fortunately, we made it.
AP: Very good.
KC: A few spills here and there.
AP: Very nice. Were there any superstitions or hoodoos amongst your crew or amongst your squadron that you knew about?
KC: We had a thing about our little, one of us had a little fluffy rabbit. About six or eight inches high and every operation we took the rabbit. And every operation we marked it on the, on the rabbit. And our ambition was to cover the rabbit. We didn’t, [pause] Stuttgart was our thirty third operation so we were looking forward to finishing but unfortunately, we didn’t.
AP: What, how many operations did you need to do for a tour at that period?
KC: Well normally it was thirty.
AP: Yeah.
KC: But with the French targets being shorter and supposedly easier they increased it to up to forty. The first two or three French targets were quite easy. But as soon as the Luftwaffe found out what we were doing they moved their fighter squadrons in.
AP: They did. Yes. I think at one point I think a French target counted as one third of a trip.
KC: Initially it did.
AP: Yeah.
KC: But subsequently they scrubbed it .
AP: There was a 467 Squadron man who said you can’t go for one third of a burton. That’s the way he put it. What sort of things happened in the, in the mess at the airfield?
KC: We were fed. And again had a few drinks and played cards or sat around and talked and had a sing song. There was no shortage of suitable songs [pause] I’m just wondering where Fiona was.
AP: Behind you.
KC: Oh, she’s there is she.
AP: She’s been there for about forty minutes, I think. She’s crept in nice and quietly. Alright. Can we, can we talk a bit about your prisoner of war experience? What — where were you taken after you were, were captured?
KC: Well from the army camp where we were assembled with about another ten people from a Lancaster crew, or two Lancasters that had been shot down in the area and there were about ten survivors. And we were taken from there to Stuttgart and subsequently to be taken to the interrogation centre at Frankfurt. We got to Stuttgart under heavy army guard and put on the platform waiting for a train. It was about midnight and the RAF came over again in force. Sirens went and people started running for shelters, saw us there and [laughs] we were, we were not popular. But the German army protected us, fortunately, and we were taken down to the cells until the train came which was Stuttgart to Frankfurt where the interrogation centre was at Oberursel. Spent the first three or four days there in solitary and then was taken to an interrogation room where the German officer started off with cigarettes and, ‘How are you?’ And all the welcoming. ‘Welcome to the Third Reich,’ He could speak perfect English. He’d apparently spent four or five years in the early thirties in England. And he said, ‘What’s your name?’ So, I gave it to him. ‘Your rank?’ So I gave it to him. ‘Your number?’ I gave it to him. ‘What aircraft were you flying?’ ‘You know I can’t answer that.’ Five or six more questions and he said, ‘Well I know you’re going to say no but we know it anyway.’ So he pressed the button and a girl came in. He spoke some German to her. She came back with a file. A file on 466 Squadron. And he told us the CO’s name, the flight commander’s name, most of the other people. The group captain. What the, how the aircraft, or how many aircraft there were. The fact that we’d transferred from Wellington’s to Halifaxes in 1943. And he knew the name of the barmaid at the local pub. There was nothing I could tell him. So, he gave me permission to have a shave and a shower which was very acceptable. Then back to solitary again and after that three or four days there were enough POWs to make a contingent to go to a POW camp which we subsequently caught a train and three or four, about three days later we arrived at a place called Bankau which was near Breslau in Poland. A very uncomfortable train trip but we finally made it. We were taken in to the camp and searched, interrogated again and duly given our quarters. All the people in the camp welcomed us, wanting us, wanting to know the latest situation on, on the second front. And being new people gave us a welcome dinner. The camp at that stage was very very basic. It was just huts on a dirt floor and bunks. There was a new camp being built just next door and we were looking forward to moving into that which we did after about four or five weeks. They finished the, enough of the camp to move us in which was a very pleasant change and there were rooms rather than huts. A big, big, a big area converted into about eight rooms with a toilet block at the end which was a much more pleasant life than going on, getting in the huts which were very crowded. The Red Cross there were marvellous to us. Before we left the interrogation centre, they fitted us out with warm clothing, boots and any other supplies that we needed. At the camp we were getting, at that stage we were getting a Red Cross parcel every fortnight which was the difference between existing and surviving. The Red Cross did a fantastic job in Germany for the POW’s. And [pause] and when were we there? That was about the end of August, I think. September. October. We used to fill in our time there with games which the Red Cross supplied. And they supplied us with a good library. And we walked around the compound for our exercise. We had to discuss trying to escape but at that stage of the war we were advised not to because they thought it would be over by Christmas. How wrong they were. In due course there was a Russian advance to the westward and the Germans wanted to keep us so we were told we were going to move camp and in January ’45 we were turfed out of our comfortable quarters into the coldest winter that, in Germany for about forty years. Four or five feet of snow on the ground. Cold. About five or six hundred people heading eastwards. We were supposedly to be marching but it soon very, very soon developed into a straggle. Everyone had found they were carrying far too much kit so the non-essentials were abandoned and whatever you could carry was what you had. We marched all day and stopped for a cup of lukewarm soup about mid-day and came to a suitable village at night and found a farm and were billeted in the farm buildings and hopefully had something to eat, which was problematical. We did have a Red Cross parcel each before we started which we tried to ration. We didn’t know how long we’d be marching so we tried to keep as much as possible of that intact. That went on for about two or three weeks. Marching by day and hopefully finding a barn or somewhere covered at night. Fortunately, on most occasions we slept in the farmers barn and threw out his livestock. Food was a very basic problem then and with, with the German army rations and what we had from the Red Cross parcels we managed to survive. And after how long? Three weeks? We were told we were going to be put on a train to our next destination. We were put on a train, about sixty five people to a four wheel cattle truck and there was room to stand up. You had to take it in turns to lie down. We spent three days in that. It was not a happy trip. After about a day we decided we would have been far better, far happier, marching. We eventually arrived at a place called Luckenwalde, about fifty miles south of Berlin and were taken to some barracks there which had originally been barracks for the German army in the Franco-Prussian war. They were in a very decrepit condition. It was a very large camp. All, a lot of POWs had been transferred there and many other, other nationalities. Thousands of Russian prisoners. And conditions were very basic. We used to sit there with nothing, nothing to do. Watched the Americans come over Berlin in the daytime and at night Mosquitoes came over Berlin at night. Subsequently the Russian army overran the camp and we were under the control of the Russians. Initially they were very good. The army people. A couple of thousand Russian prisoners were given a rifle, they said, ‘Come with us which they did. They were very keen to get their own back on the Germans for the appalling treatment that the Russians had had. We stayed in the camp there and the Russian army moved on and the administration took over. And it was a very different story. We were under Russian control and we were so close to the American lines and couldn’t do anything about it. Subsequently an American war correspondent and about six trucks came along and, to take the American survivors out but they wouldn’t, a few got away but the Russians wouldn’t let us go. But the, we were told that if we could possibly get out the trucks would be at a certain position until about 4 o’clock that afternoon. Another four or five of us managed to escape from the Russians, literally, through a hole in the wire and we found our way to the American trucks where two or three trucks had already filled. And at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon they said, ‘Well we can’t wait any further,’ and off we went. And after about an hour or so crossing an emergency bridge over the Elbe to the American army camp which was the front lines. They gave us accommodation and apologised profusely because the ice cream machine hadn’t caught up. From there we made our way to [pause] well the Americans gave us any kit we needed and fed us well and we went to an aerodrome where we were subsequently flown back to England.
AP: And that was the end of it.
KC: So, taken back to Brighton. Re-kitted. Met all our, well a lot of the people that we’d known before but also had been in Germany and given a leave pass for two weeks, a year’s pay, said, ‘Come back when you’re ready.’ So, I was a survivor fortunately. I subsequently found out years later that what had happened was another aircraft, also from our squadron had collided with us and it must have been a collision in our tail because the, our rear gunner, mid-upper gunner and the engineer were never found. The front of the aircraft, the bodies were found. And all the other aircraft were lost. So that was it. And I endured a mid-air collision and I happened to be the lucky one.
AP: How did you find readjusting to civilian life after going through all of that?
KC: Oh, coming back to Australia we were, came through The Heads which was a magnificent sight. Taken off the ship, put on a bus, taken to Bradfield Park. Not interrogated but put on record again and given a leave pass and, ‘Come back in two weeks.’ No ticker tape parade. No marching through, through George Street. Back home and out which suited us fine. It was quite a readjustment getting back to civilian life after the discipline of service life but I went back to my old job and started off life again.
AP: My final question for you. What is Bomber Command’s legacy and how do you want to see it remembered?
KC: Seventy one years later. Well sixty eight years later in Canberra it was decided to build a Bomber Command Memorial which was subsequently unveiled. I think in 2007 or eight, something like that. And it was the first Bomber Command Memorial, as far as we know, that was ever made. And it still stands in the sculpture garden of the Australian War Memorial. We were going to have our ceremony there tomorrow but unfortunately due to the inclement weather we have to have our ceremony inside. But subsequent to that, in England there was a movement to have a Bomber Command Memorial constructed and it was taken up officially and very enthusiastically supported and in 2009 I was one of the fortunate official members of the Air Force, RAAF delegation that went to the opening of the Air Force Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park in London. That is a magnificent Memorial. It took seventy one years but it was worth it. We were one of the fortunate thirty people in the official delegation that were at the dedication.
AP: Any final words? Any last thoughts for the, for the tape?
KC: Well here we are today on what was the 4th of July.
AP: 4th of June. 4th of June.
KC: June rather.
AP: Yeah.
KC: For our annual Bomber Command Commemoration Day Foundation. Remembrance of Bomber Command. It’s a very major event.
AP: It certainly is.
KC: The War Memorial have done a lot of the organisation for us. Made the, made the ANZAC Hall available and the Hall of Remembrance for our ceremony tomorrow and we’re quite looking forward to that.
AP: Here’s to that. Well, thank you very much Keith. It’s been an absolute pleasure hearing your story properly for the first time.
KC: Sorry I was so —
AP: I very much enjoyed it.
KC: The coughing
AP: No. That’s gone, that’s gone really well I think. It’s good.
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ACampbellKW160604
PCampbellKW1601
Title
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Interview with Keith Campbell. Two
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:11:55 audio recording
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Pending review
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-06-04
Description
An account of the resource
Keith Campbell grew up in New South Wales and joined the Royal Australian Air Force when he was old enough. He flew 35 operations as a bomb aimer with 466 Squadron from RAF Leconfield and RAF Driffield when, on their thirty first operation another aircraft from their squadron collided with them. All other crew were killed but Keith was thrown from the aircraft and parachuted in to a wheat field. He began to walk towards the Swiss border but was caught and became a poisoner of war.He was first sent to Stalag Luft 7 at Bankau but then was ordered on to the Long March and ended up at Stalag 3A at Luckenwalde from where he escaped the Russians and joined up with the Americans who sent him home.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Yorkshire
Poland--Opole (Voivodeship)
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1942-05
1943
1944-01
Contributor
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Julie Williams
466 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
coping mechanism
crewing up
Gee
H2S
Halifax
memorial
mid-air collision
military living conditions
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Church Broughton
RAF Driffield
RAF Leconfield
Red Cross
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
superstition
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/919/11164/ALastRR151125.1.mp3
1549212534df145caa24e82c2fc713ce
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Title
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Last, Ronald Roland
Ron Last
R R Last
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ronald Last (1921 - 2016, 160501 Royal Air Force). Ronald Last flew operations as a bomb aimer with 466 Squadron before his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-11-26
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Last, RR
Creator
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Adam Sutch
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: This is an interview with Ron Last, a bomb aimer on 466 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. My name is Adam Sutch and the interview is being conducted at Honiton, Devon for the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. Also present is his daughter Sheila. Ron, thanks ever so much for agreeing for this interview. I’d like to set the scene by asking you about your life before the war. Before you joined the air force. Can you tell me a bit about where you were born and your family?
RL: I was born at Wimborne in Dorset. That was where my grandmother lived. My home address was in 2 Waterloo Road, Bournemouth. I was, I left school at fourteen and I joined the Bournemouth Gas and Water Company as an apprentice gas fitter. When I, when I was, war was broke out I volunteered for the Marines. And the recruiting sergeant laughed and told me to go home and grow up. Well, I was only, what? Sixteen or something like that.
AS: Sixteen. What’s your birthday? When’s your birthday?
RL: I went to the army recruiting office and they looked at me and said, well, ‘Go on home and grow up.’ Well, in the end I volunteered for the RAF. Aircrew. They called me up for a couple of days to go to Uxbridge. Uxbridge, where they gave me a medical and it was a rather funny thing. They wanted to know whether my lungs were strong enough and they offered me a U-Gauge. That, yes, they put water in the U-Gauge you see and of course you blew that up and after you’d done that they filled the U-Gauge up with mercury and gave me the tube to blow up. And of course, I can only hold my breath for a few seconds. And then they told me to sit back, you know and take a real blow and I got a good reading on the thing. And they told me I had to hold my breath for a minute. Well, I blew it up, of course and with mercury being a heavy kind of thing — phew. But I passed that. Well, when you think of it mercury is a poison. It’s not exactly the thing to play with. I was sent home with a paper to see a dentist locally. So, I made an appointment with a local dentist, dentist and he gave me some fillings or whatever had to be done. I was then on the sort of a waiting list to be called up. One day I received a notification that I was to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London. So, saying difficult goodbyes to my wife and things. I got up to Lords Cricket Ground and I go into a Sector L. I was supposed to be given a uniform there but all I received was a respirator and a forage cap. Well, apparently, they never had the equipment to give us but we all had some indication of uniform. Well, we used to go for our meal to Regent’s Park Zoo. And one day, and we were living in the flat by Regent’s Park, well one day we were told we were going to have inoculations and things like that. That was really something. We were marched there to a big house with iron fire escapes and when we got to this base of this thing we were given a cap. Kit bag. And we were told to strip off all our top clothing. Well, we gradually moved up this stairway and we got to the building. Then we got to a room where there was a doctor and a medical bloke. One, the idea, the medical johnny was filling up with vaccines or whatever it was and passing them to the doctor who would put it in your arm. Well, it was just like a factory. Now, if you didn’t move after you had it just as likely you got another one, see. The best part about it there was a cast iron radiator in this room. Well there was a lot of people passing out kind of thing and of course this cast iron radiator didn’t do any problems. Well, we had two or three inoculations and then we had one on the chest. Well, of course when we finished we all went on the town that night to some, well the first time we’d seen, were the Regent’s Park and the ambulance bells were ringing like mad where people were passing out. Well, when you were on a respirator the straps went across where you’d been vaccinated which didn’t, I didn’t have them to call. No trouble. Well, after two or three days in there we got a bit more kit but not a full uniform, you know. One day we were told we were going to be on the move so we found out we were going to Newquay. So, bright and early on Monday morning we were all paraded up here. And we waited for hours before we moved off. And we no sooner got moving and I’ll never forget it, coming towards us was a platoon of Guardsmen. Guardsmen. Now, of course they were in step but we, we were come clattering along you know and these guardsmen just walked on by. Well, we got on this train and we still waited and waited. Then all of a sudden we go off. We got, we got on this train and we chugged off from the town, and [pause] No. I beg your pardon. That’s not Newquay. We went to Pwllheli in North Wales. That’s a correction. And then when we got there it was a gunnery school but they never knew anything about what I was going to do so we, we spent time. They never had a gunnery course [pause] Maybe I’m getting confused here.
AS: Did you go straight to gunnery training or did you do some flying first?
RL: We didn’t [pause] no that’s not [pause] Can I just — that was where you were going to do your training. How to walk properly, how to turn around, who to salute and all that kind of thing. But they must have had the foundation to be able to do anything. They marched up and down like that. Well, the officers in our, like platoon were school teachers. They didn’t appear to have any training. They were just brought in as school teachers. We did arithmetic and English and, like that. Well, that was alright in some respects but it, we used to feed. Now, in Newquay, as a fishing port, we used to live on fish. I’m sure that if I’d have stayed much longer I’d have got flippers. It used to be very annoying to walk around to these empty hotels which are our class rooms and then to come out and you could smell this fish cooking. Well, we used to go in to, to the dining room. You didn’t sit where you wanted to. You just filed in and sat on the — and I was unfortunate to be at the end of a line. And of course, the duty NCO came in with the officer. ‘Any complaints?’ And I didn’t think about being me but I was on the end of the line so I was, ‘Yes sir. We think this fish is bad.’ So, he says to the NCO, ‘Get me a portion.’ So, a fish portion was given to him on a plate with a fork and he daintily pushed his fork in to this fish and he’d only had a tiny bit like that and he licks it. ‘I don’t think it’s bad.’ Three night’s fire-watch for doing that. I never sat on the end of a line after that. Well, it was the, these officers they have never been through an officer’s course. I reckon they were just given the uniform as they’d retired. I mean church parade. Act your age in front. And instead of walking by the main road to the church they took us down the road a bit, left turn, right turn and we went ziggyzag, you see. Well, by the time they got to church they only had a half a platoon because when they went around the corners the back people skived off. Prior to this when we were announced we had church parade a Cockney recruit said he was an atheist. The sergeant didn’t argue with him or anything like that. We paraded, you see. When we got down to this church all the other people walked into this church and the sergeant said to this bloke, ‘Stand over there.’ By a wooden seat outside. So, as soon as the service started, he said to this man, ‘Attention.’ And the bloke had to stand to attention all the way. All through the service. And of course, the sergeant was sat down on the seat with his newspaper and fag you see. Funny, that bloke had religion the next week.
AS: When was this? When did you join the air force?
[pause]
RL: There are some dates there.
AS: Ok. So, this was in April, 17th of April you went to Uxbridge.
RL: Yeah.
AS: And then you went arsydarsy [ACRC] in London in September ’41.
RL: Yeah.
AS: And Newquay in October ‘41. So, in October ‘41 all this was going on.
RL: Yes.
AS: Yes. Did you —
RL: And —
AS: Did you do exams after these lessons of maths and things?
RL: Did we do what?
AS: Exams. Examinations at Newquay. Tests.
RL: Well, sort of but I mean we, I suppose these school teachers made their reports. We were all trainee air crew in those days. Obviously, we were all, all was going to be pilots. As we thought, you know. Let me just have that back again will you, please.
[pause]
AS: Can we wind back a bit?
RL: Yeah. Well, we got then we went from Newquay we went to Sywell. That was a Tiger Moth flying station.
AS: Ok.
RL: It was a private aerodrome. We were all dressed up as airmen. Our flying kit in those days was a silk undergarment, a capote over garment and a canvas over jacket. Goggles. Helmets. Sea boot stockings and flying boots. That’s the first time I’d worn all this. Now, it was a beautiful day and you sat outside this, like, clubhouse kind of thing and all of a sudden somebody would come up and call your name and, ‘I’m your pilot,’ you see. Now, you wobbled out to one of the aircraft, lath and plaster kind of thing and you climbed in it. You no sooner made yourself comfortable, well, semi comfortable. By that time you were sweating. It was running off you. Oh, you had goggles on then. Well, he takes off, you see and, ‘Ever flown before?’ ‘No. No.’ He said, ‘Well, I’m going to do a spin.’ And he showed me, you know, you’ll see the artificial horizon come up. You’ll bring that up,’ he said, ‘And you’re going to stall. And you kick the left rudder and you go to the right,’ or something. Yeah. And then he pulled out, you see. Well, all he was doing is looking in his mirror to see whether you were sick or alright. Course no. I was decided. Seeing this spinning around like this. Yeah. Then come back. Then we did it for the next time. And of course, it was lovely seeing the earth spinning around, you know. You didn’t, you didn’t do anything without being told. So, we landed, you know. Well, we were going through our course when we were, one bloke told us to go back to our classroom. And the commanding officer looks up and said, ‘The air force are introducing another crew member.’ So, we said, ‘What is that?’ And he said, ‘Bomb aimer.’ So, we asked a lot a lot of questions, ‘What’s the pay?’ Right. And that kind of thing. And he said, ‘I want volunteers.’ So, nobody volunteered. They all wanted to be brylcreem boys, you know, and that. So, he said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Transport will be outside. They’ll take you back to your civilian accommodation.’ He said, ‘You’ll collect your kit and we’ll —
AS: How many hours flying had you done as a, as a pilot. Very few?
RL: Very few. There was, oh apart from going into the classroom. There was one fella that was going on his solo and we were all watching him and he landed after a series of bumps but pulled up. But I think he got, went on with flying duties but that’s, as I say. So, we, he volunteered us all for the [pause] Well we got down to this, excuse me I’ve got a [pause] We got down to Penrhos. That was a gunnery school kind of thing.
AS: Ok.
RL: And they had not heard about a bomb aimer you see and they didn’t know really what to teach us. So, in the end we started flying around and dropping nine pound spent bombs on the bay just outside there. It was daft really. Ansons. We had a sight and we had to clip this sight on to a spigot. Well, the pilot would go towards the target and you had to give the corrections. You know. Well, you never had a Perspex panel. You had a metal panel used there. Well, the idea is you drop this bomb and you had to mark on a chart where it hit, according to the floating target and there was also a bloke on the headland there. Well, it shows how daft it was. We clipped on our bombsight on to this spigot and opened this door. Well, to drop your bomb you had to inch yourself forward to there. That released the bombsight on the spigot and of course we lost a few bombsights. So, in the end they decided to give us a lanyard. So that nearly pulled you out of, out of the bomb place. Well, we, we did a few night flying and things like that and we always used to drop a five hundred sand filled bomb into the sand pits prior to landing. Well, we never had such a record of this but I [pause] I passed out on that. And apparently, to my log book I had above average. So that wasn’t bad. Well —
AS: What else did they teach you? Did they teach you navigation? Or, or gunnery?
RL: Pardon?
AS: Did they teach you any navigation or gunnery?
RL: Well, yes but only, how can I say? Basics, you know. We [pause] not really in as much as when we used to go out on sort of bombing runs. Like we flew around the villages and had to take a photograph of the church which we bombed, kind of thing. That was, that was bloody silly. Well, looking back it was a bloody silly training. And see, when we used to go around to these villages or sights. There was eight of them. Eight sights you’d go around. Well, you’re up at the front of this bloody Anson, kind of thing. No intercom. You would go on to the skipper like that and come straight up and you’d get these where you were going to drop your bombs. Well, you’d perhaps give them, ‘Left. Left. Steady. Steady,’ blah blah. Right.
AS: All hand signals.
RL: Like that. When you wanted to bomb that meant the photograph and you had this bloody great box in front of you and when you’ve got to it, then you’d turn this bloody handle to take the photograph and then when you finished you wanted to say, ‘Bring her around,’ but they wouldn’t come up, you know. No. And of course he’d be bringing it up and the camera would go back into your turret. Well, when you’d done about six of these you weren’t exactly feeling very bright. If you’ve managed to do eight, get out of the craft, out of the aircraft and rest your back up against it and take a breath you were alright. Of course, if you were sick they used to cost you five bob to clean. For somebody else to clean it up or you had to do it yourself. Well, we spent quite a nice time down there. Apart from being in a classroom kind of thing. And at the end of this day we’d missed the transport to send us back to our billets and of course you weren’t exactly feeling like that but we were billeted in garden sheds. The funny thing, it’s a safe bet if you walked down the main street, about the only street there, and you saw a bloke coming towards you it was a safe bet if you said, ‘Good afternoon Mr Jones.’ They were all Jones’ there.
AS: Did you lose any aircraft on training? Crews and aircraft, on training.
RL: No. They were a bit shaky. They had a lot of Polish pilots that were on relief and I think it was an insult to those men to get put back for relief. All they wanted to do was to fly the enemy. They did some crazy things. You’d go out some nights with one man. If we circled around a village and his girlfriend lived in that village there would be a light come up, you know. They were, they were absolutely [pause] well I think they thought of it as an insult to be took out.
AS: Ok.
RL: But —
AS: When you’d finished there did you have a passing out parade and get your brevet? Did you have a big parade when you finished your training and get your brevet?
RL: No. No.
AS: How did that happen?
RL: We went in as LACs one morning and we were just given a brevet and sergeant’s stripes. I know we went up to Harwell next. That was an Operational Training Wing where you were all crewed up. And then [pause] oh you did more flying. Sort of over to the Isle of Man and things like that.
AS: Ok.
RL: That was normal flying.
AS: How, how did you crew up? How did you choose who you were going to fly with?
RL: How did you choose?
AS: Who you were going to fly with. How did you choose your crew?
RL: Well, how can I say? We mucked in together, kind of thing where I’d get in there and you saw different blokes. You mucked in with or, ‘Do you want to be in our crew?’ Kind of thing. It was sort of, well look at the blokes faces and say, ‘Well you’re not a bad chap, are you?’ No. There was no, no official crewing. No. There wasn’t like, well as I said, I was above average. I don’t, I don’t think we looked for above average crew. I mean, we just mucked in. And then we went down to Driffield for a time. That’s where 466 was starting. That, that was a place where well we didn’t do much there and we were moved up to Leconfield. I was in crew number 3.
AS: That was Healy’s crew was it?
RL: No. That was on squadron.
AS: Yeah. Was Healy you pilot? Was that your, your crew? With, with Healy?
[pause]
RL: Yeah.
AS: Ok. Let’s just pause there for a minute and we’ll get your logbook, I think.
[recording paused]
AS: Right. We’re, we’re back after a break and Ron, I’d like to ask you some questions about joining the squadron. What, what was that like when you’d finished OTU and joined the squadron?
RL: Well, we [pause] we all sort of mucked in and did a lot of crewing. I was, a Flight Sergeant Healy was my pilot for a time. But after a time, a very small time, I couldn’t tell you the date, he was taken off flying.
AS: Was he sick?
RL: What is that — Sheila.
Sheila: Yeah.
RL: What was that letters?
Sheila: Lack of moral fibre.
RL: Lack of moral.
AS: Oh. How did that turn up?
RL: Well [pause] we [pause] we flew with him. Well, we did our first op in 466, 13th of January ’43 and he [pause] he put in a rear turret u/s going to Kiel. Then he had a starboard oil pressure return to base. And then he suddenly disappeared. You couldn’t find out what happened to him but lack, lack of fibre we think.
AS: Ok.
RL: I mean he was here one day and gone the next.
AS: He never, he never discussed these things that went wrong with the aeroplane, with the crew.
RL: Well, we wondered whether, well, he faked it or not. And this lack of moral fibre, well you, there wasn’t any information. But we, we wondered whether that was it. It wasn’t, it was as though he was sick. I mean, he would, one, one day he was worse and then the next day he wasn’t. Now, it’s a horrible thing to have been labelled that. But I don’t know whether I had [pause] I’ve got so much bumph here, I don’t —
AS: Did you all live together? Were you all sergeants? Did you all live together as a crew? Were you all sergeants or some officers?
RL: At Driffield we lived in the married quarters. Three of us — the rear gunner, a wireless op and me. We lived in, like the master bedroom. Now, we got a ration of coal to light the bedroom fire up.
AS: Yeah.
RL: But it was so bloody cold. The only time I ever wore my Irvin suit. We used to light this fire up and take it in turns to undress and put on our Irvin trousers and jacket and climb into bed. Well, Kurdy was something to do with transport and the food thing. So, we decided one night, as the coal ration wasn’t enough, we would break into the coal thing and get some more coal. So, off we go with the wire cutters. Real, real professional, you know. Cut the wire. Got in. Filled up this sack, you know, with coal, kind of thing. And then we realized we couldn’t carry it. You know [laughs] Well, all of a sudden the tannoy came on. And you’d never seen anything like it. Kurdy was only a little bloke. He gets this sack on to his shoulder and he scarpered with Bob and me, we were following on. When we got back to the house there Kurdy was by the fire [breathing heavily]. But, I mean, we could have got court martialed for that. We were warned. But I don’t know. You see, when we were called up — like, like on a train. Now Bournemouth is a, was a big town. If you went for a, on a train for a journey to go up to Southampton well you couldn’t afford it really. But once you got on the train and you kept along and you came to the another station and a bloke gets on. He’s as bewildered as you are so you talk, don’t you? By the time you get to the next station you’re friends. I mean, but I mean some of the poor blokes got on. They were, well, like farm labourers. They’d never been in a train. Get in to a train and look at everything going by. That’s marvelous. I mean three meals a day they got. They didn’t get three meals a day at home, did they?
AS: No. Not at all. No.
RL: They thought they were in heaven.
AS: So, you’ve done OTU with your crew and then the whole crew get posted to Driffield. To the squadron.
RL: Yeah.
AS: And then, this is September 1942. And then it seems the squadron did a long time training. A lot of training was it?
RL: Oh yes. Yeah. We had lots of training [pause] I wonder where that got to.
AS: What, what was that all about? Was it because you were all new crews that there was so much training going on?
RL: Well, 1942 [pause] Where have I got that from? Oh, I expect when they went to sign it —
AS: Not enough room for the stamp. Yeah.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Ok. Can I borrow that back? So, it took about three months before you went on operations. This was on what? On Wellingtons you had.
RL: Yeah. Well, we had, most of our training was at, flying training was at Leconfield, wasn’t it? [pause] Captain, crew. January.
[pause]
AS: I’ll just pause it there for a second.
[recording paused]
AS: Back after another pause. Ron, I’d like to ask you about being a bomb aimer. What your duties were in the aeroplane on a, on a mission. What —
RL: Well, I used to sit on the right of the pilot. My duties were — I used to keep an eye on the instrument panel for any, well, any sort of [pause] well —
AS: Deficiencies I suppose. Yeah. Anything wrong.
RL: Any sort of fault —
AS: Yeah.
RL: That arises. With the Wimpy I always had to turn on the nacelle fuel tanks. That meant I used to, well if we were on oxygen I’d take a bottle of, a small bottle of oxygen and plug in because I had to go down the aircraft, over the main spar to where these toggles were at the side of the aircraft. Now, these toggles were connected up by wire to the nacelle tanks and it was my duty to, when the fuel tanks were nearing the emptying point the skipper used to tell me to go down the back and I’d sit down at the back by these toggles. Now, when he told me to switch on these toggles I had to pull on the toggle and engage a ball bearing that was welded on them into a keyhole slot. It wasn’t very clever.
AS: How many pairs of gloves were you wearing?
RL: And you’d no sooner, he’d say, ‘Starboard,’ and you’d pull on the starboard and you couldn’t get the ball back enough in there when you were tugging. And he’d say, ‘Port,’ and you’d have to grab the other one and pull. Well, we used to say to the, on the, ‘Slow down skipper. Slow down.’ Thinking that if he didn’t go so fast the wings wouldn’t bow out and after you’ve got them in you were [reading for gas then?]
AS: Yeah. So, the flexing of wing —
RL: Yeah. Well —
AS: Was making the cable tight.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Yeah.
RL: I mean it was straight down and we used to feel we bleeding wanted him to slow down so that the wings would go back. It was [pause] it was a horrible feeling because when you’ve got both of them you were pulling like mad, you know. And of course it was only like a keyhole that took the ball. It was rather frightening. Now, a thing we [pause] we didn’t do according to regulations. Of course, you all know that you, you know better. Well, when he used to say to us, ‘Right. Go on down the back there. Instead of putting our portable air line on we used to go [breathe in deeply] go down the back there, you know. When you got to this main spar you had to put your leg up over and it’s true when you go to put the next leg down you can’t push it down to the ground. And then when you do get down you get down to the port and your fumbling for the air line. That’s like the electro light. The maintenance panel.
AS: Bayonet fitting. Yeah.
RL: You swear that they’re going into each other but they’re not, you know. But we, and I often thought if I’d have passed out nobody would have known.
AS: What else were your duties? Apart from the tanks what else did you have to do?
RL: Well, I went to, going over the North Sea to the target I would switch on the bombing panel and get the bombs off, off safety.
AS: When would you do that?
RL: Pardon?
AS: When do you take the bombs off safe?
RL: Well, they had split pins.
AS: Yeah.
RL: In these things. And if you got back to camp the bomber, bomb aimer mechanic, he would collect these things. There was a gadget used to come down — and pull. Engage on the split pin on the bomb. Pull it out. But that meant when I dropped them, they were live.
AS: Was this gadget electrical?
RL: Yes.
AS: Ok.
RL: As I say if you got back to camp and you never had these split pins you dropped the bombs safe. I don’t mean they wouldn’t go off but quite a possibility that they wouldn’t go off.
AS: So, you, you made the bombs, you armed the bombs over the North Sea.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Ok.
RL: Well, like when we came back, we’d switch on the panel and if we got the lights on one place we’d got a hang up so we had to get rid of that over the North Sea because we didn’t like landing with a bomb on board. Sometimes that used to be just a matter of jigging up the switch or rocking the aircraft. When the light went out you knew you were alright.
AS: So, you’ve switched, you’ve turned on the bomb panel. You’ve set the bombs. You’ve armed the bombs. When did you take control of the aircraft? When was it your aeroplane to steer?
RL: Well, as you approached the target it was the pilot. We used to drop our bombs on a red flare or green. Whatever they told us. So, if the pilot, should I say aims at perhaps this odd one or clutch of red bombs and then you sort of took over. I mean the pilot [pause] the pilot could see the target so I mean he was going, he was going for it all the time. It was only when, as I say you got near enough to, ‘Left. Left.’ The next time you were there it might be oh just about, ‘Right. Right. That’s enough.’ It was only an adjustment.
AS: How, how did your bombsight work? How did you bring it on to the target? What, what were you looking for?
RL: How?
AS: How did the bombsight work? What were you looking for?
RL: Well, we never had these H2S. We just had a sight. As long as you put the wind on to direct and things like that that’s all you could, that’s all you did. I mean, as the war went on it wasn’t just a matter of bombing some guns or searchlights. I mean [pause] well you see it on television and on the pictures where the target was ablaze but when you see this target in front of you and its ablaze. I mean, I might have been a poor bomb aimer and not, and not should I say, knocked over these factories but there was a lot of people that had to change our underwear. You see [pause] it was just destroy the city or a town.
AS: Yeah.
RL: And then [pause] I mean it’s amazing for someone. We were on the second wave.
AS: To Hamburg?
RL: Pardon.
AS: Second wave to where? Hamburg?
RL: Well we used to go like the first wave and then there’s the second wave.
AS: Yeah.
RL: Was there. Well, when you could see, well, miles of flames leaping up it was unbelievable. The night that I was shot down there was the Germans shooting up flares and it was just, well can I just say going through [Exeter?] main road with all the street lamps on and you were going up to it and you’re going to raid, and you’d spend.
AS: These were fighter flares. Yeah.
RL: Yeah. With all this stuff. I mean they, they couldn’t miss us.
AS: When you, because you flew as Bomber Command was getting better and better and better.
RL: Yeah.
AS: And better at its job. So, did you notice the difference in the effect from when you started bombing to, you know, say the Battle of Hamburg, the Battle of Berlin. Were the fires getting bigger?
RL: Yeah. I mean the first time I saw, saw it, when we went back home the rear gunner was talking like you could still see the glow in the sky. Not a, not just a low glow. A big glow. And when I, when I was shot down it was my turn to open the escape hatch and my turn to go out first. You’d jump out of the aircraft but in a way that would be silly. There was an open gap there and I stepped out in it but my back thing gets caught on the —
AS: On the edge.
RL: The edge of the, and I can remember, ‘Push me. Push me.’ And they pushed me. Well. Then I dropped. I can’t remember counting three and putting on the, I must have pulled it then. And on this day, ‘Oh bloody hell. I’m going to drop in to that lot.’ The bloody fire is burning isn’t it? Then of course the common sense — oh the wind will blow me off and you gradually saw it was. But I mean.
AS: Yeah. I’ll come to when you were shot down. When, when you were flying over these targets could you feel the heat?
RL: No, I can’t say, I can’t say I ever thought of that. Or what the feelings were.
AS: Did you feel, what did you feel about the bombing? The people underneath. Did it worry you at the time?
RL: Well, they’d bombed London, hadn’t they?
AS: Yeah.
RL: And we were only giving them back what they’d done to London. That’s basically what it was.
AS: Yeah.
RL: You, well when I pulled my parachute and I saw, ‘Oh bloody hell I’m going to drop in that.’ Now, we do know that the firemen, if they saw a parachute coming down in the fire and there was a German raid on they would turn their hoses away from him. I mean they would let them drop in the bloody fire. Well, flying, flying kit you never really wore. How can I say? I never wore my flying trousers on then. I flew, I had my submarine sweater, socks, flying boots, an ordinary uniform and an open neck shirt with a lady’s scarf tied in a knot. And if I had [died from it] they were dress clothes. Now, I can remember floating down on my parachute and untying this knotted scarf because we were told the Germans could catch hold of each end and strangle you. I can remember dropping it and letting it float down. My palm of my hand started itching. Take off my glove. Scratch my palm. Put my glove back on again. Going down. I landed in — there was some wires going along as I got closer to the ground and I surmised these were tram wires. So, I pulled on my chute when I got near straight down. I can’t tell you which hand, you know. I landed in the back garden of this house. Well, to release your parachute you had a buckle. You clamp it and turn it. Well, I was doing this but the wind had got into my parachute and taking me back.
AS: Dragging you down the road.
RL: And a German soldier was there with a long bloody bayonet [laughs] I said all three masses [laughs]. And then he got me there and I put my hands up and he released it. Now, we took, we were took into the house. Obviously a mill had been and there was a man and his wife and this huge German. He had the small, small tin hat on a big head and he had this red and black armband. Like a Home Guard I suppose and he started yanking at me and he slapped me two or three times. There was this man and woman. I think it was a man and wife. And you know the Moses baskets?
AS: Yes.
RL: Where the two halves go together. Well, there was a baby in each and I’d thought he was having a go at me for bombing babies and things like that and I’ve never, so. Oh, one of the babies opened its eyes and let out a yell. Oh, that was a beautiful sound but in the end this soldier seemed to be frightened of this man. Seemed as though I was a spar as far as he was. He’d captured an airmen you know and that. But, oh I never oh that baby crying [crying noises]
AS: And were you, were you still in the middle of this bombing raid? Was it going on around you?
RL: I was on the, I was on the outskirts of the thing.
AS: What did it sound like being underneath it? What did it sound like? The bombing raid. When you were on the ground.
[pause]
RL: [unclear]
AS: Did you hear the vibrations and the noise?
RL: I can’t [pause] I was taken to a, I suppose the picket post.
AS: Were you injured?
RL: Yeah. I was injured but that’s, that’s a funny thing. I was injured. Well, a lot of that there was the bang and there was a hole in the aircraft. I didn’t think any more about it. I went down without feeling any pain. I got to this picket post. I was amazed. There was a German soldier and he talked like an Australian — ‘Hi cobber,’ you know. ‘The war for you is over.’ And he searched me. Well, we’re not supposed to take any documents but I mean I had a wallet. A picture of my wife. A few lucky charms like silver thre’penny bits there. That was the other thing.
AS: They worked.
RL: I don’t know whether this ought to be on tv. He saw a little square envelope and he opened it. He puts it in his pocket kind of thing. Well, then the ambulance is called after he took this — name and number. All that. And I was feeling then my wound. I wasn’t in pain but I, there was something wrong and the blood was trickling down my trousers. Well, when this [unclear] ambulance came, they wanted me to lie down on the stretcher. No. No way was I going to. I wanted to be sat up so I can do something if something comes along. And this flaming soldier drove the ambulance down the main road and he kept on saying, ‘Kaput. Kaput. Kaput.’ And all I could see was the front of a building standing and there was nothing behind it, you know. We drove down this main road and we come to the archway.
AS: Oh, the Brandenburg Gate?
RL: Yeah. Just before we come to that archway we saw FW Woolworth’s and that, but you know on seeing Woolworth’s, well we turned left and we go up the road or we got to a part of it. We stopped at a private hospital. And they didn’t want to know. They didn’t give me any treatment. They had enough of their own I suppose. So, we drove into this hospital and they took me through a line of Luftwaffe people and I couldn’t believe it. There was, well there weren’t soldiers that you could put on a drill squadron. I mean there was one bloke who was a hunchback but I mean he was in the German army. He could do something couldn’t he? And they sat me on the corner of a desk and the doctor put a pad or a dressing on my wound. And in came an immaculately dressed Luftwaffe officer. Dagger, and dirk. Everything. Looked beautiful. He introduced to me as a German master at one of our universities before the war. And he talked to this doctor man and then he talked to me and he said, ‘Your name, number,’ and of course I gave it to him. Well, I didn’t know that leading up. You see the next thing was, ‘What were you flying?’ Now, this doctor, whatever he had to do to my wound he did. I’m not, he didn’t hurt me intentionally. He just did what he had to do and of course instead of saying ooh, you said, ‘Oh Halifax,’ you know. Then I realized what I had to do. Every time he asked me a question I had to say, ‘Oooh.’ And you get this after he gave me a pencil and piece of paper, ‘You have to write home.’ So, what can you do? You can’t put down, “Hello, I’m in Germany. In Berlin. Sincerely, Ron.” You wrote a lot of piffle really. That letter got home.
AS: It did.
RL: Yeah. Then that went through the German postal system. Wasn’t anything to do with the POW form or anything like that. Amazing. They took me on to the hospital and apparently linen bandages were like a gold mine and the outer bandages was crepe paper. Well, they’d fitted me out with a nightie. A long nightie, you see. As I say this crepe paper, I was, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and breathing heavy and of course it just fell on the ground. They cleaned me up again and they gave me a shirtie nightie. Well, you go to bed and you think to yourself I wonder what they’re thinking at home, you know. But it was amazing.
AS: Were you obviously frightened parachuting in to Berlin. When did the fear leave you? When did you think that you’re alright? You’re safe. They’re going to not kill you. When was that?
RL: I think, when I got to the Luftwaffe hospital. Now, in the room with me there was a squadron leader and a flight lieu. The flight lieu was a Aussie. Now, he apparently had got blown out of his aircraft and badly wounded his arm and things like that. Well, the ointment that they had to use, kind of thing, it used to stink. Old Smithy used to, well we used to call him Smithy, but he said, ‘Oh cut it off doc. Cut the bloody thing off.’ I bet if that had been in England I reckon they would have took it off. And the surgeon said, ‘No. No. I’ll send you home with an arm.’ Well, this surgeon came in one night and he was dressed up in his dress uniform. And of course we were all ‘whoo ooh,’ and this kind of thing. Well he came in to see Smithy and Smithy did get repatriated with his arm. He can’t use, well he can use everything but he hasn’t got an empty sleeve. They were marvelous. I mean, I suppose it’s the code. If you need attention you got it. But —
AS: Did all your watch and your clothes disappear?
RL: My flying boots disappeared. My, my sweater. No. That was just all stained in blood. We couldn’t have been treated better in that hospital. And there was a nurse. [unclear] a nurse. She did everything for me and on, at home, there’s a picture of my mum’s mum and if you could just remove the head gear on the painting and put the nurse’s uniform in.
AS: The same. Yeah.
RL: That was my grandmother. But she used to do everything. Like, the other two bods complained. They wanted something to clean their teeth with so she appeared with three toothbrushes. Well, a man who has got it, and I had a kiss. But I think she was great.
AS: This was January 1944.
RL: Yeah.
AS: What was the food like that you were given in Germany?
RL: The food?
AS: Yeah.
RL: Well very sparse. I think we got what the German hospital [pause] I was dead lucky in getting into this Luftwaffe hospital. The food. If you had a soup plate with a pattern on the bottom and you had soup in it if you could see the pattern in the soup. Now for the first day, the first two or three days in hospital I was given white bread as my [unclear] but it turned to the black bread. How can I describe it? The soup was very thin, you know. If you say it was chicken soup it was only like a chicken left the water, running.
AS: How long were you —
RL: Various sorts of sausages. We never, we never had any cooked food. The only one that I could say no to was the blood sausage. I couldn’t. But when you get hungry you eat it. I mean it’s gorgeous.
AS: How long were you at the hospital for?
RL: A couple of months.
AS: Really. So, you were quite badly hurt.
RL: And I — but one thing I never had any dog tags.
AS: No dog tags.
RL: It’s a bloody silly thing. You see, you’re on a squadron. One day you look at the notice board and listed up is R Last is commissioned as a pilot officer.
AS: Yeah.
RL: So, you had to take all your kit back in to the stores. They take your dog tags but they don’t give you the new one. You have to sort of wait about. Well you would have thought they would take the old one, stamp the new ones and that’s that. Well, I never, I never bothered with them. I didn’t think I was going to get shot down.
AS: It’s bloody dangerous though. Flying without them.
RL: Well yeah.
AS: Anyway, you had no dog tags.
RL: But the person in the hospital bed, there was a siren goes off and you see these two other blokes. They can’t move in the daytime but they start moving. And you don’t think anything of it you know. They were directly in the bed. Well, apparently, there was one siren that says planes are coming towards Germany. Then there was another siren that said they are coming in our direction. Then there’s another siren saying, well we’re the target. Well, the Germans naturally take their own staff down to the bombing shelter. And of course, if they can’t get us down we’re left up there. Well, it’s not funny laying on a bed. When you say you can’t move you think you can’t move. Then all of a sudden you hear [bomb noise] and the bed sort of jumps up and down. Then the curtains get blown in. Then the windows. Then a fire seems nearer than it actually is. You think to yourself — crying out loud, there was nine hundred bombers on the night I was shot down.
AS: What was the noise like when you were on the ground with all the aircraft over you?
RL: Well, that was them. It was the ones that you heard. Something like, it was only, a falling [pause] like a huge tree coming down, you know. I mean, I could [pause] we, we back to our beds and our skipper had been brought in.
AS: Your skipper?
RL: Yeah. And he had something wrong with his leg up here. And he had had this leg tied up. This was the second night when I managed to get out to the bomb part. And when we come back we heard, ‘Help. Help.’ He’d had the [pulley?] out the bloody ceiling and he’d gone under the bed. Under the bed. He was going, ‘Help. Help.’
AS: Yeah. So, you saw your skipper again in the hospital.
RL: I only saw him about twice.
AS: Ok. What about the rest of your crew? Tell me what happened when you were shot down. When you had to bale out. What happened that night in the aeroplane?
RL: Well the aeroplane went on for another ten miles before it crashed.
AS: But what got you? Was it flak that got you or a fighter? What got you?
RL: It was a fighter.
AS: Ok.
RL: I’ve got a write up there somewhere but I normally flew, or sat right of the pilot. But the night we were shot down we had a second dickie. Now, that is a pilot of a new crew coming in. He comes, he comes for, more or less, experience. Well, that meant that I was in the bomb aimers place. Now, you can’t see much other than in front of you. So, instead of doing my normal duties I was down in the bombing panel [pause] What was we talking about?
AS: What happened when you were shot down? So, you weren’t the second dickie. You weren’t sitting next to the pilot. You were in the bomb aimer’s position.
RL: Yeah.
AS: What happened then?
RL: Well, I can’t see much. And I’ve not got the tie in with what’s gone on with the skipper. I know I’ve got my intercom but that’s only to, that’s not the chattering. That’s how to, emergency if you are on target. So, I didn’t see any of the journey. By that, he didn’t get injured that sat in my place. So, I was down on the bombing panel. There’s the mid-upper turret gunner there and the rear gunner there. Now, the aircraft must have come up from there.
AS: From underneath. Yeah.
RL: Gone in there and into my back.
AS: Ok.
RL: Now, I didn’t hear what was, any — I didn’t hear anything about that. I mean, as I say your intercom is basically for emergencies and I imagine that the rear gunner saw this plane come in, and he fired and the plane killed the two —
AS: The gunners. Ok.
RL: And then it stopped with me.
AS: So, the two gunners were killed in the attack.
RL: Well, we assume so. The wireless operator was injured. Oh the navigator. I think. The rear gunner. Mid-upper gunner. Navigator. They were killed. So, it must have come up from there.
AS: Yeah.
RL: And I was on the last line.
AS: Yeah. So, he attacked from the underneath on the right hand side.
RL: Yeah. You see, they, they didn’t know at that time that some of the German planes had a gun that pointed upwards.
AS: Schrage musik. Yeah. Yeah.
RL: Now, I don’t think the attack came in from underneath. I think it came in from the, that got, as I say there was three members of the crew that were killed. The wireless op, he was a POW. The engineer was a POW. And the navigator was killed.
AS: Did the aircraft catch fire?
RL: Pardon?
AS: Did the aircraft catch fire?
RL: No. All I’ve got is it crashed.
AS: Ok.
RL: Ten miles.
AS: With the bombs still on board?
RL: I’ve got it all. I’ve got so much.
AS: Don’t worry. Just tell me were the bombs still on the aeroplane when it crashed?
RL: That I can’t tell you.
AS: Ok.
RL: I just had, worried me for a long time. I think they’d gone. They must have gone otherwise it would have been burned to hell wouldn’t it? I mean, no, you see they must have gone because we used to carry a lot of incendiaries. It would have blown up over Berlin.
AS: Yeah.
RL: I must have done but I can’t, you know, I often bring it.
AS: It’s not surprising. There were a lot of other things going on at the time.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. On, on these big raids could you see a lot of other aircraft around you?
RL: No. It’s amazing but you, until you left England you saw a few but no. I mean, I’ve often wondered and it sounds bloody silly but you got four hundred and fifty planes in the air, over a town at one time. Now, it’s bloody dark and I could never understand this but, ‘Bomb doors open,’ and then, ‘Left. Left. That’s right skip.’ Then go on, ‘You’re alright skip. Left, left.’ We’re doing alright. Bombs gone. Bomb doors closed. And then he turns to the left, doesn’t he? As I say, going for home. But every aircraft has got an altimeter. Now, it was supposed to be flying at twenty thousand feet. That doesn’t mean to say that we’re all twenty thousand feet. There are some lower. There’s some higher isn’t there. According to what you left base with. I’ve often wondered how many planes had been lost. I mean, you would have thought that after they heard, ‘Bombs gone. Bomb doors shut.’ They would have gone on for certain, well a mile or a couple of miles before but you see all the aircraft flying and [unclear] and you — bam. I reckon, I reckon we must have had thirty percent shot down by our own bloody aircraft.
AS: Really.
RL: Yeah. Well. I mean, the sky’s full of it and I’m telling you we’re not all level. It isn’t like we were flying, this one could go under. This one could go over, couldn’t it?
AS: Yeah.
RL: It always seemed to me. It seemed as though it was a ritual. Bomb doors, bombs gone, bomb doors closed. Bam.
AS: Did he wait for the photograph?
RL: Eh?
AS: Did he wait for the photograph?
RL: No.
AS: He didn’t.
RL: I mean that was automatically linked with the bombs gone. And the time that we were going to drop. Oh no. I mean it isn’t as though we had to wait for the photograph. I mean that was automatically tuned in.
AS: Ok. [unclear] When you let the bombs go did you have to let them go in a certain order?
RL: No. No. No, they, all the bombs went as one. The load went.
AS: Just drop the lot at once.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Salvoed the lot. Ok. When you were operating I think the master bomber started.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Could you hear him on your, could you, as the bomb aimer hear him or —?
RL: No.
AS: Who heard him?
RL: Every crew might have been in contact see.
AS: Ok.
RL: But I didn’t hear anything about. And they weren’t so good as they thought they were.
AS: No. I wonder because he’s, the master bomber is circling, talking to the aircraft and I don’t know who heard him. Whether it was the pilot.
RL: The, the master bomber is talking to the bombers where they’re dropping the flares. He’s more, he’s more or less more scientifically geared to make his underlings drop the bombs say, to the left more or to the right. But it was a, it wasn’t exactly all that correct was it? I mean, when the Mossies got in to it there was a great improvement. When the Mosquitoes took over like.
AS: Ok. When you were flying, you started flying Wellingtons to Germany. Were you always at the bottom of the heap? Were all the other aeroplanes above you. What sort of height did you fly?
RL: No. I suppose, the only thing was the Wellington is a beautiful aircraft. It’s, I don’t know, it always seemed to be. It was a lovely aircraft, the Wellington. I enjoyed that more than I did with the Halifax. But no. I think we, we all bombed at the same height.
AS: Ok.
RL: I’m sure we did.
AS: Ok.
RL: The only snag with the Wimpy — when we used to go to briefing you’d see the track and you’d see another pin out in the North Sea and that told you when your petrol was finally out. Now, if the commanding officer went on a raid which he only used to do once in a while but they’d sometimes they’d think, ‘Oh let’s have a go,’ and off they went. When they got back to base, they’d be calling out from the North Sea somewhere. ‘Hello. Charlie one. Come in. When is my turn to land?’ ‘Your turn to land number one,’ you see. And when you get back to base you called the base, they’d say, ‘Oh circle at four thousand feet,’ you know. And you were, the rest of the crew knocked some off. ‘Oh bloody hell. What a load of crap. What a load of crap.’ That meant we’d more or less circle. Now, you’d say, ‘I’m on my emergency fuel. I’ve been on it twenty minutes. I’ve only got ten left.’ See.
AS: Just to jump the queue.
RL: Yeah. But the skipper would always, he would wait in the North Sea and we were dancing around waiting to get down. I think that would be with the Wellingtons.
AS: With the —
RL: You were more or less going to drop out of the sky.
AS: With the Wellingtons you did a lot of mine laying as well.
RL: Yeah.
AS: That must have been bloody dangerous. Low level. What were your, did you, did you map read for the, for the dropping the mines.
RL: Yeah. We, we used to go out to the Frisian Islands. We did the first, the first op I did. The first op that 466 did was to do the Frisian Islands. You used to get a landfall and then go [pause] and at landfall it was like you were so many degrees and one minute to drop your mines.
AS: Time and distance. Yeah.
RL: We had one aircraft that flew in to the building. Well, it was lovely, you see. Mine laying you were low flying. What it said on the panel and we’d been flying over the water and the spray had been hitting the underside of my panel. It’s a lovely feeling but apparently one of our aircraft got off the North Sea and he got to the building and he went into a building. So low.
AS: So, you had to trust your skipper.
RL: Eh?
AS: You had to trust your pilot.
RL: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, when we, we were on a test flight. I suppose the aircraft had been in for its usual maintenance thing and we drove along the cliff. You know. Where the girls were sunbathing. I know they were mined, a lot of the beaches but there was gaps open and we were going at low flying, got it so we were and the skipper for some reason decided to go home. He goes home and then there was a hay making cart. You know the bloke in the hay with the forks putting the hay out with a bloke standing on top. I thought we’d cut his head off. Luckily, being so low and so fast they, they didn’t recognize it but I mean, well, we’d have been in Colditz. Or Colchester rather.
20105
AS: Colchester. Yeah. How long was it before you got a regular pilot and a regular crew after you’d lost your first skipper? ‘Cause you flew with quite a lot of different people. Were you a spare body on the squadron?
[pause]
RL: Well, I became [pause] I flew from quite a different lot of pilots. When [unclear] Healy got off. I, I stepped in to, like if a bomb aimer was sick, I’d step in. That wasn’t very popular. You see, if you flew with any, any established crew they didn’t like it. They didn’t know how you were going to react, I think. And no, I flew with about seven different pilots. I mean, I flew with the commanding officer one night. The flight was, the navigator was a squadron leader. The gunner was a flight lieutenant.
AS: It must have been like flying with God.
RL: Yeah. Even with the commander called me in, ‘Would you fly with me with tonight’s flight?’ ‘Yes sir.’ And he told me all. I thought what, do I stand to attention? And so they would arrive, you know you but —
AS: I, I should imagine that you didn’t like flying with a spare crew.
RL: No. It wasn’t liked. For the simple reason you’d probably not been mentioned with them. You just, you know, knew that you were one of the squadrons crew and that’s that. If you’d have known one of them it would have been different. But there wasn’t. It wasn’t a nice thing to do.
AS: How did you pick up with Coombs, your skipper? How did you meet him and form a crew? ‘Cause you did a lot of your operational flying with him, didn’t you?
RL: Yeah.
AS: How did you meet him?
RL: You don’t half ask awkward questions don’t you?
AS: That’s my job [pause] In July you, July ’43 you started flying with Coombs and then he became your regular skipper.
RL: I don’t know. I don’t know how we met.
AS: It doesn’t really matter but you then became a part of a crew again.
RL: Well, it obviously came with Andy the wireless op. A navigator. And the rear gunner, Butch. Butch was the only married Aussie, and he died. Well, I think, I think we were just detailed.
AS: Yeah. Put together.
RL: The mid-upper gunner, the engineer, me. We were just allocated to that crew coming in. Didn’t know them. I mean, we were really up in arms against the Aussies.
AS: Really?
RL: Well they used to call us, ‘You pommie bastards,’ you know and we didn’t like it. So, we had to teach them.
AS: Some manners.
RL: Yeah. But no. No, I think that we were just allocated.
AS: Was your skipper an Australian? Was Coombs an Australian?
RL: Yeah.
AS: Ok.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. Back to when you were shot down. You were, what happened after the hospital? Where did they take you after hospital?
RL: Down to Frankfurt on Main.
AS: Ok.
RL: That’s a, that’s a sort of —
Sheila: Interrogation.
AS: Oh, is that Dulag Luft? The interrogation place.
RL: After they had gathered all of them and then allocate them to the different camps.
AS: Ok. How did they treat you there?
RL: Yeah. Well that wasn’t a very comfortable journey. I only had the remains of my kit. The blood stained jersey smelt stinky. But we, we’d gone down there on our first trip to leave hospital. And we all got in this utility ambulance. People lined up in slings and me laid on a stretcher and then we got down to this Berlin Railway Station and the driver opens up the back door and all these walking wounded type of thing got out and he shut the door. And I could hear this train noises and things like that. I waited some time and he came back, opened the door and he said, ‘We go back there.’ Apparently, this nurse said that I wouldn’t last the journey and she had created such a stink that they brought me back. Of course, I was going to be one of the last taken out of the thing. Well, German trains didn’t have upholstery. They had the plywood seats with all those holes driven through. Well, I don’t think I would have lasted. But that night we went down that’s what we were in. There was a coach with these hard wood seats. It was bad enough to sort of try and keep up. But you know what happens. You go to sleep and when you’re [makes snoring noise] it’s all a moment [unclear] Then there was all the language under the sun. You’re taken up to an interrogation centre. You’re in a cell, eight foot by about four. And if you wanted to go to the toilet you released a metal arm that went down the side.
AS: Like a railway signal.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Yeah. Ok.
RL: And the German soldier who was sat at the top he ought to take you but the snag was he never used to worry about you, you know. If he was reading his paper, well he’d read the page. You know. You were interrogated there by the SS. And I think I was dead lucky again. By then I was in Germany for a couple of months so I was old stuff to him.
AS: Yeah.
RL: My wounds were covered and aircrew in those days, we were given an escape kit. Poly [pause] You there Susan?
AS: Polyurethane is it? Like a plastic.
RL: What’s that, Polyanthus? Polyan?
AS: Polyanthus is a plant.
RL: No.
AS: Never mind.
RL: Pandora.
AS: Pandora. Ok. Yeah.
RL: Pandora pack.
AS: What was in Pandora. Yeah. What was in that?
RL: There was a silk map. A compass button. Vitamin tablets. Things like that to help you escape. Well, this officer, SS officer, took off the bandage to see whether I’d got any of these escape things there. And of course, he didn’t stick the bandage back. Well, in this cell you had an ersatz pallias.
AS: Like a mattress. Yeah.
RL: It’s not like an ordinary sack. It’s made up of, like straw. These things. And of course, the pallias got stuffed with sawdust. So, you have a heater in this room up there. And barbed windows. So, you sit on your bunk and it’s cold so you’ve got all your clothes on. You doze off and it’s hot as hell. They’ve got the heater on, see. Well you take off your jumper and of course you dry yourself off like a towel. And then you go to sleep again and it’s off. Well, that doesn’t improve you. But when, and this fellow, he interviewed me and he said, ‘I’ve seen you.’ And that’s that. I didn’t get asked questions which are two months ago. So, I got away with it. Well, you, then you were released. You marched down the road to a reception centre where they give you a kit of clothes. I mean they gave me a, I only had carpet slippers for walking in the snow, you see. So, they give me a leather belt and I had a pair of American trousers given me. The only thing they didn’t, they didn’t give me was underclothes. Funny thing. I can’t understand that because, I mean, well they’re the things that smell don’t they? They want washing.
AS: Yeah,
RL: And if you’ve only got one pair it’s —
AS: Did you meet up with a load of other prisoners then?
RL: Oh yeah. They were, we were given a medical by this German doctor. They asked if anybody wanted medical attention and I said yes. And when he saw my wound he went bloody mad. Picking, picking sawdust.
AS: From the mattress. Yeah.
RL: I think that hurt more than the wound itself. But they sent us up to the camp.
AS: A POW camp.
RL: Yeah.
AS: Yeah.
RL: I’ve seen, I’ve seen a flight lieutenant that was in charge of that. I’ve seen him since.
AS: Did you?
RL: Yeah. In Bournemouth. There’s a municipal college and I was walking past there one day and I saw a bloke and as he passed I turned and he turned. And that was the bloke.
AS: Good lord.
RL: Yeah.
AS: So which prisoner of war camp was this that you went to?
RL: Stalag Luft III.
AS: At Sagan. Ok that’s the Great Escape camp isn’t it?
RL: Well, they, I got there just before they escaped.
AS: But you weren’t a part of that?
RL: No, no. No. No. They were, oh they were clever. I’ve often wondered whether the men are in prison for what they got up to in those days.
AS: What, the Germans?
RL: Yeah. I mean they engraved. They made rubber stamps. In German. After the Great Escape [pause] The Great Escape was run by what they called Big X. Now, I was in the room where Little X was.
AS: His deputy.
RL: Now Little X coming up and he said to me, there was also in my room a bloke from Bournemouth. Ron. So, I was called Junior. And Little X said to me one day, he said, ‘Can I interest you in helping us with the escape system?’ ‘Well, yeah.’ So, he took me to another hut and I couldn’t help noticing after passing a certain bloke he started going to me like that and pointed here. Sort of strange but of course they was also, they were looking for the German guards, you see. They, they had one type of guard, he was called a ferret and he would go under buildings and all that. So, they were watching him. They were. We got into the bathroom. They had a bathroom in every block with a concrete floor, a soakaway and a shower which was a bit of a pipe up with a tin on the top, you know. All calmly walked in here and there was a bloke in his birthday suit in there. And all of a sudden they lifted up this drain cover and they started baling the water into the bath. Yeah. And of course, I didn’t know. I was watching and all of a sudden they drained off the water in to the bath, dirty water and they pulled up a concrete slab and I could get down there. And when I get down there there was a store room. It was a tunnel, it started off as a tunnel but the Germans built another compound on so that was a waste of time. There was three rifles in there. How did they get rifles down there? And I had to get some ink and I got this thing up and all of a sudden, the slab goes into position see, and the water from the bath is bunged in it. Now, I’m in this place with the candle. Well, one of the goons got a bit near it, you see but then they get rid of him by offering him a cigarette around the corner out of the way or something. And then they pull up the slab and I’m still there, you know. And you see them so they dropped the slab down and the bath that had the dirty water was pulled in. Sealed up. Well I mean —
AS: Can you —?
RL: They made clothes out of, out of blankets and things like that. Made rubber stamps. Documents with a sort of German old markers they’d got. I reckoned if they’d have started up back when they got home they’d be inside.
AS: Can you remember, because you were, you were in the camp when the news came about what happened to the fifty officers —?
RL: Yeah.
AS: Can you remember what happened then? What it was like?
RL: Well, we were all called into the camps and told this. It was unbelievable. I mean they would, we all said what the group captain said, ‘How many wounded?’ So, you know, we were shocked. They said fifty officers were shot. And so, we wanted to know what happened to the other twenty six, seven. Were they wounded? But there was no wounded people. When that, the morning of that escape we were all brought out of our huts and opposite there was this hut where it all happened, and over here kind of thing they set up a German machine gun — pointed. I didn’t like that. They could have, I would have been one of the first to get it. But I mean we were dumbstruck. How could fifty get shot trying to escape?
AS: What was the attitude of the German Luftwaffe officers in the camp?
RL: Well, you see, every camp, that was one of the biggest camps of Germany. They were always escape proof but I mean I think it was only quite bad luck that the tunnel was found. I’ve got an idea it was like a German soldier wanting to take a leak, it was found, you know. I mean, but you wanted guts to escape. I mean here we were in Poland. It’s alright if you were fluent in German language. But if you only knew the basic German you wouldn’t, couldn’t get away. Not from Poland. I mean, they wouldn’t have had a chance. I mean all I knew about was ‘Kaput.’ ‘Ser kaput’ [unclear] I would have been buggered wouldn’t I?
AS: Yeah. Did that stop escaping when that happened?
RL: Well, afterwards, yes. It sort of put the, I think the people regarded it as dangerous. I mean, all you can see, I mean all around Sagan all leave was cancelled wasn’t it? They were all looking for the prisoners of war camp. I know it’s a simple thing but a soldier who’s lost his leave he’d get quite angry wouldn’t he? I mean, I would have in this country.
AS: What was life like in the camp? Was there any homosexuality for instance?
RL: Well there was, they had a theatre. That was marvelous. They had instruments, band instruments. In the cold weather they used to flood the football pitch. I mean the football pitch was only a bit of ground. No grass on it. But they used to flood the place. They had skates and, you know, they played basket, base —
AS: Baseball.
RL: Baseball.
AS: Yeah.
RL: They founded, like different teams like East Canada against West Canada. You know, all that kind of thing. They had, I was in there one Christmas and somebody in the room said, ‘Have you seen the cake they were demonstrating? No, it’s all kind of - height. Thing is beautiful. Cake decorations, you know, cor bloody marvellous. A wooden cake. It was corrugated cardboard down. And they had a wonderful [pause] from the American [pause]
AS: The Red Cross.
RL: American boxes.
AS: Oh yeah, parcels. Yeah. Ok.
RL: They, there was klim powdered milk and they’d, how can I say it — iced a cardboard and the decoration was all in colour. Do you want a colour to be, have a kid’s paint box?
AS: Fantastic.
RL: Yeah. And they’d take some of the blue kind of thing and mix it with this thing. And it bloody marvelous. I’m not a cake [unclear] But you see, I didn’t know until after the war but you could take an OU course there. And one, for some unknown reason if you want to go on exercise around the camp you went anti-clockwise.
AS: Yeah.
RL: Well, when I came out, back out of the service and was a gas fitter I was going up Atkinson Avenue and I had to go into a certain number in this street but I wasn’t sure. So, I pulled up against the curb. Sat on me bicycle. So he locked up the car, you know. He turned like that. I thought bloody hell. I know that ass. So, the bloke mowing his lawn and he was going up that way, you see. So, I waited for him to turn and come back. Yeah, I’d seen him. So, I got off me bike and went up to him, ‘Morning sir. You were a wing commander, were you?’ ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I don’t remember your name.’ But I think he mentioned it. I said, ‘You were in Stalag Luft III.’ ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘I think I walked behind you many times, sir.’ I told him. I, as you were like [unclear] we would come out of our hut and we’d join in the, you’d be talking to somebody or walking on your own. I said, ‘Well I recognized your backside sir.’ And I told him and he said do you want to come in here and he called his wife. I don’t know but he didn’t have a peculiar walk or anything but it was just the thing.
AS: Just something that stuck with you. Yeah. So, you were there for over a year in the camp.
RL: Yeah.
AS: What happened at the end of the war? How were you liberated?
RL: Well we were, knowing we were, the Russians were near us. So, we were told that we were leaving the camp. And of course, like everything else, things get altered, don’t you. We’re moving soon. Somewhere. Then another hour. Well we moved out in the morning. Apparently, we were all given a Red Cross parcel. I didn’t get that. I don’t remember that but you see we all went out with what we could carry.
AS: And this was winter time was it?
RL: Yeah. It was snowing outside.
AS: God.
RL: Bloody cold. But we never had plastic sheeting or anything like that. I mean I was in the normal uniform. A sweater and battle dress and a coat, overcoat and a pair of boots. Or socks and boots. Well and we went out in the early hours of the morning and we walked in this slashing snow. I mean the cold, you know. And we stopped on the edge of a moor. And they crowded us into a barn. And somebody said well no lights to be shown, you know because there is straw in there and we could have knocked off quite a few. And I always remember a flight lieutenant gunner. He said, ‘Come on,’ he said. Cuddle up with me.’ And we cuddled up together.
AS: Share warmth. Yeah.
RL: Just to share warmth. And of course, when daylight came we started to get the doors open. Of course, they wouldn’t. But all we wanted to do was get out of the barn and light up for a brew and just to get warm. Had those moments.
AS: So, can you remember what month this was? Was it early 1945 or [pause] It doesn’t matter. It’s just interesting. It was snow on the ground and really cold.
RL: Yeah. Late ’44 or early ’45.
AS: Ok. And how long did this go on for? On the move all the time.
RL: Well, the next day we stopped at a village. I remember, like a corral.
AS: Yeah.
RL: And there was, and there was this bloody horse blanket all made up of all different materials, you know that. There was all these village policemen and, I don’t know — I’m going to grab that blanket, you see. And I got it. You know, I mean, when he wasn’t looking I’d swiped it. I smelled like a horse but I was warmer. Then we, well I’ve got it in a write up there. We went on to another place. They turned out a cinema, and they bundled us in there. Well that was out of the wind but then the toilet facilities was a bit overdone. Then we made it down to a station where they put us on a train. In the cattle trucks. That wasn’t fun. You only had room to sort of sit down. Somebody’s legs would be up the side of you. If you wanted to go to the toilet that was horrible. You see you had to step over bodies and you could, well there wasn’t a place where you could put your foot down. That was, you moaned and groaned. Then the outer, they could open a shuttered door but there was a feeling you shouldn’t pee in the wind.
AS: You get it back. Yeah.
RL: But the poor blokes that were by that door. They were in trouble. No, but you see I’ve heard, like when we were in that barn or when we were in German hospital, people were crying out for their mums. And you can’t do anything can you?
AS: No. And people who were sick and couldn’t keep up. What happened to them?
RL: Well, they had some German party picking them up. I think we had [pause] I think our guards were friendly. I mean even on the march if somebody had a cart there were a half dozen on the other cart and there was a German soldier whose rifle and pack had been put up and he’d be pushed with us. I mean, it got, I think it got to that stage that they really knew they’d lost the war. And I mean we were on a farm when we were released to the British army and these German guards had given themselves up, you know. I mean, I think they only took away their guns and said, ‘Well, muck in,’ you know. I mean, one or two were quite slobs. Friendly enough. They were seen to.
AS: So, you were, you were liberated by the British army.
RL: Yeah. Well, not the British army. A motorbike and sidecar, you know. No fighting. Just come out. It was an ideal farm or an estate. You know. The Russians were all the working labour you know, but [pause] no.
AS: How did you get back to England? Did you fly or go on a ship or what?
RL: Well, you will, you were told you would go on a lorry, you know. Convoy. You were going to. Well at the end of the day you stopped and you were put in a field. British army gave my mum and my wife enough sheets, enough towels and soap. We got a town so that every time we stopped, no food.
AS: Yeah. It sounds like the army. Sounds like them.
RL: We never, we got to Lunenburg and then there was like a big barn sort of with the army. We were told to put down all your gear you don’t want. Go over there and get a meal. A meal. So, people just dropped their bag and when we got over there it was a white bread sandwich. And it was horrid. We’d been used to this black bread which filled you up. When we got back to the shed all our kit had gone. British army stole it. So we formed a band and we went out looking for them.
AS: Did you find it?
RL: We found it.
AS: Yeah.
RL: We were absolutely starving. A lump of black bread would have been a treat, you know. In the end they took us by Lancaster.
AS: Oh wow.
RL: Over to an aerodrome in England and of course put the usual spray up [unclear] and they’d laid on tea, you know. Afternoon tea. Well, little cakes. But I mean while we were waiting for the planes to come there was a British airman there who gave me a tin of peaches. Well, I got the tin open. You know what peaches was like, don’t you? Went in your hand.
AS: It’s all the syrup isn’t it and the juice. Yeah.
RL: [laughs] It’s greasy, you know. You wanted something to anchor it down. And of course, it had gone on the ground. I picked it up slid it up. It was lovely peaches after you’d eaten them but —
AS: Yeah. So, you flew back to England. What happened next? Did you go back to your family or did the air force take you somewhere?
RL: They took us down to the railway station. Where ever it was. And I always remember when the Dunkirk came they put all these soldiers into schools and they had our soldiers around the outside. So that they were, until they’d been processed they were. They didn’t have to do that. We got sent down and surrounded by British soldiers.
AS: Wow.
RL: We couldn’t talk to the natives.
AS: Extraordinary.
RL: They took us on then up to Cosford aerodrome. Oh God. They gave us a meal and rice pudding afterwards and given a bath and hospital clothes, you know. Dressing gown. And we went to bed. Oh, a proper meal we had. We woke, we woke up the following morning. Now, in the RAF or any service if you move from one station to another you had to get a clearance chit. Well, when we woke up all our, all our dirty clothes had gone, you know. So, you walked around with this sheet of paper. You were warned somewhere along the line you’d have to give a sample. Well you walk around. I imagine they got every service doctor within a certain radius of the thing. So, we walked around. He looked in your right ear. Of yeah, that’ll be alright. Then somebody would look in your left ear. And you were marched into a hut, pay hut. You know, how much do you earn? You know. Well you go on through. You had to give a sample. Well you walked through the hut, wooden floorboards and there’s a huge kitchen table. And there’s jam jars, sauce bottles, any jar, but the snag is they’re all full, you see. So you want to pee and you can’t find an empty one. So, what happened? This is absolutely brilliant. They pour out in there. Pour some there. Some bloke came out and he said, ‘That looks a nice colour,’ and he takes that out as a the sample, see. There was ever so much pee floating off the table on to the floor. Stood up in it. I mean they only wanted an eggcup full. But you couldn’t find one. Then you’d go on and in a hut with blankets held up. A B C D and that. [unclear] stools and the idea was to come out of B. The next one would go into B. And I don’t understand some people were coming out of one hut and [unclear] and he would pass it on down. I didn’t take on. I got back to the mess and a bloke came up to me and he said, ‘Is she in there?’ And I said, ‘What do you mean is she in there?’’ Oh, the WAAF officer.’ I looked. ‘No. I couldn’t see her. No.’ I couldn’t see her. He said, ‘Oh, I’ll come in then.’ Apparently this strip room, where you drop them. And you know what happened there. A bloke hadn’t seen a woman for years and he dropped them and [unclear] a strip through, it perks up on it’s own doesn’t it? You know when I was demobbed you get your kit. You had a brown pinstriped suit or a blue pin striped suit. So, I got a blue pin striped one. So I, when it come to the shorts well I want a white or a blue, you know. It’s either a red or a green, you know. I’d think to myself, well got to take something, you know. We got on this train after about [pause] and there was all this changing out of our uniform into civvies. Well, when we got off in London we looked like gangsters, kind of thing. I mean nothing matched. I mean my trilby was brown, you know. I only, I took what was on offer. I didn’t go in and say bugger it, you know. But nothing, nothing matched. We were going, people were going to the train. ‘Got a new, got green shirt?’ You know, just to, but when we got off it was horrible.
AS: So, you were demobbed very quickly after coming back to England.
RL: Oh yeah.
AS: Did you get a pension because of your injuries?
RL: No. Not then.
AS: Oh ok.
RL: I did it later.
AS: Ok.
RL: A colleague at work, my supervisor but he was a good friend too, he had got a pension. ‘Why don’t you put in for it?’ I didn’t think I’d get it but I put in the forms. The doctor came home to see me. He gave me a medical examination, asked me about my hearing. Well, I lost my hearing in the war. And he looked at my bony knee. I can use it but I can’t throw a cricket ball. I could no more, well I’d collapse if I pick up a ball and throw it. And I got a pension.
AS: Excellent.
RL: And it’s very good.
AS: Did you ever keep up with your squadron colleagues or go to reunions or anything like that?
RL: No. No. Well, I think the attitude I won’t even go on a Christmas one. That was the, I’m back in civvy now and that. I often wish I had but it’s only through my daughter what’s got on to this you know.
AS: When you look back now at that time how do you regard it and the air force? Was it something you’re glad to have done or did it steal your youth or how do you feel about, about that period of time?
RL: Well, I regret sometimes. You see, the war took apart my youth.
AS: Yeah.
RL: I was a boy. I didn’t become a young man. I got thrown into the service. I’ve often wondered what it would be like. I mean, I was what? Twenty I suppose. Twenty to twenty six. That’s sort of lost years isn’t it?
AS: And you married during the war didn’t you?
RL: Hmnn.
AS: Yeah.
RL: Yeah. Well, you see they used to say if you get married you’d go for a burton.
AS: Yeah.
RL: Comes to a hard [pause] well, decision. Yeah. We wanted to get married. I didn’t think about prisoner of war. I suppose I thought I could get killed. But in, you see a lot of us kids got married. Well, we were only kids. Well, the husband can say, ‘Well, I’m flying tonight.’ Didn’t tell her when. Probably didn’t know at that time. And then he’s flying as far as, let’s say, Berlin. Now, those girls that were in digs they would count the number of aircraft that goes off and they would count the number of aircraft that land.
AS: Yeah.
RL: But their first worry is oh perhaps he’s landed but he’s not landed here. He’s landed somewhere else. I mean they’re, they’re only babies really.
AS: There’s a wonderful play by Terence Rattigan called “Flare Path.” Have you seen it?
RL: No.
AS: That’s, that’s about the wives waiting at a hotel near, it’s a Wellington squadron actually. It speaks to that very much.
RL: You see, they’d count the aircraft come back. But then get somebody — is flight lieutenant so and so? ‘We haven’t heard anything at the moment.’ Well that’s just a put off isn’t it. And the you see this young girl, she’s miles away from home. The landlady is perhaps not, not helpful. No. It’s not —
AS: And she has nothing to do all day except wait and worry. Yeah.
RL: Yeah.
AS: How soon did your wife know that you were safe after you were shot down?
RL: A chimney sweep came and told her.
AS: A chimney sweep?
RL: Yeah. He tuned into the [unclear] news and apparently they used to give petty officer so and so was washed up ashore. On the —
AS: On the German radio?
RL: On the Thames Estuary. And they gave out that PO Last was a prisoner of war. And this chimney sweep apparently told my mum.
AS: Wow.
RL: It’s [pause] —
AS: I think we’ll stop there Ron. It’s been amazing talking to you. I’d like to come back and talk again someday but we’ve been going for four hours.
RL: Have we?
AS: Yeah. I think we’ll, I’ll thank you very much.
RL: Bloody hell.
AS: We’ll pause there.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ronald Last
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Adam Sutch
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
2015-11-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ALastRR151125
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Ronald Last grew up in Dorset and worked as an apprentice for the local Gas and Water company before volunteering for the Air Force. He attended the reception centre at Lord's Cricket Ground and describes the medical tests and inoculations recruits were given. He trained at Newquay and had started his flying training on Tiger Moths when he was posted away to train as a bomb aimer. He discusses his training in Ansons, dropping practice bombs and the duties of a bomb aimer including the bombing run, mine laying and dealing with hang-ups. He flew operations in Wellingtons and Halifaxes with 466 Squadron from RAF Driffield and suggests that his first pilot was taken off flying due to lack of moral fibre. His Halifax was shot down by a fighter over the target 28/29 January 1944 and three of his crew were killed. He baled out and became a prisoner of war. He describes his decent by parachute, his capture, treatment for his injuries and the conditions at prisoner of war camps including Stalag Luft 3. He describes the escape tunnel 'Dick' and hearing the news that 50 officers who escaped as part of the Great Escape had been shot. The camp was evacuated as the Russians advanced, and he took part in the Long March from Poland to Germany. He was eventually liberated by the British Army and returned to England by the RAF as part of Operation Exodus. After the war he worked as a gas fitter.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
Atlantic Ocean--North Sea
England--Berkshire
England--Cornwall (County)
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Oberursel
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
03:09:07 audio recording
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
466 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
arts and crafts
bale out
bomb aimer
bombing
crewing up
demobilisation
Dulag Luft
escaping
Halifax
lack of moral fibre
Master Bomber
military living conditions
military service conditions
mine laying
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Driffield
RAF Harwell
RAF Leconfield
recruitment
sanitation
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2198/40172/BMcInnesAMcInnesAv1.2.pdf
039409582741300cd52a4251b3dd8e46
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
Royal Air Force ex-Prisoner of War Association
Description
An account of the resource
97 items. The collection concerns Royal Air Force ex-Prisoner of War Association and contains items including drawings by the artist Ley Kenyon.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Robert Ankerson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-29
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
RAF ex POW As Collection
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
Alan McInnes memoir
A German Holiday 1944-45
Description
An account of the resource
An autobiography by Alan of his time as a prisoner of war. He describes the night they were shot down over Germany. Also his training with his mainly Australian crew. Then he goes into more detail regarding the operation when he was shot down.
He describes their capture, mistreatment and interrogations at various locations. After interrogations at Dulag Luft they were sent to a transit camp in Frankfurt then on by train to Heydekrug, Stalag Luft VI. Although their camp section was new it was cramped and basic. He describes camp life in detail. As the Russians got closer they were sent by train to an Army camp at Thorn. He read a copy of NCO education in the camp. These courses were extremely popular and supported by text books sent from the UK. Exams were sat and papers sent to the UK for marking. At Thorn they marched to Stammlager 357 but not for long. They then marched back to the railway and were sent to Fallingbostel. He describes the rail journey in detail, then in greater detail he describes camp life.
Later he was moved to an officer's camp at Eichstadt. This turned out to be an Army camp which refused them and they were sent to Sagan. He stayed there for a short time then was moved to Stalag Luft 3, then 111A. As the Russians neared they moved again. After a couple of days waiting in trucks they returned to their camp. The railway system was breaking down as the end of the war neared.
After the Russians reached them they were allowed out of the camp but still remained billeted there. He writes about his impressions of the Russians.
His journey home was delayed by rain that did not allow aircraft to fly.
His story ends with his retelling of the night his aircraft was shot down, his night in Brussels and his return to England.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Alan McInnes
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Magdeburg
Australia
Great Britain
England--Lichfield
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Stendal
Switzerland
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Lithuania--Šilutė
Poland
Italy
Canada
United States
Poland--Szczecin
Poland--Toruń
Greece
Greece--Crete
Poland--Vistula River
England--Staverton (Northamptonshire)
Germany--Bad Fallingbostel
Poland--Żagań
Poland--Bydgoszcz
Poland--Poznań
Germany--Pasewalk
Germany--Neubrandenburg
Germany--Stavenhagen
Germany--Malchin (Landkreis)
Germany--Güstrow
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Lübeck
Germany--Eichstätt
Germany--Munich
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Eisenach
Germany--Fürth (Bavaria)
Germany--Treuchtlingen
Germany--Ingolstadt
Germany--Regensburg
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Plauen
Poland--Wrocław
New South Wales--Sydney
Victoria--Melbourne
New South Wales
India--Jammu and Kashmir
China
England--London
Germany--Elbe
Germany--Potsdam
Germany--Jüterbog
Ukraine--Odesa
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Halle an der Saale
Belgium--Brussels
England--Brighton
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Hannover
Ukraine
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland--Poznań
Germany
Germany--Hof (Hof)
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
85 printed sheets
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BMcInnesAMcInnesAv1
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-01-21
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
83 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
C-47
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
Dulag Luft
entertainment
final resting place
flight engineer
Fw 190
Goering, Hermann (1893-1946)
ground personnel
H2S
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
incendiary device
Lancaster
Mosquito
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
prisoner of war
radar
RAF Bicester
RAF Lichfield
RAF Wigsley
RAF Wyton
Red Cross
shot down
sport
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 6
target indicator
the long march
training
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1157/11716/AThomsonGB171103.1.mp3
a0197b913e467d676a48c2f6a70f7465
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
Thomson, George
George Buchanan Thomson
G B Thomson
Description
An account of the resource
Seven items. Two oral history interviews with Warrant Officer George Thomson (b. 1924) and five memoirs giving accounts of being shot down and his time as prisoner of war. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron and was shot down in September 1944.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by George Thomson and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-05
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Thomson, GB
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Right. So that’s live. Ok. This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Alastair Montgomery. The interviewee is Warrant Officer George Thomson, and the interview is taking place in George’s home in Newton Mearns near Glasgow. And this is the second part of an interview. The previous one concerned George’s life in the air and this is going to discuss his period from being shot down, captured and hopefully some of the period of the Long March. George, if you’d like to tell us about how you came to leave the aircraft and what happened when you reached the ground.
GT: Right. Well, 12th of September ’44 the target was Frankfurt. Three hundred and ninety eight Lancasters were scheduled to bomb Frankfurt that night. It was because of troops moving through the central station in Frankfurt. That was the target in any event. But we, part of 3 Group actually were doing a diversionary towards Mannheim first of all before turning up to Frankfurt. Others were going direct to Frankfurt. And we flew, flew at low level across France. We actually flew at about a hundred feet across France. My pilot loved flying low and we didn’t start climbing until we got to the German border. And we climbed up and we actually got to the bombing height of sixteen thousand feet and just to the north of Mannheim when we were attacked by two aircraft. There was one came in from the rear and there was a ME110 underneath us with the upward firing guns. And it fired and we didn’t know it was there of course but it obviously it hit our bomb bay and set some of the incendiaries alight. And although the wireless operator was trying to put it out with the fire extinguishers eventually the flames were spreading to the wing and the pilot just ordered us to bale out at that stage. So we baled out probably about local time over there it was about a quarter to twelve. It was a quarter to eleven here our time but I think it was about a quarter to twelve over there. And we’d taken some evasive action so probably we baled out at about twelve thousand feet. And the flight engineer went first. I went second. And the bomb aimer came out after me. And then the wireless operator. And the two gunners went out through the rear door. The pilot never got out at all. Anyway, we got out and we landed. Coming down you just don’t know when you’re going to hit the ground and I did eventually land in this field of maize. It was probably about four feet high. It was a very tall crop of maize which helped to break my fall. When I stood up and looked around I spotted a parachute up a tree in the corner of the field. It wasn’t at the top of the tree. It was lower down but caught up on one of the branches and I wandered over to see who this was. And it was the flight engineer who’d baled out ahead of me. And the two of us decided that we should get out there as fast as we could. We buried our parachutes and Mae Wests and we headed off then. We had a decision to make whether we’d head for Switzerland or head for Alsace Lorraine and we decided to go to Alsace Lorraine direction in the hope that we might pick up with British or American troops that were moving up in that direction in any event. So off we went and we walked that night ‘til we got to probably about 4 o’clock in the morning. We got to a river and there was no chance of us getting across that river. It was beginning to get a bit light anyway. The river was fairly fast flowing. Fairly wide. On the other side there were woods and ideally if we could have got into the woods it would have been better. But we couldn’t get in to the woods. And further down, about a hundred and fifty yards downstream there was a bridge with traffic occasionally going back and forward over it. So we decided we would stay where we were on the bank of this river. And it was actually on the edge of a farm. The farm buildings were probably about a hundred and fifty yards away and there was a slope from the farm fields down to the river and we just decided to stay in this slope in amongst the reeds and we stayed there pretty well all day. Pretty monotonous as you can imagine. And we periodically had a look over the top to see if there was any activity in the farm but there was none at all. We didn’t see anybody moving around and didn’t hear anything happening at all. So we waited there until it got dark enough that we could move down toward the bridge and we took a chance to get across the bridge. Traffic had pretty well subsided by that time. Most of it was military traffic. And we got across the bridge into the woods on the left hand side of the road and the rain came on and it pelted down. And we decided to get in to the woods and shelter there rather than walk on and get soaked. So we went into the woods and got shelter. In fact we found an old tin bath that we thought we’d put over our heads and that would keep us dry. But the noise of the rain [laughs] falling on the tin bath was more than we could bear. So we discarded the tin bath and just got wet. Not as wet as we’d have got if we’d carried on walking. We probably stayed there until about 3 o’clock in the morning and then started to walk on from there. Keeping to the woods but following this road that seemed to be running in the right direction. And periodically there was the odd bit of traffic on it but maybe one or two vehicles in an hour. That was all. During, and all military equipment that was being shipped around at that time. So we carried on walking until we got to the stage where we were, we hadn’t really slept at all so we decided that we’d doss down and have a, we’d taken a decision to walk at night and hide by day. So we, we carried on walking until we felt sufficiently weary that we’d bed down somewhere in the wood and we did. And we spent the day, most of the day there. And then carried on walking when it got dark again. Continued to follow this road which was going in the right direction and had another night in, in the wood. Walking through it and then the following day we rested up again. And we had one escape kit between us. Barry, the flight engineer had left his in the aircraft which wasn’t very smart because your escape kit actually fitted into the pocket of your battle dress. So we had one between us and we, we shared that out as best we could. But on that third day going down we eventually got to a point where there was a, the wood was beginning to thin out a bit and we could see this barn. It appeared to be deserted but it was sitting well off the road. We couldn’t see the farm at all. The barn it belonged to. But we watched the farm, the barn for quite a while. And then when we decided that it was vacant, there was nobody in it we went into this barn to shelter for that day and there was a ladder up to the loft. And we went up into the loft and there was some baggage stored up there. Farm baggage of various kinds and we, we got behind it and the two of us just bedded down for the day there. We took turns at sleeping. One of us kept awake and the other would go to sleep and then we’d turn over. And in the procedure when I was awake one time I was ferreting through some of the rubbish that was up there and I came across a pile of old newspapers. Pre-war newspapers. I couldn’t read them because they were in the old style German and even in the new style German I still couldn’t have read them. But in amongst the papers I came across a page with an advert for a petrol station and it had a map of the area. So I took the map out and that was it. Barry, before then Barry had actually said the first day when we were down by the river sheltering Barry had said, he was a pipe smoker and he had a tobacco pouch. And he said there was a map inside the tobacco pouch. So he opened up the tobacco pouch and took out the map and it was a map of the south of France [laughs] which wasn’t very much use to us at that time. But I found this. This map gave us our area. The roads in the area and it was pretty much as, as they were today. Or at least on that day when we were searching for them. So we stayed there until it got dark again and then we continued walking and again keeping to this road and following it going in the right direction. And eventually we got to the stage where we were really fearing that this walking through the wood was a slow process. So there was very little traffic on the road and we decided that we could probably walk on the road because it was a long straight road. It wasn’t quite an autobahn. It was just a long straight road and you could see traffic coming or going. And if any traffic was coming we just dived in to the side, into the woods and stayed there until the traffic passed. And that was it. We, we carried on in that way. We, it was probably, it was nearly a downturn because we walked on and we ran out of wood. And we had to walk on the road without any shelter from woods that we could go into. And there was a, of course the two of us in one area we passed a big farm field. And there were two labourers working in the field away at the other side. And they saw us and we saw them so we just waved to them and they waved back. I think the fact that there were two of us was a, was a safeguard in a way. And we carried on walking and lost sight of them. And we, we came to a slight bend in the road and we turned down this bend in the road and consternation. There was a village straight ahead of us. Houses on either side of the road. Not a very big village. Maybe about thirty houses. And there were women standing in the street and kids running about and they’d spotted us. And we thought oh what do we do? If we turn and walk back a way it might give some cause for alarm so we carried on walking and we just walked past the ladies. Nodded to them as we walked past. We were still of course still in our uniforms and I suppose the fact that our uniforms were not too dissimilar from the Luftwaffe uniforms maybe they just thought we were Air Force personnel. Luftwaffe personnel. But we just carried on walking straight through them and we got to the other end and then decided that we’d better sort of maybe try and find a bit more shelter. We had a [pause] another night we came across woods again and we walked into the woods and we had another night of shelter there. We changed our plans and decided we’d walk during the day and shelter at night. And we carried on walking the next day. And keeping to the side of the road but just walking down there were thin woods on the right hand side. And we came across a workman’s hut at the side of the road and we decided that, we watched it for a bit. There was no sign of any activity around about it so we went into this workman’s hit and decided to have a bit of a doss. You know lay down and get a bit of a rest. There was a knot in the wood panelling that faced the road. And you could watch what was happening through this knot in the wood. And consternation. An Army truck drew up alongside us. I thought this is it. This guy is coming into the hut. He got out and a woman got out the other side. And the two of them walked towards the hut but never came into it. They walked in to the woods. And about fifteen minutes later they walked back out and got into the truck and drove off. And if they were satisfied so we were we [laughs] because they hadn’t bothered with us at all. And that was how we managed to sort of evade any contact with civilians at that point in time. We carried on walking and by this time we were getting a bit peckish at this point. And we just found that down the roads that there were, the road sides they were lined with apple trees at this stretch. And of course we could get the apples off the trees and that was fine. That was, that helped to augment our poor rations that we had with us. And we got down a bit further on and we came across another workman’s hut set well back off the road. And it was getting towards evening by this time. And we had a look at it and nobody was around it. So we went into it and stayed the night in it and that was, that was fine. We’d also these apples to eat to augment our poor rations that we had. And the next day we carried on walking again and this time we came across another workman’s hut set back from the road. And this was an even better workman’s hut because it had a stove in it and a chimney out the top. And we’d actually passed a field on the way down towards this before we saw this hut with potatoes growing in it. So we dug up some of the potatoes and filled our pockets with the potatoes and took them with us hoping that we might be able to find some way of being able to use them. And of course when I came across this workman’s hut it was set back about thirty yards off the actual road. Up a very small path. It was fine. So Barry went off to gather some firewood to get the stove going and I went off in search of water. One of the things we had in our escape kit was a plastic water bottle with water purifying tablets. I found the river and filled up the bag and went back to the hut. And we got the stove going, roasted the potatoes, threw in some apples. So we had a two course meal. And before going to sleep I went outside to relieve myself. And to my horror there was flames shooting out the chimney about two or three feet in the air. So I went back in put the fire out and we stayed that night in the hut. That was ok. Nobody came anywhere near us. And then the next day we carried on walking. And this was about [coughs] excuse me about our seventh day walking and we got into an area where there was more suburbs. You could see these buildings down the side of the road but we kept clear of them until we got down to a point where we reached the road we were on actually ran in, right into this town. And we decided what we’d do and we thought well we’d better just take the chance and walk through the town. And we walked through, started walking through the town and we heard footsteps behind us and dived into a garden and hid behind a hedge while this person walked past and then we resumed our walk through the town. And we came across a marshalling yard, a railway marshalling yard and decided to go in and explore it. We knew we were getting down towards the Rhine and the, we thought there might be a possibility of getting down, finding a train or something that would take us across the Rhine. We had no idea about the size of the Rhine at that stage. I’ve seen it subsequently and I know we probably wouldn’t have got across it at all. Anyway, this town was called Rastatt. And we, we were in the marshalling yard. We actually got stopped by a uniformed person. He might have been a policeman. We couldn’t tell from his uniform but he nattered away to us and we just stood and shrugged our shoulders. And he lost interest and wandered off. I think he maybe thought we were foreign workers because there was a lot of foreign workers in Germany at that time. Anyway, he wandered off. We just beat it out of this place and decided to get as far away from Rastatt as we could but heading continuing to head towards the Rhine and Rastatt is actually situated right on the Rhine. The north bank of the Rhine. And I’ve been back at Rastatt twice on my travels post-war and it’s a beautiful town and we didn’t appreciate that at the time we were there. And we walked on that, this was the morning of our eighth day we walked on into the wood on the right hand side of the road and kept walking following the road for a bit. And then about 3 o’clock decided we’d better bed down. We weren’t going to get anywhere near the Rhine when it was beginning to get daylight. So we found a sheltered spot in the wood and bedded down and went to sleep there. And I was awakened somewhere about 7 o’clock with Barry shaking me in the shoulders and saying, ‘Look who’s coming.’ I looked up and there was four German soldiers bearing down on us with fixed bayonets. And there was a man standing, an elderly man standing in a corner. Quite a bit away. We decided he’d come in to, he was holding a bundle of wood in his arms. He’d come into the wood to gather wood. Into the wood to gather firewood and he’d spotted us and then gone to report us to this German Army camp which was two hundred yards away. We’d actually, we hadn’t seen it in the dark and it was actually an armoured regiment there but they were Austrians. Anyway the four soldiers took us back up to the camp and we were left there for quite a bit until the two officers eventually appeared. And they seemed slightly amused at the fact that we’d been caught you see. They, they could, well they didn’t speak any English. And eventually after about half an hour decided that they’d better get rid of us. So they loaded us onto a truck with two guards and they drove us into Rastatt and we went into the local county jail. What had probably been this county jail. It was still, this was under the control of the Austrian regiment that was running the camp as well and we got stuck in individual cells. I’d been in the cell about an hour when the door opened and in came this German officer. Well, he was, again he was an Austrian. But I didn’t know that at the time. But he came in with an NCO and the NCO said, ‘English?’ And I said, ‘No.’ ‘Ah, American.’ And I said, ‘No.’ And that was him. That was all the NCO knew was English and American. So he turned and spoke to the officer and then the officer turned and spoke to me in almost faultless English and said, ‘If you’re not English and you’re not American what are you?’ I said, ‘I’m Scottish.’ So he turned and explained to the NCO and the two of them had a wee bit of a conversation. The NCO then left the cell and he came back about five minutes later with a tray with a dish of meat and potatoes, a mug of coffee and a slab of bread. And the interesting thing was that during that period when the NCO was out of the cell the officer never asked me any questions about where I had come from, where I’d been shot down what was the rest of it. He was more interested in telling me he’d been educated at Oxford. He’d been educated at Oxford University. Went back to Germany in 1937. And, and that was it. And then they left me and they went up to Barry’s cell which was two up from where I was. And opened the door and the NCO said, ‘English?’ And Barry said, ‘Yes.’ And they just shut the door and left him. He got fed at lunchtime. I got fed again at lunchtime. But I was grateful for this substantial meal that I got in the morning. So we were there three days and the three days were just I suppose they were trying to organise what they would do with us. The second day I was there I was in the toilets and this English officer came in [pause] wearing, he was a flight lieutenant in uniform. But in his best blue. He didn’t have battle dress on. And I thought that’s suspicious and he said to me, ‘What squadron were you in?’ I said, ‘Mind your own bloody business,’ and walked out and left him. The interesting thing is that when we left there on the third day that officer didn’t come with us. There was just the two of us. So he was obviously a German. Where he’d got the uniform from I don’t know and how they’d managed to get a full dress uniform. Anyway, he didn’t appear and we got taken out and put into a covered in truck. And there was two bench seats, one on either side of the truck and we had two guards with us and we were taken about twenty miles up the road to another village. But the funny thing was, and I was telling a group I was speaking to last night that there were three or four civilians sitting across from us and there was a girl of about eighteen or nineteen. She had a bag at her feet. And she kept looking across at us and smiling. And then she spoke to the guards and I didn’t know what was going on but the guards obviously gave their assent. And she went in to the bag and pulled out two apples and gave us an apple each. Which I found rather strange that a German civilian was feeding prisoners of war. So we go up to this other little village and it was a place that had very very rustic and the prison was something that you’d see out of a western movie. They opened the door in the main street and there was two steps down and that was you in the cell and they shut the door. So the two of us were put in there and discovered that there were three others in there. There were two other Bomber Command aircrew and an American fighter pilot. And the next day the five of us got moved because we were heading to Dulag Luft at Frankfurt, and we actually got a train that took us up to Frankfurt. And then we got a tram car from the central station in Frankfurt which was a bit knocked about out to Dulag Luft which was on the south side of Frankfurt. And we were there. By this time Arnhem had taken place. And of course the place was loaded with airborne prisoners. And we were again, we were there three days and I was interrogated only once. I was taken into a room about this size with a big desk and an officer sitting behind it and behind him was a map of England with all the, all the bomber stations mapped on it. Including Mildenhall where I’d come from. And he asked me questions and I said, ‘Well, I can only tell you my number, rank and name and that’s all.’ ‘What squadron were you on?’ I said, ‘I can’t tell you that.’ ‘Well, you can, you know,’ he said, ‘Because the Army have regimental numbers and you have squadron numbers. So you can tell me your squadron number.’ I said, ‘No,’ I said, ‘Squadron number’s totally different from a regimental number,’ and I said, ‘I can’t tell you.’ So he didn’t press the point. He offered me a cigarette which I refused. I was desperate for one at that time but I refused it and I was taken back to my cell. And the next day we were moved into a large assembly room where they were gathering together prisoners that were going to be moved to a prison camp. And I met up with my bomb aimer and my wireless operator. They were both there and they’d been there all the time that we’d been on the loose. And they were told of course that we were dead because they couldn’t find us. That was, the presumption was we were dead. And the one that was missing was our rear gunner who was Isador Spagatner. He was an Austrian Jew. He’d actually been born in this country but his parents were Austrians who had left Austria and come over here to get out of this Hitler regime. And Spag had been born over here. But he was the most Jewish person I’ve ever seen in my life. And he always carried a revolver in his flying boot in case he got shot down because he reckoned he could take four or five and then keep one for himself. When he baled out his revolver fell out of his flying boot and he landed in Mannheim station without his revolver. And he was halfway up a pole with a rope around his neck when he was rescued by the railway police. And they immediately handed him over to the Luftwaffe. Being in Frankfurt I suppose it was easy. Being in Mannheim that was it was easy for them to do that. There was plenty of Luftwaffe people about. And he got whipped in, he went, he went up to Dulag Luft but he was only there for a couple of days and then he got whipped straight into in a prison camp and we met him eventually when we got to the prison camp. But we left there. We went, we went into, on to a train which was a corridor train and there was sixty each compartment and the guards at either end of the corridor. And we were each given a Red Cross parcel. Which of course had ample food in it but what we wanted. We were desperate for food at that time. We’d had food in Dulag Luft. In fact Dulag Luft had a bad reputation because the people that were serving us in it were Air Force. Ex-Air Force. Well they were still Air Force. Air Force personnel who’d either volunteered to stay on and serve the Germans and quite a number of them actually got prosecuted when they came back to this country. Anyway, we were going —
AM: Royal Air Force personnel?
GT: They were Royal Air Force personnel. Yeah.
AM: Oh I see.
GT: Aye.
AM: Right.
GT: Some of them got quite long prison sentences when they came back because they reckoned they were working for the Germans.
AM: Right.
GT: Anyway, we were five days in this train. Well, we travelled across Germany to get to Stalag Luft 7 which was near Bankau in Silesia. On the borders of Poland and Czechoslovakia. We were the furthest. One of two that were the furthest east camps in Germany. And we got there eventually. Got off the train at a place called Bankau which was about less than a mile, three quarters of a mile from the prison camp. Walked up the road to the prison camp. The prisoners who were already there knew that we were coming because they could see the train coming in. And one of the first person we saw was the rear gunner. He’d got there before us. The German procedure of course was that you, they took your identity disc off and you got a German identity disc. And you were given a number which related to the camp you were in. So my German identity disc had Stalag Luft 7 at the top and number eight hundred and seventy. I was eight hundred and seventieth in to the camp. The camp had only been opened up in June ’44 and it was still in a temporary stage of construction. The compound we were in was occupied by a series of wooden huts. Garden huts. Like big garden sheds. And six or seven men to a shed. And of course we got split up and put into one in here, one in there. We were in these sheds while in the next compound they were still building the new proper camp. Well, we’d been there two or three days and there were about seven or eight Army personnel there who’d been caught at the, mostly glider pilots who’d come down and been picked up and brought up there. And the Germans realised that they were Army personnel and they really should be put, they were mostly corporals and they should really be doing some work. So they arranged that they would have to go into this new compound and help put up the huts that were being erected in the, to develop the camp. So the seven or eight of them went in that day and we sort of, well we didn’t spend all day watching them. I didn’t certainly do that but quite a number were just down at the fence watching what was going on and they were getting the odd tool thrown across to them. Anyway, about 4 o’clock in the afternoon the seven came back in and came back into the camp. And then the next day they went out again but it wasn’t the same seven. It was seven of the Bomber Command personnel wearing the Army uniforms. And of course the German guards had changed and they didn’t know who they were. So they went into the camp and started working on the huts that, there was this hut that was nearest to the wire and they started working on it and actually what they were doing was dismantling most of the work that the Army boys had done the day before. And when they came out they came back in to the main compound. They slammed the door and the roof fell in. And that put an end to working. There was nobody else worked on these camps. Camp buildings. And the seven or eight Army personnel were moved away immediately. Almost immediately. And they would go to an Army camp and probably be working because the Army boys were, were made to work.
AM: Yeah.
GT: I don’t know what happened to any of the Army sergeants and above but any, all aircrew didn’t work. You didn’t. There was no work to be done at all because it was mayhem if aircrew got into it at all. As witnessed by what happened to the roof of this building. So eventually we got moved in the beginning of October. We got moved in to the new compound. Now, the new compound consisted of eight barrack blocks. And each barrack block consisted of fourteen rooms, a centre corridor and seven rooms on either side. And each room accommodated twelve prisoners in double bunks. And it was fresh. It was clean. It was. It was, there was a stove in the room and there was also two latrine blocks. One on either side in between the barrack blocks. There was a cook house and storage room. And there was another room which was a recreational room and we called it a little theatre because there was a stage in it. And it was used quite a bit. So we were in there and the sixteen foot high barbed wire fence that was around us, double fence and inside that there was about four, four or five feet inside that there was a trip wire which was about that height off the ground and you didn’t cross that wire. You crossed it at your peril. If you crossed it you got every chance of being shot by one of the guards in the guard towers that were surrounding the camp. In fact, one chap who obviously had gone a bit [pause] lost the place here. He actually went across the wire and tried to climb the fence to get out of the camp and he was shot by one of the guards. And there was a second one shot. A Canadian sergeant who was in the block next to ours. We were in block number one and there was an air raid had gone. And you weren’t allowed out if an air raid was on. You just stayed in your [pause] The all clear went and he left his billet to go to the cookhouse to collect the rations for their lunch and he was shot by one of the guards in the tower. The problem was the air raid all clear had not gone in the camp. It had gone down in Bankau. In the village three quarters of a mile away and it had been heard there and he thought it was the camp all clear. And that’s why he went out and he was killed as well. That guard disappeared from the camp. He was never seen again. He probably ended up on the Russian front. I don’t know what happened to him but he was away. And that, that was, that was basically it. And then of course we we occupied our time in the usual ways. We had the compound where we, in the centre was was laid out like a football pitch. It could be used as a football pitch. I played rugby on it. I’d played rugby at school. And I played rugby in the RAF on the squadron when I was on it. Now, the bomb aimer he was a Welshman. He was a very keen rugby player and we played quite a few games there. And there was football as well. And of course you walked the compound around to get exercise. And there was a library stocked by the International Red Cross. And there was two or three of the lads from one of the other billets had actually made a Monopoly set by hand. They’d hand-made this monopoly set which, and you could borrow it. A room would get it for a night and it would go around. Played a lot of Bridge. The Bridge situation. The last time I played bridge in my life was actually in the prison camp. But it was, it was, well, well organised and well run. And —
AM: What were the theatre shows?
GT: Well, there was there was two, two orchestras in the camp.
AM: Right.
GT: There was a semi-classical orchestra. Violins mainly. And there was a piano accordion orchestra which was run by a Canadian sergeant who had organised that he was a very very good piano accordion and he had about, there was about six accordions in the —
AM: Where did they get they get the instruments from?
GT: Well, the International Red Cross.
AM: Right.
GT: Supplied them and the, we had concerts. And the first concert was opened up in the beginning of November and we had a concert at least once a week. We also had film shows. We had two film shows. One, the Germans actually operated the cinema equipment and the first one we went to they ran, there were three reels and they ran one, three and two. So it was a bit jumbled up. You didn’t know. You saw the end before you saw the middle part. And then at, at Christmas, just before Christmas they had a big do with both orchestras playing and it was, it ran for two nights. We were, I was there the second night and apparently the first night, at the end of the concert the POWs had stood up and sang the national anthem. The night I was there the commandant who was a guest, the German commandant was a guest, he stood up and said, ‘You will not sing your national anthem.’ And the senior British officer who was a chap, Peter Thomson, an Australian he stood up and said, ‘Land of Hope and Glory boys.’ And we sang it three times. Much to the consternation of the Germans who couldn’t get out of the place. And they opened, they opened the windows and they said it was actually heard down in Bankau three quarters of a mile away. Because the whole, the whole camp took it up at that time and by this time there was fifteen hundred in the camp. And if you can imagine fifteen hundred voices singing Land of Hope and Glory. So that was it. And then we, there was a [pause] my rear gunner was not in a, we were in block number one and my rear gunner was in block number seven. And it was, he was, the room he was in was mainly Canadians and they applied to the International Red Cross for skates. And they got six pairs of skates but they couldn’t use them. So they applied to the German authority for permission to build an ice rink. And it was duly granted and they started building this ice rink between two of their, two of their accommodation blocks. And they were piling up the sand to create a sort of a well that they could flood. And of course it was so blooming cold at that time it froze over without any bother. What the Germans didn’t realise was that the sand that was being built up also contained sand that was coming out a tunnel that was being dug from one of the barrack blocks. About two weeks after they started on it the actual, the Germans found the tunnel and the thing got scrapped. But we were probably the only camp in Germany I would think, the only POW camp in Germany that actually had an ice rink. And the tunnel would never have been used because by this time through the International Red Cross the message had come out that there was to be no more escapes after the Great Escape took place. And they didn’t want any more situations of that nature. So there were no escapes at all. There was two or three guys did try to escape. One tried to escape under a pile of laundry that went out. And he was found just before he got out of the camp. And another chap tried to get out underneath a truck. And he was found and he was brought back in. There was a block of cells. Six prison cells. You got four days solitary if you were caught doing anything that you shouldn’t have been doing. Anyway, that was it up until the time when it got to January ‘45 and of course the Russians were pushing in from the east. They were coming. Moving towards the west.
AM: Do you want a wee break?
GT: Aye.
AM: Aye.
[recording paused]
AM: George, just before we finish the bit about the camp and move on to the Long March was there any way that prisoners could hear what was going on in the outside world or in the war?
GT: Yeah. I omitted to mention that at Stalag Luft 7 there were about three hundred and eighty odd prisoners moved in from other camps.
AM: Right.
GT: While Stalag Luft 7 was being built they were in temporary camps. Mostly in Army camps. And then they got moved in and a group of them who were moved in actually brought with them their own radio. But one of the, one or two of the wireless operators had managed to build a radio. And the Germans knew that they had this radio but they never could find it. Now, they were moved from an Army camp into Stalag Luft 7 and they obviously were searched when they came into the camp. Never found the radio. When we got moved from the temporary compound in to the main compound again we were all searched before we went in. Our baggage was searched, we were searched and yet within two days of getting in that radio was up and working. And they listened in the BBC two or three times a week. They took the message down in shorthand and then had it typed up and there was a group of POWs who went around the blocks and read this out to the residents in each block and then destroyed the paper. And, and that was it. So we, we got news about three or four times a week from the BBC and we probably knew more about what was going on the war than the Germans actually did.
AM: Really. Amazing.
GT: Yeah. And they still never found that radio. The other thing I should have mentioned was that the Gestapo visited the camp about once a month and the German officers in charge of the camp were always concerned about this. And they used to give us about two days notice of when the Gestapo were coming so that anything that we didn’t want to be found could be hidden away in time. And particularly this radio for example. And the Gestapo would come in, spend the day in the camp. Go through the camp. Search the rooms. They still never found that radio. And as I say the Germans were good enough always to alert us to the fact that the Gestapo were coming because they feared them more than, probably more than we did. If they’d found anything that was illegal they would have been for the chop as well. They’d have been demoted or whatever or sent to the Russian front or wherever they sent these boys to. So that was it.
AM: So, perhaps you could tell us a little about the end of the time in the camp and then move on to the, what’s become known since as the Long March.
GT: Yeah. Well, the, the Long March was by January ’45 it was known that the Russians were pushing on. Moving further west and the Germans had made up their mind that they were going to evacuate the camps and move all the prisoners to the west as well. I never found the rationale behind that because to some extent they could have left us and let the Russians get hold of us. Anyway, by about the middle of January we were alerted to the fact that we might have to move soon. And in fact on the 17th of January we were given one hour’s notice to move. It happened, it didn’t take place. It didn’t take place until the 19th. That was two days we had spare. Some of the boys made sledges out of old bed boards so that they could tow their gear with them. I didn’t want to be bothered with that. The chap I shared the accommodation with in the bunks he didn’t want to be bother with that either. I’d got some spare material. A canvassy type of material. I made a rucksack which I could just put on my back and carry whatever I wanted in it and that was fine. But we eventually moved off from the camp on the 19th of January at 3 o’clock in the morning. And the, it was blowing a blizzard. It was snowing like nothing I’d ever seen before because that part of the country is well for snowdrifts. And we left, as I say about 3 o’clock in the morning and we did sixteen miles before we stopped. We had a couple of breaks on the way for about ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. And then we carried on walking. It was difficult to see where you were going and of course there were guards on either side of us in any event. There was fifteen hundred of us on the road, stringing along. And we had, we’d saved some of our Red Cross parcel material which was pretty sparse anyway. We didn’t get Red Cross parcels every week now. We’d saved some of the material from the Red Cross parcels that we could take with us which is just as well because over the three weeks we were on the road marching we got very little food given us. So we moved on. We did the sixteen miles and it was the middle of the next afternoon before we stopped. And we stopped at a school room, a deserted school room and we slept on the floorboards in the school. There was no furniture in the school room but obviously it had been abandoned and we slept there. And we got some small rations in the morning. And then we moved on again from there and we did another fourteen miles. I think the idea was to get us across the River Oder so that they could blow the bridges and stop the Russians from getting across. It didn’t stop the Russians anyway. But the third day we actually got across the Oder and we then spent that other night in a farm. Barns. A working farm but we were in the barns. I buddied up with a chap that — a fellow, Geoff Lee. A New Zealand pilot who was in Coastal Command. And the interesting thing was that I’d actually seen him being shot down a fortnight before we were shot down on the newsreel in the station cinema. It was, they showed in the newsreel a piece that was a Coastal Command attack on on German shipping going up the German coastline. And he was, he was flying a Bristol Beaufort and he and his navigator made this attack and they got, they got struck and he more or less went straight in. And Bristol Beauforts were not known for their floatability. But it stayed afloat long enough for him to get out. And the navigator sat behind him in a separate compartment and his only way out was through a hatch in the bottom. And Geoff, having got out then went down to see if he could find where the navigator had gone, and never saw. Never found. The door was open but the navigator had gone. Never saw him again. And of course he got picked up by the Germans within, they were only about a half a mile off the shore. And when I arrived in Stalag Luft 7 at the temporary camp he was the fellow I was sleeping next to. Geoff Lee. And we just kept together after that. But I went out to New Zealand and spent some time with Geoff and his wife after the war with my wife. So we didn’t do too bad. Anyway we had these, these days of walking and days of resting. We’d only one two day pause when we actually stopped and didn’t move on for two days. And we got some very sparse rations. The [pause] Geoff had been a farmer. He, he didn’t have a farm of his own but he worked on a farm in New Zealand and one of the nights that we spent in this farm building he said to me, ‘Let’s go and sleep with the cattle.’ So we went into the section where the cattle was and bedded down with them because it was warm. And it was fine. And he also went scouting around and he got some molasses which was of course fed to the cattle. And we just ate some of the molasses as well. Gave us something to put in to our stomachs. And then we moved on from there and we were three weeks on the road. They kept promising us that we’d get transport but we never really got it. The third day we were out in the camp there were about sixty of the POWs were so desperately ill that they had to, they put them into what had been a civilian hospital and left them there. And they would actually have been overrun by the Russians in time. And the rest of us just beavered on. They had one horse and a cart that could pick up folk that couldn’t walk any further but mostly carried on. I think probably at the end of the day we lost about eighty out of the fifteen hundred who were left behind. I think one or two of them actually died. I’ve no record of that but I read an article at one time that said that forty or fifty had died but I had no knowledge of that at all. I never heard any message to that effect. Anyway, we eventually got on to a place called Goldberg and we were there for a couple of nights. And then they organised a train from there. And of course it was a cattle train. Cattle waggons. Fifty five men to a cattle wagon. And we got on to this train and we were taken from there going further west over three days. We stopped at night and they would let us out at night for a spell. Then back into the trucks and lock us up again. But we eventually got to a place about thirty miles southeast of Berlin. And that was a village called Luckenwalde and there was a prison camp there and we were stuck in it. Now compared with the one we left at Stalag Luft 7 which was to some extents palatial Luckenwalde was the pits. It was an ex-Army camp occupied by the French and the French by the time we got there there was about three thousand British and American POWs who’d been evacuated from their camps and had walked west. We got there and we were in huts that occupied just about three hundred to a hut in three tier beds in blocks of nine. And it was the filthiest place I’ve ever been in. Within twenty four hours we were all covered in body lice. Every one of us. And we never got rid of them until we got back to this country. We’d been there about, probably about three weeks when half way through the third week when our block with three hundred in it were told we were being moved again. And we were taken down to the station and loaded on to cattle trucks once more. And we stayed there for three days. They couldn’t move us because [pause] we didn’t know what was happening. We had no idea what was going on. And most of the guards that were there were German Dad’s Army guards. And there was wire fencing around the part where the cattle trucks were and occasionally the villagers would come down and stare at us, you know. Look through the fence. See what we were like. Were we human? Whether we had two heads. And some of the prisoners would do a deal when the civilians that come down. And you got two tins of coffee in your Red Cross parcels and they were, they each contained two ounces of concentrated coffee. You used to be able to get them in this country.
AM: Camp coffee.
GT: That’s right. It was, it was crystallised coffee.
AM: Right.
GT: Anyway, they used to trade these for eggs. A tin of coffee would get you half a dozen eggs and that was fine. The only problem was that the civilians when they got back opened up their coffee it wasn’t coffee that was in it at all. It was sand. And they couldn’t come back and complain.
AM: No.
GT: There was also one guy. An Australian pilot. We were allowed out of the vans most of the day and he, he got chatting with one of the guards who was a sort of German Dad’s Army type and asked to see his rifle. And the guy handed it over. And the Australian fella had a look at the rifle. Aye, it’s fine. Handed it back to him. He kept the bolt. The bolt was, the rifle was useless without the bolt but the guard didn’t know he had no bolt in his rifle when he got It back. Anyway, we were there for three days and got moved back to the camp. And there’s a book which I’ve got a copy of, it’s called, ‘Footprints on the Sand of Time.’ And it gives you a bit about each camp in it and also lists all Bomber Command prisoners of war from day one right through to the end. And it tells you in this article that this group that were being moved from Luckenwalde were intended to go to be taken to Berlin to be held as hostages. They couldn’t get us there because the Americans had bombed the railway line and there was no way they could get us there so we got back up to the camp. But the camp was a pretty filthy place as I say. When we got there originally we were desperate for food and the, we discovered that the French prisoners that were in the camp had quite a stack of Red Cross parcels and they wouldn’t hand any of them over. And a senior British officer had words with the German command and eventually the Germans went in and took the parcels and handed them over to us and left the French short of parcels. So we got some food. I’ve got a note here of what we actually got to eat on the way. The rations that we were given on the three week march consisted of, from the Germans three loaves of bread, four packets of crack bake. Crack bake was something similar to Ryvita.
AM: Yeah. Yeah.
GT: A packet of small biscuits, four plates of porridge and a cup of barley. And that was all we got in the three weeks apart from what we could scrounge ourselves. So we were there until, again the Russians were continuing to move to the west. And it was known that the Russians would eventually reach Luckenwalde as well. And they did reach us. Around about April ’45 they came into the camp. We woke up one morning and the guards had gone. We were left on our own and that same morning the Russians came into the camp. And the next day they brought in two vans loaded with rifles to hand out to us. And we told them to go and get lost. We weren’t going to start fighting with the Russians. Alongside the Russians. And that same day an American press photographer in a jeep with a driver had got lost and they found the camp. And they decided that they would hightail it back to the American lines. The Elbe, just southeast of Berlin. Apparently the arrangement was that the Americans would move up to the west bank of the Elbe and the Russians would move up to the east bank and this newspaper reporter hightailed it back to the Americans. And the next day the Americans sent a fleet of trucks to take away the sick and the wounded and the Russians opened fire on them. Drove them back. Kept us there for a month. Didn’t supply any rations. They gave the camp two horses and a cart and we had to go and find our own food. There was a group set up that did that around the farmyards and got whatever they could. And apparently the Russians wanted to have an exchange of prisoners. The Russian prisoners were very far and few between and there was three thousand of us British and American. And apparently the Americans of course did not have three thousand prisoners. So my understanding is that they actually crossed the Elbe and took sufficient prisoners to make up three thousand. And then said to the Russians, ‘We can do an exchange. We’ve got three thousand prisoners.’ And after a month in the prison camp with the Russians there some lads tried to get out of the camp and make their own way. But some were successful and some weren’t. After a month we were loaded on to trucks and the Russians drove us up to the Elbe and we walked across one pontoon bridge and the Russian prisoners walked across another pontoon bridge about fifty yards down river. And I don’t think any of these Russian prisoners lasted more than a month.
AM: No.
GT: They were sent to gulags or shot but they weren’t, the Russians didn’t believe in the International Red Cross. They didn’t supply food to their own prisoners or anything of that sort.
AM: No.
GT: That was it. So we were taken then. The Americans then took us to a place called [unclear] which was a small, well a reasonable size town but outside the town there was a Luftwaffe fighter base. And we were there for three days having the option of eating white bread for a change. And we were well fed and then after three days they flew us in a fleet of Dakotas down to Brussels. Our aircraft was the last, probably the last one to land because they, they either didn’t have a navigator or the navigator didn’t know where he was going. We landed at the airport and we taxied to the end of the runway and the pilot said — there was only twelve of us in the plane. We were, as I say the last one out. Most of the planes were carrying twenty or twenty four. We got out and we were standing at the end of the runway wondering what to do. We could see at the far end where we should have been. There had been a band there to welcome us in and it had packed up and gone away. And eventually an RAF Regiment sergeant arrived on a bike and said, ‘What are you all doing here? You shouldn’t be here. You should be up at the other end. Get moving and get up there.’ So we told him what to do with his bike and offered to help him do it. And he decided that prudence was the better option and he just disappeared. There was a Lockheed Hudson parked at the end of the runway and the pilot came across to me and he said ‘What are you lot?’ And I said, ‘We’re prisoners of war that are trying to get home.’ He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘What squadron were you on?’ I said, ‘15.’ He said, ‘So was I at one time.’ he said, ‘I was on 15 for a while,’ he said, ‘Get aboard.’ So he loaded the twelve of us in to this Lockheed Hudson and took off. And he called up Brussels Airport and said, ‘I’ve got prisoners of war. Where do I take them to?’ He was told to land immediately and bring them back. The other POWs that were, that had landed in the other Dakotas were kept there. They were about three days in Brussels before they got flown home. So this pilot just switched off and carried on flying over to England and then called up and said, ‘I’ve got prisoners of war aboard. Where do I take them to?’ And he was directed to Westcott in Buckinghamshire which had been our OTU. And we landed there and they were expecting about four or five hundred coming in and of course there were only the twelve of us. And we were taken into this big hangar and it was set out, two big long tables set out for meals. Anyway, they did give us a meal. They deloused us first of all. That was the important thing. And then we went in and had a meal. Then the two doctors came in and checked us out. And one of them said to me, he said, ‘I know you,’ he said, ‘You stay in Giffnock.’ I said, ‘Well, my parents stay in Giffnock and they’re still there.’ He said, ‘I used to see you going to school.’ He said, ‘Who was your doctor?’ I said, ‘Dr Armstrong.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘That was a different practice.’ Armstrong actually operated on his own. He was in Eastwoodmains Road and the old Eastwood School which had just opened off Eastwoodmains Road. And it’s about three miles away from where it is now. His practice was up there and he apparently used to see me. And how he recognised me I don’t know because I hadn’t had a hair cut in about two months. And anyway he said, ‘Well, we’re not going to keep you here. We’re going to give you, take the bus into London and you’ll get a train up to RAF Cosford in Shropshire.’ So we got taken into London. We got ten shillings each and we got taken into London and we had about an hour and a half to wait for our train. So we all disappeared into the bar. And after two and a half pints I was getting a bit puggled. And I obviously wasn’t thinking straight because in the bar there must have been a loo. But I left the bar and went out into the station to look for a loo. And of course I was in my decrepit battle dress. I didn’t wear a regulation shirt. I was wearing a navy blue towelling shirt which I always flew in and I got stopped by two military police. Army military police. ‘Where are you from?’ I said, ‘Well, from Germany. Ex- prisoner of war.’ And by this time two or three civilians had gathered around to hear the conversation and three or four of the lads in the bar had missed me and they came out to look for me. So when the, the Army police saw the others coming out they just disappeared. They thought let’s get out of here. So we got taken back in to the bar by some of the civilians that had gathered around us and bought more drinks. Eventually got on the train up to RAF Cosford. Probably about 8 o’clock at night. We had a, a meal and our uniforms were taken away from us and we were measured for new uniforms. And we had a medical and then went to bed in Nissen huts. And the next morning we got up and had breakfast and collected our new uniforms which were brand new. Correct badges up on them. Correct stripes on them as well. Even to the point where one chap, I can’t remember his surname but it might have been Gibson but anyway his first, his initials were VC. Victor. I don’t know what the C was for. But he was registered as Gibson, VC. And he got his new uniform with a VC on it. Which of course he protested about and had it taken off. And at lunchtime that day I was on my way home. We were only there overnight and sent on my way home and got home later that day. And spent, spent about two or three months in between times going up and down to RAF Cosford for checks. And then eventually I got a message to report to London. To a hotel in London. Went down there. This was around about the end of October, early November and I met up with my flight engineer at this hotel occupied by Army personnel. And I said to this Army guy at the door when I went in, I said, ‘What sort of a place is this?’ He said, ‘It’s for overseas postings.’ I said, ‘You must be joking,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to an overseas posting.’ He said, ‘You’re two floors up.’ So we went up and all they wanted to know from both of us was had we got any assistance when we were on the loose in Germany. The eight days we were. And we said no. ‘Well, that’s fine. Thank you very much. Off you go.’ They didn’t need to bother to call us down to London to find out that information. And then back home. And eventually I got another posting to go down to a refresher course. And went down to this refresher course and met up with my bomb aimer. And we were both in this so-called refresher course. It lasted a month and it was a total waste of time. And at the end of the month John of course he had joined the Air Force in 1937 as a boy apprentice. Trained as an engineer and then volunteered for aircrew. And the flight engineer was the same. He was the same. So the two of them actually stayed on. John still had three years to do of his service. So he stayed on and I was taken in to, the day that John left I was pulled into a remustering room. I saw this flight lieutenant and he said, ‘Well, you realise Thomson that you won’t be flying again.’ And he said, ‘You’ll have to remuster. I’m supposed to remuster you as a clerk general duties.’ I said, ‘Over my dead body I’ll remuster as a clerk,’ I said, ‘I joined the Air Force to fly. Well, you can’t get out because you’ve only been a prisoner for nine and a half months and you’ve got to be a prisoner for twelve months you got an immediate discharge when you came back. Anything less than nine and a half months you still had to do your time. So I refused to accept his remustering and I was pulled into the, the squadron leader the next day who was in charge of the remustering group. And his opening remarks were, ‘You’re making a bit of a nuisance of yourself, Thomson.’ I said, ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not.’ I said, ‘The guy I saw yesterday was, he wanted to remuster me as a clerk. I didn’t join the air force to be a clerk.’ So he went through the usual gammit, ‘You’ve only been a prisoner for nine and a half months and you can’t.’ He was looking at my file and he said, ‘Oh I see you stayed in Giffnock.’ I said ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘My parents live in Giffnock and I stay there.’ He said, ‘Do you know a family called Whitelaw?’ I said, ‘Yes. They stay in Braidholm Road. And there’s two girls in the family and one was at school with me.’ He said, ‘Oh. They’re my nieces.’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘What is it that you want?’ I said, ‘Out.’ And he signed my papers and I got out. It took me three weeks to get out mind you but my wireless operator did another six months before he got out and he was driving trucks around England. He was re-mustered as a driver. And Spag, the rear gunner he got out because he’d been medically unwell. He was older. He was actually thirty nine when he was flying with us. So he really shouldn’t have been there at all. And that was, that was it.
AM: What did you do after the war?
GT: I went back to the bank. I was in the bank before I went into the air force. Went back to the bank. The interesting thing was I think because of the Air Force training I got it was concentrated training. I mean we did, my initial training was at Scarborough. I had twelve weeks in Scarborough. And then I went to Bridgnorth to Elementary Air Navigation School which was a ground school and spent nine weeks there at Elementary Air Navigation. And then went from there to Northern Ireland for flying training. And eventually went back down to, posted from there to Westcott, Bucks for Operational Training Unit where we crewed up. And that was it then. Went from there down to Shrops, to Suffolk and went to various bases we were in. We were on Wellingtons when we were at Westcott and then we went down there and went onto Stirlings. And we spent quite a bit of time on Stirlings and then went converted on to Lancasters before we went to the Squadron.
AM: Right. Just —
GT: There was a body operating in Wales called Hero’s Return. And I heard about it through the Aircrew Association. And I phoned this Hero’s Return place in Wales and I said, ‘I would like to go and visit my pilot’s grave.’ I knew where it was. It was in a place called Dürnbach. Forty miles south of Munich. And he said, they said, ‘Yeah. Well you can do that. We can finance that for you.’ And I said, ‘My wife would like to go too.’ ‘That’s alright. We can do it for both of you.’ So I phoned my bomb aimer who was in South Wales and I told him and he got in touch with them. And it was arranged that the three of us would go and they paid seventy percent of our costs and we, one of the problems at Dürnbach, outside Munich was that the, it was difficult to get accommodation with a large lake. I think it was called Titisee but I’m not very sure about that.
AM: It is Titisee. Yeah.
GT: It is Titisee isn’t it.
AM: Yeah.
GT: And my travel agent in Helensburgh at that time eventually got us accommodation which she got three places and we had to pick one. And we picked the one that we thought was best located. It was halfway up a mountain because it was a ski resort. And Titisee is used by the people from Munich as a weekend resort and it’s not a place for English tourists. So we got there eventually and we had a mix up getting there because the original plan was the travel agent told us how to get there. Fly to Munich Airport. Take the train in from the airport to Munich. It’s about an hour in the train in to Munich and get a train from there down to Titisee. So we, John, but John had, his legs were not very good and he had arranged that he would get transport when he was in the airports. So when we got to Munich there was a chap waiting for him with a wheelchair.
AM: Wheelchair.
GT: And we were walking along and this this chap said, he was German of course, he said, ‘Where are you going to?’ And we said, ‘We’re going to Munich. We were going to get the train to Munich. He said, ‘You don’t want to get a train to Munich,’ he said, ‘You want to get a bus.’ He said, ‘I’ll take you to the bus. And it’ll take you to Munich quicker than the train will.’ So we got on the bus and I was paying for the three of us and the driver said to me, ‘Where are you going to?’ And I said, ‘Well, we’re going to Munich and then we’re getting a train down to Titisee.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘You don’t want to get the train.’ He said, ‘There’s a bus that’ll come in behind me at Munich. Get on the bus and that’ll take you down there.’ So we did that. And we got down. The only trouble was it went down the wrong side of Titisee and it went right around the whole lake before we got to our destination. Anyway, we got a taxi up to the hotel. We got in to the hotel no bother at all and we were getting the middle of the afternoon. And after we were in our rooms I went down to reception. There was a lad at reception he was probably in his mid-30s and I said to him, ‘What time’s dinner?’ He said, ‘We don’t do dinner.’ They had two dining rooms but they didn’t do dinner. I said, ‘Oh.’ He said, ‘Well, don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I will take you down to the village.’ He said, ‘There’s plenty of pubs in the village. If you went to the pub, have a drink, have a meal, have a drink and get a taxi back up.’ ‘Fine. We’ll do that.’ So we did that and we came back up after 10 o’clock at night when we got back up and he was still in reception. And when John went to his bed I said to my wife, I said, ‘I’m going to go down and have a word with this guy.’ So I went down. I said to him, ‘I should tell you why we’re here. We’re here because I want to visit my pilot’s grave,’ The mid-upper gunner was buried beside him as well, I said, ‘At Dürnbach.’ I said, ‘I know it’s about eight or nine miles from here but,’ I said, ‘How do I go? Do I take a train or do I get a bus or do I take a taxi?’ He said, ‘No. Don’t do any of these things. I will take you.’ So the next day he took a day off and he took us there just after lunch. And he stayed with, he came into the British War Cemetery. He came into the cemetery with us and he stayed with us and then he brought us back up to the hotel. And on the way back up he said, ‘Would you like a meal tonight?’ And John said, ‘I thought you didn’t do meals.’ He said, ‘I can do a cold meal.’ So John said, ‘That’ll be fine. A cold meal would suit me.’ So we all agreed to have a cold meal. So he said, ‘Come down at half past seven. And go into the smaller dining room.’ So we came down at half past seven and went in to the smaller dining room. And there was a big round table set out with plates of various cold meats on it, a bottle of wine, coffee cups and such like. And then this chap came in with a bottle of schnapps and we had a glass of schnapps each before we had our meal. We had the meal and we got a sweet after it and he came back in and gave us another glass of schnapps, and that was it. And he didn’t charge us for the meal. We paid our normal bill for the accommodation and that but that was all. And it couldn’t have been better. So I came back and I told the travel agents when I got back that, ‘Don’t send anybody to Titisee by train. Tell them to go by bus.’
AM: I think, George that’s a remarkable way to finish a remarkable.
GT: Yeah.
AM: Story. Thank you.
GT: My pleasure.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with George Thomson. Two
Creator
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Alastair Montgomery
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-03
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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AThomsonGB171103
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:27:12 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
George Thomson was a navigator with 15 Squadron based at RAF Mildenhall. On their nineteenth operation they came under attack and had to bale out of the aircraft. The pilot and mid-upper gunner both died. When he landed he saw a parachute stuck in a tree at the other end of the field and discovered it belonged to his flight engineer. Together they evaded capture for eight days before they were discovered. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft 7 before embarking on the Long March.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Suffolk
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Munich
Germany--Oberursel
Germany--Rastatt
Poland--Tychowo
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
15 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
Dulag Luft
entertainment
evading
final resting place
lynching
navigator
prisoner of war
RAF Mildenhall
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/538/8774/PWinterH1508.1.jpg
e3a345bb092e974dc8b0907b99431d4c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/538/8774/AWinterH150708.1.mp3
af948046d23b15114df2b093cdfc73b5
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
Winter, Harry
H Winter
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Winter, H
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Harry Winter and two photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 431 and 427 Squadrons before he was shot down and became a prisoner of war. He was one of ten members of the Ex-Prisoner of War Association invited to 10 Downing Street in 2014.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: Okay so, this is Andrew Sadler on Wednesday 8th July 2015 interviewing Harry Winter on behalf of the Bomber Command Archive at his home in Streatham South London. Can I start Harry by asking you where and when you were born?
HW: I was born in Cardiff in 1922.
AS: And can you tell me what your family background was?
HW: Yes my father was an er Engineer and Fitter Turner he was a tradesman er he spent the First World War at sea as an engineer on ships and when he got married he worked for the Cardiff Gas Light and Coal Company as a Maintenance Engineer. Er I went to school in Cardiff from about five years of age to Lansdowne Road Boys School and I left there at fourteen years of age, in those days er jobs were difficult to obtain and money was very very short although my father being a tradesman he was in in work all of his life er he had no problem with regard to employment, um and I left at fourteen and I went to the local paper making mill it was a very large mill I went there and I started in the office there as an assistant stock keeper then I went on to costing and finished up er on um on the order department for one particular machine making vegetable parchment, er I was on that until 1941 er when the war had started and I first went into the Home Guard and spent twelve months in the Home Guard and then on January 2nd 1941 Cardiff got blitzed and I decided to pay them back by endeavouring to bomb them, my age nineteen, I was coming up for nineteen when I would have had to be conscripted in any case and I didn’t want to go into the army so I volunteered for air crew, er I was sent to Weston Super Mare for my air crew selection board, passed and er waited er for a few months while er they they organised the er recruitment etcetera. I was called up in September 1941 sent to Padgate er in Lancashire where I was kitted out and then on to Blackpool where we did our initial training such as square bashing and learning Morse, although I had been learning Morse in the Home Guard I was very helpful that I knew most of it when I got there which helped a great deal, um I was in Blackpool from September until the second week of January 1942 er then I was sent on leave and went to Yatesbury Number 2 Wireless School at in Wiltshire er to learn the technical side of wireless etcetera etcetera, and learn about all the various instruments etcetera, and of course drill and er various other things. I left I passed out there as a wireless operator in March 1942 and er I was sent on er oh am not quite sure what you call it on I was sent to Angle a fighter station near Milford Haven to get experience on the radio communication, I spent the summer there until September 1942 er then I was posted to Cranwell Number 1 Radio School where we had more technical work on the more advanced radio instruments etcetera etcetera, and the new inventions. I spent from September until December at Cranwell then I was posted back to Yatesbury for a refresher course in January 43. I left Yatesbury as wireless operator fully fledged in March 1943 and I was sent to Manby Air Armaments School for a short course on air gunnery, then on to er advanced flying unit at Bobbington in Worcestershire where we were flying on Avro Ansoms with navigators, and trainee navigators. From there we were posted to 23 OTU at Pershore er where they were using and er what do you call them using what’s the aircraft er, oh dear –
Other: [?]
HW: Wellingtons [laughs] they were using Wellington bombers, er there we got crewed up I met the navigator of course at Bobbington and er by the time we got to Pershore we had agreed to join together and try and make a crew, er when we were all assembled at Pershore they put us in a hanger and the pilots and bomb aimers and rear gunners were all assembled there and we just mixed together and made up our own crews we weren’t forced to fly with any person we met each other and er we er crewed up together and er there we did our OTU, and from there I did my first operation. Um about June 43 we were sent on a sea search er in the North Sea there had been an American bombing raid the day before and some aircraft had come down in the sea so we went over over the North Sea to er search for a er dinghies etcetera, er we went over as far as Texel and er we got fired on by the anti-aircraft guns at Texel and one of the shells had hit the port engine and er put it out of action so we limped back to an aerodrome near Rugby where my the pilot had been trained as an advanced pilot, er my pilot was an American my navigator and bomb aimer and rear gunner were all Canadians, er we landed at this aerodrome just outside Rugby and the next day we were picked up by another aircraft and returned back to Pershore, that was the only exciting thing I had up to that present moment. From Pershore I was sent to Topcliffe Number 1659 HGU Heavy Conversion Unit where we were converted to Halifaxes and we were there for a month and then we were posted, I was posted, we were posted first of all to 431 Squadron at Tholthorpe in Yorkshire, we did a few trips there and um wee the apparently 427 had lost a few aircraft at that time so they transferred us to 427 Squadron, er 427 Squadron it was this was all 6 Group which was all Canadian Air Force, um er 427 Squadron was adopted by the Metro Goldwyn Mayer Film Company so we were called the Lion Squadron and we had a model lion presented to us by one of the Director’s of Metro Goldwyn Mayer in June 1943, there is a record of it er Pathe Newsreel recorded it I have a recording of it on my computer showing them presenting the lion to the Squadron Commander. We settled down at Leeming, various operations came up and we did various operations over Germany, oh France, Italy and Germany, and during the August and September and then in October er we were doing a few bombing raids in various places in Germany again and on 22nd October we were, oh, [I’ll just finish my coffee, whispers]
AS: Your going now.
HW: Yes we did various trips they varied um er sometimes they were quiet other times a lot of flak and night fighters attacking and er [?] sometimes very heavy cloud, intense cloud, icing etcetera, we experienced all this and um the er er sometimes we had a bomb on sky markers and sometimes if it was clear we bombed on ground markers, er these all went under special names, er they they these names had been invented by the air by er er, what was it, a New Zealand er Marshall who was in charge of um, let me think of it, oh dear my mind wait a minute, er he he introduced what did they call it, pathfinders yes pathfinders, pathfinders used to drop these various target indicators and we used to have to bomb target indicators. Er on 22nd October 1943 we were informed that we were on another operation er we went for our briefing and we were informed that we were 560 bombers were going to bomb Kassel er we were briefed and er went to our aircraft to test them er we were allocated “L for Love” which had the name “Lorraine Day” on one side and “London’s Revenge” on the other side, we went then for our pre-flight breakfast er and er we were due to take off at five thirty in the afternoon, we kitted out went to the aircraft got in the aircraft and um the pilot tried to start the engine and the port inner wouldn’t start we tried three or four times so it was getting near five thirty then so er I got the Aldis lamp out and signalled across to flying control that the engine was US unserviceable, er a few minutes later a seal [?] came over in a car and the pilot informed that the aircraft wouldn’t start the engine wouldn’t start and of course the er maintenance flight sergeant he confirmed it just wouldn’t go so er the the commanding officer said ‘G George is bombed up a spare aircraft go over to that’, er we the transport that had taken us out to dispersal had gone so we had to transfer all of our kit across to “G George”, “G George” had no window that’s the strips of foil for anti-aircraft er er radar blotting out and er so we had to carry all the bundles of window between us from one aircraft to the other, er we got into the aircraft and that started up and of course five o’clock five thirty just after five thirty we took off. We flew down to Cromer where all the aircraft er that were bombing that night congregated to assemble for the final trip across the North Sea, we flew across the North Sea and of course immediately we arrived over the Dutch border we started getting attacked by flak, um there was a diversion er flight going to Frankfurt so we were our course was towards Frankfurt for a while and then we turned off north of Frankfurt to er for Kassel, just before reaching Frankfurt the rear gunner er informed the pilot there was a night fighter coming up on the stern, er the mid upper gunner confirmed he could see it also so er he of course the rear gunner took over then and he requested he demanded the aircraft be put into a um corkscrew the er the pilot corkscrewed the aircraft and at the same time the two gunners started firing on the night fighter er we by the time we came out of the corkscrew the night fighter had gone so we carried on towards Kassel, er we were the second wave into Kassel er there were three waves altogether we were the second wave um five minutes before reaching Kassel we saw all the first TI’s going down and the first bombs going down etcetera etcetera and er we followed in and by the time we got to Kassel the night fighters had estimated our course and er they put a line of er fighter flares above us so we were flying just like going down a high street with all the lights on and er we were lit up just like daylight and the night fighters were above us observing us, and the navigator, the bomb aimer took over for the bombing run and we dropped our bombs and er we turned put to port towards Hanover, [have a drink of tea, whispers], the night fighters of course had been following us we couldn’t see them because they were behind the fighter flares, and er about five minutes after leaving Kassel there was a terrific bang, series of bangs and the pilot said ‘we’ve had just been hit’ apparently canon shells had hit us, er he endeavoured to contact the rear gunner there was no reply, he tried the mid upper gunner there was no reply, so he asked the engineer to go back to see what whether they were okay, the engineer said ‘he couldn’t go back because he was watching the petrol tanks’, so he asked me and I went back I went back to the mid upper turret and hit the mid upper gunner on the thighs and er shook him but there was no reaction at all he had his head down and there was no reaction, so I dashed back then to the rear turret and the rear turret I banged on the rear turret doors I could see the the rear gunner in there er shot down so there was no reply from him so I tried to open the doors but they wouldn’t open so er just as I turned to return er the fighter came in again and attacked us, er I was running at the fuselage and I felt a terrific pain in my right thigh and by the time I reached the pilot I put my thumbs down to indicate there was no life with the gunners and I noticed then that the port wing and engines were all on fire, the pilot shouted ‘bail out, bail out’ so I dashed down the stairs to my position underneath the pilot er which was just behind the navigator, the navigator lifted up his chair and table and lifted up the escape hatch I handed him his parachute and I put my parachute on and as I put my parachute on I noticed I had his name on mine so I tapped him and indicated so we changed parachutes and I went out and er I was out first er I landed in a tree er and er hit a branch with my left thigh and I had a terrific thigh when I hit one of the main branches, er it was quite dark but I could see the branches against the night light and I put my right foot on one of the branches er released myself from the parachute because I was hung about twenty I suppose about twenty feet up in a tree released myself and then put my left leg on the branch to climb down and my left leg gave way and I collapsed and fell from the trees and knocked myself out, er the next thing I knew it was getting dawn I suppose be about seven thirty in the morning this was about nine twenty five at night when we were shot down it was about seven thirty in the morning it was just getting light and er I noticed that I was in this small wood er and er I tried to stand up and I couldn’t so and I was feeling very very thirsty I didn’t realise then that I had lost a lot of blood and that’s why I was thirsty, so I looked around and I could see that it was lighter down below than it was up above so I crawled to the edge of the wood and there was a field there and I noticed there was a farmer and two boys spreading manure etcetera etcetera on the ground, so I shouted to them they came over and I asked them for water er they stood me up and I collapsed again and went unconscious the next thing I remember I was on a horse and cart going across a field I momentarily came conscious and realised what I was doing what’s happening then I lost consciousness again, the next thing I woke up I was on a bed in a hospital with a doctor and nurse looking over me and er when they realised I had regained consciousness they said ‘you have er er broken your left leg and you are wounded in your right leg’ I said ‘where am I?’ they said ‘in Germany’ I said ‘I can’t stay here I’ve got to get back to England’, er I tried to get off the ch the bed then I realised I had no use in my legs so I laid back on the bad, er I was there overnight [takes a drink] and the next day a German medical orderly came and informed me in broken English er that he was escorting to Dulag Luft, they put me on a stretcher I’d been my leg had been strapped up by this time of course and they put me on a stretcher and took me to the railway station which I noticed the name was Lugde [spells it out], um they was only the medical orderly so they had to get an outsider to help carry me on the stretcher and the outsider when we got to the station he left me just left the medical orderly with me the train came in so I had to get off the stretcher I had the use of my right leg by this time and er the the er medical orderly got me into the train er we travelled a short way and we had to change trains [takes a drink] er he took me out and er where we were changing trains there was no platform so we had to get down onto the side of the railway er he took me um the stretcher out then helped me down then helped me across to the platform and then brought the stretcher down for me to lay on the stretcher, er he went to get some refreshment and while he went to get refreshment a big a to me a great big German er huge German with a walking stick came and stood in front of my er stretcher looked down and said ‘my house in Kassel has been bombed’ er I looked at him and er I thought seeing the walking stick etcetera etcetera discretion being the better part of valour I kept my mouth shut, at that time the medical orderly came back with the drinks and er the this civilian went off, er we got back on another train travelled another distance and we had to change trains again, er the same thing he there was no platform so he had to help me down and he took me into the canteen in this station where there was a lot of soldiers, er he went to get some soup for me and er when he came back with the soup a German soldier with a Schmeisser came over he wanted to shoot me so the medical orderly looked around and found a er another soldier of higher rank he’d found a Feldwebel which was a sergeant, the sergeant came over and immediately this German with a Schmeisser went, I felt very grateful to the medical orderly for what he had done so I gave him my name and address which wasn’t against the law anyway because we were allowed to give name address and rank etcetera, we got on to another train and er there oh just before we got onto the next train a a a another escort came up with three other airmen and one of the airmen was my bomb aimer, so er he said to me ‘both the gunners and Bob the pilot were dead’ er he had been picked up er near where the aircraft crashed taken to the scene and er there in the turrets the turrets had come out with the shock of the crash the gunners were still in the turrets the pilot was still in the pilot’s place and of course the fire had burned him, so er he identified the rear gunner by his dentures er half his head had been blown off by a canon shell, er the mid upper gunner had one had been shot in the stomach and of course the pilot er he must couldn’t have got out don’t know why but he went down with the aircraft and was killed in the crash and then burned after. Anyway the bomb aimer and the other aircrew were taken to one compartment and I was taken to another, er we arrived in Frankfurt am Main the next morning er at about ten o’clock and they took us onto the station and er they informed us that as I was wounded they wanted an ambulance so they phoned for an ambulance [pauses to take a drink], so after a while an ambulance came and the three other aircrew and myself were put in the ambulance and we were taken a short distance to Dulag Luft at Ober, Oberursel, the bomb aimer and the other two aircrew were taken off there and I was taken about another kilometre or so to a hospital called Hohemark [spells it out] it was a clinic for mentally disturbed people before the war it had been taken over by the Luftwaffe and the first the ground floor was used for German wounded er the first floor er for British wounded and the third floor and the second floor for the staff to sleep, er I was taken in by on the um taken into Hohemark onto the ground floor into a room and locked in er about five minutes later a German officer came along and he offered me a cigarette and put a form in front of me with a red cross on the top and on there it had my details requesting my details of name, rank etcetera home address, squadron and all the details of the squadron, er I filled in my name, rank and home address and handed it back to him and said ‘that’s all I’m afraid I could inform him about’ he said ‘I will tell you your history’ so he informed me the date I had volunteered in Cardiff, he informed me of every station I had been sent to in Britain er and the dates etcetera etcetera he informed me of all my crew and er then he left and he came back and he said he came back about five minutes later and oh he said ‘I left out Bobbington you were at Bobbington as well weren’t you?’ I said ‘well if you say so’ ‘yes’ he said ‘you were’ so er after about half an hour oh then they had him told me to undress and get in the bed there took all my outer clothing away with him, incidentally the medical orderlies who took me in were all British, er one was a warrant officer mid air front gunner who’d been shot down a year earlier he was a Liverpudlian, there were two Welsh paratroop medical orderlies they had been captured in North Africa and the rest of the staff there was a German corporal, er two German gefreiters and a German doctor, er after the interrogation the two medical welsh medical orderlies came and took me up to the first floor and there were various rooms and ere r various beds had been taken over there were other aircrew with broken legs and broken arms and of course there was a lot of burns there was one ward there with a lot of burnt aircrew, I was put in a bed and handed back my uniform and on my uniform I had two buttons one an RCAF button and one an RAF button the RAF button had a compass in that had been taken off I also had a compass in my front collar stud that had been taken out taken away so they had realised what was in there they had tested and found these compasses and took them away otherwise I had my my er cigarette case and all my own er belongings returned to me, um they put me in a bed there and er oh they had they asked me to stand up so I stood up and er ‘oh they said your legs not broken get in bed’ so of course the next day one of the medical orderlies came to dress my right thigh where I had a lot of proud flesh where this canon shell had hit me part of it and it gave me a wound when I lost a lot of blood and of course he started dressing the wound and looking down he said ‘your leg is broken’ he noticed that it was at an angle so I doctor came along and confirmed it, this doctor who’s name was Doctor Ittershagan [spells it out] er he was a specialist in broken bones er apparently he had taken up a new invention where instead of putting the leg in plaster they opened the wound opened the leg er stretched the leg to put the bones back in place opened the leg and put a metal pin inside the femur pushed it up through the thigh put the bone together and knocked the er pin into the bottom part of the femur and sewed the leg up so and we were able to get around on crutches there and er apparently they were seven six other aircrew there some with arms that had been broken and some with legs that had been broken and they had all had the same operation we were treated as guinea pigs because this was a special new idea, um so Doctor Ittershagan was there to oversee us. Er we spent a few months there and just before Christmas time a fighter pilot came in he had crashed er he was a PRU Photograph Reconnaissance Pilot and apparently he’d been flying over France er taking details of the weather and he hadn’t noticed that his oxygen had given out he’d broken his oxygen pipe and er the next thing he knew he was on in the aircraft the aircraft had flown into the landed pancaked itself into the ground he was slightly wounded, apparently when he got out when they took him to Dulag Luft they found he had two dummy legs he was the second legless pilot er so of course he was sent up to Hohemark and er to have his slight wounds er seen to and er this was at just Christmas time so we spent we had Christmas dinner at Hohemark with Colin Hodgkinson which was his name er he was featured in “This is Your Life“ some years after in the BBC. I was there until right throughout Christmas and various as we were oh Christmas Day we were able to get along on crutches so we went out on Christmas Day and met some of the German wounded so we started playing football on the grounds [laughs] in Hohemark, anyway various aircrew were coming in with wounds, burns etcetera etcetera some of them died there of burns etcetera, one pilot he was a member of the Dunlop Family and he got seriously burnt and he died on the operating table there. There was another Welshman came in er at the end of er March he had been on the Nuremburg raid and shot down and when he was when he bailed out the propellers caught his left arm and left leg and took his left arm off at the elbow and left leg off at the knee and he was on crutches, er various other, oh another one came in he had his legs both legs blown off and he landed in icy water and he had the sense to get his parachute shroud lines to tie around his thighs two girls German girls picked him up and took him to hospital and er he’d been sent to Hohemark before being repatriated of course because he was seriously wounded. We were there through the spring and summer part of the summer and er met quite a lot of er German officials etcetera and some of the German fighter pilots used to come in and have a chat with us about er flying etcetera and of course the interrogators used to come in and every afternoon about three o’clock we used to have coffee so the er interrogator had the habit of coming at about three o’clock when we were having Nescafe and of course he would come and have a cup of Nescafe as against the Acorn coffee that they were issued, and we used to chat with them and er we said to one we said to one of them one day ‘how is it you’ve got all this information about us?’ so he opened his briefcase and get a folder out and showed us details of an American Squadron he said ‘this is Amercian B17 Squadron’ he said ‘they are still in America they are due to fly over to England’ he said ‘we’ve got the details of every aircraft and every member of the crews’ and we said ‘well how do you get a lot of this?’ well he said ‘there is a lot of Irishmen working in America and a lot of Irishmen working in England and the information gets through’, so anyway so that satisfied out curiosity. Anyway one of the er guinea pigs, what was his name?, er oh dear Mike Sczweck [?] he was an ex Polish emigre to America he was a ball turret gunner [?] he’d had his arm broken and he’d had a metal pin put inside it and he was getting rather restless, so we used to be allowed out every afternoon from about two to three o’clock before coffee to walk round the grounds etcetera for a bit of exercise, er this was about the 4th June and the er he informed us that he was going to try and escape so er we er when we got back in we got to our window and of course they had long u um venetian blinds there and the windows were open and the long chords if you put them out of the window they’d reach to about six feet above the ground below so er there were two Canadians and myself er we were in a room and we helped lower him down and this was about half past three in the afternoon, very hot afternoon about four o’clock we had a thunderstorm er we covered as Mike had a habit of laying on his bed they were double bunks he was on the top bunk he had a habit of laying on the bed we made up his bed to look like he was laying on it, there was seven of us “The Seven Pin Boys” guinea pigs in this room so that night er we all went to bed and the German medical orderly came in Adolf Dufour he was ex ex er World War One soldier he came in so and he noticed we were all in bed so he closed the door and we all went to sleep the next morning we got up and had our breakfast and of course they put out the all the meal so er a few of us surreptiously took part of the roll etcetera and marmalade ate it and drank the coffee etcetera then about eleven o’clock in the morning the English warrant officer, Liverpudlian came up and he said ‘where is Sczweck?’ so we said ‘well on his bed I suppose’ he said ‘he is not on his bed’ and he went straight away and reported him as being escaped.
AS: So he’s just been found missing?
HW: Yes and he this Liverpudlian as I say he reported straight away they got in touch with Dulag Luft which was a kilometre away and er they came up with dogs etcetera but of course this was the day before he got away and there had been a thunderstorm in any case so er they said ‘right’ they picked the three of us and said ‘pack your bags’ and they took us down to the cooler at Dulag Luft they walked us down came down to the cooler and we spent a couple of days there, and then two days later they came and told us they wanted our braces and boots er now there was one of the ambulance drivers German ambulance drivers a German American he again had been er er living in America went to Germany at the beginning of the war and they kept him there so he could speak perfect English with an American accent so we said to him ‘why have you taken our braces and boots?’ he said ‘there’s been a landing on the French coast’ he said ‘we don’t want you to try and escape again’ anyway two days later they handed us our braces and boots and sent us to a hospital just outside Homberg and all the other pin boys were there and we all had our pins extracted er and we sent back to Hohemark er on on walking sticks etcetera for a few days until the wounds had healed and they took the stitches out, and then oh by the way incidentally when we were there at Hohemark there used to be a warrant officer an English warrant officer he was down at Dulag Luft and I don’t know what he was doing but er he used to come up periodically he was dressed in full RAF warrant officer uniform, Slowey his name was warrant officer Slowey he had been shot down about two years earlier and no doubt he was collaborating with the Germans so of course whenever he was around we kept our mouths shut he of course he had came up for information, there was also a girl who used to come up from Dulag Luft, her mother was Scottish and her father was German and er at the beginning of the war she went back to Germany and stayed over there and she used to be sent up to talk to us at times to no doubt try and get some information from us but of course they had all these sort of things like going on and tricks to try and get some information from us, anyway I don’t know what happened to Slowey ‘cos as I say we were sent back to Hohemark for a few days then I was posted er er to sent to Obermarshfelt[?] a clearing hospital near Meiningen in the centre of Germany, er it was a mixture of various prisoners there was English soldiers there etcetera er so I was there until er we could walk properly and then in July middle of July we were informed we were being sent to prison camp, er they put us on a train and er they were seven of us eight of us altogether and two guards the two guards only had little hand pistols to guard us with so er on the journey in the morning there was an air raid went and er we heard the aircraft going over and when the all clear went the train started again and we got as far as Erfurt and actually Erfurt had been bombed so we had to change trains at Erfurt, so we got on the platform there was crowds on the platform of people who had been bombed out and there was one particular person with a Swastika ensign on his arm and he noticed us and straight away he started shouting ‘terror fliers’ in German ‘terror-flieger’ informing the crowd that we were terror fliers we should be hung er at that moment a German troop train came in and stopped momentarily on the platform and the guard said to the Germans ’asked where they were going if they were going via Leipzig’ they said ‘yes’ so he got us all on the troop train with the German soldiers and we went off otherwise we would have been hung [laughs]. We got as far as Leipzig where we changed trains again and er then we er the next train was overnight to Dresden, we reached Dresden the next morning and they put us in the basement of the station where we had a sleep etcetera and er of course they’d given us a few rations, a box of Red Cross box of rations so we had our rations and er then we were transferred in the afternoon on a train again and went on to Upper Silesia Bankau which was Luft 7 we reached there about six o’clock the next morning and we marched from Bankau er from the town of Bankau to the prison camp er we were admitted into the prison camp and it was a new one just been built and there was only about forty prisoners there but a lot of huts, the huts were only eight feet high, ten feet long and eight feet wide, and they put six of us in there, there was no beds we had to sleep on the floor no tables no chairs or anything we just had to oh and they gave us a bowl and a spoon and a cup, I’ve still got the cup I got at home with my I still got my German prisoner of war mug, so we were there and there was another compound next to it which was being built with substantially bigger huts the Russians were building that, so in the summer we had just had these huts to live in and the only water we had was a pump in the centre of the field centre of the parade ground er like a village pump where we got our water and where we could only get underneath there and have a bathe. We were there until mid September end of September and then we were transferred to the next compound where we had better accommodation we had double bunks double tier, two tier bunks etcetera etcetera and about sixteen of us to a room um we settled down there and of course they had water laid on there and once a week we were allowed a shower we were taken in batches rooms each room went into the shower, under the shower a German soldier would turn the water on to get us wet let us have a shower a wash turn the water on again to take the soap off and about ten minutes that was our shower that was our cleaning. We were there until January 19th er 1945 when the Russians started advancing so they decided we had to move er we were informed there was no transport we would have to walk, so early in the morning of 19th January they took us out we had no Red Cross parcels none had arrived, er so we went out with no food and we walked thirty kilometres that day to a place called Vintersfelt [?] where they put us up in various er er um cow sheds etcetera etcetera er and some sat out in the open, er we did that forced march then from the 22nd from 19th January to about mid February forced march each day er the camp commandant he informed the Germans and the doctor the English doctor prisoner of war we had informed the Germans we were exhausted we couldn’t go any further so the Germans after we’d marched forced marched through storms etcetera in the night minus forty degrees er with sleet and snow etcetera for about fourteen days um they they marched us to a station where they put us in cattle trucks forty to a truck locked us in and er we were there in this train for two days weren’t allowed out er two days later we arrived at a place called Luckenwalde er which is about twenty kilometres south of Berlin it was a very big camp all nationalities in there so er we were marched into Luckenwalde camp there again there were no beds we had to sleep on the floor er we were issued with the minimum amount of food er I lost about two stone actually in that time er and er we were there until about the 22nd 23rd April er when we woke up one morning to be informed the Russians were outside we looked out and there were Russian tanks out there and they they ploughed down the outer wire and came in they informed us that we could go east if we wished but we couldn’t go west we could go out and forage for food if we wished so various parties went out foraging for food into the town er in the meantime the Russians and the Americans had met at on the Elba. The Americans came over and the Russians stopped them at the edge of the camp and the Americans wanted to take us away and the Russians wouldn’t allow us they were keeping us hostage until they got all the Russian prisoners that had joined the German forces back into Russia to shoot them. So er the Americans informed us that down the road a few kilometres away they would station some trucks and if we could make our way down there we would get away, so after the next day I walked out with one or two others and walked down to this copse there was an American truck there we got in a soon as it was filled up the American truck took us across the Elba that was on 8th May which was er VE Day, so we crossed the Elba into er into a German town and we were put in er a barrack part of an aircraft factory that the Americans had taken over and of course there they fed us er we stayed there for about a day then they trucked us from Luckenwalde sorry from the camp er to um er where was it Mankenberg [?] no not Mankenberg and we finished up at Hanover, er we stayed overnight at Hanover and the next day they put us on Dakota aircraft and flew us to er Belgium Brussels and we arrived in Brussels in the early evening and there they deloused us kitted us out in army uniforms and told us gave us a few francs and told us we could go in town and have a beer [laughs] which we did we came back to be informed we were back on a train er which was a prisoner of war train with all barbed wire and bars on and we were shipped to er er from Brussels to Amien er there we stayed overnight and the next morning there were aircraft landed at Amien and they flew us they flew us to England where I landed just south of Guildford the next day, again we were deloused er kitted out in British uniform and er sent up to Cosford where we were medically examined and if we were fit given a pass and sent home. I arrived home about the 10th or 11th of May er and that was the story of my life up at that up until that time.
AS: Fascinating.
Other: [Laugh] [?] trying to transcribe all that.
HW: ‘Cos there again I as I’d been a prisoner of war I was due for discharge but they wouldn’t discharge me until I had my tonsils out so I had to wait a year before going into a hospital an RAF hospital immediately they came out they discharged me and I went back to my civilian job in paper making and I have been in paper making ever since.
AS: Why did they want to take your tonsils out?
HW: Actually I got tonsillitis in October and I’d been reported sick and of course the day we were to take off I didn’t bother I felt better so I didn’t report sick so I told Bob the pilot ‘I wasn’t reporting sick’ and he said ‘right we are on tonight’ and that was the fateful day [laughs].
AS: Can you tell me about what happened with the German medical officer who stopped you from being shot?
HW: Yes, I he was a medical orderly Gunter Aarff [?] his name was he was about nineteen years of age about two years younger than myself and he could speak fairly good English so of course having met him in Dusseldorf at the Control Commission and we went there and we gave I gave my report he gave his report.
AS: Can you tell me can you just tell me again because you mentioned it when this thing wasn’t on how you were contacted about?
HW: About er er he wrote me and said he introduced himself that I was the person he had escorted to Dulag Luft.
AS: Because you’d given him your home address?
HW: Yes his father had been killed etcetera and he wanted to become a dentist. So of course I arranged it I wrote to the Control Commission they gave me permission to go over I met him we went there together he gave his story I gave mine and er of course he went into university and he became a dentist and of course from then on we kept in contact each year those candlesticks there he sent they were Christmas boxes each year we used to exchange Christmas boxes etcetera etcetera.
Other: Have you got a photograph don’t know?
HW: Yes I’ve got one, as I say we kept in contact ever since we went over there he’s been over here we went one time and he took us down the Rhine boat trip all day trip back up to Cologne etcetera so we did a cruise on the Rhine etcetera.
AS: So he really saved your life and ?
HW: Oh yes he saved, yes that’s why I gave him my name and address because if he hadn’t got this sergeant er the German he was drunk of course he would have shot me, so of course we kept in contact as I say until two years ago er we sent him a Christmas card and we had no reply we did again last year we still had no reply er we had heard in the meantime that he had cancer but er no doubt this has overcome him and he has passed on.
AS: So you really went to the Control Commission to act as a character witness a character reference so he could get into university?
HW: Yes, they said they couldn’t er order the German authorities to give him a place but they could recommend it of course he was recommended and he went into university yes.
AS: Can you tell me after all this how you managed to settle back into civilian life?
HW: Yes, I went back into my er into the paper mill of course they had taken on other staff but they were forced to take us back er and of course they offered us such low salaries that a lot of them just couldn’t afford to go back and they found another job, I was lucky that I had twelve months leave paid leave with warrant officers pay so I was getting £6 a week as a warrant officer and £3 a week civilian pay so I was able to manage to but they gave me didn’t give me my same job back they gave me another job on costing and while I was there I took up paper making studying paper making at City and Guilds etcetera and passed the City and Guilds on papermaking and we had an associate mill at Treforrest where they coated the paper put on this coating for photographic paper, chocolate wrappings etcetera, er waxing, er they used to put the purple coating on the paper for Cadbury’s wrappers etcetera etcetera, er wax craft etcetera er waxed brown paper that is for various jobs in the metal industry um papers for the books for printing books etcetera coated paper and er that was 1946 I went back to the paper mill, 1949 I understood there was a job going in the order department in Trefforest so I applied and of course I got it so then I was in charge of the paper coating on the on all the coating machines, er I was there for about two years inside the office then they decided they’d like me to go out selling paper so I went out travelling they provided me with a car and I started travelling selling paper. In 1953 er there was an upheaval in the with the directors of the mill and the managing director resigned and they decided to take me back in to do the job until they could find another managing director er having experienced outside work I didn’t want to stay inside so I said well I would do it for a year they said right they would find somebody in a year, they found somebody but they still kept me in. At that time my wife’s parents who had been evacuated to Cardiff during the war had moved back to London er and my father in law had contracted er er cancer so we came up for a holiday and er I had a customer in London who had offered me a job if ever I wanted to come up to London so we came up for a holiday and er I went to see him they said yes they would like I could start straight away so I left my wife up here we looked round found a house left my wife here and er I went back put my notice in worked a month and came up to London to live and I started in the paper trade again selling paper to printers and that I did right until I retired in 1986.
AS: Was it difficult when you came out of the RAF fitting back into civilian life?
HW: Yes yes having had the freedom of the RAF I found it very very difficult being tied down to a desk yes.
AS: What do you mean by freedom you were a prisoner of war for several years?
HW: Sorry
AS: You were a prisoner of war for several years that wasn’t
HW: For eighteen months yes.
AS: Eighteen months?
HW: Yes yes and of course er there was the life fighting for food because the Germans gave us the minimum amount of food so we wouldn’t have the energy to try to escape, er we used to play football or cricket etcetera er in the centre of the camp and each day do a march around the perimeter we would all be exercising walking round for miles and miles round the perimeter between the escape wire and the huts to keep keep fairly fit which we were glad of because of the forced march. In September 43 of course there was Arnhem and of course the glider pilots although they were in the Army the Germans treated them as Luftwaffe so they came into our camp and we got really depressed we felt that with the Russian advance we would be home by Christmas and of course that made us our morale dropped a great deal of course we had the paratroopers not the glider pilots there with us joined they the camp. By the time we came out of the camp in January 45 there were fifteen hundred of us when I went there there was about twenty five so you see the number of prisoners of war that was NCO prisoners of war taken in those few months and er only about twenty about ten percent of people flying over Germany that were shot down were made prisoners the rest were killed so you can just imagine the number of people fifty five thousand five hundred and seventy three were killed during the war.
AS: Afterwards did you have you managed to keep in touch with any of your comrades?
HW: Yes I kept in contact with all my crew with the remainder of my crew and of course the parents of the er er members that were killed, there again the parents of my pilot died after a while and er the mid upper gunner then kept writing to me but when in 1949 I told them that I was going to Germany to speak on the part of the medical orderly I think I might have upset them ‘cos they stopped writing, anyway the rear gunners mother she came over here and she went to visit his grave etcetera etcetera we kept in contact with them we went all over we visited them I visited my navigator and my bomb aimer we’ve been over in Canada a few times there so we er kept in contact ever since. Now about five years ago er my bomb aimer died and about four years ago my navigator died we are still in contact with the daughter no the yes the son no grandson of the rear gunner and his family, the navigator’s wife we’ve been in contact with them until last Christmas we sent the usual letter we had no reply er so therefore I am the only survivor the last survivor of the crew.
AS: Well Harry thank you very much indeed.
HW: That’s all right.
AS: It’s been a fascinating tale.
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Interview with Harry Winter
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Andrew Sadler
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-07-08
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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
Harry Winter grew up in Cardiff and worked in a paper mill from the age of 14. He served in the Home Guard before he volunteered for the Air Force. After training as a wireless operator at RAF Yatesbury he flew operations over Germany, France, and Italy with 431 and 427 Squadrons. His Halifax, LK633 (ZL-N) was shot down over Hameln returning from Kassel on the night 22/23 Oct 1943. Four of his crew were killed and he sustained injuries to both legs. He escaped summary execution through the intervention of a German Army medical orderly. After the War, Harry helped the medical orderly with his application to train as a dentist.
Contributor
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Jackie Simpson
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Luckenwalde
Germany--Oberursel
Wales--Cardiff
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943-10-22
1944
1945-01-19
Format
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01:19:33 audio recording
1659 HCU
23 OTU
427 Squadron
431 Squadron
6 Group
aircrew
Anson
bombing
bombing of Kassel (22/23 October 1943)
civil defence
Dulag Luft
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Home Guard
Initial Training Wing
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Cranwell
RAF Halfpenny Green
RAF Leeming
RAF Pershore
RAF Tholthorpe
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Yatesbury
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
target indicator
the long march
training
Wellington
wireless operator
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/602/8871/PMannionF1501.2.jpg
c22677c13690661250851232fca97513
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/602/8871/AMannionF150910.1.mp3
0f083b5239e43b2f309588500024a155
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
Mannion, Frank
F Mannion
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Mannion, F
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. Collection concerns Flight Sergeant Frank Mannion (1921 - 2016, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 10 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war. Includes an oral history interview, some details of forced march as a prisoner, notes on some of his operations and a photograph.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Frank Mannion and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok. So, it’s Thursday the 10th of September and this is Annie Moody on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre and I’m talking today to Frank Mannion at his home in Glossop. So, Frank if we start off just tell me a little about where you born, your childhood, your parents.
FM: I was born in Manchester. I went to work at Metropolitan Vickers. I served my time as an electrical engineer. When the war started I was still serving my apprenticeship so after I served my apprenticeship I went in to the RAF.
AM: Can I wheel back a bit? Where you born, Frank?
FM: Gorton.
AM: You were born in Gorton.
FM: Yes.
AM: What did your parents do?
FM: My father’s an electrical engineer. My mother’s a dressmaker.
AM: Right.
FM: I had two brothers and four sisters. I’ve only one brother left now. A younger brother.
AM: Right. Where did you go to school, Frank?
FM: St Anne’s, Fairfields in Manchester for a start. And then the secondary school was St Gregory’s in Ardwick.
AM: Oh right. Yeah. How old were you when you left?
FM: Fifteen.
AM: You were. Did you do school certificate then? Or —
FM: I did but I couldn’t tell you where that is now [laughs] yeah.
AM: And then — so straight after school.
FM: Yeah.
AM: That was when you — what did you do straight after school.
FM: I went in to, went to work at Metropolitan Vickers.
AM: As you said.
FM: As an apprentice. Yeah.
AM: At Metropolitan Vickers. What did they do there then? At Metropolitan Vickers?
FM: Well it was what they called electrical scientific instrument maker. Well, basically I was an electrical engineer training in electrical engineering.
AM: So what sort of things did you do then?
FM: Now, you’re asking me.
AM: I’m going back a bit.
FM: All sorts of things electrically.
AM: Yeah.
FM: We were trained from the very basic parts of electrical circuits right through to what they did do. Well, as far as you can go now as you know. We didn’t do nuclear engineering. That wasn’t in the system then but we went through all the system as regards engineering in the electrical side.
AM: Right.
FM: Instrument making and all that sort of thing.
AM: Right. So, then what made you decide to join the RAF?
FM: Well, we were in the blitz a few times in Manchester. In the shelter. And I thought well one of these days I’m going to have a go at this lot myself. And when I finish serving my time I’m going to see about getting in to the RAF. Bomber Command. And train to be a pilot. And that’s what I did do.
AM: Right.
FM: But when I joined the air force they accepted me. I was creditable as regards training for a pilot. Physically and everything else. But then they told me they’d got a lot of young men waiting to be trained. They couldn’t cope with them all so they sent me back to work.
AM: Right.
FM: And after a while they got in touch with me and said they still had a lot of people, young fellas, waiting to be trained as pilots but they were short of air gunners. Was I interested? So, I joined the air force and became an air gunner.
AM: You became an air gunner.
FM: Yeah.
AM: Where did you, where did you go to join up? Can you remember? Would it have been nearby or did you have to travel to it?
FM: St Johns Wood was the place where I — in London.
AM: Right. So that was where you did the first —
FM: Yes.
AM: Training.
FM: Yes. And my brother, my older brother was down there. He was in the REME. Electrical engineers. Mechanical and electrical engineers and he also boxed for, boxed for Southern Command. And —this day or this evening he came across to St John’s Wood and with one or two of the big hefty boxers in his lot and asked the people there could they let me out to take, they wanted to take me to a show which they did do. So, there’s this little Frank and all these big fellas. I think it was Vera Lynn. I’m not sure.
AM: Yeah.
FM: But it was somebody. A well-known singer. Yeah.
AM: What was the food like? I’ve heard different reports about the food at St John’s Wood.
FM: Normal. I couldn’t see that it was any different than —
AM: So, it —
FM: Well food was different in those days as you know. You only got this — so much of this and so much of the other. I mean when you were at — well when I was at home and I got my chocolate or whatever it is — a certificate or whatever it was to get some food I dashed off to the shop and bought some chocolate and ate it. That’s what I did. And we were all the same. But I couldn’t tell you any more about food. It wasn’t very very good.
AM: No.
FM: It was very limited actually.
AM: Yeah. It’s just somebody said they actually went across the road to the zoo for their food and whatever it was he didn’t like it. Anyway, that’s another story. So then, so St Johns Wood. Then where did you go after St John’s Wood? Or what did you do? What — what came next?
FM: I was trained on the Isle of Man. Riccall.
AM: Right.
FM: No. Not Riccall.
JM: Jurby.
FM: Jurby. On the Isle of Man. And from there I think I went to Riccall from there after being trained. Went up to Lossiemouth. Did some more training up in there. Scotland. Came down and I —then I went to Riccall. And that’s where I met my pilot and the rest of the crew.
AM: So, what was that like? Crewing up. Who got hold of who?
FM: Well, we just all stood there looking at one another and, you know, blokes — fancy going with him there. And that’s what they did. And I just didn’t do anything. Waited until there was just myself and another chap left and the other two went with this Canadian pilot. George Kite. And he was a big fella. Smart. Strong looking fella. Never had a lot to say but a very nice chap. The navigator was also Canadian. He was a very nice quiet bloke he was but very nice. We had various wireless operators. Different ones so we had one or two left because they had enough of their operations. One or two were filling in because we were short of one. In the end we got Saunders. Alex Saunders. A Scotch lad. And he was the one that was with us when we were shot down.
AM: Right.
FM: And he was the one that got killed.
AM: Ok. So, when, so you’ve crewed up and then I think — I can never remember the order it comes in. You go for your heavy conversion.
FM: Yeah.
AM: Training after that.
FM: Yes. Yes.
AM: What was that like then?
FM: Well I think we did some of that — well Wellingtons I think. Lossiemouth. And then we went on to Halifaxes doing flying about the country in daytime. You know. In fact, I don’t want to tell too many things about it but —
AM: Oh, you can do.
FM: I’m all on my own at the back of the aircraft. In my turret there. Sat on my own there just doing nothing. At night time it was just horrible doing nothing. Just there. In the daytime you could have a good look around. But the pilot, George Kite, every now and again he’d call me up to the front. He wanted a smoke and I used to take charge of the aircraft. I used to fly the aircraft for a little while he was stood at the side of me.
AM: Is this in training or actually on operations?
FM: This is while we training. Yeah.
AM: While you were training.
FM: Yeah. But this wasn’t supposed to, this wasn’t the accepted thing. But that’s what we did anyway and I suppose lots more crews did similar things. Funny things like that.
AM: Yeah.
FM: We just wanted to make as much of the time we could do. It was very boring to be sat there on your own.
AM: Yeah.
FM: Doing nothing. Being frozen to death. So that’s what he did. He wanted a smoke and he asked, ‘Do you want to come to the front?’ Yeah.
AM: So where were you posted to ready for your first operation?
FM: Oh, that was Melbourne. 10th Squadron. Yorkshire. 4 Group.
AM: Yeah. Beautiful church there.
FM: Is there?
AM: Yes.
FM: Oh, now you’re telling me something.
AM: And can, can you remember the first operation? What it was like. What it felt like.
FM: Well, I’ve got a list of them actually. Well it wasn’t —
AM: But the actual feeling of the first one.
FM: Yeah. Well, we were a bit apprehensive but it was somewhere in France and after that, coming back, I thought well that wasn’t too bad. It was, you know, what’s all the fuss about? It wasn’t too bad. And that was what the first one was like and gradually I got to know why people were getting frightened of going on operations because it all started to come about because you could see aircraft being blown out of the sky. All sorts of things. Collisions. And all that. And it wasn’t very pleasant after that. Very dangerous. And you got to a point where you knew sometime you were going to get shot down. Went on and on and on. And eventually we were shot down on our thirty seventh operation.
AM: What can you remember? Can you describe that?
FM: Well if you want. Eighteen months or so ago. What’s — the Rotary, was it the Rotary love?
JM: Hmmn.
FM: They asked me if I’d go and talk to them about Bomber Command. I’ve never spoken to anybody about it. So, I said, ‘Well yes.’ I went and I had a chat with them. And at the first meeting it got to one point where I was trapped in the turret and I said, ‘That’s the end of my flying comments. That’s the end of my little chat to you tonight.’ And they were so impressed they asked me to go back and tell the rest of it. And I’ve got them both recorded there.
AM: Oh right. I’ll listen to them but tell me a little bit about it now then.
FM: In what way?
AM: Just, well you just said you got trapped in the turret. How come? How did you get, how were you trapped in the turret?
FM: Well, when, after we’d bombed the target, it was a place called Neuss. Next door to Dusseldorf in the Ruhr. A lot of our bombing went down, our crews there. And went through the target area as normal and took a wide turn to be out of the way of other aircraft approaching the target and I thought there was something very funny. There was no nothing. No ack ack. Nothing going on like that. Something queer going on here. And all of a sudden, a bang. It was all ablaze with bullets and things strafing all through. Some right through my turret. And the pilot screaming, ‘Here fellas —get out out out. And that was when we were supposed to get out. The escape hatch is in the very nose of the aircraft and in the tail of the aircraft. The turrets turned around to a point where I can’t get access. I can’t get back into the aircraft and there’s no power. It won’t go so I’m trapped in the turret. Now, the pilot, I didn’t know until after the war, but he obviously thought he could crash land that aircraft in the reoccupied part of Holland. So, this is what I learned after the war but what went on then he must have been under some sort of control. He knew the wireless operator, he could see him, he hadn’t got out. He knew I hadn’t come through the aircraft and so presumably he was trying to give a chance to both of us. And he crashed in Holland and they were both killed. That photograph there shows you where they did crash. There were some trees over a hill. As they approached, the US army there did all they could do to help them but they were both killed there. And that’s where the memorial is. For me — well I tried very hard to get out. I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t get into the aircraft to do anything and I thought the only way now is to get out of the aircraft by the turret but I couldn’t get the turret doors open. It was all damaged. And I tried and tried and tried. I couldn’t do anything about it and I gave up and I thought I hope it doesn’t hurt too much. Then another — what you might call an un operational movement by the aircraft, that the pilot corrected. He was doing all this funny thing and he’s flying trying to keep the aircraft airborne. I thought well come on Frank. You know. Come on. Come on. And I, this time I managed to get my fingers between the two half doors of the Boulton Paul turret and I broke a nail off in the process which is very very painful. And I wriggled my hand through a bit more and a bit more and instead of opening that turret door just fell away. The half fell away. Now, pushed at the other one. No response. So I thought, I’ve got a space. Must be — I think it’s a foot wide. To get out of. So, I had my parachute. I always had mine between me the turret doors. You were supposed to leave it in the aircraft. On the shelf there. I didn’t do that. I don’t think anybody did. And I had this on my shins and when I got to that position I wriggled. Brought the parachute up, put it on the ring and fixed the vest here and I wriggled and wriggled and wriggled until I was halfway out of the aircraft and in the turret and then realised the parachute was too wide to go through the space available. So, I had to wriggle back a bit. Take one half, only one half so the parachute was reverse with my body and then I striddled out again. Hanging and hanging on with everything. Managed to get it engaged on the other hook and I rolled out of the turret and that’s how, that’s how I got out of the aircraft. And by this time, I weren’t far from the front where the U.S. 1st Army were in Holland where they were fighting the Germans there. When I landed I could hear the gunfire. I think probably about fifteen twenty miles away or something like that. When I landed I didn’t expect to land just when I did and I landed very heavily. Not as you would normally land when you’re doing the parachute training. These do. People do. And my left leg was behind me. I’d badly twisted my knee. So, I got a nasty cut on my head. An injury to my shoulder and my back and I just thought — now what am I going to do? Getting myself together fully I heard this noise and I thought there’s something coming. I listen again. And this noise again. It was a bit closer this time. I thought somebody’s approaching. So like all, we were all trained to try and get back if we came down. Shot down. You probably know all about that. I got wriggled up. Got out. Up onto my feet, moved away and I fell into water up to my waist. And then I was stuck in this cold water there and this thing that had made the noise appeared. Big head came over mine. A big tongue came out of the cow. Came licking my head. Anyway, after that I managed to get out of there. I sat against a tree. Squeezed as much water off as I could. And the next day, which was Sunday, I tried to get — I didn’t know what to do. I moved a little. Well, perhaps about a hundred yards or so to a lane and the people — perhaps they were going to church. I don’t know. And nobody bothered about me if they saw me. So I couldn’t get any further so I went back to where I’d been the night before and I stayed there. And that’s where I was when two boys who came in the woods looking for something — that’s where they found me. And then of course I was taken a prisoner then.
AM: Two, two young boys.
FM: Yeah. Yeah. Frightened them to death when they saw me. I must have been a pretty sight to see. And about a quarter of an hour afterwards there were twelve people came to take me in. Nine of them were women. Three were men. One of the men had a pitchfork over his shoulder. I don’t know what he thought he was going to do. Another had a big club over his shoulder. But the women were, they were very good. One of them put my right arm over her shoulder and another one my left arm over her shoulder. And they more or less half carried me to the local jail which was in the square and just below the square. The level of the square. The grill, the roof, the top wall, of the wall of that cell was just level with the square. The square. And they looked after me very well and I was there for some time before I was moved to a place, another place near Dusseldorf airfield and I was put in a cell there. But the one in, the original cell I still had my escape pack inside my tunic so when it was just nobody about. This little space between the wall of the cell and the floor I took it out and I pushed it down there. And it’s probably still there. Anyway, after I’d been moved to this other place at this airfield at Dusseldorf that was a different cell altogether. It was all bare walls and stone bed. Stone floor. Sloping bed. Stone pillow and a little bit of a stone thing in the end to stop you from sliding off. And I thought this is probably the place where they put the bad boys, you know. And these two German Luftwaffe people came in. Now, all aircrew when I was flying had a big white sweater they wore between their flying suit and their tunic. And I was using mine as a bit of a pillow. Well they told me to get up. I got up. And one of these two men, the smallest one, about my size he picked this pullover up and put it under his arm. He was having that. And I thought well you’re not you know. So, I reached out and snatched it back. And he gave me such a good hiding.
AM: Really.
FM: Punched me all over the place. I couldn’t do a thing about it. Anyway, after a while the other one stopped him eventually. After that I was taken through Dusseldorf on the train. They took us to Frankfurt where we were questioned. On the way, it was daytime, on the way through Dusseldorf the air raid sirens went. Just the same as they’d got over here. Just the same sound. And all of a sudden they all scattered and all left for the shelters, and the two guard’s with pistol holders here they took me into the shelter with the others. Well they could see my brevet. My flight sergeant stripes and everything. And one of those soldiers, guards, he put his finger to his lips and he went like that and he said, ‘They don’t like you very much.’ In other words, don’t say anything. You know. Be as obscure as you can be because if they know who you are and what you are they might do something about it. And from then we went to Frankfurt and that’s where I met John Maling. Our navigator. From there we were taken to Bankau. Luft VII. On the way there went a long way on a train. I think to the Polish border and there we went in a truck. A big open truck and there were four armed guards to that truck as well. Apart from the driver. And two of the guards sat in the driver’s compartment with the driver. And two more sat on a bench with their back to the driver. And on the way there that driver did some — I don’t know, for some reason he did a very violent manoeuvre which threw someone off the truck. And well I don’t know if broken bones or whatever. It was the old the bumps and bruises. You went at speed. And when we got ourselves together one of the guards came, that guard came out with us as well and it was funny to see one of the POWs help the German guard up to his feet and then pick his rifle up and give him his rifle back. That’s what happened there. And then from there we went in to Bankau. Luft VII. That’s where it all started. That was when — the Long March from there, after we were there, what — till February I think.
AM: How long? When were you shot down Frank?
FM: September. September 1944.
AM: ’44. Right so you were there how many months? About?
FM: Well about –
AM: About four.
FM: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: Four months.
FM: Yeah.
AM: So, then, you’ve given me details here of your —
FM: Yes
AM: Forced trek.
FM: Yes. Yes.
AM: I’m going to give it you back and then you can just tell me a little about it from that. What it was actually like being on the Long March.
FM: Terrible. I had a [pause] I had great difficulty in walking because of my knee. When I was first taken into that first prison they brought a doctor to me and he was muttering and saying things to the guard and he, the guard got hold of me. He said, he got hold of me, me put his arms around me and that doctor took hold my leg and gave it a wrench and pull. I had dislocated my knee and that’s what he was doing. He was resetting my knee but it was very sore. It’s always been a problem since then. And I was having trouble walking, anyhow. I wasn’t fit to walk like that. And John Maling helped me along quite a lot. Like other people there were lots of lads falling down on the way and helping one another up and things. Some didn’t get up and there was nothing you could do about it. On part of that way I know a load of army lads joined us. Their guards had deserted them and they’d nowhere else to go. They didn’t know what to do and they came and joined us and they all ended up with us and eventually we ended up at this place and put in these cattle trucks. A long line of cattle trucks. Not the open type. The doors on the side. And there’d be fifty to sixty men in this truck put in there. Now, you couldn’t sit down. There was no room to sit. You just had to lean on one another. Dear. Our truck anyway. We weren’t allowed out for anything. We were in that truck for three days.
AM: And you weren’t allowed out for anything at all.
FM: No. No. And we were in a right mess as you can imagine. And eventually it did. That train kept moving one way and stopping and going and different things going on. And they apologised afterwards. The Germans. They said that they’d been waiting for an engine. Well, what I think they’d been doing keep taking the engine off our train. Using it for more important things as far as they were concerned. But eventually we did end at Luckenwalde —IIIa. That was a big camp. And in that camp, inside the main enclosure there were separate enclosures where they kept the different nationalities. I mean the USA had their own. The French had theirs. The Polish. The Dutch. They all had their own. We had. And when the big battle came on with the Germans and the Russians well the Russians pushed the Germans. We were in the middle of the battle there. And when the Russians pushed the Germans back westwards and pushed on and on and on they — in charge there. We were prisoners of the Russians. What they did they sent a tank into the camp and ran down some of these enclosures so that we could all mix freely then. Which we did, like. Nothing else to do. And we didn’t know what was going on and there was nothing going on but big space westward. Nothing there. All the armies had vanished. There was absolutely nothing. But we knew that the Americans were at Magdeburg. On the River Elbe. A few miles away. And after some time John Maling said to me, ‘Not much going on here, Frank,’ he said, ‘I’ve had enough of this. ’ He said, ‘What do you think about having a go and getting out of here?’ So that’s what we did. With lots of difficulty we got to Magdeburg, to the Americans and after that everyone looked after us as though we were royalty.
AM: So you just went. You just walked out.
FM: Oh no. No. No. I had to get out under the fence.
AM: Oh right.
FM: One of the big, one of the posts that was a part of the fencing of one of the enclosures. We used that at night. When it was dead of night, pushed it under the fence and levered it. Pulled and pulled and levered until we had a little gap. So we squirmed underneath that, each of us and then we got to this, we walked all the rest of that night and all the rest of the day in the wooded area. Or on the edge of the woods. Couldn’t see anything. We wondered what to do now? We knew that every now and again that the Americans sent patrols in this wide area from Magdeburg. From, you know, they had a base at Magdeburg. And all of a sudden we saw this cloud of dust. That’s what it was. And John Maling ran out waving and shouting. Well, they wouldn’t hear him of course, but they saw him. They came racing over and when they knew what we were well — they treated us like royalty there.
AM: Yeah.
FM: Just imagine what they were like with us. Everybody did after that. We moved from there. We were eventually taken to another place where a DC3 had been diverted to pick us up. That took us to Brussels. From Brussels we were taken to by train to France. Lille in France. And from Lille in France we were taken by another transport to an airfield and this big Lancasters there waiting for us and we flew over the Lancaster. So, I think I’m the only air gunner in the RAF who flew out in his last operation in the rear turret of a Boulton Paul Halifax bomber and came back in the Fraser Nash turret of a Lancaster.
AM: Of a Lancaster.
FM: I think so. I bet there’s not another one.
AM: What was it like when you, when you did get back? Because you, had you been deloused at that, by that time or were you still –?
FM: Oh. The Americans. They deloused us alright.
AM: Did they?
FM: They washed us, hosed us and everything. Squirted powder all over us and one thing and another and put the bits that were there, their clothing on us to cover us and then gave us a great big meal. It was a smasher. A great big plate full of —
AM: Could you eat it though?
FM: Oh well. Chicken. Everything you could think of. Vegetables. And peaches and cream all on the one plate. We ate it alright, yeah. And then we were both violently ill for a couple of days. And they were a bit worried about us but eventually we were alright.
AM: Yeah. Because if you’d not eaten properly for six months or whatever.
FM: No. No.
AM: You’re not going to be able to eat that are you?
FM: No. No.
AM: So, What happened when you got back?
FM: Well we were taken to [pause] name’s on there somewhere.
AM: Oh, I’ve given it to you back haven’t I?
[pause]
FM: I can’t remember the place.
JM: Cosford.
FM: Not Cosford? Not. No.
AM: It don’t matter because I’m just wondering because you’ve got back. So they’ve flown you back.
FM: Yeah. Then they debriefed us.
AM: Ok.
FM: And deloused us and more or less did some of what the Americans had done with us when they got hold of us. Then they sent us to London for the night.
AM: Right.
FM: Both in a hotel in London for the night. And after that we were sent to Cosford the next day. And that’s when we were re-kitted and everything and given a nice bit of back pay and sent home on leave.
AM: And what? How long after that were you demobbed?
FM: Well I wasn’t demobbed just like that. I was, at that time, there was some funny things going on. The Russians were misbehaving. Well they thought they were misbehaving. The allies did. And the, a lot of the Bomber Command boys had left. They were all volunteers and they left. But then they were appealing for them to go back on a, on a short engagement. Three years. And they had too, they had the aircraft, but they hadn’t got the people to fly them then. And they were flying food and all sorts of things over to Holland and Germany but they hadn’t got the people to do it. And that’s why they wanted the boys to go back and do. And with the Russians doing what they were doing what they were getting. They were getting very worried about the Russians. And I didn’t leave the RAF. I stayed in the RAF. And then I applied again and I wanted to be trained as a pilot which is what I was going to be. So, I went. Stayed in re-engagement but after a while I was — this complaint took over me and I had major surgery in the RAF. Then discharged as unfit for flying duties.
AM: Because of your knee.
FM: No. No. This Raynaud’s disease.
AM: Oh. Your other bits.
FM: Yeah.
AM: Right.
FM: So —
AM: Right. Tell me a little more about the memorial. You’ve shown me the picture. And the who — who organised the memorial where you’re plane had —
FM: It was a Dutch chap. I can’t think. Just —
AM: Just where —
FM: A letter.
AM: Where it had crash landed.
FM: Yes. Yes. That’s right. He’d been researching different things and what they wanted to do with this place in Holland they wanted to put a memorial there. Related to what had gone on in the war. And there had been another aircraft crashed there earlier in the war. A twin-engined aircraft. And the names of those two are on that memorial plaque. But they got my name, they got our name from somewhere. I don’t know how they got it. I got a letter through Canada actually. And this chap had got his information from Canada so it was perhaps the relatives of Chorley or something like that. I don’t know. But they invited me over to unveil the memorial. Well I got in touch with John Maling, our bomb aimer. He was living in Essex then. And Jean and I and John Maling and his wife Beryl all went over there and give those photographs to show what we did there.
AM: Yeah. What happened to the — he was the bomb aimer wasn’t he? John Maling.
FM: Yes.
AM: He was the one you ended up meeting in the prison.
FM: Yes. That’s right.
AM: In the prison camp and everything.
FM: Yeah.
AM: And I think you said the pilot was killed when he crash landed it.
FM: That’s right. Yes. And the wireless operator.
AM: And the wireless operator. So that’s four of you. What happened to the other?
FM: Well they got out.
AM: Did they?
FM: Yes.
AM: They got out.
FM: I didn’t, I didn’t meet any of them again. That was the Gordon Chorley, that was the navigator. The flight engineer. The mid-upper gunner. I didn’t meet any of those again.
AM: No.
FM: They were all POWs though.
AM: You’ve shown me the picture of the German pilot of the plane that shot you down.
FM: That’s — that’s what they said. Yeah.
AM: And would you have been happy to meet him?
FM: Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah.
AM: Yeah. What would you talk to him about?
FM: Well I don’t know. It would have been nice to chat to him about his job and my job and one thing and another. You know.
AM: Yeah.
FM: Compare things and it would have just have been nice. They asked me if I’d like, if I’d like to meet him and I said, ‘Yes I would. ’ But I didn’t meet him.
AM: No. That’s a shame. And what did, what did you after then. In later life. Back to electrical engineering.
FM: Yes. I became a maintenance electrician at one of the mills around here and that’s what I ended up doing.
AM: Yeah.
FM: Until I retired.
AM: Brill. What more can I say? I’m going to switch off now.
FM: And I used to think, I could see all this, it wasn’t always the case, but you see these big blazes going on below there and more bombs being thrown down there and I used to think — God. What about all the women and kids? And I still do that. And I still do at nights.
AM: Really.
FM: I have prostrate cancer. I have to get up quite a bit in the night and I don’t get a lot of sleep. I lie awake quite a lot and I think about it. Yes. I think about it a lot.
AM: So still.
FM: Oh yes. Yeah. That won’t go away. I mean they told us when I have mentioned to somebody — well very sad, but it was necessary.
GR: Yeah.
FM: If we hadn’t have done what we did millions more would probably have been killed.
AM: Yeah.
FM: So, I can’t argue about that but it still doesn’t make it better, does it? It’s very sad.
AM: And that’s pretty much what everybody says, isn’t it?
GR: I don’t know if you’ve watched it but they’ve been doing a programme this week —
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Interview with Frank Mannion
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Annie Moody
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2015-09-10
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Sound
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AMannionF150910
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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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00:36:21 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Frank Mannion was born in Manchester. When he completed his electrical engineering apprenticeship at Metropolitan Vickers he volunteered for the RAF. Initially he was ready to train as a pilot but was told there was a shortage of air gunners so he volunteered for that role instead. After training Frank and his crew were posted to 10 Squadron at RAF Melbourne. He was shot down on his thirty seventh operation. Frank managed to finally free himself from his badly damaged turret and he baled out. He severely damaged his leg and he was found and taken prisoner. While he was being taken to prison there was an air raid and he had to share a shelter with the local population. He was sent to Stalag Luft VII at Bankau and then four months later was forced on the Long March. He and his navigator escaped from Luckenwalde and the Russians and were picked up by the Americans before he was repatriated home.
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland--Tychowo
Temporal Coverage
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1944-09
10 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
Dulag Luft
Halifax
Lancaster
memorial
prisoner of war
RAF Melbourne
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/614/8883/PMusgroveJ1501.1.jpg
b7eca1ecabb2abfcc21142f7d37a6759
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/614/8883/AMusgroveJ150812.2.mp3
772053bb4cd364dadff721dd7f83f840
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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Musgrove, Joseph
J Musgrove
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Musgrove
Description
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Two items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Joseph Musgrove (1922 - 2017, 1450082, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 214 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2015-08-12
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Transcription
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AM: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Annie Moodie, and the interviewee is Joe Musgrove, and the interview is taking place at Mr. Musgrove’s home in Whatton, on 12th August, 2015. So Joe just to start off will you tell me a little bit about your, where you were born and your family background and school, stuff like that?
JM: Well I was born in York in 1922, my parents were Soldney [?] people, my father unfortunately had an accident when he was sixteen and lost half an arm so I was brought to appreciate the problems of people who had lost limbs. I went to school, I was at school until I was fourteen at the Loddon School in York which is very good quality school, er, did not do very well. When I went to work I decided that my education ought to be extended a bit more and spend two days a week at night school to bring myself up to a reasonable standard.
AM: What job were you doing Joe, what job were you doing then?
JM: I was working at Rowntrees which is a factory, and just ordinary work producing what is today a Kit-Kats.
AM: What did you do at night school then, what sort of things were you doing at?
JM: Well I concentrated on English and mathematics as I thought they were two basic things in life and that did stand me in good stead when I applied to join the Air Force when I was seventeen.
AM: What made you apply to join the Air Force?
JM: The main reason I think was I didn’t want to join the Army, I didn’t want to join the Navy, obvious reasons [laughs] and the Air Force appealed. The reason why in 1936 a single engined twin wing fighter landed not very far from where I was living and that got my interest in flying which I had ever since.
AM: Right. So you joined the RAF?
JM: Yes.
AM: How old were you eighteen?
JM: I joined in 19 well I went to join in 1940, had all me exams and one thing and another, but I hadn’t realised when I first applied to join that it would be such a complicated business and that, because I spent three days at [unclear] at Cardington where the airships were, going through various tests and exams and things like that, and fortunately I did quite well so they eventually accepted me as a wireless operator/air gunner and I went and trained me on that.
AM: So what was the training like where did you do it?
JM: Well.
AM: Describe the training to me?
JM: I did a bit of everything, I went to Cardington to get kitted out and I went from there to Scar to Blackpool, for initial training, which I enjoyed, because bearing in mind at the time I was just coming up to eighteen in 19. I never been away on me own before it was quite exciting to be in Blackpool in those days, and that was the doing Morse Code and things like that. I did I think reasonably well, a very kindly flight sergeant patted me on the head and said, ‘I think you’ve passed.’ I was pleased about that, and then I went on leave. And then from there I went to a place called Madley in Herefordshire for initial flying on, can’t remember the name of the aircraft now, anyhow it was a twin engine twin plane, it was my first experience of flying which I think I enjoyed at the time you went up and down it’s a little bit rough, and I found out what air sickness was all about and that particular thing, but did quite well pass there and then I went on flying with a single engine aircraft a Percival IV [?] which was quite good. And then from there on leave, Madley by the way was the place where Rudolph Hess when he came was moved to Madley first of all from Glasgow. From there I went on leave, sounds if life’s one great leave for me isn’t it, and enjoyed it. From there I went, can you just let me have a little think. I got posted to a place called Staverton, I went to the, er, railway transport office, and he said, ‘Oh I know where it is it’s not very far from blah, blah, blah.’ So off I went down to the South Coast and on to Staverton, got off train there, empty platform, I found one of the officials there, I said, ‘How do I get to Staverton aerodrome?’ He said, ‘With a great deal of difficulty from here ‘cos you’re in the wrong county the one you want is between in Gloucestershire, between Gloucester and Cheltenham.’ So they put me up overnight and the following day to Staverton which was an aerodrome just opposite Rotols Airscrews Factory. Spent some time there, I’m not quite certain what the objective at Staverton was, did a fair bit of flying. Staverton went on leave and got posted to 102 Squadron on Halifaxes at Topcliffe. Hadn’t been there very long and then moved just the other side of York, can’t remember the name of the aerodrome now, anyhow, but wasn’t on operations I was there as part of my training.
AM: Was this the Heavy Conversion Training, Heavy Conversion Training?
JM: Yes, thoroughly enjoyed it. Went on leave from there yet again, I think my parents begin to think life is one great leave for Joseph David. And from there, oh I got posted to a place called Edgehill near Banbury, which was No. 12 Operational Training Unit. From there of course I joined the usual thing there’s twenty of us of each kind, so the cup of coffee on the lawn and get crewed up which we did.
AM: How did, how did you crew up? How did that work?
JM: Well, it’s I stood there, mostly among people of my own breed if you like [unclear] and a chappie came up to me and said, ‘Are you crewed up yet?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well my pilot’s, a chap called Ces Brown, and I’m his navigator.’ And his name was dead fancy. ‘It would be very nice if you joined us and if you do of course we’ll have an idea we’ll just pop in the mess and have a cup of coffee and a beer later on in the day.’ And I thought, sounds good, so I joined them. And we did our OTU at Edgehill which was an aerodrome sit on like a little plateau which was a bit different but the beauty of it is, it was a farm that abutted the aerodrome that used to have a really good system whereby they give egg and bacon if you wanted it from the farm, which we did regularly. And from there on leave again, goodness, now this time it’s on my record in’t it this man goes on leave quite a lot. And got posted from there to 214 Squadron which was based at Chedburgh. Unfortunately on the way there I got robbed of my case with all my RAF papers in that I was studying nothing secret or anything like that but it was a bit of a loss to me, and joined 214 Squadron at Chedburgh not very far from Bury St. Edmonds. Stirlings Mark 3 Stirlings, I was quite pleased because I thought Mark 3’s, one or two were joining Mark 1’s and Mark 1’s were a little bit of a [intake of breath] I always thought a bit of a difficult thing they used to have a lot of swing on take-off, whereas a Mark 3 had one but not quite as serious as the other ones. So that was it I’m now operational.
AM: So what was your first operation like?
JM: Well it was gardening they always are aren’t they, cinnamon [?] which was just off the Baltic. I don’t know it’s when you’re sitting in the radio operator’s little compartment almost isolated from everybody else you don’t really know what’s going on outside, so what I used to approaching the target area stand in the astrodome and look out for people who were a little bit sort of not all that nice to us and that was the first one, it was uneventful insofar as we weren’t damaged anyway usual [unclear] shells and flak and that was my if you like introduction to operations. I didn’t find it very difficult at all.
AM: What were you doing as the radio operator, what did you do for your main things?
JM: Well it’s communications I suppose was the main thing about radio operators, [coughs] they it was an air gunner, the training for air gunnery and I missed that out ‘cos I did my air gunnery training on Walney Island which was nice.
AM: Near Barrow-in-Furness.
JM: It had a nice pub, and they had Boulton Paul Defiants which was nice, and enjoyed that, and of course at the end of it we did we went on leave. [laughs]
AM: So back to being a radio operator?
JM: Well the Boulton Paul Defiant one was [unclear] two seater fighter with a pilot and the turret just behind, quite fast aircraft. The only thing was with Boulton Paul Defiant’s, oh yes and the pilot that I had was a Pole who didn’t speak English and on the thing there’s a set of coloured lights which combination of each it meant something to him and to me but not necessary the same so on that we had a bit of a problem on there. And on them the undercarriage the hydraulics were a little bit dubious, if I can use that word [whispers], so the problem was if you wouldn’t come down sometimes you’d get one leg down and the other one not, so I used to take it up, oh he used to take it up to about seven or eight thousand feet put his nose down and pull it up and centrifugal force would force the other one down. Well I was a [unclear] and when I flew on it it always worked, and from there as I said before I went on leave and on to [?] squadron.
AM: So actually being the radio operator on the operation what sort of things did you have to do?
JM: Well the thing is [coughs], excuse me, when approaching the target when presumably no, no stuff was going to come off the radio, my skipper asked me if I’d go in the front turret which I did, interesting ‘cos when you sit on the front of an aircraft, with nobody in front of you and nobody at the side of you to me it was a little bit isolated and there’s only two guns in the front turret rather than four in the back, but it was not too bad and it is interesting ‘cos you get a good view of the target when you went over it. One or two times we had a difference of opinion with night fighters, which meant me spraying or hosing the guns.
AM: So you did actually use the guns then?
JM: But I never ever shot anybody down unfortunately so I can’t claim any credit for anything like that, and that was it. And of course we had leave from time to time. [coughs]
AM: How many operations did you do Joe?
JM: Well it was listed as eight, so I wasn’t all that lucky.
AM: And what sort, what areas did you target, where did you actually go on the operations, can you remember?
JM: I remember two gardening, one was cinnamon and the other one was off the isl, Ile du Ré on the Durant which was the entrance to a U-Boat base somewhere.
AM: Why did they call them gardening, why did they call them gardening?
JM: Well they codes we all was vegetables, like cinnamon and rose and things like that, so it was just a code gardening. It was supposed to be our introduction to operations more often than not on the second one we did which was Ile du Ré off the Durant, we got you’ve got to drop them at a certain height, certain speed, and we had two large ones and then going down along the powers that be that gave us the route didn’t take into consideration the facts, there was some anti-aircraft ships they used to have based there, um, which unfortunately for us were just a, if I can put it that way, just a little bit unfriendly.
AM: Describe unfriendly?
JM: And um, the I think it was port [unclear] and that destroyed the power supply to a lot of the instruments the navigator was using [coughs] so we used the, I can’t use his name, but it was “D”. The code you phoned when you were in trouble on the nights and the thing indicated it was night time and we asked for searchlight assistance to get us to our which couldn’t do, so they got us into Andrew’s Field which is an American station which mitchers [?] and marauders and of course we put this Stirling down there and of course we put the Stirling down there and of course the quite high the nose on a Stirling, and the following morning we got up there’s all the, a lot of American [unclear] looking up at us, with some right rude remarks being made about it. But the beauty of it was, was the er, one of my commanders’ said, [coughs] excuse me, ‘You can go into the PX’, I think it was called. A large building where you could buy all sorts of things, so we stocked up on, I think it was Lucky Strike Cigarettes, handkerchiefs and things like that. And I must say when we landed there we went for debriefing for these, they got the station education officer etcetera up who debriefed us and he said, ‘Well non-commission officers in the Air Force the American Air Force don’t have a mess separate, but nevertheless we can get you something that you’ll will enjoy.’ And we had steak and one thing and another for breakfast, and they said, ‘Did we mind.’ And I thought no I don’t mind but if they want to hang on to me for a month or two I don’t mind at all. Eventually we went back to Chedburgh.
AM: How did you get back? How did you get back did somebody come and fly you back?
JM: They sent a lorry for us.
AM: Oh right.
JM: Not a crew bus a lorry and we sat in the back of that, flying kit and everything. And when we went along people recognised what we were and waved to us and we waved back, which was like being on holiday, and we got back and we went on leave, which was nice. And at that time I’d been introduced to a young lady who eventually became my wife, and I went to London to, she was a Londoner, I went to London to see her.
AM: Where did you meet her?
JM: I met her in Banbury when I was at HEO, and there was no bus service from HEO that I remember into Banbury so I used to walk, it wasn’t very far six or seven miles something like that. And I used to walk in spend the day with Elsie, walk back, and we was on night flying, circuit, bumps and things like that, and after seven days I said to Elsie, ‘I wish you’d go back to London ‘cos I’m worn out with you here going backwards and forwards.’ But it was nice. So back to Chedburgh, on the 27th which is the Monday of September 1943, we was briefed to go to Hanover which we’d been before so we knew the way, at least I thought we knew the way to Hanover. I remember it quite well because the final turning point was at the far end of the Steinhoven [?] and I was illuminated by a white flare cascading at three thousand feet, and I thought great that’s exactly where we go on the last leg, unfortunately rather unpleasant German night fighters I think it was, they used to have two sets of night fighters who would [unclear] there’s the tamer soar which was the tame boar and the wilder soar which was the wild boar, and the wild boar it roamed with radar a little bit feared by the way came from nowhere and one of them took a fancy to having a closer look at aircraft and the rear gunner fought him off. The rear gunner, Tommy Brennan, thought he’d shot him down but I don’t think he did, the trouble with rear gunners they always think they’re are shooting people down and there not. But by that time by the time we’d been chased all over the sky we was down to about five thousand feet and we took a consensus of the crew whether should go on or turn back so we decided after come that far we’d keep going although five thousand feet was a little bit low for operating.
AM: Had you been actually shot up at by that time?
JM: Yes the port engine had caught fire which we put out with the Gravenor, the Gravenor is the fire extinguisher in the engine which you can only use once, got that out, got down say to five thousand feet and then got shot at by anti-aircraft fire which set the port outer one on fire, so we [laughs] the bomb aimer disposed of his little things and off we went back but it was pretty obvious we was losing fuel and the aircraft kept getting lower and lower and lower, and Ces Brown the pilot said, ‘We better bale out now otherwise I think it’ll blow up.’ So that’s what we did and I landed near Emden in the middle of a field, and the funny thing was I remember about it, it was a soft landing, so I thought get rid of the parachute and me flying jacket etcetera, but I couldn’t find a way out of the field because there was a ditch all the way round and there seemed to be no way above it to get out, so I went round again and the moon was shining on the water but just underneath the water was this black bridge that was covered by water. So I got across there and I thought right go to the village which was in the distance with a church, go to the last cottage then if it’s unpleasant I’m out in the continent. Well that was the principle but when I got to the village I’m walking along very carefully keeping well into the hedge and things, when a little thing was in me, me back, and a voice said something or other, I could never remember what he actually said but I knew what it meant and that was it, and he was, he was I think he was a Hageman [?] in the Luftwaffe on leave, serves me right for getting involved in [unclear], and he was saying goodnight to his girlfriend when I happened to walk past so I thought his eyes lit up and he thought, ooh I’ve got it, I’ve got it, and I was, and he actually took me to the end cottage anyhow. Got in there and there was my navigator, Ted Bounty, sitting there looking quite miserable but he did perk up when he saw me and that was it.
AM: What happened to the others, what happened to the rest of the crew do you know?
JM: Well see when you are baling out you’ve got to remember the aircraft is still moving, and I been bale out the next man might be half a mile further on, so I don’t know until we’d been to Interrogation Centre, Dulag Luft, and we met that was the first prisoner of war camp I went to which was Stalag VI in Heydekrug in Lithuania.
AM: Right. Tell me about Dulag, tell me about the interrogation part of it?
JM: So they sent him that picked us up to Emden and Emden which was a police marine barracks, him that picked us up, and of course on the films you see these motorbikes with Germans on with a sidecar, they sent one of those, well they sent two, one for Ted Bounty, and one for me, and off we went to Emden. And at that time [coughs] I had, every now and again aircrew a thing we used to do, one of them’s got money and I was the one that had money, currency, so I thought I’ve got to be careful here what I do with it, so I said to the interrogator and they all, interrogators they all look nice, very polite, but there are not. I said, ‘I’m awfully sorry but I must use the toilet.’ So they got a guard took me along and I went inside the little cubicle and he waited outside, and I thought I know what I’ll do I’ll put the money, it was one of the old fashioned toilets up there, lift the lid up put it inside and get it later on. That was a, so went back into interrogation and they in retrospect it was not any particular worry on that, they shout at you, they threatened you, [coughs] excuse me, they offer you cigarettes, in fact I was offered a drink, um, but I’ve always made a promise I would never drink if I was captured, at least I think I did. So I then was taken into a room and given some soup to keep me going and said to that person, ‘I must use the toilet.’ [unclear] fine I’ve got it back again, climbed up lifted it up it had gone, dereliction of duty I suppose you would if the commander found out but I tried hard to keep it. And then went from there after about two or three days by train to Frankfurt am Main which is near to Oberursal which is where Dulag Luft was, stopped at Cologne and there’s I’m in this compartment with two guards, and I thought oh gosh I don’t feel very safe here on the station at Cologne, but fortunately a Luftwaffe officer came in and what he demanded I don’t know but he came to sit in here with us so his presence kept everybody out.
AM: So it was the civilians that were —
JM: Yes.
AM: Was the worrying factor.
JM: So we got on to Frankfurt am Main and then on to Dulag Luft. Dulag Luft I’ve read many many accounts of people’s grief there but I didn’t find it particularly harrowing if that’s the best word for it, unpleasant yes but not harrowing. So again I was offered cigarettes and drink which I didn’t take, regretted it afterwards. And then after about a fortnight something like that, may be six or seven of us that was there, I mean you was in isolation by the way, they took us by tram to a park where there was a wooden hut and it was opposite the IG Farbernwerks [?], I always remember that and we’d got to spend the night there and there’s an air raid, and next to the hut was a German anti-aircraft gun unit, which pooped ‘em up all night, not particularly pleasant, but in retrospect not too bad anyhow. I think when you say in retrospect it means that as the years have gone by you’ve mellowed to the situation, and then from there we were transported by train, luxury train, well cattle trucks really, but they were clean. All the way and I think we spent, and I can’t be hundred per cent certain, but I think we spent two days and two nights going to across Germany to Lithuania to Luft VI Heydekrug, and then that was it. And then when the Russians moved and in July 1944 when the Russians were not all that far away they decided they’d move the camp, most of the camp went by train to Thorn in Poland, the rest of us about eight hundred British airmen and the Americans went by train to Memell just up the coast from Lithuania and boarded a little ship called “The Insterburg” there was nine hundred I think from Klage[?] in the hold that we were in. It was a, it was an old coal ship, a Russian coal ship the Germans had taken over, and I had got volunteered to help the medics at Heydekrug there, one of my problems in life is that I keep going and putting me hand at the back of me head to scratch it and every time I’ve done that I’ve volunteered for something and I apparently volunteered to help the medics. Particularly on aircrew that had had injuries to the joints and the joints become sort of locked with adhesions of the joints, and my job was sort of try to break them down, which was interesting on that. So I had a Red Cross Armband and when I got on “The Insterburg” I said, pointed to it and the just tore it off and backed me down [laughs], and it was a twenty foot ladder, steel ladder into the, and we was on “The Insterburg” I think can’t remember exactly three or two days and nights on that, and then we landed at Swinemünde the German Naval Base at Swinemünde. When the what appeared to be an air raid but it was an individual American aircraft, [unclear], and went from there to Kiefheide, Kiefheide Station where we was going to go onto Gross Tychow which was Luft IV, and when they eventually the following morning got us out they had Police Marine [?] men or mainly boys in running shorts and vests with fixed bayonets and some of the Luftwaffe with dogs and a chap whose name was Hauptman Pickard, I always remember, and he was stood on the back seat of a Kugelwagen which was like a German little vehicle, and shouting all sorts of things [unclear] move you to Gross Tychow Camp at a reasonably fast pace with jabbing and one thing and another and dogs biting, and a thought that occurred to me was that I’d rather be on leave right now than doing this. And it was not all that far about four kilometres from Kiefheide Station to Gross Tychow but we had lots of casualties.
AM: On the way or you had casualties that you were taking with you?
JM: Well the instructions apparently mean to the police moving people, you can do what you like but you must not kill anybody, but that gave them carte blanche to knock hell out of us. Luckily I wasn’t too bad. So when we got there we found that the camp wasn’t even finished, we slept the first night in the open. The toilet arrangement in those days were a little bit suspect and it comprised, I shouldn’t really say this, a big trench with a [unclear] over it. And then the following day we was like in we call them dog kennels, small wooden huts, we slept in there for a few nights until they got the permanent ones done and that was Gross Tychow. It was of all the camps I was in the worst of the whole lot.
AM: Worse because of the conditions or the —
JM: Well, Prisoner of War Camps are governed mainly by the people running them, they can be nice or they can be nasty, at Heydekrug there were some about average they weren’t too bad at all, Gross Tychow they were awful to any of us.
AM: Awful in what way?
JM: Well bullying and things like that, but the food wasn’t very good, didn’t have much of it. There was a man there who was six foot three, or six foot four something like that, we used to call him the big stoop, largely because I think he was a little bit embarrassed by his height and he used to walk in a stoop. He was the one that took by wristwatch, he was the one that used to knock people over and things like that. But for every villain there’s always a day of comeuppance isn’t there and when we moved out on the march towards the end of the war the Americans found him and they’d taken his head off and that was that he’d got his comeuppance didn’t he. The end of the war.
AM: Tell me about the march then?
JM: Well in February, I think it was February 2nd, they made out we had been pre-warned we hadn’t been pre-warned they told us at midnight they was moving out the following day. So you’d got to prepare everything take everything with you that you can take, and most of the people got a spare shirt, sometimes you had a spare shirt, tie the up, the arms up and button it up and it made a nice little receptacle put your things in there, and the following morning we went on the march, it was I think it was eleven o’clock if I remember rightly. And we went from Gross Tychow on the northern run to the Oder to cross the Oder, the Russians were the other side of Statin further down the Oder, and we had to take, we had to get across and what they did for the ones I was with you went into barges, there was two barges tied together and you was towed across the Oder to the other side. Unfortunately the night before when we got there the Germans said, ‘We’ve got nowhere for you to stay for the night.’ It had been snowing so we had to sleep in the open, but being aircrew boasting to the, we worked out what to do, so there’s some like a cloudy fern at the side, got those down tried to sweep away a bit of snow off, we had overcoats on.
AM: Did you have boots, did you have boots on?
JM: Oh yeah, oh shoes, in those days we’d been, well [coughs] usually when you get shot down you lose your flying boots. So the following morning I say they moved us across by barge and then we had to, we found out afterwards of course that the reason for the panic they was frightened the Russians would catch up with us, whether they was ever in a position to do that I don’t know, but the Germans obviously thought that they did. So then we went on the march across Northern Germany, various places, enjoying it, looking at Germany through the eyes of a hitchhiker. [laughs]
AM: You don’t really mean enjoying it?
JM: Well yes, but it, um, there was too many incidents happened there.
AM: What was it like, what was, ‘cos it’s cold?
JM: Well it had been snowing, remember we set out in February.
AM: Yes.
JM: And it was a cold winter. By the time we got to Fallingbostel the weather was getting better.
AM: What did you eat, what did you eat and drink?
JM: Well that’s a problem, I’ve got the world’s worst memory, so I don’t remember a lot. The two things you must do is you must get sleep and you must have liquids, liquids was a very difficult thing, some of the times the Germans got us liquids a lot of the times they didn’t. When there was snow about if you were lucky enough to get a snow that was still clean it would melt in your mouth, but that causes dysentery anyhow, I know [whispers] that’s the other problem. But, to be honest a lot of the time they found us barns and things like that to sleep in. What you had to remember at that time, March and April of 1945 it was mostly British fighter planes in the air which were having a good time, and one of the barns I was in got shot at and set on fire.
AM: How did you all get out?
JM: One or two people got killed.
AM: Did they?
JM: But to be honest the Germans tried to find us somewhere, but I’m afraid Royal Air Force fighter pilots were seeing something that’s a good target they went for it. [coughs] Fortunately we got to Fallingbostel eventually sometime in April if I remember rightly.
AM: So two months.
JM: We was then there for a couple of days on the station, the man in charge of Fallingbostel decided it was overcrowded so our little lot was moved out again on the road to Lubeck, which we went to, was one or two incidents on the way. But the man I was with, if you in the thing you’ve got to have a friend who you are with and Danny was one of mine, and Danny said to me, ‘Why don’t we just nip out sometime when we stop if there’s a time when we can do it safely.’ And there came one of those times and we just, Danny and I nipped out across the field into the woods and that was it, spent a little bit of the time keeping had to get through the German lines and through the British lines which we did when we got to the Elbe, across the Elbe.
AM: Just the two of you?
JM: Yeah, on a boat there was no oars but the hands work for oars don’t they.
AM: And did you know what you were making for that, did you know that you would find the British lines?
JM: Well not really we know the direction roughly and we’d got ears that tell you a lot, we got, there was only one time where we was in a little bit of trouble, we spent the night in a barn that didn’t have a roof but it was a barn so Dan and I spent the night in there and the village further down about two kilometres further down it was a village where there were German half-tracks and things and logic would say that they should be moving east which meant they wouldn’t come our way they’d go east and we were north of them, so we decided, we saw them moving to go so we decided we would go to the village. Unfortunately they decided to go our way north instead of going east, and it was not a lot of them I remember a Mark IV type of tank was pulling two lorries and there’s half-tracks with Germans at the back and we’re going along and they’re coming and there’s no point in running away doing anything like that, and our jackets were already prepared, chevrons everything was pulled off so there’s nothing, so we just kept on walking and we had a like a French conversation, and if they knew it was French they would have wondered what language we were talking it certainly wasn’t French but it sounded like it, and luckily they were so keen to get away they just ignored us and we just kept on going, and we just kept on going, and going, and going, eating what we could and we eventually came across an aerodrome that had some Dakotas, we went on an RAF pilot we collared him.
AM: What did you think when you finally saw it?
JM: Eh?
AM: What did you think when you finally saw it there?
JM: Well, well, contrary to what other people have said it didn’t make a lot of difference to me. It was just something was happening at the time, the fact that it was the if you like the starting point of going out didn’t occur to us, the RAF pilot he said he was on some sort of exercise for evacuation of prisoners of war, and he was, he did say he that they was taking people like to me somewhere in Belgium for transit, but he said I’m not going that way I’m going direct to Great Britain. And we talked him into taking us and he flew from there to Wing near Aylesbury, I think as part of an exercise sort of, and we got to Wing and that was the nice part. When we was coming towards, they all take you over the white cliffs of Dover don’t they you see that, and he couldn’t head them ‘cos you can’t see much so he said ‘I’ll bank to port and you can all go that side and have a look, anyway he said for goodness sake go back again the balance of the aircraft is all over.’ We got to Wing and unloaded us, Danny and I, I remember [coughs] there was WAAFS and all sorts of things, there was two rather large Salvation Army ladies I remember quite clearly came across and lifted us both up and swung us round said a lot I think then we went inside the hangar where all sorts of people came and cuddled you and things like that, yeah that was a nice thing. And one lady said to me I can send a telegram to your parents if you like, give me all the details which I did and they sent a telegram off to my mum and dad saying I was here. So we had something to eat, I always like this because you see they have all this food out and when you get a plate full suddenly a doctor comes along and takes half of it back you know, saying, ‘You mustn’t eat too much.’ And we went from there to Cosford which was set up as a reception centre, had medicals and things like that, and the station commander apparently if I believe what I’m told, given me concerning reception a chat on how to treat ex-prisoners of war and one of the things what he apparently said if I’m to believe what I’m told, ‘For goodness sake don’t leave anything lying about you’ll find it disappears you know.’ Whether that was true or not I don’t know could well have been ‘cos I was the only judge of a lot of people you live on your wits don’t you. And then after I’d been there for some time there was one little amusing incident you had to see a doctor before you could do anything you had to see a doctor, and that’s after you had been deloused that’s one of the things you get done, deloused straight up. And there was five cubicles and the word got around there’s four male doctors and one female doctor, everybody’s trying to work out where the female doctor was to avoid that one, and we, I can’t remember, say cubicle four, and this cubicle four came up you were next you used to say, ‘You go before me I’m not in a rush.’ And I got pushed into cubicle four and it was a lady doctor, mind you she was getting on a bit she was a nice lady, but it was funny the way people were avoiding her simply because they’d been away all that time. And then we were carted off [coughs] to the station, I remember it quite well it was just an ordinary little local train that went from Cosford to Birmingham, two stations at Birmingham, Snow Hill, and I can’t remember the other one.
AM: New Street, New Street, its New Street now in’t it?
JM: So we did that and when we got on the train that was going north there was just one carriage, there was an RAF policeman at either end of it and that was reserved for people like me, the train was absolutely crowded but our coach wasn’t and nice young ladies served refreshment all the time. And I got to York Station, I’d already notified Elsie my future wife and she was at York Station, and all the time I was in Germany I imagined meeting Elsie it’s a step bridge across the rails at York Station, [unclear] slow motion on that like if you’re on the films, looking forward to this, so I’m going slowly towards Elsie and she went straight past me, I remember that I thought oh dear all that time she doesn’t recognise me, it’s something you remember isn’t it, and that and at the other side there’s my sister and her husband so that was it. And I had instructions to go to the RAF York aerodrome there to see the medical officer which I did and he gave me a form to go to the food office in York, and the following day I went. A man said, ‘Join that queue.’ So I joined the queue, it was in the Assembly Rooms in York which is a lovely place, and I’m in this queue and it occurred to me there’s all pregnant women, there’s all pregnant women getting extra rations, people patting me on the back and one thing and another and I always remember that, and that was it I was back in York.
AM: Back in York, on leave.
JM: [laughs] On leave, yeah, yeah, ubiquitous leave.
AM: What happened after that then up to being demobbed how long?
JM: Well I got, er I don’t think you know that most aircrew, nearly all of them had a rehabilitation period and mine was at an aerodrome off the A1, can’t remember the name of it.
AM: No don’t matter.
JM: Doesn’t really matter, anyway I was there for a month and it just so happened the Royal Air Force band was based there so we had music, and for that four weeks what it consists of Friday morning we got up quite early and the station commander had arranged for a Queen Mary to be there on the grounds we had to go to London for some reason.
AM: Queen Mary, is that the big truck?
JM: Yes.
AM: The big open truck.
JM: And about twenty of us climbed on there and went all the way from the station about fifty miles into London on that, and we had to meet at a certain time to get back and coming back and we did that for four weeks until I got on leave yet again, to arrange the wedding with Elsie.
AM: So she’d recognised you by then?
JM: Oh yes I’d put a bit of weight on and that [laughs] yeah, and took a long time to live it down. So from there where did I go, oh I went to Compton Bassett. They decided to put me on a code and cipher course so I went and code and ciphered Compton Bassett. I was the only warrant officer there, there was all flight lieutenants and squadron leaders going to be code and cipher officers which apparently I was destined to be. So I did that and now I’m a code and cipher officer aren’t I, had to go before the board for a commission and they said, ‘The posting will be to the Middle East they’re looking for code and cipher officers.’ So next time, I got every weekend off, so I’m coming back to London to Elsie and I said I’d been offered a commission but it’s a posting to Middle East code and cipher officer, and Elsie said, ‘No way.’ So I had to turn it down. So then they thought well what do we do with him so they had to [coughs] we had a party for the people who passed the code and cipher officer, and I’m sitting next to a civilian and I said to him, ‘It’s a little bit of an impasse I’m not quite certain what to do.’ And explained the circumstances to him, so he said, ‘Write to the air officer commanding training command for this particular region and apply for a compassionate posting to where you want to go.’ Said, ‘That’s fine I don’t know who the air officer commanding is?’ And he said, ‘Oh it happens to be me.’ So he was, I got to meet him he was coming to Compton Bassett for some reason and I had an interview with him and I said, ‘Well my wife is living in Golders Green which is only two stations off Hendon, Hendon would be a nice place.’ So I got a posting to Hendon and they say what the hell do you do with him. It was nice posting, nine to five Monday to Friday living hours, most enjoyable, 24 Squadron which had the Curtiss every now and then unofficially I used to join one of them and go flying. And then I got I think July 1944 I went to Oxbridge and got demobbed.
AM: ‘45.
JM: ‘44, ’45, ’46.
AM: ’46 we’ve moved on one.
JM: Well you’re allowed a mistake now and then.
AM: Yeah go on then.
JM: And got demobbed and got involved in getting a suit. I think Burtons made a lot of them.
AM: Montague Burtons.
JM: Montague Burtons. Some of them were really quite nice, I think I wore it once, it’s the material was nice the cut not particular, but I’m demobbed anyhow. And the company I used to work for before I went in the Air Force wrote to me to say there’s a job waiting for you.
AM: Is this Rowntrees?
JM: Yeah. So I wrote back and I said, ‘I don’t mind working for you but I want to work in London ‘cos my future wife lives in London.’ They said they can’t do that. The problem is when you come out the Air Force you don’t take very kindly to being instructed and when they said we can give you a job but not especially where you want it, so I said ‘I don’t want it.’ So I went to find a job in London and I was offered a job, the people who make fridges, and they made big American ones, but the problem was the job was stores controller and the man was doing it already but he was not retiring until September October and this was early in the year. So I got a job with Express Dairy which was a place quite close to where Elsie lived and thought I’ll have that job until I get the other one, but enjoyed working at Express so much then I wouldn’t leave although the difference in salaries was quite high, and I worked for Express Dairy for all my working life, and they were taken over by various firms but I still worked for them. And one of the problems if you got taken over if it’s two people doing the same job one of them’s going.
AM: Yes.
JM: And the one that’s going is the one in the highest salary.
AM: Yes.
JM: And I kept on being retained, and I said to Elsie, ‘Must mean that my salary is too low.’ I got offered a job at the main site at Ruislip, the job was in charge of warehousing and things like that, and they said well, and then I had a heart attack everybody does if you’ve got a do you’ve got to have one if you’re in a fashion[?], and I had three months off and the chairman called me and said, ‘You mustn’t go back on this job and I’ll sort it and we’ve found a nice little job for you working as PA assistant for the director who was responsible for production.’ And that’s what I did.
AM: And that’s what you did.
JM: And Dennis Watson was my boss, well nothings been written yet so you’ve got to sit down and write your job description will go from there so that’s what I did. I spent the rest of my time on that job.
AM: As PA.
JM: And his responsibility was keeping an eye on [unclear] functions and things like that and decided on systems, his, and we had seven factories up and down the country. One of my jobs was to visit ‘em now and again, and now and again meant to me when you’re a little bit fed up you get in the car and off you go to a factory and that’s what I used to do. And then when I retired my boss Dennis made a big party at Ruislip and there was about a hundred of us there, and that was it.
AM: And that was it.
JM: Yeah.
AM: I’m going to switch off now Joe.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Joseph Musgrove
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-12
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMusgroveJ150812
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
United States Army Air Force
Format
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01:11:32 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Born in York in 1922, Joseph left school at 14 and started work in a chocolate factory and attended two nights of further education per week. In 1936, a fighter aircraft had landed nearby which stimulated his interest in flying which he retained all his life. After joining the RAF he did well in the selection tests and was offered a position of wireless operator/air gunner. After initial training he went to RAF Madley to train on twin-engined aircraft and then RAF Staverton, RAF Topcliffe and was crewed up at the operational training unit at RAF Edgehill. Gunnery training was carried out on Defiant which were notorious for undercarriage issues. Finally he was posted to 214 squadron at RAF Chedburgh, flying Stirlings.
His first operation was minelaying in the Baltic and he recalls standing in the astrodome to warn of enemy fighters. On other operations he would sit in the front turret and occasionally fire at enemy fighters, without success. Further minelaying operations were carried out and on his eighth, his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire and diverted to a US Army Air Force airfield where he stocked up on goodies, unavailable in England from the base exchange store.
On the 22 September 1943 he took part to an operation to Hanover and describes the night fighter tactics in detail. Following lengthy evasive action his aircraft was forced down to 5,000 feet where it was hit by by anti-aircraft fire and he was forced to bail out over Emden where he was caught by a member of the Luftwaffe who was visiting his girlfriend. After initial interrogation he was sent to the interrogation centre at Dalag Luft and after a two day train journey arrived at Stalag 5 prisoner of war camp.
On July 1944 the encroaching Russian army forced the evacuation of the camp and he was moved to the unfinished Luft 4 camp and remembers the bullying guards and poor conditions. Again in February 1945 the camp was evacuated and after crossing the River Oder in barges marched across northern Germany. After two months he arrived at Lübeck and escaped the column, narrowly missing being captured by German soldiers by conversing in French. Finding an allied airfield he was repatriated to England where he was treated as a hero.
After recuperation he attended a code and cipher course and was offered a commission if he would go to the middle-east. Wanting to get married he declined and wangled his way to 24 Squadron at RAF Hendon, were he was eventually demobbed in July 1946.
Contributor
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Terry Holmes
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Herefordshire
England--Oxfordshire
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
England--London
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Hannover
Germany--Emden (Lower Saxony)
Germany
Europe--Oder River
Germany--Lübeck
Poland
Poland--Tychowo
Lithuania
Lithuania--Šilutė
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1936
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1943-09-22
1944-07
1945-02
1946-07
102 Squadron
214 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
animal
bale out
bombing
crewing up
Defiant
demobilisation
Dulag Luft
Halifax
mine laying
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Compton Bassett
RAF Madley
RAF Shenington
RAF Staverton
RAF Topcliffe
shot down
Stalag Luft 4
Stalag Luft 6
Stirling
strafing
the long march
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/634/8904/PRobinsonD1601.1.jpg
6f5724486c610bd863a402940f8cc060
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/634/8904/ARobinsonD160911.2.mp3
4f37bc0e490f864de3f1ed0ae6cedfbd
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
Robinson, Douglas
D Robinson
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Robinson, D
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Douglas Robinson (1922 - 2017 1215638, 170413 Royal Air Force) and five photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 158 Squadron and became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Douglas Robinson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-09-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DR: Unfortunately, when I came to Oundle people started calling me Dougie and if I, if there’s one thing -
GR: You don’t like. Yeah.
AM: Right. We won’t do that. Right. Here goes then. So, my name’s Annie Moody and I’m a volunteer with the International Bomber Command Centre and today we’re in Oundle and it’s the 11th of September 2016 and I’m with Flight Lieutenant Douglas Robinson and he’s going to tell us his story. So I’m going to start off, if I may, just asking what your date of birth was.
DR: Date of birth.
AM: Yeah.
DR: 27th of July 1922.
AM: ’22. Right. And where were you born Doug?
DR: Where?
AM: Where were you born?
DR: I was born in Skegness.
AM: Skeggy. And what, what did you parents do? What was your family background? What was your family like?
DR: Well my father was a retired warrant officer from the Indian army and that’s, that was it. He was retired. He did a job as Registrar of births and deaths for the district around there. Well the, not the district. Skegness and one or two surrounding villages.
AM: Yeah. Did you have brothers and sisters or -
DR: Sorry?
AM: Did you have brothers and sisters?
DR: Yes. I had three of each. Three brothers. Three sisters.
AM: Right.
DR: My eldest brother also went in to the Indian army but he, not until during the war and he was commissioned into the Indian army. Had to come out I’m afraid when they gave India independence.
AM: Right. And what about schooling? What was your schooling like?
DR: Skegness Grammar School.
AM: Yeah. Did you enjoy it?
DR: Well. I didn’t dislike it. Didn’t really enjoy it.
AM: No.
DR: It was alright at times.
AM: How old were you when you left? Sixteen.
DR: Sixteen.
AM: Sixteen. So you would be, that would have been 1938.
DR: Yes. 1938. Around there.
AM: So what did you do when you left school?
DR: I went into a bank. The, have you heard of the TSB? I started as a junior clerk in the TSB and it was strange actually because it was a brand new office. They built it and you know there was no business there and there was the manager and me. The manager was only in his early twenties. He lost his life in the navy during the war.
AM: Right.
DR: I don’t know whether you’ve heard about it but there was a [terrible buzzing noise from interference on microphone -] [a ship, a naval ship escorting the Queen Mary from the [?] across the Atlantic bringing American troops and I think it was the Mary was a lot faster than the cruiser that he was on and so it zigzagged to keep the -] And one day bright sunshine as it is today, middle of the afternoon the ships came together and neither of them gave way and the Mary went straight through it, total loss of life. He was on that. His widow, she was, she’s dead now, she got a pension from Cunard as a result of that.
AM: Blimey.
DR: [?]
AM: So there you were though, a bank clerk with your, with your young manager.
DR: Yeah.
AM: And along came the war.
DR: [not then?] What made you join, what made you join the RAF?
DR: I don’t really, I don’t really know. I did a year in “dad’s army,” The local defence volunteers and then I don’t know I began to think I ought to be doing a bit more -
AM: Ok.
DR: For the war than this.
AM: What were you actually doing in the defence, in “dad’s army” then?
DR: Well we used to guard things that didn’t need guarding. The electricity power station, power thing and the gas works and the funny one was the telephone exchange because they’d built a new post office at Skegness and the telephone exchange was on the top floor so you’d be defending the telephone exchange but people would be coming for posting letters anyway[laughs] I mean.
AM: When you say defending it, defending it with what?
DR: Rifles.
AM: Oh you actually had rifles.
DR: For a year I had a 303 rifle and, I think it was fifty rounds of ammunition in my bedroom every night.
AM: Did you ever, did you ever use it in anger?
DR: No. No. We practiced firing but we never used it in anger.
AM: Yeah. So -
DR: There was -
AM: Sorry. Go on.
DR: There was a scare, a national sort of scare about September of 1940 that the invasion was about to start and we were called out with one of the local, one of the army units that was stationed locally and went out in to the country and spent a cold night out there. Came back next day when it was all cancelled.
AM: But I interrupted you ‘cause I asked you how come you joined the RAF.
DR: Well as I say I felt I ought to do a bit more and I think, oh what really eventually did it. One of my jobs at work was to go to the post office and I went in one day and they’d got a leaflet there which was in sort of three sections and the first one it was about pilots joining and they got twelve and six pence per day I think it was and the next one was navigators and they also got twelve and six pence a day and the third one was gunner eight and sixpence a day so I thought well I can’t fly, well I’ll never be able to fly and I’d done reasonably well in my school certificate maths so I thought well navigator must involve mathematics so I went. I sent this form off to become a navigator and I went to Lincoln for an interview. I’m not sure whether it was at Lincoln or if it was somewhere else but anyway there was a board of three officers. I think it was a group captain and he said, ‘Why do you want to become a navigator?’ And I told him and he said, ‘Well, why don’t you want to be a pilot?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think I could, could do that,’ so he said, ‘Well, I think you could. Would you be guided by me?’ And so I said, I said in my ignorance, I said, ‘Well if I went on a pilot’s course and failed it could I then become a navigator?’ ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘You’ve my assurance on that.’ It shows how green I was. But anyway I agreed to become a pilot and that was it.
AM: And that was that. So, so talk me through it then. What happened? So they’ve decided you’re going to do pilot training,
DR: Yes.
AM: How did that all start? Where did you go first for -
DR: Well first of all I went down to a place near Torquay. Babbacombe near Torquay and I got in a flight there of about thirty five of us and it was my first experience of RAF jiggery pokery because the NCO in charge of the flight said, ‘I know the postings clerk and for,’ I think it was, ‘sixpence a head I can get you posted where you want to go,’ you see so we all wanted to go to the same place. So I paid my sixpence and all the rest of it and we paraded in the little theatre they’d got there on a Saturday for the posting and of course they posted the wrong Robinson. He, he went on my sixpence. So I had to sort of stay there. I stayed the next week and went along for the posting things and I wasn’t on that one. Then on the next week I found out the, I found the NCO who I’d paid my money to and I said, ‘Look I’m fed up being here. Get me posted this week or else.’ And I got posted but instead of going where the others had gone to Torquay I was posted up to Scarborough and I did my initial training at Scarborough and from there I went to Southern Rhodesia.
AM: Right.
DR: To do my flying training.
AM: How did you get to southern Rhodesia?
DR: By troop ship. Really packed with troops. They were going to -
AM: Where did it sail from?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Where did it sail from? Can you remember?
DR: It actually sailed from Glasgow. We were, we were in West Kirby in the Wirral for a few days and then they took us up to Glasgow and we sailed from the Clyde in a convoy, a big convoy. Called at Freetown on the way and then around to Durban.
AM: How long did it take? Ish.
DR: It seemed forever but -
AM: Yeah.
DR: We were in Freetown for several days whilst they refuelled and one thing and another and then as I say went around to Durban.
AM: Were there any scares while you were on the boat?
DR: Not going out. No.
AM: No.
DR: No. We were all at, we had a big convoy. We had, I was trying to think of the battleship that was with us. It was in Freetown near us. It went on from there to the Far East and when they sank the Prince of Wales it was sunk at the same time. I can’t thing which one it was now.
GR: Was that the Repulse?
DR: Repulse.
GR: Repulse. Yeah.
DR: Yes. Repulse I remember sailing past it as we went out of Freetown. Went. Yeah.
AM: So there you are a boy from Skegness.
DR: Sorry?
AM: So here you are a boy from Skegness.
DR: Yes [laughs]
AM: In Rhodesia.
DR: Yes. Yes.
AM: So what was that like? What?
DR: Well it was, it wasn’t bad at all really. We, there was a transit camp we went to first which was the old, it was a showground really and we were in the cattle shed, cattle, where they used to display the cows and so on, had the things on the floor we sat on but it was alright. That was just near Bulawayo. Then we went up to what was then, well now Harare anyway and that’s when I started my flying training. Initial training.
AM: So what was the training like? How did you -
DR: Training on Tiger Moths. And I had a very nice Australian instructor. Very good with me otherwise I wouldn’t have passed but –
AM: How, how did they go about teaching you to fly?
DR: Well he sat in the front cockpit and I sat in the back and communicated by tubes but, but he, he told you what you do and you would do a movement with him and then he’d tell you to do it on your own. It wasn’t really all that difficult.
AM: Could you drive a car at the time?
DR: No. No.
AM: No.
DR: I learned to fly eleven years before I learned to drive a car.
AM: The reason I ask that is because it’s pretty much the same I guess. Somebody’s showing you how to do it and then you do it.
DR: Yeah.
AM: And how long was that training? Were there any alarms and scares in that?
DR: That, that initial training we started at the beginning of November and finished at Christmas.
AM: Right.
DR: And then –
AM: So quite quick.
DR: Moved back down towards Bulawayo for the service training which there were two lots of stations, for service training. One for single engine aircraft by and large expected to go on to fighters and the other for twin engine so we went on the twin engines, the old Oxfords.
AM: How did they decide which you were going to be?
DR: Well you were asked your preference but you didn’t necessarily get it but they obviously had a certain number to post to each place and they made up the number if, but I went on the one I wanted to do actually. The twin engine one. And -
AM: So what did you go on to then then as a twin engine -?
DR: That was the Oxford. It was a –
AM: Right
DR: Wooden aircraft actually. It was designed, it was a nice little aircraft actually.
AM: Yeah. Tell me a bit more about the training then. Any alarms and scares or did it all go smoothly?
DR: Well, yeah, I had a, had a little prang on night flying. The airfield there, it had, it was strange ‘cause it was a grass airfield but there was a concrete thing across one end which we taxied on. You’d land and get on there and beyond that there was a lot of wasteland which was sort of elephant grass you know and that, this night I took off. I think it was my first night solo and I took off but didn’t do it very well and I finished off skidding along the ground in this elephant grass. So I got out and started to walk back and I met the crash thing coming. He said, ‘Have you seen the pilot of that aircraft?’ And I said, ‘Well I am the pilot.’ [laughs] So that was it. But that was all. That wasn’t much. It wasn’t very scary. I mean, just slid along the ground.
AM: Just skidded. It was like a skid.
DR: It was just, I mean, you know, people weren’t overjoyed with you [laughs].
AM: I was going to say, well that was going to be my question. What happened? How much damage did you do to it?
DR: Oh I -
AM: And what happened as a result?
DR: I imagine, I don’t know really what they did. Whether it was written off or not. It probably was. I don’t know. But no. We, we got away with it.
AM: And what happened as a result? Did you just get a telling off or just -
DR: Yeah I got a bit of a telling off and that was about it, about it but the funny thing was they immediately rush you to sick quarters because they think you know there must be some [laughs] you must have some injury, internal if not, but I was in sick quarters overnight I think. That’s all. And then I had to go down to the flight and went with an instructor around, around the low flying area. Supposed to get over your nerves or something.
AM: Climb back on the bike.
DR: Yeah.
AM: So to speak.
DR: Yeah. So that wasn’t really much though.
AM: So what next? You’ve -
DR: Well when we eventually passed out from there and got our wings and so on we went on a train down to Cape Town and then we got on a troop ship that was coming back to this country, almost, there were a few people on but there was about a hundred of us from Rhodesia and there were also some people who had been on air crew training in South Africa. I’ve got a book by one of them in there. Coming back we got on this ship in Cape Town, the Oronsay which was, there was a line called the Orient Line and they only had about four or five ships and they all started with the letters OR Orient, Orion, Orontes and so on and we’d been on our way to Free, going to go to Freetown on the way back, on our way and then in the early morning when it was still dark there was a horrible bang [laughs] and a torpedo came in. I heard the torpedo hit, hit the ship, I heard it hit the things, heard the in-rush of water and I heard the torpedo go bang and I thought it’s time to get up so we got out. There wasn’t, there was no panic. People went quite quickly but quietly upstairs. Unfortunately when we got on deck, well I suppose we knew it before we got on deck but my boat station was on the port side but it had developed a great list to starboard which was where the torpedo had gone in. So all the boats on the starboard er on the port side couldn’t be lowered so which, so went around to the starboard side and there didn’t seem to be any. They’d all either gone or, so I went, I went back to the port side and they had several rafts there and I let one of these rafts go and it went down into the darkness and I thought well there’s not much point in following that. I didn’t know where it had gone so when I went back around and where, oh there was a boat about to go, the last boat. I met a friend of mine actually on the way around and so we went to get on this boat and the chap standing in the thing said, ‘Just room for one more,’ and my friend got on first. He said, ‘Room for one more.’ My friend said, ‘Can’t you get my friend on? There’s room for,’ ‘No, only room for one.’ So he got on and I didn’t [laughs].
AM: So then what happened?
DR: Well there were, this ship, I think with it being a converted ship, you know it was a peacetime liner and they’d converted it for a troop ship and they’d got it so that they’d got one boat inside another. Both used the same lowering gear, what do they call them? Davits or whatever and somehow they’d managed to lower this one right on top of the other and it was across it.
AM: Right.
DR: And so quite a number, well half a dozen people had gone down and were trying to get the top one off so I thought well I might as well go and have a go with that so I went down the ropes and having a go, put my shoulder to it and all the rest of it. You couldn’t budge it at all. It was [?]. We saw the captain’s boat go down, the captain get in and his officers and they started to go away and we thought well, you know, this is a bit odd but anyway he came back for us.
AM: Right.
DR: So we got off in his boat although after a while he transferred us to other boats to even the load out. So that was it.
AM: So where did you all get? So you’re all there in the lifeboats. Where did you get to?
DR: Well -
AM: And had it, had the main the ship sunk by this time?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Or –
DR: Well we, no it was, we were all in these lifeboats. I think there were about sixteen lifeboats successfully launched and we’re all sort of around the ship and the captain decided that it wasn’t going to sink so he started calling for volunteers among his crew to go back and sail the thing and I thought, anyway he’d no sooner done that then there was another great bang and another one, another torpedo went in. I think, I think they fired another three and eventually the thing instead of being listing it righted itself but then it gradually went down, the stern went down and the -
AM: Yeah.
DR: Nose came up and then down she went.
AM: That was it. So what happened to the lifeboats? How did you -
DR: Lifeboats.
AM: How did you come ashore then?
DR: Well we rowed for eight days.
AM: Eight days.
DR: Eight days yeah. Actually the first night it rained and rained and I had the misfortune to sit or probably, probably the good fortune to sit near the pump and it were only a little diddly thing you did this with. I was doing that all night, pumping but everybody else was baling so probably I had the easy job but we, we had to pump a few times and then after about, as I say eight days, we tied up actually, we tied nine boats in a row. It was the captain’s idea we’d stay together. I think we had nine boats in our row and there was six in the other I think. Six or seven. And after the first night we never saw the others again. They sort of disappeared but our nine stayed together. On the eighth day the, a lot of the crew were getting a bit restless. They said it would be better to be separate. We’d make more progress if we were separated and in the early afternoon the captain said, ‘Alright. Separate.’ We all separated and we’d no sooner separated than somebody spotted a Sunderland Flying Boat. It was only a little dot miles away. I mean people started sending up flares and I wondered what was happening and then I realised what it was. This Sunderland came over and circled us and dropped a few things with food in and he was in touch with the CO in Freetown and they said they’d be sending a destroyer out to us at midnight. So we sat patiently in the boat until midnight and then this destroyer appeared and we thankfully went up the scramble nets and we just sort of -
[machine pause]
GR: Life boats.
DR: I think so. I think so.
GR: Yeah.
DR: I’m not, I wouldn’t be certain.
GR: And did all the lifeboats make it to the dest -?
DR: Well some of, there were different stories. You see our nine, our nine stayed together and we were all picked up, I think, at that time, taken in.
GR: By the destroyer. Yeah.
DR: By the destroyer. Taken into Freetown but of the others some, some were adrift for about twelve days I think.
GR: God.
DR: And some were picked up by the Vichy French.
GR: Yes. Of course.
DR: Taken in to Dakar
GR: Yeah.
DR: And they were interned there for some time and there were quite a few ladies actually. Well half dozen or more. I think they were nurses. I know there was a squadron leader and his wife. Well, time expired and coming back and his wife -
GR: Yes.
DR: And what happened to her I’m not sure but apparently when they interned these blokes in Dakar they took these ladies to the border with, I forget what the British territory was but whatever it was.
AM: I can’t think.
DR: And they just set them loose and they were quite a few days trekking to the nearest place.
GR: And you never saw anything of the U-boat, the U-boat didn’t come after the survivors or –
FR: For years I thought it was a U-boat and people said that it had.
GR: You’d better record that.
DR: People had said it had surfaced and the captain -
GR: No.
DR: But it actually wasn’t a U-boat. It was an Italian ship, Italian submarine.
GR: Submarine. Right.
DR: Called the, I forget what it, I’ve got a book, a little book there.
GR: Yeah.
DR: But it was written by one of the chaps who was trained in Southern Rhodesia, er in South Africa and he actually became, he was, he’d been a foreign officer clerk and he went back to the foreign office and he became ambassador in Norway I think and somewhere else and is now sir somebody.
GR: Sir Archie Lamb.
DR: Archie Lamb. That’s right.
AM: Goodness me. That came as a, all of that came as a surprise because I don’t think you knew that did you?
GR: No.
AM: No.
GR: No. No.
AM: So you all finally get back, I mean I’ve got loads of questions I could ask like what did you eat and drink on the boat?
CR: I was going to say –
AM: Were there provisions on the boat?
DR: Sort of you know emergency rations. Small biscuits. Probably two or three of those a day. Horlicks tablets. You remember Horlicks tablets? Well we had those. They were nice. The funny thing was there was a lad from Spalding. I think he was a member of the crew, I think he was a steward or something and he was in the lifeboat with me and he didn’t like Horlicks tablets so I got all his Horlicks tablets [laughs] and then we had some water and they had a thing like a test tube. They used to bring it up about and you’d half full of that and you’d watch everybody drinking ‘cause you were making it last as long as you can you know swilling it around.
AM: Was anybody in charge on the boats or –
DR: Yes.
AM: Making sure that -
DR: Yes. One of the crew was in charge of it.
AM: Right.
DR: I forget what they called him now. I don’t know whether, whether it was his position on the ship or whether it was just, bosun. They called him bosun. Whether it was ship’s bosun or if it was just his title for being in charge of the lifeboat I never knew.
AM: But you all got back so -
DR: Yes. We got, we got back.
AM: So you all got back then. How did you all get back to Britain from there?
DR: Well we, the destroyer took us into Freetown and we didn’t get, we even get ashore in Freetown. They ferried us across to another troop ship which was actually a Greek, had been a Greek ship the Nea Hellas and we were on that coming back. There was apparently a bit of scare that it was being shadowed by a, but anyway we never, never got worried by it. It was never. We got back to England alright.
AM: So that was that. So then what happened? So you’re now a qualified pilot.
DR: Oh yes I was a qualified pilot. Well we landed at Glasgow. As the air force would arrange these things they put us in a train and took us down to Bournemouth. And the Bournemouth was run by, it was a receiving place for the Canadians mainly and it was run by the Canadians and there was a Canadian group captain there. Oh, whilst we were on the boats the merchant navy blokes had said to us, ‘When you get home you’ll get twenty eight days leave. Survivors leave. We all get it,’ he said. ‘You’ll get it.’ So when we got back we asked for this survivors leave and do you know what we got? They said you get twenty eight days. We got seven days. And that is the, that is how I got the title of my book. We had a, paraded in a cinema in Bournemouth and a group captain came on because he was welcoming the Canadians to this country and so on and he said something about, ‘Welcoming you to this country.’ He said, ‘Some of you have had great experiences in getting to this country but then life is a great experience. Adventure. Life is a great adventure.’ So I thought when I wanted a title for my book I thought that’s it. The group captain’s given it to me.
AM: So you’re in Bournemouth.
DR: Hmmn?
AM: Then I’m just trying to think chronologically of what happens next. Do you carry on with your training but go to Heavy Conversion Unit? What? I can’t remember what order things come after that.
DR: Yes, yeah from I’m not sure where, we went first to Operational Training Unit.
AM: Yes.
DR: To get crewed up.
AM: Right.
DR: Started at a place called Wymeswold and finished at Castle Donington which now of course is East Midlands Airport.
AM: Yes.
DR: And that was on Wellingtons and from there we went to Marston Moor which I’ve already told you about. Meeting Cheshire. And from there to 158 squadron.
AM: Ok. Do you want to tell me the Leonard Cheshire story again for the recording? Tell me the Leonard Cheshire story again for the recording.
DR: Well the night after we got to Marston Moor we decided we’d go in to York and three of us went to get on the bus but the bus had gone so we went out on to the road and decided to thumb a lift which sergeants weren’t supposed to do and we were, it was quite a long road. We could see a car approaching and we stood there thumbing and suddenly realised it was an RAF car and as it got nearer we could see it was an officer driving and when he pulled up we could see that he’d got four rings on his sleeve and he was a group captain. And he said, ‘Alright. Get in.’ So the other two jumped in the back and I had to get in, open the front passenger, well I opened the front passenger door and his cap was on the seat and so momentarily, momentarily you don’t know what to do. So do I, I can’t touch his cap, I can’t sit on the seat while it’s there but anyway eventually he said, ‘Don’t sit on my bloody hat.’ So I picked the thing up, put it over the back and got in.
AM: And he took you to York and dropped you off at –
DR: Bettys Bar. Yes. You’ll finish up there anyway.
AM: So, anyway, so back to the chronological order. You’ve crewed up. How did they crewing up go? Who chose who?
DR: Crewing up well yes it was, it was reasonably good. I was in a hut and I got to know ‘cause they bring in, I mean if they’re making say twenty crews they bring in twenty pilots, twenty navigators, twenty bomb aimers and so on and I was in this hut with quite a number of other people of various trades, and I got to know a number of the wireless operators and I met them actually in a pub in Loughborough as well and they’d got an air gunner with them so the four of us seemed to go out quite a lot together. I had to make a decision which wireless operator I had. I could only have one of them and so I selected one and so that was my wireless operator and my rear gunner. I needed a navigator and a bomb aimer. There was a navigator we’d got quite friendly with and I asked him to be my navigator and he said he’d already agreed to be somebody else’s but he would find me somebody who was, and he found me a navigator. A very nice bloke and a good navigator and the navigator found me a bomb aimer. It was funny actually because all the bomb aimers, bomb aiming had only just, bomb aimer as a, as a trade had only just been introduced and they were trying to popularise it I think and so they commissioned most of them. I think of the twenty, twenty five that we had there were only three who were non- commissioned.
AM: Right.
DR: So nobody wanted the non-commissioned ones. They thought there must be something wrong with them if they [laughs] so I got a commissioned one and that was the initial crew until we went to -
GR: Heavy Conversion Unit.
DR: Heavy Conversion Unit on to Halifaxes when we got another gunner and a flight engineer.
AM: And a flight engineer yeah.
DR: And they were just detailed to me so I didn’t get a chance to -
AM: Ok. But you got the full gang.
DR: So I got the full gang but didn’t always keep them I’m afraid. The rear gunner I had, we were very friendly together but one night he refused to fly. Well, he didn’t refuse to fly. We, we were going to Berlin actually and we taxied around, do you know Lissett?
GR: Lissett, yes. Yeah.
DR: Well normally we could approach the runways on either way. This particular night as it happened we were all coming from one direction and it was very fortunate because I got the green light and as I got the green light to go on to the runway this gunner said to me, ‘I don’t think I ought to go.’ I said, ‘What did you say?’ He said, ‘I don’t think I ought to go.’ And I thought well I can’t go anywhere. What do I do? I can’t, can’t call up the flight control because of the radio silence but as I say with the other side being vacant I just taxied straight over and parked on the, on the taxi -
GR: On the side. Yeah.
DR: The, the other side and I thought well air traffic control are going to see me there. They’re going to think well what the heck’s he doing? And they’ll find out and fair, true enough, after a little while the officer in charge of night flying was Brian Quinlan. I don’t know if you knew Brian. He came out on his motorbike and I said to my, my temper by this time was a little frayed and I said to this gunner, ‘You’d better get out and tell this officer what you’ve just told me.’ So he got out and within a few minutes Brian Quinlan appeared in the cockpit and he said, ‘Taxi back. Taxi to the next intersection, you know, where the runway came in, turn and come back again and wait here.’ Which, which I did. And when he got, when I’d no sooner got back there then he appeared on the runway on his motorbike with a spare gunner on the pillion and this poor bloke got in, got in the rear turret and that was it. We went away.
AM: And what happened to the other one? Just disappeared.
DR: Yeah. Well yeah.
AM: Lack of moral fibre.
DR: He was court martialled and it was a sad old time really. I had to go as a witness. I don’t know who I was witnessing for but I mean I, but it was, I felt sorry for him in a way because he looked so dejected and you know he’d been a nice enough bloke.
GR: How many operations had you flown by then?
DR: I don’t know. I should think probably about eight or something like that.
GR: About eight. Yeah. Ok.
DR: What, what he, I think what probably happened the one the previous one we’d done was Milan and it was over nine hours and it was in, coming back anyway, it was in bright daylight and he, I think he was a bit nervy all the way. He kept saying, ‘What’s that on the port starboard, on the port bow Paddy?’ Paddy, being the mid upper and Paddy in a broad Irish accent, ‘Och it’s only, only a bit of cloud,’ you know, and this sort of thing but you could tell really. I mean at the time I never thought anything of it but afterwards, after the refusal to fly and so on it struck me that his nerve had gone by that time I think.
GR: Because when you flew back from Milan it was complete, you flew back over France didn’t you?
DR: Over Switzerland.
GR: Over Switzerland.
DR: And France.
GR: And France yeah. In daylight.
DR: Yeah.
AM: What, what, so when he was court martialled what did they actually do with him?
DR: Well. Well he was court martialled. The funny thing was they questioned, when they questioned me it was strange they wanted to see was he actually ordered to fly. Well I mean they didn’t order for a standing place, ‘You’ll fly tonight’. ‘You’ll fly tonight.’ I mean it wasn’t like that. Just a board went up and the names of the pilot was on and -
GR: Yeah.
DR: You took that crew went and that was it but he was actually as I say court martialled. Ordered to be reduced to the ranks and to serve eighty four days detention but the AOC didn’t confirm it so he got away with it.
AM: Right.
DR: He got off and Calder I don’t know whether he rang me, or spoke to me one day and said, ‘As he wasn’t found guilty he’s still on the strength of the squadron and I don’t suppose you want him back do you?’ I said, ‘You’re right there.’ [laughs]
AM: That’s a no then. Yeah. So what did they do with him? Did he stay or -
DR: I don’t know what happened to him eventually.
AM: As ground crew or -
DR: I don’t know what happened to him eventually.
AM: Yeah.
DR: He would be posted away I think somewhere.
AM: Yeah.
GR: Yeah.
DR: But it was, I don’t know, a pity, you know how Group Captain Pickard was at -
GR: Yeah.
DR: He wasn’t there in my time. He was there before I got there but he had a couple of horses at a farm there and our dispersal we lived on was one field away and this gunner was a real horsey type so he used to go and look after these horses. Groom them and one thing or another and then we [laughs] we used to ride them down to the pub [laughs]. Well we used to get on and they knew the way to the pub and so we’d go. There were three of us. One would ride a bike and the other two would go on a horse and we’d tie them up outside the pub and have a drink or two and then they’d know their own way home and of course we lost all that when he went but –
AM: We’ve jumped a little bit because we’ve gone from the Heavy Conversion Unit. What we didn’t say was that you were posted to 158 squadron at Lissett.
DR: Yeah that’s right.
AM: So I’m just. So you’re on 158 squadron now.
DR: Yes.
AM: So the stray bod that you got did you keep him or did you get another?
DR: No. No. He, I got another one.
AM: Right.
DR: I got a Canadian.
AM: And kept him.
DR: Yes. I kept him. I was with his, one of his sons and two daughters last week at 158.
AM: Wonderful.
DR: They come over every year.
AM: I’m going to jump again now then. So I know that you’ve done a number of operations now and I know that you either have done or are going to do Berlin.
DR: Yes.
AM: So tell me about Berlin and what happened.
DR: Well this night of course with having this kerfuffle with the, we were about fifteen, twenty minutes late taking off so I tried to make that up as best I could but it could, got to Berlin and nearly everybody else had gone so we had the whole Berlin defences to ourselves and it’s a long way across Berlin and it was very, very well very, very lonely flying across it. We think there was a fighter had a good, started to attack but I’ve an idea that it was a Mosquito was around and chased him I think so we didn’t get attacked. We got over quite safely that time.
AM: That time.
GR: Yeah.
AM: So tell me about -
GR: How many times did you go to Berlin?
DR: Three.
GR: Three.
AM: Three.
GR: Yeah.
DR: It was -
AM: So, on the third one -
DR: On the third one we were, we’d just dropped the bombs, the bombs had gone and there was an almighty bang. It really was. I’m sure it was a direct hit and the nose of the aircraft just started going up, straight up in the air which isn’t very healthy, I mean it could go into a stall in no time but I just could not seem to get it to stop and I said, ‘Prepare to bale out,’ because I thought we’ve had it and I realised the moment I’d said that the intercom was dead so I thought I’ve got to do something about this. I got a chap, you know we used to take a, when a crew came to the squadron he usually did an operation with an experienced crew.
AM: Yes.
DR: Well, and I’d got this chap, second pilot. I got him to put his leg across my legs and push on the control column. I was, I’d got it under my knees like that and he was pushing with his leg and we flew I think for over two hours, two and a half hours like that and the nose was trying to come up all the time and it was just above stalling I think. And I flew along. The Baltic was on the right and I thought to myself, shall we go to Sweden? And I thought, incidentally, we were all supposed to be on leave, we should have gone on leave that night. It was an incentive to get back but I was thinking about Sweden and of course I knew nothing about Sweden. With my boyhood knowledge I thought it was very mountainous so you know how could we flying in to mountains trying to get, so I decided I wouldn’t go to Sweden. We’d try and get home so we kept on and weeventually got to the Dutch coast and we were there at the time we were supposed to have been back at Lissett. We’d got winds against us of very nearly a hundred miles an hour. The aircraft was only just above stalling speed and I thought well I’m not going to go, I couldn’t risk going across the North Sea. We wouldn’t have got, we wouldn’t have got any more than half way across. If that. So I thought, and by this time we were down to five or six thousand feet. I can’t really remember but there was a light flak battery firing at us and doing a bit of damage so I thought well the only thing is we’re over a friendly country. Bale out and we might get in with the underground and you know so I baled them out.
AM: If the intercoms had gone how did they know to bale out?
DR: The only way, actually, the flight engineer. I told him to go around and tell everybody to bale out which he did. He, and then he came back and I said, ‘Have they all gone?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Well you’d better go then’. Of course we stowed his chute and my chute together and he was supposed to get the chute, two out, bring me mine, put his on and go. He came back and he said, ‘One of them was damaged.’ ‘So I said, ‘Well you’d better take the other one then.’ ‘No. No. I can’t. I can’t leave you.’ I said, ‘No you get in. Take, put that on. Get out.’ And he argued and I’m not going to argue and told him three times to get out so I said, ‘Well if you’re going to stay you’d better get back in to the rest position and brace for,’ I didn’t know, you know I realised I’d got to somehow get the thing down and I flew along looking for a decent, a good field and eventually, well it wasn’t long actually before I saw a field I thought I could do it -
AM: Was it daylight by now?
DR: No. It was -
AM: ‘Or dawn?
DR: Yes in-between sort of thing. Yes. It was sevenish in the morning. Something like that. And it was, I think it was lighter looking down than when you actually got on the ground. Anyway, we got down and skidded to a stop and got out and had a, well the funny thing was I thought I’d better go back and see if he’s alright and this is [laughs] this is the truth I walked back to him and instead of being braced he was standing up and he said, ‘Are we down?’ ‘Who the heck’s flying this thing?’ [laughs]. You know.
GR: Well that’s a compliment to the pilot.
DR: It was. Yeah. Anyway we got out the escape hatch and then we were having, I thought we’d have a quick look at the damage and we were having a look and as you say it was half-light or not quite half-light and he said, suddenly said to me, ‘There’s somebody the other side of the aircraft.’ And so I went around. I thought the only thing to do, whoever it is, oh and he said, ‘He’s got a gun.’ I thought well the only thing you could do is confront the chap so I walked around and didn’t need any confront, he was friendly. He said something about, I don’t remember whether he said, ‘Have you had a meal?’ Or, ‘Would you like a meal?’ And I thought, I was thinking I want to get away from this aircraft as far as I can as quickly as I can so I refused it and we walked. We left the thing and we walked on. We walked out through a village and up a country road and there was a bend in the road and there was a farmhouse there and the farmer outside so we went to him and asked if he could give us a drink of water or something and we had a drink of water and I asked him where we were and he brought out a little school atlas and, ‘There.’ And there just about covered the Netherlands. [laughs]. I thought well I was a little bit clued up about –
AM: Yeah.
DR: Which country it was. Anyway, we went in his house and to get to his house you went through a cowshed. I noticed there was a sort of hay loft sort of thing you know so I asked him if he, if we could get up there and he said, you know shook his head and talked about the Germans you know, shoot him and so on. I can understand his point of view.
AM: Yeah.
DR: So we decided, well I decided we wouldn’t stay and we got out of the house and two Dutch policemen came around the bend on bikes and they came to us. One was a young bloke and the other was a bit older and they, I don’t know for certain but it seemed to me that the young chap wanted to turn us in and the older one wasn’t very happy. He looked as if he was a bit tearful actually but anyway they, he had to go along with what the younger one wanted to do so they took us back to the village we’d come through and telephoned the Germans. And that was it.
AM: And for you the war is over.
DR: Hmmn?
AM: For you the war is over.
DR: Yes. Well, that, that was the greeting yes. For you the war is over.
AM: So what year are we in now? Is this -
DR: That was January ’44.
AM: ’44.
DR: January the 29th ‘44.
AM: So when the Germans came and got you where, then what?
DR: Well they took us to what was obviously a house which they’d taken over as a sort of place for their troops to live in and we were there most, so funny actually because they made us turn our pockets out and all this sort of thing and Lofty the engineer he’d taken an orange out of the, that we had in the flying rations and of course he’d got this orange and he put it on [laughs] and it was so funny ‘cause there were Germans coming in and poking it. You know. They’d never seen an orange before [laughs] But we were there most of the day and then they took us down to the station, local station and we went by passenger train up to Leeuwarden. I don’t know whether that’s the pronunciation L E E W A R D E N. And there was an NCO in charge of us and two other blokes and the NCO, he walked in front with a drawn pistol and one of the others walked at the side of us and the bloke with a submachine gun walked behind us and I thought well if you let off with that you’re going to get your mate in front here as well but anyway they paraded us through a long street in Leeuwarden and it was so funny I mean there were people walking past victory signs, thumbs up and there was a tram car came along and it just kept pace with us and you could see all the passengers in there doing this -
AM: Thumbs up and -
GR: Victory signs.
AM: V for victory to you.
DR: And we were sort of, yes. Acknowledging it all. I mean, it was, it was so funny really because it wasn’t what they were intending but they were showing off to the Dutch that they’d got the, you know -
AM: They’d captured you.
DR: Yeah. They got the terror fliegers and all the rest of it and anyway they took us along in to a big compound. Well a sort of parade area. It was a naval barracks and they opened a cell door and pushed us, well didn’t really push us, made us go in and there was all my crew there except one. They’d picked them all up except one.
AM: All of you. The whole lot. Did they know that they were your crew?
DR: I don’t know. I imagine so. I imagine so. And he, actually he, the one that was missing wasn’t really one of my crew, my mid upper gunner was a Southern Irishman and we were all supposed to go on leave that night. Well he used to get a couple of days extra for travelling to Southern Ireland and he’d already gone so this chap that was with me, this Canadian standing in and of course they hadn’t got him and he was the only one who did make it to the underground.
AM: Right.
DR: Apparently some farmers found him. They’d got the little pens out for the sheep to go in, supposed to be lambing or something and they found him hiding in one of these and so they took him in and looked after him for a time and I don’t really know the full story but he was eventually picked up with the underground in Antwerp or somewhere so he they’d got him quite a way away but he were betrayed and that was it. He was finished in another prison camp. I never met him again. He didn’t get, I did meet him again in a reunion after the war but I didn’t during the war. We thought he was dead. I thought he must have had an accident baling out and you know and that’s it. And -
AM: We, we spoke to someone else who exactly the same thing happened and I think the escape line, the escape line was the KLM line.
DR: Yeah.
AM: That he’d been, and exactly the same. Captured at Antwerp.
DR: Yes.
AM: So the whole lot of you there minus one. And where did they take you from there?
DR: From, yeah, they took us, the same night I think they took us to a Luftwaffe station. Actually it was a Dutch station it was about the biggest or only sort of regular air force station. I can’t remember its name. And we were in the cells there for the best part of a week I suppose. They tried to interrogate us and so on and then from there they took us to Amsterdam and we were incarcerated in Amsterdam jail for a week or so. Yeah.
AM: Where did you end up? Which prison camp did you end up in?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Which prison camp did you end up in?
DR: Well, from, after we go into the interrogation place we went to, or I went to, some of us went to Stalag Luft 6 which was up on the borders of East Prussia and Lithuania. We were there until July of ‘44 when the Russians were pushing the Germans back. The Germans had got right in to Russia.
AM: Yeah.
DR: And the Russians pushed them back and we could actually hear the artillery fire and we were beginning to get a bit worried about what might happen if we were liberated by the Russians but anyway they then took us, not all of us but I was one that was taken, they took us to, in the cattle trucks down to Memel which was in the port of Lithuania. I don’t know what it is now. I couldn’t pronounce its name now but it was called Memel. We were put in a little tramp, in the hold of a tramp ship which was filthy and we were about, I think we were about four days from there to, oh dear, I forget the name of the port now.
GR: Don’t matter.
AM: No. It don’t matter.
GR: Don’t matter.
DR: A German port in
GR: Yeah
DR: Sort of [?] When we got off into cattle trucks again and we had, I think, one night. Oh they, as we got off that, the boat they handcuffed us in pairs. I thought I was being clever and I asked if anybody was left handed so we had could have one left hand and one right but we didn’t. I got this Canadian but apparently he was right handed too but he had his right hand handcuffed to my left and we were, officially we were handcuffed together for about three or four days but we soon learned how to take them off actually.
AM: Oh good.
DR: So people were taking them off.
AM: I’m just thinking when you’re doing the necessary -
DR: Yeah.
AM: Ablutions and things like that you don’t necessarily want to be handcuffed –
DR: That’s right.
AM: To someone.
DR: No. We, people soon learned the key of a corned beef tin came handy with that. It used to be out -
AM: But where did you get the key of a corned beef tin from?
DR: Off the corned beef tin. Red Cross parcels.
GR: Red Cross Parcels.
DR: Red Cross parcels.
AM: Oh so that was your rations. Right. Ok.
DR: Anyway, we and then we got to Stalag Luft 4 and we had a very rough reception there. We got, we got to the station, or the siding, very early in the morning and it was a really hot day and they kept us in the cattle wagons ‘til about two in the afternoon and we got, got out and of course to try and carry all your, what belongings you had, I mean, for example I had a greatcoat. We were wearing greatcoats. It was the easiest way to carry them and it was really hot. And anyway about 3 o’clock they got us out of the things and we lined up and there was a German officer got up, and he, he’d got, he’d got an immaculate white tunic on. Oh really. And instantly, instantly became known as the ice cream man. But he was obviously in charge and they marched us out on to the, on to the road, lined up and there was a lot of cadets, naval cadets that came and they were all armed, all, and he ordered them to fix bayonets which wasn’t a very friendly thing to do and we started walking along, or marching along this road and they started saying –
GR: Thank you.
DR: They started saying, ‘Quicker. Quicker. Quicker’ and we were getting, until eventually we were sort of running and then we were in a wooded thing then suddenly they turned left and there was steep hill and we were going up this hill and they then tried, they were then aiming to jam you in your backside with these bayonets and of course people were throwing all their stuff away to lighten the load. I’d got a haversack thing on my back which I couldn’t take the stuff out so the Canadian who was running with me he got it open. He was throwing stuff out and we ran up this road and you could see people with blood coming down them, and I passed one poor lad I knew. I don’t, I can’t remember his name but I knew and the chap he was with had obviously passed out and he was there -
AM: And he’s still handcuffed.
DR: Handcuffed to him. Couldn’t move. You could see he was absolutely terrified the poor lad. He was only a very young lad I think. And then we got to the, eventually got to the top of the hill and turned and about a half a mile away was the prison camp and we, we got there. I hadn’t been touched actually until I got there and then one of them got his rifle up and started having a go at my ribs but he didn’t really do anything hard. He tried and didn’t. And then they called them off and we went into the vorlager, sort of first place. Not right in to the camp and we were there all night.
AM: When you said, you said they were cadets so were they just, were they teenagers or young. Young.
DR: Well I suppose they were, no I suppose they were eighteen year olds.
AM: Right.
DR: Sixteen, eighteen year olds. Yeah. But, they’d, all the other guards of their own but a lot of them, but it was, it’s always been known as, ‘the run up the road.’
AM: Yeah. So how long were you in there for then? Where are we now? July did you say? July 44?
DR: July then until February of the next, of the next year when we started on the Long March.
AM: So you did the Long March.
DR: Three months of that.
AM: And what was the worst bit of that?
DR: Sorry?
AM: What was the worst bit of that?
DR: The weather. It was so cold. Snow and ice and sleeping out at, some nights, we did sleep outside some nights. Most nights they found a barn or something like that more or less but we had one or two nights out. But one night we went to a farm and there were three large farm buildings in a row with thatched roofs and I think they put some of their own transport in one. In the end one. We were pushed in the centre one and some army prisoners in the left hand one and we were tight in this thing. When we, they’d got straw in the floor and when we laid down at night we were head to toe in a row and touching each one. It was as close as that and during the night we heard an aircraft flying over and we could hear it approach and it dropped a bomb on the, and it hit the thing where they’d put all their stuff and it flew away again. Came around machine gunning and I was lying down there. I could see tracer bullets coming through the straw you know and he hit the wall on the side and before there was a little ring of fire and it just spread like mad and it was, the whole lot was going and people just sort of got up and walked out and that’s it. They didn’t really run.
AM: No.
DR: But um -
AM: Did you, did you see it? Was it an allied?
DR: Sorry?
AM: Was it a British plane or a German?
DR: Oh we take it that it was probably a Mosquito. We’ve always called it the Mossie raid. I mean we were just guessing at that. We sort of -
AM: Yeah.
DR: I think it would be an allied one.
AM: Then when –
DR: I think there were, there were three or four of our blokes were killed.
GR: And then towards the end of the long march I presume you walked into allied hands.
DR: Well yes. We were very, it was a great day to remember. We, we were stopped in a village and we sort of spent the night in a barn and this, and I got up to make the coffee and there was Americans with us as well and I suddenly heard an American voice shouting, ‘The limeys are here. The limeys are here.’ And looked and it was the 6th Airborne Division coming through the village.
GR: Brilliant.
AM: Yeah.
DR: What a day that was.
GR: What a day that was.
DR: And they were throwing tins of their rations to us you know and we didn’t eat half of them, more than we, actually it was, everybody was just having a good time.
AM: What condition were you in by then?
DR: Well -
CR: He looked a bit thin on the photographs.
DR: Yeah I was very thin and I think I got frostbitten feet. They were always cold. We was lousy. [laughs].
AM: Yeah.
DR: But apart from that we weren’t too bad.
AM: So how did you get back home then from that, that stage?
DR: Well, they, the 6th Airborne asked us to stay there that day because they were bringing all their stuff through and then we get up to, oh what was the name of the place, what was the place where Montgomery took the -
GR: Luneburg Heath.
DR: Yes.
GR: Luneburg Heath. Yeah.
DR: Well that was the town.
GR: Yeah.
DR: And we had to get up there the next day and it was quite a thing because people were pinching bikes and cars and all sorts of things to get up there and we were a bit slow off the mark. We couldn’t find anything but we found a bloke who was going out in a pony and trap thing so we got on board there and I sat, jiggling mind you it was a beautiful sunny day. It was quite a nice ride, trip and we eventually we got to a village and we stopped for a drink. Went in the pub and demanded a drink and of course when we got out the pony had gone but one of the Canadians, our Canadians came along driving a bus so we piled on to this bus and it was so funny ‘cause there were Germans were walking back on the side of the road and everybody was trying to get a good hat.
GR: Souvenir.
DR: If you could see an officer with a nice smart hat. Boom. [laughs] No. It was. I got a sword.
CR: Yes you got a sword didn’t you?
DR: Going through a village, a great big pile of swords so I got out and had a look and picked one I liked and still got it.
AM: Wonderful. Might have to have a photo of that.
DR: Sorry?
AM: We might have to -
GR: Have a photograph of that.
AM: Take a photo of that. How did you eventually get back though to England?
DR: Well, we, we were flown back. RAF Dakota.
GR: Dakota. And back to England was you? Was you demobbed straight away?
DR: No. No. Actually I stayed in the air force for three years after the war.
GR: Oh.
AM: You were probably deloused first weren’t you?
DR: Hmmn?
AM: They deloused you first.
CR: They deloused you.
DR: Oh yeah.
GR: Yeah.
CR: You were lousy when you came back.
DR: They more or less did that when we landed. We landed at a place called Wing. I don’t know.
AM: Yes. Yeah.
DR: And I was posted to Wing.
GR: Yeah. We know Wing.
DR: Soon after but they arranged it quite well actually. They sort of deloused you and they set it out like a restaurant or café and the ladies would bring you tea and coffee and then the buses took us into Aylesbury and put us on a train up to Cosford.
GR: Yeah.
DR: And then I went on leave from Cosford.
AM: Had you been able to tell your parents? Did your parents know that you were alive?
DR: Yes. Yes. Actually, yeah, I think the Red Cross had told them that I was.
AM: Right. Ok.
DR: And the night we got back the RAF gave us forms that we could send telegrams. So we got telegrams to say we were back.
AM: Yeah.
DR: But -
AM: And that was that but you stayed in for another three years.
DR: Yes. What happened was that when I was shot down I was a flight sergeant but had been interviewed for a commission and the commission came through backdated about a month before I was [laughs] before I was shot down. So I came, when I came back I was actually a flying officer and it rather appealed to me. I thought well here I am, a flying officer, I’ve never been in an officers mess in my life and I was when I got back though and I thought, they gave us interviews to see what we wanted to do and I said, ‘Well I would like, I want to stay on flying.’ And, ‘Oh well, you know everybody wants to do that who wants to stay in.’ People who, others just want to get out. And I applied for a permanent commission and when they put me on flying I thought that’s it I’m getting my permanent commission but it wasn’t so. I extended my service for two years and towards the end of the two years I extended another year. At the end of that time I had a letter telling me that the king thanked me for my services but he didn’t want me anymore. [laughs] So that was that.
AM: Thank you and goodbye.
GR: Yeah.
AM: In the, in that three years though you were flying. Where? Whereabouts? What -
DR: I flew Lancasters then instead of Halifaxes.
AM: Yeah.
DR: Yeah I flew. I was in, well, we had to more or less had to go, start our training again. What happened you see there people there who’d been POWs four or five years so they had, obviously had to have a refresher course if they wanted to go on and so they didn’t really just make a refresher course for us they stuck us on the course that the new entrants was doing, you know, people doing for the first time which was alright. We went back on to Oxfords and I did Oxfords and then on to Wellingtons and then on to the Lancaster Conversion Unit and then from there I went to the central signals establishment which was at, we did about, I think I did a bit over a year there and Cicely and I lived out. It was just after we got married actually I went there and -
GR: ’Cause that’s the one question we’ve never asked. Did you two know each other during the war?
DR: No.
CR: No.
GR: No.
CR: I didn’t even know him.
GR: Right.
DR: Yeah it was quite an interesting job on central signals. We used to, well we got various things. There were two squadrons, one calibration squadron their job was to go around calibrating the approach landings. I forget what they were called it now. The blind flying approach.
GR: Yeah.
DR: That was their main job. We were the development squadron. We were supposed to develop, test fly new things but of course we were test flying things that had been used during the war [laughs] and, but we had other things to do. We used to test the Gee coverage over France and Holland and so on and over Wales and Ireland and so on. We used to have a route to fly and pinpoints to go over and it had two cameras in the aircraft which took pictures simultaneously. One of the ground and one of the set so that they could be compare the -
AM: Right.
GR: Yeah.
AM: Yeah.
DR: But invariably one of them went wrong so they’d say, ‘Let’s do it again.’ But it was quite interesting. We also had to, people that were doing the calibrating and what not in Germany we used to have to take them over with all their equipment and fetch them back and so on. That was a bit of bind but one of the funniest, probably the funniest thing in my career was when I went to fetch a load back once and they weren’t ready. I went on the Friday and they weren’t ready. They was going to be ready on the Saturday morning so I said, ‘Well I want to be off by 8 o’clock at the latest,’ And they got to get all their equipment there and so on. But anyway when we eventually got them in the aircraft it was the COs monthly parade on the airfield. Lutzendorf I think it was and they’d no parade ground, they used to parade on the runway. So I was about to taxi out and the parade was getting on, forming up on thing there and my temper was getting a little frayed to say the least so I had words with air traffic control and then after a few minutes they came back and said, ‘Well the parade’s going to march off the runway onto the overshoot area until you’ve gone so you’re alright to go along there, turn and take off.’ So I, ‘Fair enough. I can do that.’ And they all marched off and I got along there and I turned, as I turned I opened up the throttle up. All the caps went. [laughs]
AM: Wonderful.
DR: Didn’t stop to see them sorting them out.
AM: And off you went into the wide blue yonder. What did you do after the, after you’d left the RAF?
DR: Sorry?
AM: What did you do after you’d left the RAF?
DR: I went back to the bank.
AM: To the bank.
DR: Yeah. Eventually. Yeah.
AM: At Skegness?
CR: He did one flight in a Lanc over Biggin Hill didn’t you? The first Biggin Hill.
DR: Yeah. Well yes just before I came out. It was the first time they’d done this Battle of Britain day thing you know and all the stations wanted a Lancaster. They all wanted a Lancaster and -
CR: Winston Churchill was there.
DR: And I think our people agreed to supply about four or five or something. Well I wasn’t going to do it on this Saturday. I know they didn’t put my name down for it anyway and then my boss, the squadron leader, said to me, he said, ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ he said, ‘I’m going down to Biggin Hill. We’ll have a day out’. So I said, ‘Alright.’ So that was on the Monday. On the Tuesday he went off on leave. He said, ‘I’ll see you on Saturday morning.’ ‘Alright.’ On the Friday afternoon air traffic got on to me to say Biggin Hill had been on the phone and they would like the Lancaster to go down today for obvious reasons. They’d only got a short runway and if you make a mess of it they can clear the mess up before the crowds come in tomorrow. I mean that was obvious what it was. So, you know they said Duchy is on leave. You’ll have to bring it so I thought fair enough. I took it down and -
GR: Sorry to interrupt you but when you do flights like that -
DR: Yeah.
GR: How many crew did you have? Did you have like a flight engineer with you, a radio operator?
DR: I think I had a navigator, a radio operator and, an engineer, I think.
GR: Yeah. So the four of you.
DR: I don’t think we needed any more than that.
GR: Yeah. Sorry.
DR: I had a lot of odd bods who wanted to get away for the weekend you know. Poured out when I said that.
AM: But you didn’t really need a rear gunner.
GR: No [laughs]
DR: But no it was funny actually and of course it was a big display.
GR: Yeah.
DR: The guest of honour was Winston Churchill.
GR: It was the first Biggin Hill Air Show.
DR: Yes. The first Biggin. Yeah. Winston Churchill was and the funny thing was that, you see nearly all the other things were fighters and doing aerobatics and so on and the CO of the squadron came to me and he said, ‘Would you do three engine flying?’ So I said, ‘Yes. I can do three engine flying. I’ll do two engine flying.’ ‘Oh that would be nice,’ he said. Afterwards I thought I’m an idiot because we were supposed to practice three and two engine flying but the maximum height, rather the minimum you weren’t, I think for two engine flying you weren’t supposed to come below five thousand feet. So I thought well five thousand feet they won’t see me. So Winston Churchill’s going to be down there. What the heck do I do? I think eventually I compromised a bit but I didn’t, I didn’t go the full hog down to a thousand feet or anything like that. We went down a bit below what we were supposed to do. I did the two and two on one side look spectacular.
GR: What you flew with two -
DR: Two on one side.
AM: So both on one side.
DR: Yeah.
GR: And both -
AM: Going and the other one’s not.
DR: Yeah.
AM: Does that not make you –
GR: Yeah.
DR: No.
AM: Swing around.
DR: You hold it alright and the -
AM: Ok.
DR: But the big shock, the only trouble you get is if, if they cool down to much and you can’t get the flaming things started [laughs]
GR: I’m sure you were alright.
DR: Yeah but -
CR: Would you like a cup of tea or anything?
AM: I think we’re done. I think we’re done actually.
GR: Yeah.
AM: I’m going to switch off now.
[machine paused]
GR: It wasn’t Len McNamara was it?
DR: Sorry?
GR: It wasn’t Len McNamara.
DR: No I don’t think so. I don’t think it was McNamara. No.
GR: Because Len had rear gunners.
AM: The one question I would have asked as well was just, so you flew the Halifax operationally but then the Lancaster after so which -
DR: Yeah.
AM: Was your favourite and what are the pros and cons of the two?
DR: Well I’m still a Lanc, er a Halifax man.
GR: Halifax.
DR: I think it’s nicer to handle. Certainly nicer to get in and out of and you know there was not a lot to choose between them I think but it’s on things like that that I would judge it.
GR: And to be fair everybody who we’ve asked the question of who -
AM: Prefers Halifax.
GR: Served on Lancs and Halifax they all said the Halifax.
DR: Halifax. Yeah.
GR: They said, ‘Alright the Lanc -
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Douglas Robinson
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-09-11
Type
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Sound
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ARobinsonD160911
PRobinsonD1601
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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.
Format
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01:33:56 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Lithuania
Zimbabwe
Germany--Berlin
Lithuania--Šilutė
Great Britain
Lithuania--Klaipėda
Mediterranean Sea
Temporal Coverage
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1940-09
1944
Description
An account of the resource
Douglas was in the Local Defence Volunteers before joining the Royal Air Force as a pilot. After Babbacombe, he did initial training at Scarborough and then in Rhodesia. Initial flight training in Harare on Tiger Moths was followed by service training on Oxfords at Bulawayo. Douglas had an eventful passage home when his troop ship, the Oronsay, was torpedoed by Italian submarine Archimede and he spent eight days in a lifeboat.
After returning to the UK, Douglas went to an Operational Training Unit to get crewed up, initially at RAF Wymeswold and then RAF Castle Donington on Wellingtons. He went to RAF Marston Moor and on to 158 Squadron at RAF Lissett on Halifaxes where he describes an encounter with Group Captain Leonard Cheshire. Douglas relates how a rear gunner refused to fly and was court martialled.
Douglas flew three operations to Berlin and on the third took a direct hit. After most of the crew baled, he managed to land in the Netherlands before being taken prisoner. Stalag Luft VI, on the border of East Prussia and Lithuania, was followed by Stalag Luft IV after the Russians approached. For three months Douglas was part of the Long March before being rescued by the 6th Airborne Division and flown back home.
Douglas stayed on for three years after the war. He was posted to RAF Wing and went up to Cosford as a flying officer. He attended a Lancaster Conversion Unit and flew Lancasters. He finished at a development squadron at the Central Signals Establishment. He recalls flying a Lancaster at the first Biggin Hill Air Show in front of Winston Churchill.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
158 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bale out
bombing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
forced landing
Gee
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
military discipline
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
pilot
prisoner of war
promotion
RAF Lissett
RAF Marston Moor
Stalag Luft 4
Stalag Luft 6
strafing
submarine
Sunderland
the long march
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/648/8918/PTomlinR1503.2.jpg
5feeef4c71584185da2d1aebf6d7e5b7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/648/8918/ATomlinR150818.1.mp3
109034737a77a609cefe84b0dd75762f
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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Tomlin, Ron
R Tomlin
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Tomlin, R
Description
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Four items. An oral history interview with Ron Tomlin (b. 1923) and three photographs. He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 10 Squadron. Collection catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-19
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AM: Okay so, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, and the interviewer is Annie Moody, the interviewee is Ron Tomlin, and the interview is taking place at Mr Tomlin’s home in Streetly and it’s the 19th of August 2015. So, Ron, can we start with, can you just tell me a little bit about your family and where you were born, and your family background, what your parents did and school and stuff like that?
RT: Right, we was born in a place close to Shrewsbury, it’s called Ford, a little village, erm, I only lived there for a short while because my Father had come back from the First World War and he’d got himself a little van and he got a job with the post office, and then the post office got their own vans and er, so his little job dried up and we, and without his van he really didn’t have any trade apart from the fact he was a bit of a mechanic, he knew a bit about motor cars et cetera, and so they came back to Birmingham and they did their best. But, my Father had been gassed in the First World War and he couldn’t have a job inside because he was always spitting, and in those days people thought this was like a dirty habit, but modern information tells me, that spitting into the fire was the most hygienic way, they didn’t have paper hankies in, they couldn’t wash out, disinfect. We lived in a little back house, erm no garden, outside toilet that sort of thing and erm, this went on, my Mother tried to get her five children educated, my older brother went to grammar school, I went to grammar school but only on my second attempt because I didn’t pass high enough to get a grant for the books, and they couldn’t, my Father was unemployed, my Mother earned a living with washing and things like that, cleaning, and they, they couldn’t afford the extra grammar school fees, but because my older brother had gone, when he'd been there two years, I passed again, I could now go because I could have his books and his rugby shirt and things being passed down and so on, that went on until I was fourteen
[loud aircraft noise]
RT: When I ran away from home, I went to stay at my auntie’s house in, close to Shrewsbury, close to where I’d been born, on a farm, until my Mother bought me back, but I just didn’t want to go back to that grammar school, I didn’t want to learn French, I didn’t want to have a different life to all my friends, because nobody else I knew apart from my brother had gone to grammar school and in the end, erm and in the end that was accepted and I became apprenticed to a carpenter, and I say a carpenter, he was a big firm and he, he fitted out bars, Gaskell and Chambers, after a couple of years of that, I was fed up with that, and I wanted to get more money and the war had just started. I was sixteen, I was able to break the apprenticeship because I got a job doing war work at the BSA factory, and er, so I started working there and it wasn’t long afterwards, erm, one of the things that got me interested in the airforce was that the BSA had an ATC squadron, that’s the Air Defence Cadet Corp which became the ATC, and because this was the early days and because I was interested, I got a fair amount of promotion in that, and so when the BSA factory got bombed in nineteen forty one, I got fed up with clearing up after bombing and went with a couple of friends to join up. Now, we all wanted to be pilots
AM: Of course
RT: And they sent us away to Cardington for a three day test and I was accepted for pilot training, erm the other two, one was thrown out because he had flat feet
[loud aircraft noise]
AM: Because he had?
RT: Flat feet
AM: Flat feet
RT: Medical
AM: Yes
RT: And the other one, he was slightly older than us, he was accepted but into the RAF Regiment, so he didn’t come home with us, he was now in the airforce, he’d been thrown out and I’d been put on deferred service until I was old enough to start my pilot training, came back to Birmingham, I had to do evening institute work, navigation and things of that sort, until in nineteen forty two, late January, nineteen forty two, I was called up, I was now eighteen, erm eighteen and a little, and I went to Lords, the usual place for aircrew, I went to Scarborough, erm I had a problem with my feet, and when I’d finished my Scarborough breaking in, marching and all that, I was put into hospital to have toenails removed because they’d been bleeding, when that was finished and that took some time because I was eventually sent, it went wrong and I was sent back to Birmingham into Selly Oak hospital, I then went back to Carlisle, and I did my twelve hours pilot training
AM: Twelve hours? [emphasis]
RT: Yes, pilot training, at the end of twelve hours, the instructor said, ‘I’m not going to let you take off and land on your own, we haven’t got enough aircraft to let you crash,’ and so, I was placed into aircrew
AM: Right
RT: Sent away to the Isle of Man, and I eventually passed out with an observer brevvy, I’d done that, done navigation, bomb aiming, air gunnery and from the Isle of Man with my brevvy
[loud aircraft noise]
RT: I’d come back to Hastings in England, where I was being trained with advanced navigation, when the school got shot up by German planes, it was on the sea front and they shot out all the windows, and because we were now, some were needed to go, I got posted up to Lossiemouth and, to join a crew
AM: So, Hastings to Lossiemouth, how did you get from Hastings to Lossiemouth?
RT: By train
AM: Right
RT: By train with a warrant and a change of crew or whatever, and this and that or whatever, and from there, I joined up with five other people in what was known as Dibben’s crew, all the names are then, and for about three months we thought we were about to go out over Germany in a Wellington, we thought we were ready to go, we’d been doing a lot of flying particularly at night and we’d been, we’d had all sorts of mishaps, we’d had engine failure in Scotland, we’d had, we’d been shot by anti-aircraft guns over Oxford, we were ready to
AM: [laughs] Sorry to interrupt, what plane were you doing that training in then?
RT: It was in a Wellington
AM: You were in a Wellington, okay
RT: We were the Wellington crew ready to go, but then they said, you are going to be transferred to a Halifax
AM: Right, so at that time there were only five of you because you were a Wellington crew?
RT: There were only five of us, that’s right. So, we went back to Marston Moor in Yorkshire, under a CO who was Leonard Cheshire
AM: Right
RT: And we spent a few weeks learning to fly the Halifax
AM: Sort of, conversion training
RT: And we picked up an extra gunner called Agnew, and we picked up an engineer called Bob Hollinrake, but Bob Hollinrake is waiting for his cremation next Tuesday
AM: Yes, very sad
RT: That’s the last of the crew, yep, so erm, when we were then ready we were posted to 10 Squadron at Melbourne
AM: Right, okay
RT: And we got there in early July and we noticed, at the time I didn’t realise this was happening, but I know from records since, that most of my crew were being borrowed by other crews to go on missions. The pilot went twice, the navigator went twice, the engineer went twice, one of the gunners went once, and I was just sitting waiting for whatever
[loud aircraft noise]
AM: So, at that point, you hadn’t, had you done your first operation?
RT: No [inaudible]
AM: What was that like then, waiting while your mates were off doing operations?
RT: It’s one of the mysteries of life, because I and Louis Ure, the other man that didn’t go, have discussed this many times, we didn’t know, we were never waiting for them to come back, we were never asking them what it was like, we didn’t know, whether we would have been allowed to go if there was a raid on, we wouldn’t have been allowed off the station anyway, so we must have known, but for some reason it’s not in our minds now, so we don’t know
AM: Maybe, your just young and getting on with it
RT: That’s it, but then, late in July, probably the twenty second, twenty fourth of July, as a crew, we went to Hamburg
AM: The first one
RT: The first one
AM: So, what, what did, tell me about the day then, the bacon and eggs and then, did you have bacon and eggs?
RT: We, we always had a nice bacon and egg meal when we came back
AM: Right
RT: Yep, and we erm, I believe we had a good meal before we went, but the day of any operation is from lunchtime onwards, is being briefed, not only are you being briefed as a whole crew, each of your separate trades are being separately briefed about this, that and the other by the master bomber or the chief engineer or whatever, and then erm, in the early evening you are preparing for your trip, you are checked to see you are not carrying this, that and the other, you’re having your meal and eventually it’s time for you to be taken in your little van with the nice WAAF driver, and to your dispersal point, and there’s twenty aircraft almost surely being taking off and it takes a bit of time to get, it isn’t like, you see, twenty fighters taking off in the Battle of Britain, erm, all in dispersal places, they all have to assemble, they all have to fly off and gather on the coast before you set off in your wave
AM: And there’s a lot more men than there were in the fighters in the Battle of Britain, there’s seven of you in each plane
RT: That’s right, yep, and so erm, and then of course you don’t see much apart from the back end of other aeroplanes or something going wrong, because it’s all dark you know, nobody’s got lights on and the radio silence, but so, but when you go to a place like Hamburg which is already burning, you see it from a long way away, and our second big, [unclear] no serious incidents on our first trip to, our second trip was also to Hamburg, two or three nights later and we had a problem, we found that our oxygen system had failed, particularly there was none to the rear gunner who was singing as if he was drunk, and we made contact with our base and were ordered to get down low because of the oxygen, returned to base
[loud aircraft noise]
RT: Eject your bombs in the sea
AM: Why was he singing because he was drunk, from lack of oxygen?
RT: From lack of oxygen, yeah, and it wasn’t clear whether the whole oxygen system was failing or just his part, but without a rear gunner protecting us we were too vulnerable anyway and they wanted us to come back, so they bought us back, erm, that was in my memory as being one of the raids, not knowing what time or where it was, but the man who made the film, looked up all the records and assures me that it was on the second Hamburg one we went on, and we were not too far over the sea when it happened according to him, in something like an hour and three quarters we were back home, whereas we would have been six or seven hours across the sea to get back down
AM: What happened, what did you do with the bomb load when you were coming back?
RT: We dropped it in the sea, we ejected it, and we had trouble with that too, we reached the stage where we even considered chopping out the, the last of the bomb bay racks for which we had a chopper, we’d been briefed on that if you had to get rid of them, but it actual fact a lot of shaking about, eventually they all went but not all in one place, but seeing as you was over the sea it wasn’t too bad. Two or three nights later we went back out to Hamburg again, this time no problem, that was a good mission, and so two out of three Hamburg runs were okay, and then this squadron was stood down, they had been on a lot of operations in July and early August and we were given a three day pass, I think they shut the whole squadron down in order to try and bring the planes back up to
AM: Scratch
RT: Because, I mean, on our first two missions that we did see planes sink, we did see planes going down, and these, we did encounter searchlights but the drill was always the same, you know, left, left, [unclear] and whatever, we reckoned we did have a good pilot and no serious mishap. So, having had our three day’s we went back
AM: Where did you go on your three days?
RT: We didn’t
AM: Oh, you just stayed there
RT: We stayed there, we stayed there, we, Louis and I have discovered that whilst we stayed there, the
[loud aircraft noise]
RT: we, the skipper was entertained at the navigator’s house in Staffordshire, and we always ribbed them about this, ‘why did you take him and not us,’ and we always used to take the mickey and that sort of thing, but erm anyway, this has all come out later on
AM: Yes
RT: In those days, none of those things would have probably, so we, we then, soon after we got back off our three day break, we were sent to Mannheim, which is a long trip, not across the sea, down England, right across Paris, right across Germany to Mannheim, seven hours sort of trip, and on our way back one engine overheated and we were forced to shut it down, so when we got back to base, we assumed that we could happily go to bed and we wouldn’t go the next night, the same night we just got back, but around lunch time they woke us up, and said, your aircraft is now suitable and we are raiding Nuremberg tonight, right, and you are required to go, so two or three of the crew, Bob Hollinrake, I think, and the skipper and the engineer, took the plane up and came back and said, its ok, and so we got briefed, and that evening at about quarter past nine, we set off again, right down England, right across Paris, right across, a bit further this time, this was an eight hour, before we got to the target, the same engine packed up again, and so we dropped a little behind the bomber stream because, I think we were in, it was in five waves from memory, and we were in two, so the fact that we were going slower than the rest meant that we were still with them like, just at the end, but we were probably [unclear] it wasn’t too long after that when we’d lost a bit of height because we’d had to come down a little bit past three because a fighter had frightened us, and partly because we were gaining a bit of speed et cetera by coming down. We lost another engine
AM: Same side or?
RT: No, no, one on each side
AM: Oh, okay
RT: And, okay, you can still fly, you can still fly a Halifax on two engines, but we decided we would go back to engine number one that had failed and see if we could get it going again, because it had overheated again, we got it going again, not too long we had the same problem again, and they dabbled with trying to make it three out of four but we never really had more than two. We gradually lost height and when we came back over Paris, we were all on our own of course, we’d now lost the, the other, the shelter of the others
AM: No, you weren’t in the stream anymore
RT: And, technically we were a bit too low, we were around nine and a half thousand feet, that is well in the range of guns, but not hit, and we got out over Dieppe
AM: Yeah
RT: Heading for Beachy Head, which was our right route home because the mines had been swept in order to make a ditching area, but we got hit by something [emphasis] in the wing, we believe it was a German warship, and I’ll tell you why later, but we, the plane couldn’t fly straight and whatever had happened to the wing, and the pilot decided that the only, and we’re still in cloud
AM: Was it still dark at this point?
RT: Oh yeah, it was four o’clock in the morning
AM: Oh right, sorry
RT: And it, yeah, and we’d been going since quarter past nine, it would have been a night out if we’d got back to Yorkshire. It was actually quarter past four when we actually hit the sea, but erm because of his problems with the controls and his decision is he’s not going to make the English coast, he’s got to get himself a good ditching chance, you’ve got to have enough control, to control it when it hits the water, though he did his best, as I say, we believed we had a very good pilot, he did his best, and we got six out I was, stayed with the pilot because I used to fly the second [unclear] and about six hundred feet we came out the cloud, and I said, cheerio to him, and took up my position which is lying on the floor with my feet on the bulkheads, and one of my jobs was to just jettison the two escape hatches, which I did, went down to join the others down there, and it was fairly soon after that, although I think he probably only had one engine going when he hit the sea, he wanted to make sure he got absolutely control over what it, it had to be good, not anything that could suddenly alter, and because we had the perspex nose and the sea was rough, and it was in rain, the nose broke when it hit a wave, in theory, he tried to put the tail in first and fall into the sea, that’s the theory of it, but the nose went so we were suddenly flooded because it, and of course it isn’t just sea water we’ve got, its fuel
AM: Fuel, yeah [coughs]
RT: And the dye that it, the yellow dye the Fluorescein, that they, so we were
AM: Hang on, the yellow dye of?
RT: It’s called Fluorescein, and when the plane hits the water it releases a yellow dye so you can see over
AM: Right, okay
RT: It distinguishes where the plane went in, I mean for some weeks after in Germany we were all yellow, but so, we then get up as quickly as we can, my job was to be first out as bomb aimer, other people have got other duties to do, Louis is supposed to be sending his message and to, I mean now he’s in his ditching position, he’s done all that, the navigator’s supposed to be bringing the charts with him and
AM: Packing his bag
RT: I think he had a big bag which was supposed to be locked on his arms, he claims he got a bang on the head and he didn’t get all his stuff, not able in time, but anyway, I’m at the dinghy, the plane is flat on the sea, I was able to get into the, onto the wing, took the dinghy over because it was inflating the wrong way up, push it into the sea, get into it, and then the others are coming one at a time, the pilot of course is still in his own bit, he’s got to find his way to us, but the dinghy isn’t inflating as it should
AM: I was going to ask you, so the dinghy, who lets the dinghy go or does it do that automatically?
RT: I never thought about it
AM: And its auto, should automatically inflate
RT: It is definitely inflating
AM: Okay
RT: When I first saw it upside down and then I turned it over it was inflating, its only when we got inside and the others started to pile in, and seven of you in one of those dinghies is a bit of a squeeze
AM: You still got your flying boots and everything on at this point?
RT: I’m sorry
AM: You still got your flying boots on at this time? [inaudible]
RT: Oh yeah, all in that, and it’s starting to, it’s trying to float below the surface and it’s starting to fold up like a
AM: Yeah
RT: Air is escaping, it’s only then that we realise that its full of holes, shrapnel, a small piece of shrapnel had gone through when we were hit on the wing, it’s gone through the folded up dinghy, now part of our drill is to find all the items we drop attached to the dinghy by cords, one of which is a knife, one of which is a pair of bellows, one is some food, one is a Very gun, there’s a whole set of things, the first thing we want is the knife, because of our position folded up in the water, not sitting on the water and because we’ve got holes, not only in the air bit, but also in the bottom, the pilot says, we must find the knife otherwise we are going down with the plane, we were attached to the plane, it’s a strong cord, ‘stand up one at a time, because there’s holes in the bottom, take your flying boots off, I don’t want anybody’, and I’m the first one standing up, my job really was to be first in everything. I stand up, first thing is my flying boots are over the side, nobody’s ever admitted to it but if you look in my little museum upstairs, you’ll see most of the crew in later years have sent me cards of flying boots
AM/RT: [laughter]
RT: Because eventually of course I arrive in Germany in bare feet, and I’ve had bare feet for a fair little bit of this nonsense. So, we can’t find the knife, the new air gunner a man we’d never quite got to know as well as the five man crew, Sandy Agnew, he produces a sheath knife from down his flying boot, a thing which we’d always been told, ‘don’t arrive in Germany armed even with a knife, because if you’re armed they could kill you,’ whereas in the Geneva convention they’re not supposed to, he cuts us free. Very shortly after that we see the aircraft slide away, that’s right, so now we start to find these cords and find these things, we find the bellows, we find the bag full of corks, they’re like old fashioned spinning tops, little wooden things with threads on them, different sizes, with different size holes
AM: So, they’re for plugging all the holes?
RT: So, we start plugging the holes, we haven’t got enough for all the things, so people by holes have got fingers in, and things like that, but we’ve got the bellows and we start pumping, we kept that thing going for seventeen hours until we were rescued off the French coast. By then we’d found a little bit of Horlicks tablets, we found a Very cartridge gun, and we were you know, we were sailors now, we were but we couldn’t guide the dinghy
AM: So, you drifted back to the French coast then?
RT: Yeah. We got paddles but it’s a round thing and there’s no way two people can paddle a round thing and it, you know, eventually we’re off the French coast, we know we’re off the French coast at nine o’clock in the evening, it’s like twenty four hours since we left home, and there’s a ridiculous [emphasis] debate going on, can we, can we paddle all the way round to Spain? Shall we risk trying to go up towards all the twenty one miles, or if we get into the North Sea we’ll get lost, you know, et cetera, et cetera. When we see a Spitfire coming, two Spitfires actually, coming back over the coast, we fire our Very cartridge and the one Spitfire comes down, puts his canopy back, starts to wave to us and we’re now getting quite excited, it’s only a matter of minutes until they drop a flying, er flying lifeboat to us or whatever, or a flying boat will come and pick us up
AM: Yeah
RT: But, we were so close to the French coast, we didn’t realise how close we were, because the waves were high enough to hide it from us down there, but the Germans had seen the Very cartridge, and so they start to flash Aldis lamps, ‘identify, identify, identify’
AM: They’re actually [coughs] on the coast or were they [inaudible]?
RT: No on the coast
AM: Oh, okay
RT: And, eventually we flashed back because we also had a lamp, ‘RAF, RAF’ and they came out in a fishing boat with soldiers, armed soldiers, we all had to lie down, because of, we realised that there was a fair bit of risk with that sinking dinghy and we hadn’t got food or whatever, I think we were pleased to be picked up, to be saved as it were, you know
AM: At least you hadn’t drowned
RT: We weren’t drowned, yeah, and a boat came and they took us to a place called La Trémouille [?] which to me until recently is an unknown place in France, we’ve been back there a couple of times et cetera, I’ve had a holiday there. This last week or so, there’s a, a new series, series started on BBC and it’s all based on La Trémouille [?] [laughs] it’s a beautiful little town with all sorts of intrigue going on, you know, but anyway, we’re taken to Abbeville airfield and handed over to the Luftwaffe
AM: Are you still in your soaking wet clothes at this point?
RT: Oh, we are soaking wet, we were put in a little hut just to ourselves, in our wet clothes, we got a blanket each, still in our wet clothes, they locked us in and they gave us a saucepan full of hot potatoes in their jackets which were quite pleasant, and then the following day, a group of people who we believe to be two crews of German bombers, a party just bigger than us, we were seven they were probably nine, maybe ten. We were put on a train, still in our wet clothes and taken off to Germany, the journey took four days
AM: With the, with the German bomber crew
RT: Oh yes, they were in charge
AM: Is that right, okay, yeah
RT: One of those men loaned me his spare pair of boots, which I wore until I got to the first prison camp
AM: Did they fit you?
RT: Yes
[loud aircraft noise]
RT: We, when we arrived in Frankfurt, still with our dinghy, carrying our folded up dinghy, we were paraded on the station and the crowd came and spat at us, [unclear] bombers and all this sort of thing, which we thought was a bit unusual, we’ve found out since, that it was probably normal
AM: Did they try and get at you or were they just?
RT: No, nobody hurt any of us, no, et cetera, then they, the same nine people, they took us from the station to a tram car, one of these door tram cars, one behind the other, they shunted some people out, put us on and they took us to Gestapo headquarters, and outside Gestapo headquarters, the proper name is Dulag Luft
AM: Yeah
RT: Its well known as Dulag Luft now. The German had his boots back, they were his boots, they weren’t mine they were his, the, we didn’t need to explain, exchange, because I had no German, he had no English, he took me things and we went into there, and of course once we got in there, for about a week, we were then separated, we were in solitary confinement, interviewed most days by some German, sometimes we were put back in a cell with another airman
AM: But not your own crew?
RT: Not our own crew, sometimes we were put back with a member of our own crew, but we’d been briefed about all this, it was well known, we just don’t talk to one, if you don’t say anything, you know, but this went on for a week
AM: Did they do the nice guy, bad guy?
RT: Oh, all of that
AM: Cigarettes, all that stuff
RT: The officer with his gun in, gun out, until you’re proved to be, ‘I can shoot you,’ it’s all within, and ‘I don’t accept you’re a prisoner yet’, ‘you are not answering but I want you to’, ‘we are only allowed to give you rank name and number,’ ‘where you went to school’ and so, and so, ‘you attended Mary Street primary school,’ they got all the details, you know, so it, ‘that’s true, that’s a lie’, ‘I could shoot you for telling a lie’
[loud aircraft noise]
RT: [inaudible] but anyway, it went on for about a week and then we were all bought together again
AM: Were you scared, were you frightened, how did you feel about it?
RT: I think, I think I’m a young lad of nineteen, I must be, but the only time I can recall being really scared was while we were waiting to hit the water, you know, saying prayers and whatever, whatever comes into your mind, that’s a completely unknown situation you just don’t know what’s going to happen and, but I’m sure I’ve had a number of scares from Germans and things of that, but none of it is that I can recall in any detail, I’m sure, I’m not claiming to be brave or anything like that, so I think I must have been, but it’s not foremost in my mind. So, ooh, we are then in this Dulag Luft, which is, we were released by the Gestapo and we go into what it’s like, a little prison camp next door, there are English people in charge and they may be collaborators, they may be genuine people working on behalf of newly caught prisoners, I don’t know, but I still haven’t got my boots, and as I enter the compound somebody gives me a tin of condensed milk, and as soon as I got it opened, I scoffed it and I was violently sick, [laughs] but I can remember that in great detail
AM: It’s too rich for your stomach
RT: Well, I mean we hadn’t eaten for some time, you know, and on that train for four days, we’d had a little bit of German sausage and a little bit of bread, once a day, you know, the same as the Germans were having, that’s what they were having, they also [emphasis] didn’t have a bed for four days, you know, they were just in a wooden seated carriage, the same as we were, et cetera, so, okay, you’ve [unclear] then, you’re put on a train, bus carts and I’m taken to No 1 prison camp
AM: Were you still with your other six crew?
RT: Oh, we’re all together
AM: You’re all together
RT: We’re all together
AM: Yeah
RT: And we’re all together for some, that camp was organised into what we’ll call sixes, the food was shared out and you had to be in a combine of six, and so six of the crew were in the combine and one wasn’t, it was the little gunner, the man with the knife, he was in another combine with a Scotsman that he, because he was another Scotsman, so anyway, that was that. That was a nice prison camp, it was organised, it took all the people shot down since the start of the war, were all there, and they’d got a theatre and they’d got football teams with names like Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, and I’m told that that one or two ex-professionals who’d become aircrew were playing in the teams, I didn’t know the people, and that was a nice enough place, and then somewhere along the line I acquired a pair of American army boots from the stores, the prison camp stores, but then a few months later we were, because it’s now getting very crowded, there were so many English and American prisoners coming in, its nineteen forty three, it’s all happening now and we were put on a train and we were taken to Lithuania. Four days again, same situation, we went to a reasonable camp, just started
AM: That was Lithuania, can you remember where it was?
RT: It was a place called Heydekrug
AM: Alright
RT: In Lithuania
AM: Yep
RT: Erm, we stayed there until, I think we went there in about November, remember I’d been shot down, its, its early September I’m in a prison camp
AM: Yeah
RT: So, I was not there too long in the good camp, then we go off to this very cold place in Lithuania, erm and nice place as I say, large place, four compounds, Americans in one, English there, English there and probably others in that one, and whilst we were there, five crew air gunner, Jock Finney, met his brother in law through the wire, he was in one of the other compounds, he knew he was there, and he persuaded the Germans to allow him to transfer to be with his brother in law and he took the little scotch lad with him, they all went together, and that was it, end, we never saw them again. They survived the war but not [unclear] we were involved in. Now, in about July or just after the invasion in June, we were overrun by the Russian front
AM: So, we are in nineteen forty-four?
RT: They were nowhere near us, but we’re in Lithuania and the Russian front is cutting off that whole section of Latvia and East Prussia, it’s all being, and so the Germans evacuated us by sea from the port of Memel and bought us back in to Swinemünde, a four day trip down in the hull
AM: All of you? How many?
RT: Eight hundred, down, we were on one boat, eight hundred, that was our compound. We know that on the day before, we only know now, on the day before in another boat, the American compound had also made the same route, and when we arrived back in Swinemünde, we were bombed by the American airforce, so we were lying on the truck, cattle trucks and there was a German pocket battle ship firing at them
AM: Would they have had any way of knowing who was on the boat, they just wouldn’t would they?
RT: No, no, no. So, eventually we were on a train, cattle trucks again, another four-day trip, this time back into Poland, at a place called [unclear] now, when we get it, this is known as the run off the road, this is the, which you all, one you must surely have heard about, when we get off the boat, where a lot of us have been manacled, we’re not manacled down in there because we couldn’t climb up the ladder
AM: So, hands rather than feet
RT: Yeah. But once we got off, some were pairs, some were fours, manacled together, and then, I call them the Hitler Youth, it was like a naval brigade of young soldiers with dogs and bayonets, start to chase us through the woods
AM: Yeah
RT: Wanting us to run, now we’re manacled together, and according to one lad, and we’ve each got a little haversack on our backs, which is an old shirt sewed up to make, to carry any bits and pieces that we’ve acquired in our nine months of captivity or whatever, and so, that runs down to your manacle and your stuck. I managed to get my hand out of my manacle because I was quite thin in those days and I’ve avoided any injury, and I’ve run on, I’ve left my other lad, whoever he was, I don’t know the name of who I was manacled to, I don’t think he was one of our group at all, not one of our crew certainly, and so eventually we arrived back in what we believed to be the prison camp, we now know it was a five kilometre run from when they attacked us, and we do know that the worst lad had sixty something bayonet wounds in his backside, prodded, not stabbed, prodded
AM: What where, what were the German guards doing, just letting them do it?
RT: No, they were the ones that were doing it
AM: Right, okay, so they were the guards who the young lads, were the ones, yeah
RT: They were the guards. The documents now say that they wanted us to escape and that on the edge of the woods was machine guns, that’s what the big books now record, we never saw any of that. We stuck together, not because we wanted to stick together, we were just following one another. Now, when we got to this camp, it wasn’t a camp, it was the outside of a camp, there was, we had to go in with a, what you get at a wedding, with a, soldiers, a guard of honour with the soldiers
AM: Oh, yeah, yeah
RT: Who bit you, prodded you, made sure that nobody had got anything, even a toothbrush, and then for some days, we were in this camp, with no huts, sleeping at night on the floor, and outside was a great pile of all our gear. Eventually that got shared out amongst us, toothbrushes, whatever, anything, and it took a few weeks before huts were made
AM: What month are we in now, is it, are we still in winter?
RT: No, this was July
AM: So, we’ve moved back through, yeah, with everything
RT: It was just after the invasion
AM: Of course, in forty-four, yeah
RT: So, the weather is much better, although there was a very nasty thunderstorm where one of, because before we got proper huts we had what we called dog kennels, they were like little sheds about five foot tall, four foot six tall, about ten people could lie on the floor, so at night we’d get into those. One night there was a terrible thunderstorm, two of the huts got struck by lightning, two or three prisoners got killed by the lightning, that must all be documented
[loud aircraft noise]
RT: Over a few more weeks, the Russian prisoners, they were like slaves, and they built a proper prison camp and we went into our compound and the facilities there were quite reasonable, a massive toilet block, seventy-two seat toilet block, and so on, and which the sludge of the toilets had to be moved everyday by the Russians
[unknown]: [background talking]
AM: [inaudible] yeah
RT: With their oxen carts, they used to suck it up with a little explosion that caused it to
AM: Okay we’re paused, hang on
RT: Have we stopped?
[unknown]: [inaudible] I just said
[unknown voices]
[unknown] Just a little nibble, its ready but we’re having it indoors
AM: Right
[unknown]: Not bringing it out here
AM: Oh, we’ll come in, can we come in when we’re done?
[unknown]: Do you want to finish all that and then come in?
AM: Yeah, can we?
[unknown]: Yeah okay, fair enough
AM: Alright, right then
[Unknown] [laughter] I hope you are not going into too much detail Ronald?
AM: No, you’re not its wonderful
[unknown] I’m sat here listening and
[unknown] [inaudible] [laughter]
AM: So, cut you off in your prime, off you go again
RT: Anyway, we were in [unclear] which becomes a very reasonable sort of camp, the main occupation, was the guards trying to count us, every day. Every day we’d be forced out of our, I mean at night time, the huts are all on legs, dogs are underneath them, to avoid escaping. You do your own cooking on a little bit of a stove in there with your ration of potatoes or your twenty eighth of a loaf every day, a slice of bread
AM: And if they’re on legs you can’t dig tunnels?
RT: Not easily, you, et cetera, et cetera, and so on, and then in the daytime, they would force us out while they searched the huts and then they would do a count, somebody would manage to sneak through there and spoil the count for them
[loud aircraft noise]
RT: This went on all the time. Is he a bomber? Oh no, he’s just a passenger thing, yes. Have you got him recorded?
AM: Yeah, be alright, as long as it doesn’t drop anything on us
RT: It isn’t too long now, and we coming to the end of January, this is now nineteen forty five
AM: Forty five
RT: And the Russian front comes again, and this time the same routine, but instead of the ship or the train, we just set off walking and it goes on from the sixth of February until I get liberated on about the sixteenth of April
AM: Okay, how did you get liberated?
RT: The British army. By then we’d walked back to [unclear] which is a big, nowadays well-known place, it was so crowded that our column were told they had to go back again, and our column did leave and went back the way they come, most of my crew went with them, but Dibben, the pilot and I, went into sick bay, lay on the floor and said we were too sick to move, and we just stayed there, two days later we were liberated by the British army. We knew the army was getting close because we could see the searchlights in the sky
AM: Who was it that sent the others back?
RT: Oh
AM: Germans or?
RT: Germans
AM: The Germans, right
RT: And, the people in charge of the camp, because the camp was run by Sergeant Major Lord who was a big disciplinarian who had been captured at Arnhem
AM: Right
RT: And whilst I was in [unclear] a British soldier took me into the town to show me the little village, first day out of the prison camp, [unclear] and who should I meet? But Ken Pugsley, the lad with flat feet, who’d been captured at Arnhem as a prisoner and was in the same prison camp. I met him in Germany [emphasis] [laughs]
AM: Five years later
RT: Absolutely. But, on the march, I developed frostbite, I just couldn’t walk [inaudible]
AM: In your feet?
RT: Yeah, I couldn’t keep a, shouldn’t, whether it was those army boots from
AM: Americans
RT: Americans, which were never going, the right size or whatever, but anyway, and so the Germans [unclear] took me on a work cart and with a soldier, put me on a train, took me to a Belgium workers camp, dropped me off, and for seven or eight days, I was fed by a little Belgium school master
[loud aircraft noise]
RT: Until he died last year, he corresponded [inaudible words] and a Serbo-Croat prisoner operated on my foot with his penknife which eventually, to release the pus, to allow the thing to get out. They put me on a dressing, on about the seventh, eighth day, we’re now into March, the German soldier arrives back, takes me on the train, puts me back with my crew on the march in a snowstorm with a cardboard box on my foot which lasted about
AM: About a day?
RT: No, not quite
AM: [inaudible]
RT: And so on, and so then, there we are back on the march again until we eventually
AM: It’s a strange mentality isn’t it, that they’d come, dropped you off, get you fixed up, bring you back
RT: Yep
AM: And get you to exactly where you’d been
RT: Now, when I recorded this in my film, I said, that the Germans with their efficiency, took me back to wherever the column had got to, but I now know from looking at my other documents, that for eight days the column stayed in th same place
AM: Oh
RT: Because all the roads ahead, were full up with other prisoners
AM: Right
RT: And, population escaping from the Russians, and so there was nowhere for us, so we are stuck
AM: Between a rock and a hard place
RT: Between the few farms. We had a prisoner on a bicycle, he was known as Percy Caruthers, he was allowed, and he spoke good German, he was a pilot, he was allowed to ride ahead contacting farmers to see if they would put up some prisoners overnight in their barns, provide food or hot water, and because no farm could take eight hundred, he would probably find about five farms in an area, and he would issue a document to say you helped British prisoners of war, and which would stand them in good stead with whoever liberated them, okay and so on, because we’re talking now about Poles and Germans, and all sorts of people because of the war and whatever, and that was the way it was, you know, so eventually I’m liberated
AM: So, you meet the British?
RT: Meet the British and within a few days I’d been fumigated, flown back home and then I was put for two years in Cosford Hospital because of, I was very [unclear] I had no nutrition and I was suffering from dysentery, you know, couldn’t hold food or whatever
AM: Two weeks, so you were two years in, two years did you say?
RT: No, two weeks
AM: Two weeks, I thought you said two years?
RT: No. And I left there on the seventh of May and was home for VE Day, whereas the rest of the crew
AM: They’d had to go backwards
RT: Gone back. They weren’t liberated until after VE Day
AM: Right
RT: And so on, they were, so we arrived back home, erm, even the little ambulance that took me from the airfield down in Hertfordshire to Cosford, called my Mother’s house to let her see me in the back of the, it wasn’t an ambulance, it was sort of a little canvas thing, you know and so on, that was in the middle of the night, because
AM: Did she have advanced warning that you were going to turn up?
RT: No, no, they knocked at the door
AM: [gasps]
RT: And said, ‘we’ve got your son out here’, you know, that would be the first she knew that we’d been liberated and of course it was before the end of the war, and so. And then we, I stayed in the airforce for about a year, the airforce didn’t want me to leave until my future was ascertained. Now, you know about my background of mucking about, this, that and the other, whilst I’d been apprenticed to the carpenter, the bit I fancied was the drawing office, so I’d arranged to get a training course to the draughtsman, and until that training course came through, the airforce kept me on
AM: Right
RT: I was a warrant officer, I got a good salary, I had a nice little flat in Scarborough, I only had to stay in Scarborough long enough to find some prizes for the spa dance every Saturday, and once I’d got my spot prizes I could go home and come back the next week, so
AM: Were you on your own?
RT: Yeah, on my own, yes me on my own with a little flat in Scarborough
AM: Not booking in anywhere or?
RT: No, no, eventually they transferred me to the drawing office at RAF Wittering, but nobody in that drawing office seemed to want, so I used to turn up there on a Monday morning and then catch the first lorry along the main road back to Birmingham for the rest of the week, you know, because they didn’t want me and the airforce were trying to help me. Eventually, my training came, I did my nine months of training and then, for the first job I went to, I was well trained, first job I went to was a good firm, I stayed with them for thirty-three years
AM: Blimey
RT: Yeah, changing jobs all the way through, as a sort of promotion, a good job, that’s where I met Freda
AM: That’s where you met Freda
RT: She worked there, yeah, so we’ve been together not for fourteen years, but for sixty-one years
AM: Sixty something
RT: And so, yeah. Now, when I retired my story vanishes then, I have nothing to do, not true, I met Louis Ure in London nine years after the war, but apart from that, apart from sending Christmas cards to the crew, I had no contact with the crew until I retired, when I retired I went up into Yorkshire to a place called the Rocking Horse shop, because I’d planned to make a rocking horse for my oldest, I was still using my apprenticeship with carpentry
AM: Carpentry
RT: I had always been a bit, you know, and all these little side tables you see there, all of this is, and sheds, fences, all these fences and green house, all that’s is stuff I’ve made, and so, I go to the rocking horse shop and it’s in a place called Holme-on-Spalding-Moor
AM: Yes
RT: Which was twinned to Melbourne. So, I go into the local pub which is called the Bombers Arms which we used to use from Melbourne, and on the wall, was a chart showing that 10 Squadron had just had the 10 Squadron Association dinner, and my pilots name and the bomb aimers name were on there, so I contact the publican and he said, there’s a man at Elvington air museum
[unknown background talking]
RT: Who does Tuesdays and Thursdays, whatever, he’ll be on tomorrow, the secretary to this association. So, I stayed the night in the pub with Freda, I’ve got me bits for my rocking horse, and I go to Elvington, the man on the door says, by the time you get back to Birmingham
[loud aircraft noise]
RT: Your crew will be in touch with you, and they was
AM: And they were
RT: And the first reunion was within three weeks, it was at the Prisoners of War Association called Creaky Corps at, who were the people who were in that boat down the Baltic
AM: Yeah
RT: And that became Creaky Corps, Percy Caruthers, the man with the bike, was the chairman, and so, they had, they had a reunion every year, as did 10 Squadron, so within three weeks, we were meeting up in Wellingborough, and we went to Sywell where Percy Caruthers had been trained as a pilot, we always went back there, to the Aviator, a big hotel, and for twenty years we went to those things and when Percy Caruthers was feeling, he’s going to pack up soon, I became the vice chairman because nobody else would take it on, and shortly afterwards, Percy died, and so we went to our first meeting, and the first job I did was to say, I’m not the right bloke to be this thing, I want somebody who really wants to be it, we found another bloke, he came the chairman and he continued, and it went on, you know, he did well, he did well, it didn’t last too many years because the people were dying off, and so, and because 10 Squadron kept going
[loud aircraft noise]
RT: And, Freda and I went to 10 Squadron’s hundredth anniversary this year, we won’t go again [unclear and inaudible words]
AM: How many of the original [inaudible] war veterans were there?
RT: There were one or two including, including ground crew
AM: Right
RT: But nobody that we knew, not one of the people that we used to see year in and year out, and so on, because 10 Squadron is still flying and because they’re still flying, they’ve still got old boys who were youngsters compared to us
AM: Yeah, they were old boys but not as old as you
RT: And, some of their sons and daughters are now, you know, they had to ballot to see who could go
AM: Right
RT: Freda and I, and the pilot’s widow wanted to go and we all got tickets, and we went and stayed in Burford, we did, all the years we used to go there, we used to stay in a pub in a little village called Broadwell, which had five bedrooms, and there were five of us with our ladies
AM: Brilliant
RT: And, for years, and then this publican retired himself, and the people buying it didn’t keep it open as a pub, they shut it down for two years then opened it up as a Swiss restaurant and it failed, so it’s probably derelict now, the house, we are still in touch with the publican who lives down in Devon, you know, et cetera. But that is the story
AM: Okay
RT: As far as the war goes, you know
AM: Wonderful
RT: But the, as I say, the big story is the twenty years that we met after retirement
AM: And enjoyed
RT: Twice a year
AM: Looked back and
RT: And we always went to the reunions and we always stayed another couple of days and we, ah
AM: [Laughs]
RT: And it’s amazing that the things that they, the pilot Dibben and the navigator, the navigator eventually became a publican
AM: Right
RT: And his pub was ever so close to Dibben’s house, so every Friday night, Dibben and the publican told all their audience, related the war
AM: Open the hangar doors [inaudible]
RT: And when Louis and Bob and I joined them, we had to correct all their stories
[laughter]
RT: Yeah
AM: That was wonderful, that was wonderful, I’m going to switch off
RT: Yeah
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ron Tomlin
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-18
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ATomlinR150818, PTomlinR1503
Conforms To
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Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Ron Tomlin grew up in Birmingham and was an apprentice carpenter before working in a munitions factory. He volunteered for the Air Force at 18, and after training, flew operations as a bomb aimer with 10 Squadron. His aircraft was forced to ditch in the English Channel and he became a prisoner of war. He discusses the conditions he endured before he was liberated. He became a draughtsman after the war and attended 10 Squadron reunions after his retirement.
Contributor
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Cathie Hewitt
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Lithuania
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Yorkshire
Lithuania--Šilutė
Format
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01:08:31 audio recording
10 Squadron
aircrew
animal
bomb aimer
bombing
crash
ditching
Dulag Luft
Halifax
prisoner of war
RAF Melbourne
sanitation
shot down
Stalag Luft 6
the long march
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/652/8923/PWadeR1503.2.jpg
0b506137cd4da312b391a18185ae0198
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/652/8923/AWadeR150726.1.mp3
95701c1624fa69e8a17fb1a5fdcce23c
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wade, Ron
R Wade
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wade
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Ron Wade (b. 1917, Royal Air Force) and three photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 58 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Okay, so this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moody, and the interviewee is Ron Wade, and the interview is taking place at Mr Wade’s home in, near Cheltenham at Bishops Cleve on the 26th July 2015. So, Ron, if you just may be start off with just a little bit about your background, about your school days and what your parents did? Off you go.
RW: All right now, it’s switched off
AM: [Laughs]. Okay, so off you go Ron.
RW: Right. What do you want first?
AM: Well just tell me a little bit about your, what your parents did, and school days, where you were born, just a little bit of background about you.
RW: Yes, right, I was, you’ve got the date I was born.
AM: I have.
RW: And um, my parents, I was one of four children, I had two sisters and a brother. Unfortunately my brother was killed during the war, not on operations, but he, after I was shot down, he was working for the gas company and he would have been, um, he needn’t have joined, let’s put it that way, but er, because I was missing believed killed for six months and he said, ‘they’ve got Ron, I’m going to take his place’, and he joined the RAF. He was coming home on his birthday, 1943, on a motorcycle, and I was the motorcyclist in the family and taking risks a place, he hit a lorry and was killed outright, and so my parents had a rough time because I was, they thought I was, I was injured they didn’t know how badly and so um, they had a rough time.
AM: They must have done, yeah. What did your parents do Ron?
RW: My father was, they had a grocery shop at the time, but before the war my father was a Master Grocer and he was made redundant by the person he worked for it as a, I was born. Let’s start off where I was born. I was born in Stoke-on-Trent and Longton was the name of the one of the six towns, not five towns, they forgot Fenton, and so, um my, that was my father, he was a Master Grocer and those days, when he was younger, to be a Master Grocer was quite a trade. And so um, he, my mother worked in the Potteries in Longton where most of the china was produced and Ainsley and all the top china work, and she was a Paintress, a freehand Paintress, and er, the, also my sister, one of my sisters was also a paint, a freehand Paintress on pottery.
AM: Where did you go to school?
RW: I went to school at Woodhouse, it was called Woodhouse and er, an Elementary School. I wasn’t very good [laughs] at maths but I enjoyed school, but when came the age of fourteen, in those days you had to pay to go to Grammar School. We couldn’t afford that, so at the age of fourteen I was kicked out and I left, and so um, I wandered around trying to get a job. If you think, this was in the thirties and a lot of unemployment and so I was told to go and get a job. So I got a job in a factory at Longton and it was a bit rough because I had to, as a warehouse boy, I was paid five shillings a week and one of my jobs was to scrub the floors, light a fire under a heater in the factory so they could bring their food and put it on the top to heat it up for lunch. If I was late getting all that done, I was in dead trouble [laughs], but scrubbing the floors, it was so the one floor from downstairs, the ovens, we had two big ovens, one gloss and one biscuit, that we called biscuit ovens, [coughs] and then after a while the former warehouse boy he er, he worked in the moulding, he became a moulder in the moulding shop, and he said, ‘have they got on to you yet about moving from here?’ and at that time, I was scrubbing the floors with a scrubbing brush, cold water, down the steps, all wood, wooden steps, cleaning the steps going down there [laughs]. And so and er, then the crunch came when they said ‘right, pack it in, you go downstairs and help unloading from the ovens’ and what happened, it was, they’d be firing and then they used to open up after the firing, take all the bricks away from the entrance and then for twelve hours it would be cooling off. And then they got me with the others, the people unloading right from the top of the ladders and they brought it down and it was still very, very hot ware and then they got me with the others, carrying ware like dinner plates, [laughs], carrying from the oven. Up the stairs, two flights of stairs, along the corridor, which I had to clean [laughs] and into the warehouse, where the women were and they unloaded from the baskets. And one day, I was going up with a basket full of cups and saucers, and I used to carry them on my shoulder, basket on my shoulder and one hand on my hip, going up the same flight of stairs and I caught a water pipe that was sticking out from the stairs, just caught the basket and I had a choice. Shall I go down with the basket [laughs] or try and retrieve what I could, but I decided to let the basket go [laughs] and save myself.
AM: Save yourself.
RW: And there the ugly manager, who was one of the bosses sons stood at the bottom, with his hands on his hips and he saw, he saw all the ware down there, all smashed, and he said, ‘I’ll stop that out of your wages’ [laughs].
AM: And did they?
RW: No, no, they’d have been forever [laughs].
AM: I was going to say wages probably wouldn’t have been enough, would they?
RW: No [laughs] so that was that.
AM: So that was your introduction to work.
RW: My introduction to work.
AM: What about the RAF, how did you come to join the RAF?
RW: The RAF yes - what happened there?
AM: What made you want to join?
RW: From there, I went, I had several other jobs you know, trying to make a living in the 1930’s, wasn’t easy, and I walked around for miles getting jobs for five shillings a week. And then I was always interested in the RAF and I wanted to fly and so I went to join up when the war started and er, they said, ‘no, no’. I said ‘I want to be a pilot’, because my uncle had been a pilot and been killed, and um, but I always, right from a tiny child, wanted to fly, I wanted to be a pilot, and so they said ‘no, we have enough pilots’, and um, my maths wouldn’t have been good enough anyway.
AM: This was right at the beginning of the war, 1939?
RW: Oh yes, the beginning of the war, when the war started.
AM: So you would be twenty two?
RW: Twenty two, that’s right and I had been married. I made the mistake of getting married, and er, anyway I had a daughter by that marriage and she is now ninety seven, eighty seven, sorry, and amazingly enough, she visits me, she stills lives near Stoke-on-Trent.
AM: Yes, excellent.
RW: And she comes now and then to visit. I, then, that’s right, oh they said, ‘if you want to go into aircrew, if you want to fly, we can offer you the um’, what shall I say, oh yes, ‘offer you the way you can get into aircrew and you can be the wireless operator, and then from wireless operator, you would be an air gunner. That’s the only thing we can offer you if you want to fly’, and so this is what happened. I joined up, I was called up and I offered my services then, and I was called up in January 1940 and I did my ITW in Morecambe, sent to Morecambe, and that was quite an experience, because we all walked down the street in Morecambe and they said, ‘you eight in that house, you eight in the next house’, and so this went on and as we were allocated this one house and the dear lady, who was the boss of the house, she was coming downstairs and we were just coming into the house, into the hall and she said, ‘I didn’t want you here, I’ve had enough with guests through the summer’, [laughs] and so that was our introduction to this place. She wouldn’t let us use the lounge, we had a little room at the back and then they had a kitchen, where we were allowed in, but not the lounge [laughs], and I wasn’t very popular with her because I didn’t like her attitude, and she said we had to be in at ten o’clock at night and so one of us used to stay around, say like if we went to a dance, you see, and so this is what we did and er, we made it enjoyable. I think the pranks we got up to such as I cut out a skull and crossbones and put it in the light that it shone, the light shone through the skull and crossbones [laughs]. They had um, a, a bit of a showcase in there and I saw er, a cup in there, I thought, the old man, poor devil, he was really under the thumb with the old girl, and I saw a cup in there, an inscribed cup and I thought, marvellous, he must have been a runner or something like that, and so when I examined the cup, fortunately the door wasn’t locked on the showcase, and I was disgusted to see that it was for mineral waters [laughs]. The cup was given for being very good with his mineral waters, and so what happened there was, I filled it with cold tea [laughs]and I wasn’t very popular at all.
AM: No.
RW: We were allowed to go upstairs to our rooms, she complained about, about the rifles, we all had our the Enfield rifles.
AM: Because you were square bashing?
RW: That’s right, yes, up and down the streets, and so um, she complained because we put our rifles in the umbrella stand in the hall, so she said, ‘no, they must go upstairs and under your beds’, so fair enough, this is what we did. But at ten o’clock in the mornings, we had to get up early, but at ten o’clock we had a tea break and so we all, the whistle went and we all had to fall outside in the street and er, the old boy had to make the tea, you see. By the time he’d made the tea for the eight of us, the whistle went again [laughs] so we had to form up outside again, and er, also the rifles had to keep going upstairs under the beds [laughs], so by the time we had done all these things, then we were going to be late on parade so that’s fair enough we managed it.
AM: Oh good.
RW: Yes, and then we were eventually, we were called by the CO, we had to go, we were called into the CO’s Office in Morecambe and – left, right, left ,right, halt - and er, we stood, the eight of us there, and we stood in front of the CO, and he had his bits of paper on his desk and he said ‘which one of you is Wade?’, so - left, right, left, right, halt - ‘Right, I’ve had complaints from your landlady’, and er, he read out all these different things that I had done in the house. And then I tried to explain, I said ‘I’m guilty of what she said, but it’s very difficult to go up and down the stairs in our boots and not make a noise’, that was one thing that she went on about, and the other thing was that she had to take up the stair carpet and so we were making more noise going up and down the stairs and this went on for a while, but the CO, ‘well, you won’t be here for very much longer’, which we weren’t fortunately, but next door they had a marvellous time, the eight in there, and they were allowed into the lounge and they had a piano, and the pianist there, I’m trying to think of his name - Ronnie, Ronnie, but he played at the BBC and er, his friend ran the Squadronaires.
AM: Right.
RW: I forget his name now, they were a nice couple of guys, and they also were able to fraternise with the two daughters [laughs] so they were unhappy to leave Morecambe [laughs]. Anyway we went from Morecambe up to um, to do the wireless course, wireless operators and er, so as I say I joined in January and when I went to Swanton Morley, no, not Swanton Morley, I’m trying to think of the name of the place we went to now.
AM: No, never mind
RW: It’ll come, and um, that’s right, and so I started a course there as a wireless operator and er, I did quite a few months there, doing Morse. Very difficult, very difficult and I was very happy to leave there [laughs].
AM: Did you pass?
RW: I passed, yes, we had to, and from there I was interviewed, now I was hoping they were putting me onto a pilots course [coughs] and I was interviewed by a group, and they were ex pilots from the First World War and um, as I sat there they were asking questions, ‘why did I want to fly?’ and I said ‘I’ve always wanted to fly since, I, since being very small’ and so er, I thought I am going to get my course as a pilot. But the one question one of these old boys threw at me was, ‘what would your feelings or attitude be, if you fired at a German and you saw his face disintegrate due to your bullets?’ I said ‘bloody good show, that’s what I joined for’ and so [laughs], and they all looked at me, you know, ‘who’s this crazy guy we’ve got here’ [laughs] and so that went on, and I thought, oh no, they’re going to put me on a pilots course. ‘No’, they said, ‘no, you will be an air gunner’. So I went down to South Wales and did an air gunner’s course there and this is just about the end of the Battle of Britain, and er, we were being bombed and shot up every day and night there, and er, and I was chased down the runway one day by a Junkers 88 and I managed [laughs], the bullets were going all around me and I got behind a sand bin and they came through the sand, the bullets from this 88 and then the hut, the hut we were in the, the normal RAF Huts.
AM: Nissen Huts.
RW: Yes, that’s right, all wood, and er, one day they bombed and destroyed the one each side of ours then we had to lie down flat as they strafed us, the bullet holes through the hut, through the wood.
AM: And this was at training camp in South Wales?
RW: In South Wales, yes, day and night. We weren’t allowed, as air crew, we weren’t allowed to sleep in the huts so we had to go out in the field and within tents and sleep outside, and there again, I was a bit crazy and I slept behind the beds. I put my mattress down there and then I thought ‘what’s it going to be?’ and my DRO’s, one of our men, was killed because he didn’t get in the tents, so I was turfed out of there and I had to go into a tent and er, that was the end of the Battle of Britain.
AM: Of the Battle of Britain.
RW: Yes.
AM: What was the training like Ron, the air gunner training?
RW: Oh it was intense, very intense and we had, had er, we had the um, Fairey Battles, Whitley’s 1’s and 3’s which were, they were pretty awful things this is why they had, and the Whitley 5’s we finished up on, they were also rubbish, [laughs] sorry to say. And um, as I said training had to be intense because we were the only ones carrying the war to the Germans, Bomber Command, and so from there other things happened you know, I was lucky to get away with we were, because they were bombing night and day.
AM: Because of the bombing?
RW: And so er, from there I went to OTU at Abingdon.
AM: Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
RW: That’s right, Abingdon, and er, that was very intense. We had very few hours off and because we were needed, and so from there a very good friend of mine, he was a pilot doing his training too and we were formed up into fives.
AM: So it was five, there were five of you in your group?
RW: Five in a group.
AM: This was for a Whitley?
RW: Whitley 5, yes, and er, Mac was his name, MacGregor Cheers and I’ve got it in my book, and he didn’t want to be a pilot, he wasn’t happy training as a pilot, poor Mac. There was me, I wanted to be a pilot and he would have rather, rather been an air gunner but it didn’t work out that way.
AM: How did you get together as a crew?
RW: Oh there we er, we had, later on when we got to the squadron, I moved on to 58 Squadron er, from training and um, this, our CO there, he said ‘I’ve been having too many complaints from you, from all air crew about the Whitley’, and we said ‘we’d rather be on the Wimpeys’, you know the Wimpey?
AM: I don’t know the Wimpey.
RW: Yes, the Wimpey was the one, I’m trying to think of it now, the Wimpey. We were on the Whitleys, I was flying on the Whitleys, this was the, this will probably tell you in the book there [looks through the book].
AM: I can’t find it, never mind it doesn’t matter.
RW: Anyway, we’ll find it yes. It’s my age [laughs].
AM: You’re allowed [laughs].
RW: And so we said we’d rather be on different aircraft, we didn’t like Whitleys, and he said, ‘anymore complaints and you’ll be off flying, you’ll be grounded’, he said ‘you fly in this and it’s a very good aircraft and you have to fly it’.
AM: Where was 58 Squadron based then, at that point?
RW: We were at Linton on Ouse.
AM: Okay.
RW: And that is where we had to form up and choose the crew, choose the fives, and er, it was very good, very good. And, oh yes, when I arrived there, our flight commander came through the hangar, I came from one door and he came through the other door, flight lieutenant, and um, he said ‘my god, we are glad to see you’, he said, ‘we had a rough night on Berlin last night and we had one aircraft left in our flight’. So he said, ‘come and meet the lads’, so off I went in the crew room and er, I met the lads and er, he said ‘right, this is Ron, Ron Wade, and er, he wants a cup of coffee. What do you want, tea or coffee? Who’s on making coffee?’, ‘Oh, I did it yesterday’, ‘now make him a cuppa, whatever he wants’, so I met the lads that way. But er, how we formed up in a crew we went into flying control and into the room there and all milling around meeting each other, formally or informally and this is where we formed up, and er, I was very lucky guy. I had a lucky war really because my original crew, I was taken off, we did two trips, two trips, I forget where it was now, but they said, ‘right that’s me softened up so you are being replaced by this Graham (I think his name was), Graham, because he ditched in the sea and he has been on leave for a couple of months, but he will be taking your place’, then last heard of, they came down in the sea, so this Graham had two trips, two operations both into the sea and the second time they weren’t recovered, so I was very lucky there, but I said to Amy, ‘how must his parents have felt?’
AM: Yes
RW: Because I think of him now, taking my place I had through good luck and he had the bad luck. My folks had the bad luck with my brother being killed and me being [unclear] after six months they thought I’d been killed.
AM: So just wheeling back a bit.
RW: Yes.
AM: So you didn’t, you were taken off that crew and then, presumably, put with another crew?
RW: Yes
AM: And did some more operations?
RW: Yes, with another crew, and then I was waiting to get on another crew and er, it was rather boring because I was sweeping, I was cleaning the snooker table and I got very good at snooker, and I was waiting and then I had several attempts to go on ops but something happened every time. And then on a Whitley 5, they um, they had a lot of what you call exacter trouble. If they snatched too hard then it would go fully fine and we would have to turn back and so er, this happened, different things happened and I didn’t get, because I had, I just, oh yes, what happened, from the trip before, it had been a bit hairy, got a few holes in it and er, I had a premonition from that, that as we were coming into land, I saw the runway and I thought I won’t see this again, I’m going to be killed. Strange feeling, it was a very, very, it, it and I knew I was going to be killed, strangely enough and I wanted to get this trip over, the next trip over, all my crew who were going to be my crew were on leave and I should have waited to come back but this is on January, January 8th I think, I think it’s in there, the book. Oh yes, my roommate, I won’t mention his name, but he came back from leave and he said that he was tired, he knew what the trip was going to be, it was a tough one, Konigsburg, and er, the CO said, ‘there are two fighter areas’, so he said, ‘keep North and be very wary because of the fighters’, and I knew that it was going to be tough because of so many things going on there. And so er, I volunteered for this, and he said that he was tired so the sawbones gave him a pill and told him to go to bed, so I volunteered, do you want to go to bed because always a thing come back, leave, he had a tough one, crew didn’t make it, we were losing so many in those days. And so off with his name, on with mine, just the [unclear] they wanted and er, I thought, I’m going to get it over with, and so off we went and this is when we were in Holland, North Holland, and then we had, they hit the port engine and we set on fire.
AM: Where? On the way to drop your bombs?
RW: Yes.
AM: On the way there.
RW: On the way there, yes, and er, we thought we were going to come down in the North Sea, we were going over the North Sea at the time, and January you didn’t live very long in the North Sea, and so we thought, that’s it, and all the rest of the crew were aged nineteen and I was the oldest.
AM: You were an old boy, twenty three?
RW: Twenty three, yes, and so um, the navigator said, ‘I don’t think we’ll make it, we are not going to make Holland’ and so the skipper said, ‘right I don’t know what you are going to do, but it’s no use coming down, we’ll have to go down into the sea and about five minutes that will be it because Whitley’s didn’t swim very well’ [laughs]. And so I was in the, I was flying as a rear gunner at the time, operating as a rear gunner, and by the way before that I had done a trip from um, the, when I was at OUT, I’d been, I was on a crew, going, dropping leaflets over Italy. We had a trip to Turin and it’s in the book there and dropping leaflets and we were attacked by two fighters and I told the pilot to do this um, manoeuvre to get away from them and um, then when we came up again, they fired at us and then I had the new Brownings, four of them, and they really did damage because I fired at them and then they turned and smoke poured from both of them and they retreated and went back. I didn’t know if they went down or not but they weren’t happy, and so that was an earlier.
AM: So that was Italy,
RW: And I was going to tell you.
AM: So now, now you’re on your way to Holland?
RW: That’s right on operations, I’d gone from there and I had a photograph taken by picture post in the turret, in the rear turret, showing off these new Brownings , and er, yes, so back to the squadron, on our way to Wilhelmshaven and then we were hit and I thought that’s it, this is my premonition coming because fire broke out and it was getting close, my job to get, we were given the order to bail out although if we wanted to over the sea, but by this time the navigator had informed us that we could make it, we just made it, North Holland, so we had been told to bail out. I had to get out of the rear turret somehow, we’d been losing height at quite a pace, so when I got out of the rear turret, because my parachute was in the fuselage, and so I had to open the rear doors of my turret, crawl out, then the order was to get my parachute and harness, ‘cos there’s no room in the turret for them, so my training was that I got these and then I had to get back into the turret with great difficultly, close the doors, turn ninety degrees and then go out backwards.
AM: Right
RW: But fortunately for me, as I was getting my parachute and harness and I put them on, the first wireless op came down the fuselage and he jettisoned the door, waved to me and the sparks and flames coming past the fuselage door, and he waved and jumped through this. Now I’m not getting back in that turret, I’ll never make it and so I was going after him and so I made for the door and, what happened next then, and, oh yes, I was about to jump and then out of the corner of my eye I saw the navigator coming down dragging his parachute and harness. He hadn’t put it on.
AM. Oh no.
RW: And so I couldn’t leave him, the plane was slipping like this – slipping, slipping, slipping - we lost a lot of altitude and we were getting pretty close, and so he couldn’t do anything because he was almost falling over every time the plane went. What had happened, the two pilots had gone from the door, from the front.
AM: So they’d bailed out?
RW: They’d bailed out, because he’d given orders for us to bail out by then, and as I say don’t forget that all the rest of the crew were nineteen, they very young. And so he went, that’s right, so I went back and zipped him up and then pushed him out, hoping that he’s there [laughs], then I went after him. Then I don’t remember anything else, apart from it had been snowing through the night, it was a very, very bad night and um, it was about eight o’clock and then I came down in this field and er, the place is called Anna Paulowna, a little hamlet, and the next morning um, a man going to work on the farm and er, he just saw me and I was covered in snow, and it had been deep snow through the night, and he found I was still ticking.
AM: So you were unconscious?
RW: I was unconscious because, what had happened, the Dutch people told me afterwards, that I had gone towards the plane, so we must have been pretty low when I bailed out. I was the last one out, and so that’s why I don’t remember anything, they said that they called to me to come away ‘cos I was making for the plane, so it wasn’t very far away, but as, what I remember when I bailed out, that I was hoping that the parachute would open [laughs].
AM: Quickly.
RW: Quickly, and the um, I wasn’t scared, strangely enough, I just wasn’t scared, and the only thing I could think of, I missed my bacon and eggs, because the only time we had bacon and eggs was when we came back from an operation, then I was calling swear words to the others ‘lucky bastards’ [laughs].
AM: No bacon and eggs.
RW: [Laughs] You’ll be having my bacon and eggs and that’s all I could think off [laughs]. I’d been looking forward to that, and then they called me to come away from the aircraft and so what had happened then, as the ammunition had been exploding, then I stopped one in the back of the head and so I’d been treated in hospital there and um -
AM: So the Dutch people found you?
RW: Yes
AM: And took you to hospital?
RW: No, oh no.
AM: Oh right.
RW: They called the Germans, because if they’d been found, they took me into the hamlet where they lived and then they called the Germans because if the Germans had come and found me first, we’d have all been shot. So the Germans took me away and then they took me into hospital because I’d stopped the bullet in the back of the head, the doctor said I was very fortunate because if it had been any deeper I would have been killed, which was my premonition. And if it had been over a little, I would have been blind and so what happened, I lost, I found out later, I lost the least of the senses that was smell and taste and I’ve never been able to smell and taste since. I can taste, I was tested for it when I came back home and I can taste sugar, salt, vinegar.
AM: So things that have a strong taste.
RW: That’s right yes, that’s all I can taste, so that was it.
AM: So you are in the hospital, you’ve been treated?
RW: Oh yes, I’d been treated.
AM: Then what happened?
RW: What had happened, I had an enema, do they call it? It was a hell of a mess [laughs] and then I was in this ward and er, I was, I remember being in this bed and looking up and there’s a fellow waving to me across the ward, and I thought, ‘who the hells that. I don’t know him’, and this went on for a whole day when he was waving and that was the navigator.
AM: Right
RW: And I didn’t recognise him and this went on and after a while it came, my memory came back again.
AM: So that’s two of you in the hospital?
RW: That was in the hospital. Oh yes and um, when I got talking to the navigator again, he said, ‘careful’, because I was well known for my dirty jokes at times [laughs], anyway different thing he said, ‘be very careful what you say because that one there, is a Nazi’. The only time they listened to the radio was when Hitler was making a speech so he said, ‘very, very careful what you say’. He used to go to the cupboard there, get this radio out, switch it on when Hitler finished speaking, disconnect, back in there, so he said, ‘be very careful’ [laughs], and from there I went in an ambulance, that’s right. They took me to an old camp, the French, French and Belgians in there and um, I’d asked one Frenchman there, he spoke English, if he could get me some information because we were right next to an airfield and they were working on the airfield, and I said, ‘can you get me an old coat to wear and er, then I can make my way with you to this airfield’. Somehow I was going to, although I was a wireless op, I knew the controls and I was going to try and steal a plane and get back home.
AM: This is in the first camp after the hospital?
RW: In the first camp, yes, and er, it was a rough old camp. I remember the blanket I had was 1917, and er, it was rough, and er, and I’ll never forget having, oh yes, they said, ‘can’t you taste that?’ I said, ‘why it’s all right’. I was eating this stuff, sauerkraut [laughs], rough sauerkraut, they were dished up with, I said, ‘no’ [laughs]. Anyway just after that, next day, two great big Nazi’s came in, ‘wait’, so this Frenchman must have, must have told them what I was up to because they took me and after seeing films of people being taken for a ride, I went in this Opel I think, I think the car was an Opel, it was an Opel, and the one as big as Gary. I had one each side of me, I was down middle of them, and off we went and er, I was taken down to the station, down near the station, into the large, like a town hall - left, right, left, right - up in front [laughs], not so nicer man, this CO, and he said, ‘right, this and that’ [unclear] it was a big desk, I’ll never forget and he said, ‘this man here has had his orders, and he is going to take you on the train to Frankfurt and he’s been warned and told that if you try to escape, or do anything, he will shoot you dead’.
AM: He spoke to you in English?
RW: Oh yes, oh yes in English, and so um, I was, people were trying to attack me on the way up, up to this town hall.
AM: Civilians?
RW: And one man came with a knife and the guard had to fend him off and others because they’d had an air raid there, you see, and so off I went, and went up to this town hall and that’s when he had his orders, anyway I was taken back down to the railway station.
AM: What town was this Ron?
RW: This was in Cologne.
AM: You were in Cologne by then.
RW: Yes, and I was driven right the way down there, and so I thought, oh yes. When I was in the waiting room and other er, Germans were in there, you see, drinking coffee, suppose that’s coffee and things like that, nothing was offered to me [laughs] and so then I said oh, ‘stand up’, and the door opened, as this door opened a major (unclear) he came in.
AM: An English, a German?
RW: No a German, a German major, he came in and they all gave the Nazi salute, ‘Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler’, yes, I came out I said, ‘Heil Churchill’, oh, he was just turning to go and I said this, and he got his gun out his Mauser, his Mauser or whatever it was, and I thought, well you’ve done it this time [laughs], and then he said ‘English schweinhund’ (unclear) off he went. I got away with that one [laughs], especially as I had just had this
AM: The warning?
RW: Warning yes, and um, and that was that and so when the train came, we went up to Frankfurt and um, he was watching me like a hawk.
AM: Were you handcuffed to him or anything?
RW: No, no.
AM: There was nowhere to run to though is there?
RW: No, but all the way I was wondering how I was going to belt him and looking at the window, how strong is it because I was going to smash it with his rifle, you see.
AM: Right.
RW: And it was quite a journey, beautiful trip from Cologne, up to Frankfurt but that’s in my mind all the time, how am I going to get out of here and get rid of him [laughs], and then the chance didn’t come, didn’t come. His eyes were on me every step of the way, he was scared he would have been shot if I had escaped, and so we went to my first real prison camp that was up to the um, what they called, it wasn’t a Stalag, before the Stalag.
AM: Was it a Dulag, Ron?
RW: A Dulag, and once again this officer, German officer came in and I was in the cell there, and one very high window, and er, oh he said, ‘I speak English very well, I was educated in Oxford’, and er, he said, ‘you will find we will treat you very well now, but er, a few things to add’, and er, he said, ‘this form here’, he’d got a form with a red cross on the top, ‘so all you need do is answer a few questions, so there you are’, and he said, ‘first of all, do you smoke?’, and I smoked in those days, so he got a packet of Capstans and a box of Swans.
AM: Vesta.
RW: Vesta matches, put them on the top there and there I was, smoking away, ‘right then, first things, name, rank, number’, that’s all right, name, rank, and number, and so put those in, he said, ’good, then we will let your parents know or what have you, that you are alive and well and injured’, and so um, that’s all right. ‘Now these other things’, and I looked on this form, ‘what squadron, your CO, what was his name, and the airfield you took off from, what was the aircraft you were flying, note it down here’. ‘There we are and that’s all I can give you, name, rank and number’. He said, ‘surely you want your people to know, you want your parents to know you’re alive?’, ‘yes course I do and that’s what you have to do because that’s all I’m giving you, my name, rank and number’. Then he became a German, and he went red and he did a lot of words came out that weren’t English and he said, ‘then you’ll stay here until you do fill that in’, and [laughs], and he grabbed the matches and cigarettes and put them in his pocket, and so I was fortunate in as much as I had to be taken up to the hospital to get my bullet hole seen to [laughs] and so I got away with that. Next cell he, whoever it was, had had a rough time, I heard him groaning and yelling and I think they beat him up because he wouldn’t answer and I refused too. The next morning they had taken my uniform away through the night, they’d taken it, I had to strip it off and they took it all away. The next morning, I saw they knew where the map was in the shoulder, then they’d taken the button off.
AM: So all the stuff that was to help you to escape?
RW: That’s right, they knew where it was, they’d taken it and the needle, the compass needle had gone out of the button [laughs] so then you weren’t full of tricks, and so that was Dulag, and from there, I was taken, I went to, yes, Stalag Luft 1, yes, I was taken there next.
AM: Were you still being taken on your own or were you with other prisoners by then?
RW: No I went in, the other prisoners I met there in Dulag and um, you know it was great to meet them and speak English, it was great and they’d give tips and that. I went to Stalag Luft 1 and um, then we stood at the gate welcoming the boys coming in and it was a sandy soil and we got them to throw the lighters and things in there, because the guards were trying to keep us back, you see, and as we went towards the gate, we did this at every camp we went to, throw your things in, throw them in, throw them in, because they had been stripped of things mostly and so what they did, pick them up and give them back to him and then, and then when we couldn’t get down to things, we just trod them in.
AM: Trod them into the ground?
RW: Into the ground as they forced us back, because them bleeders were very sharp [laughs].
AM: So you could go back for them later?
RW: Yes that’s it, and especially went from Stalag Luft 1 and then did about eighteen months there and then we were moved to Stalag Luft 3 and er -
AM: So what year are we now, 41 probably?
RW: My god, yes.
AM: So you were shot down early 41.
RW: January 41 yes.
AM: And then you were in hospital and eighteen months.
RW: I wasn’t in the hospital for eighteen months.
AM: No, no, the hospital and then you were in Stalag Luft 1 for eighteen months.
RW: That’s right.
AM: So we are now?
RW: Now in Stalag Luft 3.
AM: Probably early 43?
RW: About 43.
AM: By this time.
RW: And we did, and went to this new camp, er, we hadn’t heard of before.
AM: How did they move you, on trains?
RW: Yes, and er, yes, on cattle trucks, they weren’t very clean. There’s wire both sides of the entrance of the cattle truck and we were put in twenty each side, standing up, you couldn’t sit down, we were packed in. When you think half a cattle truck, and so this is how we moved, sometimes we had better accommodation but this new camp we went to was Stalag Luft 3, everything is new there, all the huts were new and so we started a different life.
AM: Were you the first intake into Stalag Luft 3?
RW: We were yes, from Stalag Luft 1 into Stalag Luft 3, and then, after that, they started to bring the RAF prisoners from other camps into Stalag Luft 3, and er, they said, ‘you’ll never escape from here, we’ve learnt too many lessons’, but we did, the lot, a lot of people said they tried, escaped from there and they probably tried but they didn’t succeed and it was difficult, and then all the different things, books had been written by prisoners [laughs] and things, no, it was very difficult. I tried once and out of the corner of our hut, I got down and one man from Cheltenham said, ‘you’ll get us all shot, you know’ because I dug through the floor and dug down and I could see where workmen had been, electricians or something yes, been working outside and there was a trench near the camp, near the um, wire and so I got down there and then got out there in the early hours of the morning. It was dark and er, I thought I can get under the wire, get under there, escape, fair enough, so I tried this and then I heard a guard approaching with his dog. Dogs, they were more like wolves, and he had got this one and I heard him coming along and so I got out of there, swiftly went up the road, oh yes, and I had an experience, I ran between two huts and I didn’t see wire stretching from one hut to the other and I ran into it, and it got me in the mouth, took me off my feet and I was strung up and the wire went into my mouth and forced, forced my teeth out. I lost seven teeth, and I landed on my back and then there was the guard and the dog, and he was afraid of that dog as I was [laughs], they weren’t trained to be friendly and so I was put into the cooler from there.
AM: What was that like?
RW: Rough. I had water to drink, bread, well when they say bread, black bread, just bread and er, I was in there for over a week.
AM: On your own?
RW: Oh yes, yes, oh yes.
AM: And no teeth.
RW: No teeth, they’d come out, I have no teeth now. I tell people that um, if I’ll say I had my teeth out, all paid for [laughs]. But um, all the time we were trying to, if we had any ideas about escaping, we had they had to go to this Massey who was the -
AM: What was the name sorry, Ron?
RW: Massey, Group Captain Massey, and you had to give your ideas to him for the escape committee, but something we noticed when we first went into Stalag Luft 3, that one part where the fence was, they hadn’t built any German huts or anything there, it hadn’t been finished. And so John Shaw, my good friend, he noticed this first and he said, ‘we’re gonna go try that’, he said, ‘we go first, the four of us’, I forget the other one and he said, ‘I go first because I noticed it first’. I said, ‘okay, then I’ll go, you get away now, I’ll go follow on’.
AM: How were you going to get out, were you going to tunnel under?
RW: Tunnel under there because they hadn’t built anything that side, so this is what we are going to do, and so you’ve got to appreciate, so John decided to go. What happened, bang, bang, and I have a photograph I’ll show you, with John, and shown in his coffin, he was shot right through the heart, so if people thought that these guards were asleep in the huts, no, and they were crack shots, they got him right through the heart, poor John.
AM: So the other three of you didn’t go?
RW: No, we’d been discovered that was it.
AM: Did you know the people who were involved in the great escape?
RW: No.
AM: No.
RW: No, they were mainly officers. You see what happened, we started off these tunnels under the cooking, took that away and then got all that (unclear) and then dug down to do the tunnels, but then again, we said this would happen, the officers took over, we started it as sergeants and then they said, ‘no, we are going to take over’, and then we were moved eventually to Heydekrug.
AM: To?
RW: Heydekrug.
AM: Which is?
RW: Heydekrug.
AM: Which is another camp?
RW: Which is another camp, yes, so we’d done a lot of work. I was, I helped out with moving the earth wearing these things there, but the soil, the soil we brought up from below, it was a different colour, so we had to take this earth from down below, walk around, walk around and distribute it and dig it in as we were moving, because they were watching us all the time.
AM: These are from the tunnels you dug?
RW: That’s right, yes [laughs], and we were getting rid of the earth, tons of earth, you know. It’s boring.
AM: Well yes, what else did you do in camp?
RW: Oh all kinds of things, apart from trying to escape [laughs], and er, we wrote shows. We did this, you see, and Les Knowle became a very good friend of mine and he was a pianist before the war, before he joined up and he, a professional pianist, was very good too.
AM: Was he the one next door to you in Morecambe or a different pianist?
RW: No, no, it was a different one.
AM: A different one.
RW: No, Les Knowle, he was a different one. This one I’m trying to think of his name, Ron, I forget now, but he went on to the BBC and worked from there and he was on the RAF Band.
AM: Yes.
RW: And then he became well known.
[Interruption]
AM: I’m just going to pause for a moment.
RW: Have you anywhere else.
AM: No, no, so we’ve got shows, what about, did you do any education they had?
RW: Oh yes, yes, and um, I’ve a pencil, and I was studying maths actually and I was going to do a course on maths and it was difficult because it was very, very cold, very cold, up in Lithuania, this was and getting close to Russia and so I was studying and then trying to write out holding the pencil.
AM: So literally holding it with whole of your hand?
RW: That’s right.
AM: Trying to write.
RW: Trying to write, it wasn’t easy, but it was quite good and then I studied, I was studying, was architect because I had been in the building trade, you see. I was taken away from the factory when I was fourteen.
AM: When you were fourteen yes.
RW: By my brother-in-law, who was, um, he’d come to the factory, fortunately before they absolutely killed me [laughs], and he said, ‘you, out’ and he took me away and made me an apprenticeship joiner.
AM: So you were a joiner. Going back to the camp in Lithuania.
RW: Oh Yes.
AM: So what happened then as, what did you know about what was happening in the war?
RW: We had clever people as sergeants, not all officers then. We had people from all walks of life as sergeants.
AM: As sergeants yes.
RW: And er, we had entertainers from the stage, and I wrote um, with Les Knowle, he wrote the music and I wrote the words for shows on the stage and I’ll show you a picture of him, but I don’t know if you have ever heard of Roy Dotrice?
AM: Yes
RW: You have? Well Roy, I’ll show you a picture.
AM: His daughter was an actress, Michelle.
RW: That’s right, he had two daughters, one lives in the States, Michelle, I was watching her the other night.
AM: And was he in the prison camp with you?
RW: Yes, yes, and then I never thought that he would, because he was very young, he was born in Jersey and he changed his age. He was very much younger than me then and he came over to the mainland and joined the RAF.
AM: What happened at the end of the war, how did you find out that the war was ending and what happened?
RW: Oh yes, now then, we had our radios that were built out of things, things we’d stolen from the Germans. I remember walking behind one man carrying, carrying a box and stealing something out of there and when they, they used to um, we used to be woken up in the early hours of the morning by the Nazis. They used to come in and get us out of bed, tear the place apart, and never put it back again, and all things taken out and then we would be walking around the compound from the early morning to late at night while these Nazis were searching and they, yes, and they used to go away with things. Oh yes, we used to steal their hats and their gloves and they weren’t very happy [laughs], and also if anyone escaped, they used to have what we called a sheep count, and they’d form up the barriers so we used to have to go through, and they’d check and check the numbers, you see, and we used to go through and then we used to go back round, and come in again, in the end they had more prisoners than they wanted [laughs], and that was one gag we got up to, and then some had contact at home. You’ve possibly seen it in the letters they used a code in a letter which the Germans couldn’t spot.
AM: To say where they were?
RW: That’s right, all kinds of things.
AM: So how did you find out that the war was coming to an end? From the radios?
RW: From the radios we had, yes. We had certain guys who were very clever, clever electricians among us, all kinds of things they used to do, where if a German came in the front about or something, a buzzer would ring at the far end telling whoever was doing something, escape committee at the other end.
AM: To stop them?
RW: Then bury the stuff again.
AM: Gosh.
RW: And then all things like that and um, the, yes, parts for the radios be stolen from the Germans [laughs] and they would build a main radio that one clever man used to operate. I forget the names now and um, they used to come around the huts and give us the, the news we used to get daily news, we knew exactly what was happening back home, and e,r when the invasion came, the first time, the Germans were gloating when they said, ‘that was your invasion’, when so many Canadians were killed, remember, my minds going.
AM: On the beaches at, yes.
RW: Yes, where so many were killed, and the Germans thought that was our invasion. They said, ‘you’ve had your invasion, you’ll be here’, I was told that I would be there for the rest of my life, they used to enjoy telling us this, that we would be there and we will be rebuilding Germany.
AM: Because they would win.
RW: That’s right.
AM: Sadly for them but thankfully for us.
RW: Oh, thankfully for us.
AM: They didn’t.
RW: But they loved telling us that we would be there forever.
AM: When it did all end? Were you involved in the long march?
RW: Oh yes.
AM: You were.
RW: That was the worst part of it.
AM: Gary’s making faces.
Gary: I’ll leave it.
RW: Okay. That was a tough one, the long march.
AM: How long were you on the march for, Ron?
RW: I can’t think now.
AM: Months, it was months, wasn’t it?
RW: Months, months, bad weather, bad weather, so many died, and then we were, we had no food and they’d been trying to get through to us and then this one Red Cross wagon appeared and he said, ‘this is the third load I’ve had. I’ve been shot at, and destroyed, then I have gone back and got another load’, and finally, well you know the story.
AM: Sadly.
RW: And some sights there, on that march, and one man, he was signalling with his coat in the meadow, this meadow where we were, shot up by the fighters and I saw him just cut in the air.
AM: Shot at by German fighters?
RW: No, by our fighters.
AM: By our fighters.
RW: Yes, they thought we were Germans.
AM: Right.
RW: And he was just cut in two, Roger. Next time I saw him, just his legs standing there, top half gone and they killed forty, fifty of us there, it was a rough one. Oh, and we were in twos, they delivered these Red Cross parcels, we shared one between two, and when we were shot at by Typhoons by the way, based locally and all the way through, we’d been shot at by Spitfires, and what have you, Hurricanes, they thought we were Germans. And on one occasion, we were walking, they made us walk at night because, so through the day, we had to sleep in barns with their animals, and the Germans, the German people used to give things to the guards but nothing to us, not like this country where there were prisoners, their prisoners there given food but we never got anything from the Germans. If we wanted a drink, we had to wait till we got to rivers, lakes, or something or get washed.
AM: So how did you get rescued in the end?
RW: Oh that is another story. The 10th Hussars. We were hearing reports our, our troops across the Rhine and how close they were getting and we were being marched away, we were going to be hostages and Hitler would have got rid of us eventually, we’d have been shot or what have you. We were heading for Norway somewhere and they were taking us as we were going to be hostages, but so many things happened we were shut up, barns were set on fire, men were there.
AM: With men in them?
RW: Yes.
AM: Yes. But the 10th Hussars were?
RW: The 10th Hussars caught up with us and oh, they were marvellous, they treated us like royalty. They set up trestles in this village in Ratzeburg in Lubeck, Ratzeburg, and er, this little village and it was in March, was it May?
AM: So May of 45?
RW: We went through Luneburg, where they signed the Armistice, and we went through there and then we came back through there when the signing had been done, and it was marvellous, so they set up tables there with food on, couldn’t eat it.
AM: I was going to say, could you eat it?
RW: No, no. One man died because he tried, he tried to eat, couldn’t. Then we came back from Lowenberg on Lancasters and I’ll never forget seeing white girls, posh ladies all made up, I thought they, I thought they were on the stage somewhere, heavy lipstick.
AM: Once you got back you mean?
RW: And this is when we, no, when the 10th Hussars. Oh yes, that’s another one, we had the, this major, English major. I said, ‘can I help?’ because I had had stomach trouble and couldn’t eat anything, so I felt this marvellous feeling.
AM: Freedom.
RW: Freedom, marvellous after four and a half years, freedom. And I’d stuck my neck out several times, one man, I bent down to pick up food or something, I don’t know what it was, peas somebody dropped on the road, and this guard, he came behind me, kicked me up the backside and I went over and I got up and turned round to gonna belt him, and the look on his face, and his Tommy gun was there waiting for it, just what he wanted. All they wanted, an excuse.
AM: To kill you?
RW: Yes and er -
AM: When you saw the Lancaster?
RW: Oh yes.
AM: You’d been in Whitleys, what did you think of the Lancaster?
RW: We saw the side of it really [laughs].
AM: Four engines.
RW: Four engines, yes, marvellous.
AM: So they brought you home in the Lanc.
RW: Yes, they landed at, forget now where it was, down South somewhere, and as we landed they opened the door and a lovely young WAAF came, and I had my box with some belongings in. This girl got it and I grabbed it back from her she said, ‘it’s all right you are home now’ [laughs] and er, she led me off and as I was talking to her, going up to the hangar, I said, ‘this is a holiday’, this is VE Day, you see. I said, ‘you’re on holiday, what are you doing here?’ She said ‘oh we volunteered, we were the lucky ones’. I couldn’t understand it ‘cos we were filthy and the first this they did - whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
AM: Shower?
RW: Not a shower.
AM: Water?
RW: No - debugged.
AM: Oh right, oh sorry, they sprayed you?
RW: That’s right, yes, before anybody could touch us [laughs] and then they had all this food out, I couldn’t eat anything, not a thing, and then from there we came up on the train to where we went, see that photograph, and we came up there, all there, all the records were up there. That was marvellous. Then one day we were taken over, over there, records and what have you, but I went home and that was a rough time because I found my wife, I had my daughter, was that much older, she was only two and a half when I went away, she was seven she didn’t know me, didn’t know me, didn’t want to know me. And er, then my wife had met me at the station, although I didn’t want to see her because I’d had reports and she wrote to me and didn’t want to know me ‘cos she’d met an American and she wanted to get married to him. And so um, that was my homecoming, didn’t want to know me. I‘d had a letter from her saying she wanted a divorce, which I wanted too after that, and then my folks had been trying to meet the train to tell me what she had been up to, what she’d become, well you can understand it, it had been a long time.
AM: Yes.
RW: But the way she did it, she dyed her hair, it was red, and er, I’d asked a friend in camp who came from Stoke, from near where I was, where I lived, if he could find out why, what’s happening because she didn’t write to me. I’d only one letter that I had and she wanted more money, it’s all she was interested in.
AM: So your pay while you were a prisoner of war goes to your wife, doesn’t it?
RW: That’s right, it went to her and then she wanted more money, and so I came back and went up and met my wife, as I say, I didn’t know anything what she had been doing, no one had told me and this friend in camp, I’d asked him to find out what was happening, why I hadn’t had any letters from my, my wife and er, he put it off all the while. I said, ‘have you heard from your wife?’, ‘no’. I didn’t know anything about it.
AM: He wouldn’t tell you?
RW: No, and so when I got back, it was my wife who knew, my wife. He said to me, he said, ‘Ron, I couldn’t tell you what I found out about her’.
AM: No.
RW: Couldn’t tell you. So I met her and she was all over me and I met all her sisters and her brothers because it’s difficult, very difficult because my folks had been trying to meet me off the train but she’s the one who had been told.
AM: She’s the one who’s entitled to know.
RW: That’s right, and she’d got the time of the train, she met me, all the other trains had been coming in my side had been.
AM: They all missed you?
RW: They’d all missed me, everyone.
AM: Oh dear.
RW: My homecoming and I felt like going back.
AM: You married again though. Amy.
RW: Yes.
AM: I’ve met Amy and she is lovely for the record.
RW: Yes, oh the best thing that ever happened to me.
AM: Wonderful. I’m going to switch off now, Ron.
RW: Yes okay.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ron Wade
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-26
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AWadeR150726, PWadeR1503
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:44:54 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
Description
An account of the resource
Ron was born in Stoke-on-Trent. He left school at fourteen and tells of his experiences working in a pottery factory doing odd jobs until he was called up. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1939 at the age of twenty-two. Ron trained as an air gunner at RAF Morecambe after initially wanting to be selected for pilot training. He completed his air gunner training in South Wales at the end of the Battle of Britain - he tells of being strafed by a Junkers 88 and the damage that was inflicted to the Nissen huts. Ron flew the Whitley, which he did not enjoy. He then went to an Operational Training Unit at RAF Abingdon before moving to 58 Squadron based at RAF Linton on Ouse. Ron tells of being forced to bale out in 1941 after his Whitley was attacked by two German fighters over the the Netherlands. He did not remember that much since ammunition was exploding and a bullet hit him in the back of the head, leaving him with memory, taste and smell impairment. Ron also tells of his first interrogation by a German officer and how his humour nearly causing trouble at the at Cologne railway station. He was transferred to Stalag Luft I and then to Stalag Luft III. Ron tried a few times to escape but was discovered every time - he also details the death of his close friend during one attempt. Ron was eventually transferred to Stalag Luft VI (Heydekrug, Lithuania) which was his last camp before the end of the war. However, with the end looming, Ron was then forced to go on the long march. He then tells of some of his memories of the event, including being strafed by British fighters. Ron was freed when the British Army 10th Hussars caught up with the group near Lubeck, and he tells the story of his homecoming in May 1945.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Lancashire
Netherlands
Poland
Germany
Lithuania
Poland--Żagań
Germany--Barth
Lithuania--Šilutė
Wales
Germany--Oberursel
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1945-05
58 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
animal
bale out
bombing
crewing up
Dulag Luft
escaping
Ju 88
Nissen hut
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Abingdon
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Morecambe
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 6
strafing
the long march
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1515/28684/MDryhurstHG1332214-160608-05.1.pdf
1930a80a69df4a40a02296ac8f736d1e
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
Dryhurst, Harold Gainsford
H G Dryhurst
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Dryhurst, HG
Description
An account of the resource
42 items. The collection concerns Harold Dryhurst (1923 - 1967, 1332214 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, letters, memoirs, documents, newspaper cuttings and photographs. He flew operations as a pilot with 103 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Glen Dryhurst and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Recollections – Warrant Officer BF Hughes (Service No NZ402870
RNZAF)
[black and white photograph – Bernie Hughes]
Shot down 28th August 1942. Halifax BB214 - Sgt H G Dryhurst
Date Target/Duty S/N Rank Initials Surname Age Hometown Service Missing POW
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 Sgt HG Dryhurst POW
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 Sgt JW Platt 25 Liverpool. RAF M
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 Sgt AA Roberts RAAF POW
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 P/O VMM Morrison 19 Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada. RCAF K
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 F/S JJ Carey 22 Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada. RCAF K
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 Sgt BF Hughes RNZAF POW
28/08/1942 Nuremberg BB214 Sgt JL MacLachlan 21 RAFVR K
This article was written by Bernie Hughes and sent to me by the Hughes
family some years ago. It was published in the RAF Elsham Wolds Assn
newsletter in 2007. In view of the renewed interest in the crew of BB214, I
have added this to the web site. Many thanks to the Hughes family for
submitting this interesting item. DF 26th June 2014
“Although the details of what happened within the plane the night we were
shot down are still vivid in my mind, I am rather vague about such things as
the target for that night and the number of aircraft taking part. I have a dim
[page break]
recollection that the target was Nuremburg, that the number of aircraft was
about 800 and that for the first time we were dropping bombs not pamphlets
on that city. I could be mixed up with the stories shared by us later in our
P.O.W. camp in Ober-Silesia of course, but it is my recollection that
Nuremburg was our target.
We had an uneventful flight across the Channel until we reached the French
coast where all hell broke loose. Very heavy anti-aircraft fire was
encountered and we had n extremely busy time trying to avoid being hit.
Eventually we had escaped it and pressed on towards our target. Along the
route we saw heavy outbursts of gunfire on both sides of us, but apart from
two or three awkward patches we seemed to be having a charmed run. I was
just congratulating myself that we were going to have a rather easy trip
when without warning there was a shattering sound of bullets cutting
through metal, an explosion, flames everywhere and much coloured smoke.
I was normally the tail-gunner in the crew but on changing over from
Wellington bombers to Halifax bombers, I asked to change over to midupper
turret for a few flights to see what a difference it made. Underneath
my feet in the fuselage, flares were exploding, there was a lot of smoke and
flames, and I could not see out of my turret. The plane was now in a dive
and I slid out of the turret to get my parachute and clip it on to my harness. I
have always been afraid of heights often “freezing” when climbing a ladder
to get on to a wall or roof, and I had sworn that I would always stay with my
plane as I felt I would be too terrified to bale out. However, when your life
is out on a limb you forget your fears quickly and your main aim is to do
anything to preserve yourself. I attempted firstly to get through to the front
of the plane to contact the skipper. Finding this impossible I then tried to
open the door into the rear-gunner’s turret but this seemed jammed and
would not budge. By this time I was praying, cursing, laughing and crying. I
tried to open the entrance hatch to make my escape, but it would not move. I
kicked, screamed and yelled and after what seemed an eternity I finally got
the hatch open. I turned onto my stomach to slide out into space and my
harness caught on a jagged piece of metal as I went through the hatch. I
found myself pressed against the fuselage like a fly on a wall while the
plane plunged towards earth. I consider only God got me off that hook.
When, after what I consider the worst few minutes in my life up till then, I
finally broke free from the plane. I found everything so peaceful that I
delayed pulling the handle of the ripcord. When I did it was to find a forest
of trees coming up to meet me. I landed in a wheat field completely
surrounded by trees. I could hear machine gun fire in the skies above me and
the barking of dogs through the trees. I rolled up my parachute, and together
with escape documents that I tried to tear up, hid them under a wheat stack
and proceeded through the trees on to a road, which sloped downwards. I
started to walk down this road when I was suddenly confronted by a youth
who peacefully but urgently tried to stop me and pointed in the
[page break]
opposite direction. He kept saying, what I figured out later when I had learnt some
basic German words, “Deutschen Zoldaten”. Later on when I had time to
think more clearly I figured out that he must have been the son of a foreign
worker forced to work in Germany, and that he was trying to warn me to
make off in the opposite direction. Later when I saw him in the crowd that
gathered as my captors brought me to headquarters I smiled at him but he
ignored me. I must have been in a state of shock after my escape from the
plane and parachute descent because I did so many stupid things and took no
evasive action.
I continued down the road, around a bend, and without warning two German
Air Force soldiers stepped from behind the trees and with rifles pointed at
my back, they shouted at me to halt. They marched me down to what
seemed to be part of a monastery building that presumably had been
commandeered for war purposes. I was told there was a night-fighter base
nearby and that the pilot who had shot us down was from that base.
My interrogation was conducted firmly but courteously. I gave my name,
number and rank but refused to provide further information. I was advised
by my interrogators that they knew my squadron, but merely wanted my to
verify the information. I said if they knew so much there was no need for me
to add anything further. I must add that their information was pretty accurate
but I refused to tell them so. Being still a little shocked might have helped
me. I was told that Harry Dryhurst, the Skipper, had his parachute caught in
the trees and had to unbuckle himself and drop into a canvas sheet held by
his captors. Also that Roberts, the Navigator, was captured and was being
interrogated, that the plane had dived into a lake and was on the bottom, and
that the bodies of the crew had been recovered. From the information they
gave me later I thought that only one body remained in the plane, John
Carey, the Canadian front-gunner.
After the interrogation we were taken by train the next day to a P.O.W. entry
camp. Here we were put in solitary cells. I spent about five or six days in
solitary. I think the idea was to break you down a little so they could obtain
further information from you.
I recall in the cell next to mine the window was open and I could hear the
inmate giving lots of information about life on his squadron and how
bomber crews reacted to raids, and how big the turnover was in aircrew. I
still think this was a plant because I was interrogated not long after that and
told I should co-operate more like many of my comrades. In case it was not
a plant I mention the matter to the senior British officer when we were
released into the main camp after solitary confinement. Solitary
confinement, though not harsh or cruel, was very unnerving to young men
coming straight from the free and easy camaraderie of an RAF squadron.
[page break]
Release into the main camp was like an unexpected holiday. Here one could
talk, read, play games, enjoy comradeship and have more satisfactory meals
(Red Cross parcels, not German black bread, watery vegetable soup and
ersatz coffee). Perhaps the greatest release was the feeling of space and not
the claustrophobia of being shut up within four narrow walls.
After a short stay at this quite pleasant camp we were entrained and taken by
rail to the huge P.O.W camp Stalag V111B – Lamsdorf, in Ober-Silesia on
the border of Poland. This camp contained P.O.W.s from practically every
war front commencing from the British Expeditionary Force in France up
till Dunkirk, Greece and Crete, the Desert, the Mediterranean, Sicily and
Italy. There were British, Anzacs, Canadians many captured after the
abortive Dieppe raid, South Africans, Ghurkas, Americans and
representatives from all the nations involved on the British side in the war.
Although it was mainly an Army camp there were naval men and members
of specialist groups such Parachutists, Commandos, Desert Long Range
Groups and approximately one thousand Air Force men. From memory
there were about ten thousand men in the camp at any one time, plus a total
of nearly ten thousand men in various working parties attached to the camp
for administrative purposes.
The camp was divided into compounds with approximately one thousand
men in each, living in stone barracks with concrete floors and wooden
shutters covering the window openings. In the middle of each barrack was a
washroom containing cold water, washbasins and a stone copper for boiling
water when wood was available. About a hundred men lived in each half of
a barrack with three-tiered bunks in rows on one side of the room and
wooden trestles with wooden frames on the other side. There was an outside
latrine (a forty-holer we called it) built from the same materials as the
barracks and with a covered sump at the back. Periodically, a horse-drawn
wooden tank was brought into the compound, the wooden covers of the
sump were opened and the human waste pumped into the tank. The tanks
was then driven from the camp into the surrounding fields and used as
manure. In the summer the latrine smelt to the high heavens. In the winter it
was a severe penance to go to the latrine as it was icy cold, there being no
doors nor shutters over the windows. As it was not permitted to go outside
the barracks at night a wooden tub was positioned inside the porch for toilet
purposes. Barrack inmates were rostered each night to carry out the tub and
dispose of the waste. It was not a pleasant duty but luckily only happened
two or three times a year for each man.
Life in each compound varied according to circumstances. At normal times
the gates of each compound were opened at 9.00am and locked at 4.00pm in
the winter or 6.00pm in the summer. Inmates of one compound could visit
inmates of another or go to lectures in the school building, or play sport on
[page break]
the two clay sites set aside for this purpose, or go under guard to the shower
block on their rostered day of the week. Some nights there were stage
performances in the theatre building and different compounds, whose turn it
was that night, were escorted under guard from their compounds to the
theatre and back afterwards. Roll call was taken in the morning and
afternoon to coincide with the opening and closing of the compound gates.
Normally this took 10 – 15 minutes but every so often if there had been an
escape from the camp or radio sets, which were strictly forbidden, had been
found in the barracks then the compound inmates could be kept out on
parade for hours. On one particular occasion we were kept on parade from
9.00am until after mid-afternoon with only the proven sick allowed to sit on
the ground for short periods of about 10 minutes. There was a strong protest
by the senior British representative but this was ignored by the German
control, as were other protests. There were frequent interruptions to the
normal running of the camp when compounds were kept locked. Classes,
lectures and the theatre were shut down and apart from visits to the latrine
under guard no movement was permitted between barracks in the same
compound. This was also a grim time as Red Cross parcels were not allowed
to be distributed and the inmates had to exist on German rations such as
watery vegetable soup, or fish soup with fish heads swimming in it, black
bread, ersatz jam, or fish cheese (a vile tasting and smelling concoction) and
black ersatz coffee.
Perhaps one of the worst periods for the camp was just after the Dieppe raid
by the Canadians. Some of the German prisoners captured by the Canadians
after their initial landing were found dead on the beach with their hands
bound behind their backs. The Germans at first thought they had been bound
and then shot by the Canadians and it was not until later they realised they
had been killed by flying bullets, probably from their own side, when the
Canadian attack was repulsed and the few who escaped were driven from
the beach.
However, in retaliation, for what the German Command at first thought was
a British atrocity all Air Force personnel in the RAF compound at Lamsdorf,
as well as all Army personnel, in the other compounds of the rank of
Corporal or over had their hands tightly bound with very strong string from
early in the morning till evening. They were not permitted out of their
barracks except under guard to the latrine. German front rank troops from
the Russian front, who were on home leave, were brought in as extra guards.
Armed with quick-firing rifles with bayonets attached they patrolled four to
each end barracks. They were fine soldiers, unable to be bribed like normal
guards, who once bribed, could be forced to bring into the compound
forbidden items such as parts of a radio, tools, clothing etc.
[page break]
These soldiers were not at all happy about doing guard duty in a P.O.W.
camp but they did it with quiet efficiency, firmness and no cruelty. This
period lasted for four to six weeks. With the demand from various war
fronts for more experienced troops these guards were pulled out and
replaced with the normal camp guards posted outside each compound. The
string around our wrists was replaced by handcuffs. These were brought in a
large tray into each end barrack by two guards. Each P.O.W. had to put on
his own handcuffs and keep them on until they were unlocked at the end of
the day. Gradually, the mean learned to open the handcuffs with a nail or
similar shaped object and the whole operation became a farce. In the end the
guards were bringing in the trays, leaving them in the porch and collecting
them in the evening. This particular period of reprisal occupied several
months before dying out. The next major disruption in the camp took place
at the end of December 1944.
The Russians were breaking through on the Eastern front and the Germans
decided to move the occupants of StalagV111B westwards. Each occupant
was issued with a Red Cross parcel of food and told to carry whatever
clothes and personal item he could manage. Under armed guard we started
to march westwards through the cold and snow of a severe eastern European
winter. We were billeted overnight wherever room could be found for each
group in large buildings, other unoccupied camps, churches and factories.
Many of us contracted Dysentery, various types of stomach ailment, feet
troubles and because of lack of bathing, lice.
Eventually with another RAF friend and a British Army friend of his, we
escaped from the main march, and after a series of adventures we contacted
a party of Polish foreign workers on a party complex. With their help and
guidance we hid up in a barn where they kept a farm tractor. For over a
week they smuggled food and drink to us when they came each morning to
collect the tractor. The last day they advised us that American troops were
approaching the area and they would have to lie low to avoid being caught
in any military action. That night there was a fierce battle. In the morning
we could hear tanks rumbling along the road, then the sound of motor driven
vehicles approaching the barn. We buried ourselves deeper in to the hay.
The doors were flung open and an American voice called out, “Okay fellows
you can come out now. The Americans are here.”
It was April 9th, the greatest day in our prisoner of war life. The outfit that
rescued us was the Second Battalion Combat team 23, Second Division
(Infantry), 1st Army, Officer Commanding Lieut/Colonel William A Smith.
I have his autograph and I have kept it since the war years.” Bernie Hughes
This item is courtesy of the Hughes family in New Zealand.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Recollections - Warrant Officer B F Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
Account of operation to Nuremberg on 28 August 1942 in Halifax where aircraft was attacked and shot down by night fighter. Continues with account of capture, interrogation and transport to prisoner of war camp. Describes camp occupants, situation, facilities, barracks, compounds, roll call. Continues with conditions/retaliations after Dieppe raid. Concludes with short account of long march as Russians approach.
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Germany
Germany--Nuremberg
Poland
Poland--Łambinowice
Creator
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B F Hughes
Date
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2014-06-26
Format
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Six page printed document
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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MDryhurstHG1332214-160608-05
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Temporal Coverage
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1945-04-09
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.
Contributor
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David Bloomfield
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
Dulag Luft
Halifax
prisoner of war
RAF Elsham Wolds
shot down
Stalag 8B
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/200/3335/PBaconSG1601.1.jpg
70945e1921ef54e6d100ad826375db35
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/200/3335/ABaconSG160216.2.mp3
b7fb370705e8e6280c2275db97ad276e
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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Bacon, Stephen Granville
Stephen Bacon
Stephen Granville Bacon
Stephen G Bacon
S Bacon
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Stephen Granville Bacon (1921 - 2023, 1351298 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as an air gunner with 12 Squadron before he was shot down and became a prisoner of war.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-02-19
2016-02-16
2016-01-18
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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Bacon, SG
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing Sergeant Stephen Granville Bacon at his home in Burnley on Tuesday 16th of February at twenty past two. Start us off -
SB: Err, excuse me a minute -
BW: Go on.
SB: Warrant Officer Bacon.
BW: I beg your pardon.
BW: Warrant Officer Bacon.
Other: Is that different?
BW: They only gave me your rank as sergeant.
SB: That’s what I finished up as. A -
BW: That’s fine.
SB: Warrant officer
Other: Is that higher than a sergeant? I don’t know.
BW: It is. Yes.
Other: Oh right. Warrant Officer
BW: That that was all they gave me, sergeant. So, Warrant Officer Stephen Granville Bacon can you just confirm for me please your service number and your date of birth.
SB: 1351298 as I already told you. That’s my service number and my date of birth is 2 3 21. 2nd of the 3rd 21.
BW: 2nd of March 1921.
SB: Yeah.
BW: And you were born in Barton on Humberside. Is that right?
SB: Yes.
BW: And what was your, you say you were from, your family was you had eight siblings. Is that right? You were one of eight.
SB: I’m one of eight.
BW: I see and -
SB: I had five brothers and two sisters.
BW: And were you the eldest?
SB: No.
BW: Eldest brother?
SB: I was the youngest bar one.
BW: And what was your home life like in the 20s and 30s? What would you describe it as?
SB: Strict. And that’s all I can say. I mean we used to have a time to be in at night before dark. Anything like that. We strictly adhered to that. So it was really strict.
BW: And where did you go to school?
SB: Pardon?
BW: Where did you go to school?
SB: I went to school at Queen Street School, Barton upon Humber which was a church school in actual fact.
BW: Were you a religious family?
SB: Pardon?
BW: Were you a religious family?
SB: No.
Other: You were quite poor I think. Am I right?
SB: Mind your own business.
BW: And so what age did you leave school?
SB: Fourteen.
BW: Which was I think standard at that that time wasn’t it?
SB: It was standard age at that time. And that was -
BW: Did you leave with qualifications or anything or not?
SB: No. I finished up in a class of my own x7 and WH Aubrey was the headmaster and I’d go to school and there was only me in this x7 and he’d just say Stephen just pop along and see if Mrs Aubrey wants anything. Any errands running or anything. And that was my last year at school.
BW: Yeah. Just running errands for -
SB: Oh yeah. There was no point in me being there on my own. It just wasn’t the class, the only one in the class I think and it was quite pointless. I did go to school as soon as I joined the air force.
BW: And what, what age were you when you joined up?
SB: Eighteen I think. Eighteen. Nineteen. I forget which. Eighteen I think. Was I?
BW: And what, what prompted your decision to join the RAF? Why? Why the RAF and not the other services?
SB: I had an ambition to fly but it didn’t work out that way. I joined when I went to enlist in Hull at Kingston I, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘I’d like to be flying in the air force.’ ‘Very good. But you can’t. You’ll have to join up as a AC plonk’ as they called it. AC2. ‘and then you’ll, you’ll have to put a remuster application in.’ Well, after several remuster applications I eventually was accepted to go to Weston Super Mare in front of a selection board and I think there was eight of us at that time. I didn’t see any more but I got a recall after seeing, being in front of this selection board to tell me I’d been accepted. From there I had to go to St Johns Wood in London for a deep medical.
BW: Ahum.
SB: And then from there I went to Craven Hill and then I went to Dalcross and that’s when I started flying.
BW: Whereabouts is Dalcross?
SB: Scotland. And there were Boulton Paul Defiant aircraft, we, which was a single engine plane with a turret on and the pilots, I think the majority of them were Polish. Quite nice chaps. A bit haywire when they got in the air. In fact, I remember the pilot who was flying, I was flying with we landed and he said, ‘I can’t give this in Steve.’ That was the, there were drogue, drogues towed and we used to fire at the drogues. He said, ‘You’ve got too many bloody holes in this drogue.’ I said, ‘Well you took me too bloody near’ and that was the attitude. Free and easy. Aye. But enjoyable. Oh aye.
BW: And so while you were there you were training as a gunner. Is that right?
SB: Yeah. That was all we did we used to fly over the North Sea, follow the drogue and fire at the drogues and that was our training.
BW: How successful do you think you were at that?
SB: I seemed to be fairly successful. I finished up with taking ten of us down into England and dropping them off here and there and I think it was because my name was first on the alphabet. More or less B. I seem to get all these things and in actual fact I was posted to India when I was stationed in Blackpool. The only fault was I wasn’t in Blackpool. I was in Burnley [laughs] and of course I had to go for the high jump and another, in front of another board and I explained what was going on and funnily enough I got in charge of the party going to Mold, I think, in North Wales and this party was eventually India on the, and though we didn’t fly we sailed on the Mauritania.
BW: On the Mauritania?
SB: Ahum I think it was its last trip.
BW: I see.
SB: In actual fact and the largest boat to go through the Suez Canal but they were quite pleasant at being a warrant officer. I had advantages. We’d waiter service at the table. We were on A deck and we used to look down at the motley crew on the other deck. Oh aye. My job was check the armoury so I used to go down into the bowels of the ship every morning, casually check and that was my day. The rest of it was deck quoits and all sorts of entertainment. Oh aye.
BW: You say you were already a warrant officer at that point.
SB: No. I was only a sergeant.
No. Are you -
SB: Oh at that point, going to India
BW: Yes.
Other: That was after the war isn’t it?
BW: Yeah.
SB: Yes. Aye
BW: So that was some time after your service in the war then when you went to India. Is that right?
SB: Yeah.
BW: Ok.
SB: There was no vacancies for flying. So -
BW: Ok.
SB: I took going to India which was quite an education.
BW: So coming back then to the early part of the war and your career. You said you went to school in the RAF and so you -
SB: Yeah.
BW: Was this before your gunnery training or after or part of it?
SB: It was before. I passed flying exams on Thorney Island which is not far from Portsmouth and the flying officer there he said, ‘I’ll set you an exam Steve. The equivalent to the flying job.’ And he did and that’s how I come to go to Weston Super Mare. He recommended me and I finished up in front of this board at, selection board in Super Mare.
BW: And was your intention when you joined up to be air crew air gunner or did you actually want to fly or navigate? Was your ambition higher than to be gunner or were you -
SB: My ambition was to fly. I remustered for a pilot but I didn’t get, it didn’t happen while I was vacant. I was otherwise engaged in Germany. [laughs]
BW: I see. I see.
SB: I was there two years in Germany.
BW: Ok. So you had your initial time in England as, as sergeant and you were trained on Boulton Paul Defiants as air gunner.
SB: Yeah.
BW: What happened after that? What was the next stage of training for you?
SB: That was it.
BW: Did you go to a conversion unit or an operational training unit?
SB: I went from Dalcross which was Boulton Paul Defiants. I went from there to Wickenby which was 12 squadron.
BW: And what period in the war was this? What sort of year was this?
SB: 1942.
BW: Ok so you finished training at Dalcross which I’m guessing would be summer ‘42. And you went to Wickenby to continue flying as a gunner. On, on what aircraft? What were you posted on to?
SB: Lancasters.
BW: Lancaster. So this would be a new squadron for you and a new squadron entirely because 12 squadron was only formed in September ‘42.
SB: [?]
BW: Or thereabouts.
SB: It was a very basic place were Wickenby. Very basic. Nissen huts.
BW: And did you live in the nissen huts with all your crew or was there another crew with you?
SB: No. We, in the nissen hut I was in we were all gunners.
BW: So you were all on different aircraft but you were all the same trade.
SB: Yeah.
BW: Ok. That’s interesting. Some, some huts were occupied by crews and so there’d be two crews in there but in your case you were just billeted with other gunners -
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: Entirely.
SB: Oh yes. In actual fact during my stay in Germany I, at the, where was it? I don’t know where it was somewhere down in the interrogation place it was and they give me papers to look at and I noticed one of the chaps who was with me in this nissen hut he’d drowned. It was at the side of his name - drowned. It was all propaganda them showing us these things.
BW: So when you were at Wickenby and you joined this new squadron how did you meet the rest of your crew?
SB: I haven’t a ruddy clue [laughs]. I’ve no idea whatsoever. My crew was three Australians, two Canadians, and myself and a fellow from Tadcaster and I was the youngest.
BW: Do you recall their names and what they did?
SB: Now then. Now then.
BW: I believe your pilot was Featherstone. Is that right?
SB: Bob Featherstone. The -
Other: There was the piece of paper that we thought were your crew but we weren’t sure. Have you got your glasses?
SB: Oh aye. Well I’ll tell you what they were.
Other: Oh right.
SB: There was Bob Featherstone the pilot. Laurie. Laurie Hickson, navigator. No, Laurie was the radio operator. Jack [Ebblestone?] was the navigator. Tommy Fouracres was the bomb aimer. My friend, the other gunner, I’ve no idea what his name was. All I knew him as was Robbie.
BW: And would he be Canadian?
SB: Robbie was a Canadian. And he wasn’t in the billet with me, with the other -
BW: What-
SB: With the other gunners. Robbie.
BW: Was he a mid-upper gunner or a front?
SB: Who?
BW: Robbie.
SB: Robbie was rear gunner.
Other: Yeah. Steve wasn’t a rear gunner.
BW: Ok and there was one other. A guy called Cooper.
SB: Engineer. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know because I couldn’t see him climbing on the bloody wings if anything went wrong with an engine. Quite surplus to requirements in my opinion was the engineer but we had to put up with it.
BW: And his name was Freddie you say?
SB: Harry.
BW: Harry, beg your pardon.
SB: Harry Cooper
Other: F H Cooper.
SB: He was a director of John Smith’s. Not John. There’s two of them. John -
Other: Sam Smith’s.
SB: John Smith’s
Other: John Smith’s Brewery.
BW: I see. And how did you all get on as a crew?
SB: Very well. Bob. Bob Featherstone, he was a very reserved sort of a person. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t drink. I remember being in the mess one time and I said, ‘Would you like a drink Bob?’ He said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘What would you like?’ He said, ‘A glass of milk.’ And I got him a glass of milk. [laughs] but the rest of the crew were, me being from Barton on Humber I didn’t spend much spare time other than Barton on Humber like according to what the Germans told me the aerodrome was eighteen kilometres northeast of Lincoln. I didn’t know that.
BW: That’s right. That’s absolutely right.
SB: They like, we used to get before flight we used to have a briefing all the crews all together and we used to get lectured and what have you and one of the things was, ‘Now if you have the misfortune to be shot down and captured during your interrogation a little old fellow will come and he’s a member of the International Red Cross. He isn’t.’ And lo and behold I think it was in Frankfurt where this interrogation camp was and lo and behold eventually this little old chap came and he said, ‘I’m from the International Red Cross,’ and I said, ‘Don’t kid me.’ I said, ‘You’re not. I got that told that before I left England.’ ‘Oh. Oh.’ And that finished that and he give up trying to convince me he was the International Red Cross fella.
BW: So coming back just to Wickenby itself you were quite a mixed crew as you say two Canadians and three Australians and two British.
SB: Yeah.
BW: But you didn’t mix a lot on the base. You said you went back to Barton on Humber quite a bit.
SB: Well I -
BW: Is that right? To see your family.
SB: They used to be workmen and there was a workman’s bus went from Wickenby to Barton upon Humber which was rather convenient when, when I was available.
BW: And so you spent your free time mainly at home.
SB: More or less. Yeah.
BW: Did you get to socialise on the base with the crew before missions or after missions
SB: No not to any degree I think. No. I remember after the war I was on a course in Tadcaster and I found out my engineer’s telephone number was and I rang him and I said, ‘Hello Harry.’ I said, ‘This is Steve. I’d like to ask you and your wife to lunch with me. I’m at John Smith’s.’ ‘Oh. Oh well, well I’m helping my son to do some decorating.’ I thought oh. So I didn’t hear any more of it.
BW: But you still had to fly together in the -
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: In the aircraft.
SB: Oh yes. Oh yeah well I mean you don’t fly together. I mean, I was very remote on top of it. Robbie was remote at the tail of it and the others were at the front.
BW: So -
SB: We were two isolated persons other than RT.
BW: So your position in the Lancaster was a mid upper then was it?
SB: Yeah.
BW: I see,
SB: Three hundred and sixty degrees viewing. In actual fact I was walking, I’d been cleaning my guns and I’m walking along the aerodrome and I saw a fella on top of a Lancaster and I thought, ‘What the bloody hell is he doing?’ So I give a shout and I said, ‘What the hell are you doing up there?’ ‘I’m cleaning guns.’ I said, ‘You what?’ He said, ‘I’m cleaning my guns.’ I said, ‘Hold it. Hold it’ I said, ‘Stay where you are,’ and I went in the plane and through the main there was a cover some, behind the turret or front of the turret I don’t know which it was and he didn’t know you could rotate your guns manually and always park them over the tail and he was trying to climb over the bloody turret to clean his guns and he was a commissioned air gunner. He was a pilot officer. I couldn’t, I couldn’t believe a pilot officer didn’t even know how to rotate the bloody turret and was going to climb over it. I mean if he’d fallen off I mean it’s quite high up is a turret gun when it’s on the deck. Aye a pilot officer. How the hell he became a [governor/gunner?] I don’t know.
Other: [You’ve only told this to protect the innocent?]
SB: Oh yes it, another incident I might recall was, I don’t know why we were on [Denham?] Golf Course and we were intermingled with the army on dive bombing. This was not flying and there were, what was the popular twin engine plane? I forget. Anyway, they were dive bombing and this plane’s coming down and there’s four people walking across the aerodrome. They should not have been there and as the plane took off knocked a fellas head off.
BW: Wow.
SB: There was just a red flash and he was gone.
Other: I didn’t know they got that close to the ground.
SB: And as far as I can remember it was Sir Christopher de Bath. I think that was his name but he shouldn’t have been where he was. They just let the pilot fly a bit and then they brought him back and he was ok but that was not in my agenda as a -
BW: No.
SB: As a gunner. I mean we all gunners were all trained on the same things. Turrets and guns and that’s it.
Other: What was the golf course?
SB: Hmm?
Other: Was the golf course, did the golf course go across the aerodrome or something?
SB: No. I don’t, no. No. I don’t know during the war I don’t know if it was permissible the golf course no it was -
Other: [It was…?]
SB: They were using the golf course obviously for, to be a plane without any obstruction. No buildings or anything.
Other: Oh I see. He was probably looking for his ball.
SB: But I do remember that fella getting his head knocked off.
Other: Oh God. I didn’t realise they flew that close to the ground.
BW: So you’re on operations now at Wickenby and what sort of routine would you follow for missions? What sort of preparations would you make for a mission if you were on roster to -
SB: Well obviously -
BW: Conduct a raid?
SB: We had to look to our guns to start with. Then we all who were flying collected together for a briefing on where we were going, what height we were flying, what we expected to come across. Other than that we just clambered into the aircraft and away but it was very boring I should think just sitting there and not many, I mean, I never fired my guns in anger and neither did Robbie and as I say it was rather boring sitting there and no, no fighter aircraft or anything.
Other: Not much fun.
SB: Like Ruhr Valley. Well that was rather lively anti-aircraft gun and Berlin when we crashed and whatever the hell happened to us I don’t know. That was different. I can’t remember much anti-aircraft so whether there was flying, planes flying, fighters I don’t know but according to information I got from someone in Lincoln there was also another three -
Other: Oh yes.
SB: Lancasters went with no survivors.
Other: Yeah that’s right.
SB: So whether it was because of that I didn’t recognise any anti-aircraft fire and they were shot down by aircraft I don’t I don’t know but we were fortunate we were straight down and very, I only met Bob Featherstone, I only met him for a few minutes because we were separated. We were stripped naked and separated, put into different, separate cells and he said, ‘We just touched over five hundred mile an hour, Steve. In a Lancaster bomber.’ And I remember I sat there and I thought, ‘Bloody hell this is it.’ And nothing I could do. I just sat there. Initially I thought he’d put the nose down to get out and home but it wasn’t. They pulled the plane out of this dive and I thought I was going to go straight through the ruddy bottom with the pressure and and that’s what Bob said. He said we reached over five hundred mile and hour and then after we pulled out we seemed to be flying straight and level and Bob came on the RT, ‘Bale out. Bale out.’ So I said, ‘Just a minute, Bob.’ He said, ‘What’s that.’ I said, ‘Can’t we reach Sweden?’ ‘No.’ ‘Oh that’s just too bad then,’ and we, course getting in and out of a mid-upper wasn’t very easy and by the time I got to the back door Robbie, the rear gunner at that time, he was sat on the doorstep. The door had gone. He’d got an axe to it and opened it with an axe and he was sat there and as I got there he climbed back in and I said, ‘What’s to do Robbie?’ ‘I can’t get out.’ And I said, ‘Have another try.’ I thought I had to do something here and he got back sitting on the doorstep and I gave him a bit of encouragement and he went. But I sat on the doorstep and I rolled out and I didn’t find any problems whatsoever. Why, whether he’d lost his nerve or what I don’t know.
Other: He probably didn’t fancy landing in Germany.
BW: And you don’t recall how the aircraft was hit.
SB: No I don’t know whether it was hit-
BW: Whether it was fighters or flak.
SB: Gun whether it had been hit with a fighter or anti-aircraft I’ve no idea whatever. All I know is the plane crashed. I know it crashed because I saw the ruddy thing crash. I was hanging about up there. And but I’ve no idea and I’ve only heard that our plane crashed. I’ve no idea why it crashed or what caused it to crash but -
BW: And do you recall this was on your fourth sortie. There were two previous trips to Essen and one to Berlin. This was a second trip to Berlin.
SB: Ahum.
BW: And it seems this was the last time that the squadron visited Berlin through the rest of their tour but do you recall what it was like on the approach to the target. You say as a mid- upper you had a good view. Were you looking around -
SB: No problems whatsoever.
BW: For fighters? Could you see the target ahead?
SB: As we, I don’t know which it, whether it was so but you’re talking about the target. Towards the end of, or when I was flying the Mosquitos came into action and the Mosquitos used to drop flares and we used to bomb the flares but the Mosquitos used to pick the target, drop these flares and we’d bomb on the flares.
BW: You didn’t see much of Berlin at this stage below. Sometimes crews report seeing targets on fire or explosions on the ground.
SB: No. No. I can’t recollect seeing anything. No. I mean as we were approaching targets Bob used to corkscrew to upset the ground crews and that sort of thing.
BW: And were you picked out by searchlights at all?
SB: Only once. We got searchlight and went straight, Bob went straight down it and pulled out. Other than that we weren’t bothered with searchlights. Not like the pilots are today. Have you read in the papers about this -
Other: Laser.
SB: Oh dear.
BW: Yeah ridiculous isn’t it? Do you, do you recall the earlier trips at all over Essen?
SB: No. I mean I remember one time we were on low level practice and old Bell , Squadron Leader Bell got in touch with, ‘Mr Featherstone. You’re on low level not a bloody altitude.’ Well that upset Bob and of course I can see all this. We went down, we went down and we went down and there was as I say there was workmen on the Wickenby and there was a steamroller there and our, the people on that steam roller had never moved so bloody fast [laughs] when Bob went down and they must have thought he was going to hit it. I did as well. [laughs]
BW: And in general how did you find it? Flying in a Lancaster?
Other: [What did you call it?]
SB: It was what I’d always wanted. I mean going like a cross country over this country, Ireland very nice oh very oh yes very exciting. Not exciting. No. It wasn’t exciting but it was what I always had wanted.
Other: Cold.
SB: Oh we had four pairs of gloves on. A pair of silk, a pair of woollen, gauntlets and electric and we’d an electric waistcoat and electric slippers. Course at the back of the plane there was no heating whatsoever. Forty degrees wasn’t abnormal. You couldn’t touch your guns with bare hands or you just stuck to them. Oh it was very cold but [I had?] my fun here. I enjoyed it.
BW: And did you take hot drinks with you or anything like that?
SB: Pardon?
BW: Did you take hot drinks with you during the flights to keep warm?
SB: All we got flying was chewing gum and a small can of orange juice. A small can of orange juice by ten thousand feet was solid ice so were not much help really. Oh no it’s, I mean, I couldn’t move anyway. I mean I was just stuck in a turret on the top of the ruddy plane and that was it.
BW: Up there in the cold.
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: And this time of the year is the end of ‘42 and the squadron only became operational on the 27th of December so your early trips were in January ‘43 so it would be particularly -
SB: New.
BW: Cold at that time.
SB: It was cold. Damned cold. Oh yeah.
BW: It was cold at the best of times.
SB: In actual fact –
BW: At altitude.
SB: I landed in a field with several inches of snow and of course being in air force dark, darkish coloured I’m burying my chute and I looked up and there’s two fellas there. Both with guns. I suppose they were kind of home guard and we weren’t allowed to, we were advised not to take guns because if you did like the position I’d been, I was in they would have shot me because they thought I had a gun but we didn’t and these two chaps took me to a house and they must have rung the police or something. Anyhow, a guy, I remember he had a brown uniform which I don’t know what that was and he interrogated me. He says, ‘What, what, how many were in your aircraft?’ I said, ‘Only me.’ ‘Oh.’ I thought he doesn’t know much about this. He says, ‘What do you mean only you? I said, ‘We jettisoned tanks on the aircraft.’ I said, ‘There was only me.’ ‘Ah gudt gudt gudt. Here you are,’ and he gave me a twenty packet of Gold Flake cigarettes. I light up and he toddles off. A few minutes later he dashes in to the room, ‘You lied to me.’ [laughs] ‘I find another man.’ Well he found seven eventually but it was funny being given Gold Flake cigarettes but I lost them of course. When he found the second man he took my cigarettes off me but it was a bit of a comic. But we went to, I think it was an air force camp and that’s when they stripped us completely, put us in separate cells and eventually they transported us down south to, I think it was Frankfurt, I’m not sure about, that to an interrogation camp. There were quite a lot of people in it. Mostly air force of course and that’s when the little chap from the International Red Cross came up but and then of course we were taken to a Stalag 8b. Because of something happening with the Canadians who raided Dieppe, something about them tying prisoners of war hands handcuffed and the Germans wanted to have reprisals but they hadn’t enough Canadians to suit their purposes so they drafted the air force. There was about three hundred of us and we were in handcuffs. They were put on. They were decent about it. They put them on in the morning and took them off at night and of course it’s amazing what people get up to. They soon found out how to manipulate the locks on them and if the guards had been decent we’d just throw them in the box. If they hadn’t they had to undo every, every one. And, and they used to be radio reports put up in the billet. In the billet I say they were proper huts. No windows in. There were windows but they’d no glass. Very little water, just a dribble. No chance of getting washed. We were dirty. We stunk. Must have done. And lousy. Me and Harry Cooper the engineer who was, there were three high bunks in this place and er and initially they’d started with boards but the prisoners found a better use for the boards which was making a fire to get a brew and as time went on we got Red Cross parcels that usually a parcel between two but they were all tied with string and we collected this string and we made nets to replace the boards on the beds. At the finish I shouldn’t think there was a bed with boards on it. Only Red Cross string. And [pause] you must excuse me I’m looking for a handkerchief. I’ve just found one. Oh yes and we used to get tenth of a loaf a day which were about that much.
BW: About an inch and a half.
SB: Aye. Identity disc was just a tenth of a loaf and some used to, you could cut it. The bread was so like a solid mass and you could cut it so ruddy thin and some of the chaps used to cut and spread it out over the day. I used to do the same but I used to eat it and hope for the best and we used to get, they used to bring a dustbin thing in occasionally and that was supposed to be soup. I remember one soup what we called bedboard soup. It just tasted like sawdust. We were hungry but nobody could eat it. The toilets were forty seaters. Four banks of ten so you could have a chat while you were [laughs] aye. Four banks of ten and during the summertime if we got Red Cross parcels they used to stab all the tins so we couldn’t save them for making escape purposes. So, if we couldn’t consume them we used to throw them over to the next compound which was the Russians and they were very grateful to a point. I remember when they decided to move us from Lamsdorf which was on the Polish border and they set off, sent us all off marching, hundreds of us. I don’t know how many was in the camp at the time but I think it was, there was twenty five thousand in and attached. Most of them were on working parties. There were, ‘cause it was an army camp. They decided that they were going to move us away from the Russians. I don’t know why. And this was in January. A little bit of snow and what not and we started marching and I remember the first stop was at a brick works and I got bedded down on some blocks of clay and we’d, we’d all got a [?] blanket and eventually the blanket became too heavy and too much of a damned nuisance but we just, we were like bloody zombies walking in the snow and very little or nothing to eat. I remember one time that we were walking along and there was a potato clamp. Are you with me? You should be.
BW: Ahum.
SB: One of the lads took a dive for the potato clamp and he was shot through his shot through his face and that’s how desperate we were. I mean sometimes we were just laid in an open field. A derelict factory. Course no bedding. No cloth. No -
BW: No provisions of any kind.
SB: We’d no washing facilities whatsoever so we never got undressed for about three months and we must have smelled a bit ripe [laughs] but it was all part of it and it was war.
BW: And this period of time would have been January ‘45 is that right? This would have been January ‘45 or thereabouts when you were marched out of the camp.
SB: ‘44 ‘45 I forget which.
Other: [It would be towards the end of the war wouldn’t it?]
SB: Like another point as I said we used to get Red Cross, Red Cross parcels. Maybe two. Occasionally and they used to stab it and we used to throw it to the Russians and of course the Russians they were marched with us on this walk and they were separated from us in so far as we were in a compound and they were in the next compound and we were in a huge marquee and on the floor was small branches off fir trees and that was it and we’d no water but the Russians had a tap and when we went to the Russians and asked for water. ‘Cigarette’ and ‘cigarettes.’ Well, they knew damn well we’d no cigarettes. We didn’t get no water. That was the gratitude for giving them the parcels.
BW: I was going to say yet you’d been throwing parcels over the wire to them.
SB: Yeah and er -
BW: And they wouldn’t let you have water.
SB: Eventually we got, the Germans left us. The guards left us. We were in a camp with nothing and me, and I got friendly with an Australian soldier and we decided to have a walk and we were walking around the countryside. We saw a house with a light in it and we went and knocked on the door and there were a lot of mumbling and grumbling and I said, ‘What’s to do, Joe?’ He says, ‘I don’t know.’ Anyhow, Joe could speak French. He started talking in French. Eventually we got in this house. There was eight Madagascans and they’d got a set boiler, you know, a boiler with a fire underneath it full of meat and they give us as much as we wanted but nothing else but meat. No bread, no veg, no, just meat but by heck that meat was good and that was, I never met Joe again. The Americans came and at that point my legs were tight in my trousers. Beri beri I think they said it was and I went and found a medical, an American medical chap and he said, ‘Sorry I can’t give you anything.’ He said. ‘All I have is two or three aspirins,’ he says. ‘I’ve used everything I had.’ He says, ‘It’ll wear off eventually when you start eating.’ [laughs] And then we got in some clapped out Dakotas aeroplanes and they flew us back to Cosford which is near Wolverhampton I think.
BW: That’s right
SB: And there we were stripped again and deloused and treated like royalty. Oh yeah. They couldn’t do enough for us and then we were despatched home and then after I think I had four weeks leave and then I got sent to India and that was the end of the war for me. I I in actual fact I was in India in Delhi and I thought there’s all these bloody people getting relieved and they were conscripts. They’d completed their two years [and they would be ?]. So I got in touch with the officers and I said, ‘What’s my position?’ I said, ‘I’m an RAF volunteer reserve I suppose,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Oh we’ll see what we can do with you,’ and the next day I was on a train to Bombay. And there they were very obliging again, ‘Well we haven’t a place cabin-wise for you. You can go on this ship or you can wait till there’s a cabin available on another ship.’ Oh I said we’ll get the [excuse ?] let me get on it and I think it was the Scythia if I can remember right and I came back home and I, I was in a bit of a state. I’d no qualifications. I was a machinist before the war in a cycle works and I daren’t say I was a machinist or I would have been reserved occupation so I just said I’m a labourer. Anyhow, as I say I came back here and I got sent to Blackpool. I spent a lot of time in Blackpool and I met my wife. [back then?] as she was a young woman and we got married and I’d no qualifications whatsoever and of course going to Burnley it was either went to Burnley or Barton. Well, naturally I’d no, no say in the matter. It was Burton and I thought well I had to find something. I went as a coal miner. Had a few months in a coal mine and I got dermatitis and so I had to come out and my wife said, I used to see these in the paper, situations vacant and there used to be overlookers wanted. Overlookers wanted. I said to me wife, ‘What’s this overlookers?’ She said, ‘Oh you’ve no need to bother about that. You won’t be one.’ I said, ‘Its hard luck then.’ Anyhow, I took a job at just over three pound a week. Three pound a week and I thought well it’ll keep me going cash wise and I got in to the, this job three pound a week was at the end of the war and before the war the mills used to get large amount of coal on the canals but after the war it was delivered in three ton trucks and my job was wheeling it over the ruddy boiler and tipping over for the fire beater and I’m shovelling this coal one day and a fellow walking down the yard and he stopped. He said, ‘What are you doing?’ I politely told him [laughs] it was running off my nose was the sweat and ‘Aye all right.’ And he toddled off and a couple of hours later, ‘You’re wanted in the office, Steve.’ Oh I’ve got set for being rude with that fella and it was this same fella wanted to see me. He said, ‘How about coming working for me?’ ‘And who are you?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I look after this mill. I look after four in Blackburn, one in Morecambe, outside Morecambe, Whiteland. ’ I said, ‘Right. What’s the reward?’ He said, ‘Oh you’ll be a lot better than what you are now,’ he said ‘And I’ve a van you can use,’ And I got into the textile trade then through this fellow Harry [Makenson] I’ll always remember his name. He looked after me. He made me an overlooker as they called it, was a maintenance engineer on looms and I I seemed to cotton on to it and I finished up manager of a weaving mill. I mean initially I didn’t know one end of a bloody shuttle to another and that’s how I finished. George Street Mill closed down and it’s gone now. It’s been knocked down. I retired and I’ve been retired thirty odd year.
BW: Ahum.
SB: But er no my war experiences was, this march oh that was grim was that. Oh bloody hell. I I ate raw chicken and raw rabbit what they if the people had left them, forgotten them, we didn’t forget them. Oh I think I weighed seven stone something when I and they sent me on four weeks holiday. I went back and, ‘Right. Get on the scales,’ and I did. ‘Get on the scales again.’ I did. ‘Something wrong here.’ I says, ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘You’ve put on thirty odd pound in forty eight days. What have you been doing?’ ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I must confess.’ I says, ‘I’ve been drinking Guinness.’ I said, ‘I’ve been drinking about an average of about fifteen bottles of Guinness a day. ‘
Other: Good grief.
SB: He says, ‘You what?’ I said, ‘Oh yes.’ That’s where my money went and I got back to my ten and a half stone and now I languish at twelve stone. [And you must excuse me ‘cause I must go to the toilet.]
BW: No problem.
[pause]
SB: My escaping [laughs].
BW: I was going, I was going to ask you actually -
SB: Which was rather farcical.
BW: I believe you made a number of escape attempts.
SB: I er, in actual fact I never escaped. I was always someone else. The first effort was I swapped identities with a fella. An old, well to me an old fella. He would be about forty He was a member of the Pioneer Corp which was a non-combatant unit and I swapped identities with him and eventually I got drafted to a working party on an aerodrome and our job was looking after the grounds but it didn’t work out very well. It was alleged that someone had managed to dodge the guards, got in an aeroplane, couldn’t read the ruddy things and jettisoned the petrol out of it. We were straight back to the camp. All lot of us. That was number one. I reverted back to my position in the air force and its surprising there wasn’t a lot more people doing the same as me but anyhow, eventually I got another one. I got friendly with one in the army camp and he was fed up of working. I mean they’d no option. They had to work.
BW: So you were, rather than being, let’s say, given protection because of your rank and aircrew you were actually put to work. You were in labour gangs were you?
SB: At my rank no. My rank I couldn’t go to work. I wasn’t allowed to work. The soldiers were compelled to work so the only thing we had to, well I had to do was change my identity and as I say I changed with this guy. He was a Pioneer Corp and we got drafted back to the camp because of this misdemeanour, this alleged ditching the juice from the aircraft but whether that was true or not I don’t know but that was the reason I heard and eventually I got fed up and I got this other fella. I can’t remember his name. I know we were doing some work in [Gliwice] and I decided I’d had enough and I got hidden away and the guards were a bit slop happy and I was left and I had a couple of three days and that was it. I had nothing to eat so I got picked up.
BW: So you manged to give them the slip and spend three days away.
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: Two or three days.
SB: Oh yeah. Course I used to walk at night and hide in bushes and whatever during the day and oh that was the second time I think there was a field with a kind of a basin in it full of bushes. Ideal for sleeping. Only trouble was I was prodded in the ribs and it was a fella with a rifle. He could speak, he spoke very good English. And he says, ‘Come on. Come with me.’ And he was a farmer and he took me to his house, rung the local police and he was talking and he said, ‘I’ve come from America.’ He says, ‘It’s the worse bloody days’ work I ever did. He says, ‘Coming back here’ he said, ‘But you know the feeling. It’s your country. Well come and,’ he said ‘It’s the worse bloody thing I ever did in my life.’ He says, ‘I daren’t do anything but ring the police.’ And a policeman came on a two stroke motorbike. He made me push his motorbike and he walked on and I had a night in jail and the guards came from the camp to take me back and I settled back again and then I got the urge again so I picked on a fella going as an air force man. Aye, I often remember his name. They called him Bill Major from Liverpool. Only fault was Bill got fed up with being in the bloody camp. He was so used to going out to work so he changed his identity so when I eventually, where was it oh I was at a brick works and I was there one day working and I saw a spanner and I thought bloody hell that looks like the bolts on windows. It was a little, it had been a little school where we were billeted in, on this brickwork and this spanner it fitted the nuts so I got, pulled them out one side and got out and I was a gentleman I put them back and screwed them back and the lads who I’d got friendly with they came back and they said, ‘You left us in the real bloody muck,’ he said. ‘They didn’t know how you’d escaped.’ He said, ‘How did you escape?’ I said, ‘I found a spanner and I opened the bars and I walked out.’ There again I got caught again and of course every time I got caught I used to be sentenced to solitary confinement and it was solitary. 5 o’clock in the morning, fill a pail with water, scrub your deck out, stand your bed up. The bed was a few pieces of wood with rope across but you had to stand it up so you couldn’t sit on it and if you didn’t do it in their time they just used to kick the bloody bucket over and your cell was swimming in water but we put up with it. And there was one fella there one time I was in solitary and the padre used to come every day to see him. He was a New Zealander and it seems he’d been on a working party and he’d seen a chain on the ground and so he just picked it up and threw it into a machine and it was dodgy whether he was going to be shot or not and this padre used to come every day to see him and after the war I saw his photograph in the paper. He’d been awarded the BME is it?
BW: Um could be MBE.
SB: MBE aye. And so obviously he didn’t get shot and he got back home. Oh yeah. Aye. But I’m surprised there wasn’t a lot more of them swapping identities with soldiers who, well some of them had done four years. I’d a brother. My brother, he was a marine. He was taken prisoner on, [pause] where?
Other: Crete.
SB: Island.
Other: Crete.
SB: Crete. Oh Crete aye and one time I’m in in solitary and they used to take us out. Geneva Conventions again. They used to take us out and we used to walk around in a little circle. We had to get this exercise in and one day one, the fella said, ‘How long have you been here?’ I said, ‘I’m just doing fourteen days.’ ‘Well how did you get from Crete er from Germany er Italy?’ I said, ‘What you are talking about?’ He says, ‘Haven’t you just left Italy?’ I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Were you a marine?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘That’s my brother.’ What happened he’d met my brother in Italy. But no there was some comical things happened. Oh yeah. Oh aye.
Other: [Not?] very comical.
BW: But you didn’t have to have your escape attempts approved as might be the case with others in some camps. You acted on your own initiative to try and escape.
SB: Oh I just went. I just went. Oh I wouldn’t. No. No I knew I couldn’t go anywhere because I couldn’t speak German but I thought well I’ve got to do something and as I say it became something of a, like I changed the third one Bill Major who got fed up of being in the camp because he’d always been used to working so he swapped identities with another fella so when I got back I had to find out who Steve Bacon was. [laughs] Quite funny really but oh no they -
BW: How were you picked up each time? I know you mentioned a farmer found you sleeping under a bush at one point. How were you picked up other times? Were you, when you were out of the camp were you not afraid of being picked up by the army or handed over to the Gestapo or something like that?
SB: I can’t remember to be quite honest. I’m just trying to think. I had that farmer and then we were sent back because of someone ditching the ruddy petrol out the aeroplane and then the third time I went Bill Major, Bill Major, Bill Major. I can’t remember how I got caught that time but I got caught and that time it was a bit of a nuisance. I got caught and of course I got sentenced to fourteen days, well it was twenty one days then. It had gone up. But I had to go to a straflager which was a part of the camp reserved for potential what not, isolation and in there, there were mostly soldiers messing about there because of the women and I remember one chap he was, he had to go to civilian court and he went and he came back and he said, ‘Right.’ He said, ‘Right, here you are.’ He’d taken all the lightbulbs out the ruddy waiting room of the court he’d been to. Oh there was some humorous ruddy things. Oh yeah aye oh aye but as I say I never escaped because I was never me. I was this Pioneer Corp chap. I belonged, I belonged the Pioneer Corp and I was a gunner and then I was an ordinary soldier with Bill Major and I’m talking I got back I’d done my solitary and I got back to the camp and back to the air force compound and I’m walking around one day. ‘How are you going on mate?’ I looked around, ‘I’m alright. Why?’ ‘You don’t know me do you?’ No it’s surprising what they got up to. I said, ‘No. I don’t know you.’ And he said, ‘I was in straflager with you,’ he said, ‘But I’ve escaped.’ He’d escaped into the camp. [laughs] what happened to him I don’t know but they used to get up to all sorts of ruddy tricks. They used to put this radio bulletin up every morning and of course the Germans, ‘They must have a radio.’ They cleared all everybody out. The camp was on a moor, moorland in actual fact as I previously said with a forty seater toilet where they used to pump it out and they used to spread it around the camp to stop digging tunnels and what not and, what was I going to say? I’ve forgotten. But they emptied the camp completely. They’d dogs in and all sorts in looking for the radios that wasn’t there but we had bitterly cold on this moor but we, we did it and, oh aye. And another time they used to, we used to have roll calls of course in fives and one day we were out nearly eight hours. They couldn’t figure out how we’d missed, they’d missed somebody and every time they went five, ten, fifteen. There were three hundred of us and somebody had bent down to tie, reckon to tie their shoelace. One missing. And they’d go again and they’d get it right. That’s right. And they were so bloody stupid. That’s right. Aye aye. ‘We’d better have another check,’ and so they’d check again and somebody had bent down and it would be the same again. One missing. And they’d dogs and they’d officers of all bloody sorts in the camp that day in our compound and they never found the one who was missing but it was our discomfort but we used to put up with it and that was it. It was part of the gang kind of thing but as I say I never escaped because I as never me.
BW: What were relations like with the guards? If people are managing to build rudimentary radio sets they must get the components from somewhere. What were relations like with the guards? Did you, were you able to bribe them or -
SB: Oh, no. They, they -
BW: Persuade them to do things for you?
SB: They didn’t like it. No, no. I know there was one, I did see one fella shot. He was being marched through the camp, past our compound with a guard, a guard with a rifle and all of a sudden he had his coat over his arm and he just threw it over the guard’s head and galloped. He didn’t gallop fast enough. They shot him. They shot him and he was dead. Aye.
BW: Just coming back to, I’m interested in the point where you talked about getting out of the aircraft and you took to your parachute. How were you then picked up? You landed in a field of snow and then -
SB: Picked up with two, two like home guard. I don’t know -
BW: Ok.
SB: They’d guns. That’s all I know and they took us to a house and there was a young boy in this house in actual fact and I had my escape kit with me. I thought, well there was chocolate in it. He wouldn’t eat it. He wouldn’t touch it. No. We had an escape kit. The chocolate and vitamin tablets and what have you and money but not German money. I don’t know. I think it was franks. I don’t know but -
Other: I think you thought it was the home guard didn’t you?
BW: And so they reported to the police that they’d picked you up and presumably the police came for you.
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: What, were you taken to a civilian jail? Or were you -
SB: Oh yes.
BW: Passed to the Gestapo? Or were you -
SB: Oh yes I had a night in the jail and the guards came from the camp, a couple of guards take me back. Kept them occupied. But oh no it had its humorous side.
BW: And news of your aircraft being lost must have reached home. There’s a letter here which is a reply from the wing commander at 12 squadron to your mum, ‘In response to your letter.’ She was asking about getting your personal effects sent back. When you got back to your family do you recall what had happened from their point of view? Were they told by the squadron you’d been lost? Did they know you were in a prison camp or what was their take on events?
SB: Well they initially telegram.
Other: Yeah that’s the other one Brian. That’s the telegram from to say he was missing in action or something.
SB: Your son is reported missing and then another one was something about Lord Haw Haw. You wouldn’t know that would you?
BW: William Joyce yeah.
SB: William Joyce, yeah. He broadcast my name as a prisoner of war and they sent my mother another telegram stating that take it with a pinch of salt.
BW: Yeah there’s an official telegram here that says, ‘Regret to inform you that your son Sergeant Stephen Granville Bacon is missing as a result of air operation 17th, 18th Jan 1943. Letter follows. Any further information will be immediately communicated to you. And that’s from, that would be air ministry I think but it’s, it’s er named from, I think Wickenby but so they’ve been informed by telegram. How, how did you end up on Haw Haw’s broadcast? Was this a regular thing to name POWs? Or was it -
SB: I’ve no idea. I haven’t a clue. I didn’t know until after I got back.
BW: Yeah.
SB: That it had happened.
Other: Yeah. I think they’d already had a memorial service for him in the [Barton?] church I believe.
SB: Oh aye. It was a long after the war I, my nephew sent me a paper cutting and it was from the local paper, Hull Times I think it was. And there was a list of names, ‘Would anyone who knew these people get in touch with us.’ They’re all, these people who had been killed during the war and Stephen Granville Bacon was one of them. I’m still here [laughs]
BW: Well it’s like when you were in the prison camp. You didn’t escape. That was somebody else. Somebody else was killed, it wasn’t you.
SB: Yeah it was. I was amazed when I got that paper cutting. I think I have it somewhere.
Other: That’s quite recent isn’t it?
SB: Yeah.
Other: Yeah.
SB: Aye.
Other: Yeah.
SB: Anyone know anything about these people who were killed during the war.
Other: Well I think it was something like -
SB: I knew a lot about him [laughs]
Other: Something like six months or so after that initial letter and Lord Haw Haw and his mother had to go around the village then apologising to everybody for -
BW: Right.
SB: Oh aye. Well er -
Other: Having a service for him.
SB: Like what was it now?
Other: I don’t know if she was more embarrassed [?] or what [laughs]
SB: Oh it was old Tom Everett. He was one of our neighbours. He must have been listening to Haw Haw and he heard this and of course he dashed out and went out to my mother’s, knocked on the door, ‘Your Steve’s a prisoner of war.’ [laughs] It must have been a shock for the old lady but aye that was Tom Everett.
BW: So you, just coming back to the point when you’re first captured were you in, did you meet up with the other members of the crew. Were you fairly close together when you were picked up? Or, I mean, was there any chance of escaping? Or making your own -
SB: We were all picked up at separate times.
BW: Right.
SB: And they must have got in touch with these, this I’m sure it was an air force camp that we were taken to where they stripped us and I mean they were looking for compasses and such like things and compasses used to be all over the ruddy place. I had it in the lapel of my coat. Bob Featherstone, I know he had one in his pipe. He didn’t smoke but he had a compass in the bottom if this pipe but the Germans knew all, all these things. They knew where to look. When we got our clothes back they were torn where they’d looked in the seams and what have you but oh no it’s surprising how much they knew about us as we knew about them aye.
BW: And you were handed over from civilian police straight to the camp. So there was, was there any formal interrogation that took place?
SB: No, not at that point. No, no, it was, as I say I think it was Frankfurt this camp we went to which was just an interrogation centre and it was very populated but they used to be in separate cells and they’d turn the heat up, heat up on us in the cell and it used to get bloody hot and then they’d switch it off altogether and it would just go just the opposite just to cool, just to loosen you off a bit. Aye. Oh aye.
BW: How long were in the interrogation camp at Frankfurt?
SB: I’ve no idea.
BW: Roughly.
SB: Eventually we were put on a train with no shoes. Nobody had any shoes on and we were taken to Lamsdorf on the Polish border. I remember the train it was it was luxury I mean there were seats in it but they were wooden seats but er and that’s how I got to Lamsdorf by train.
BW: Were there guards on the train?
SB: Oh yes. Oh aye. Aye, there were plenty of guards on the train and of course when you’ve no shoes it’s a big handicap.
BW: Did you get your shoes back or any shoes when you got to Lamsdorf?
SB: Any shoes, clogs, all sorts, wooden clogs. Not, not like what we used to wear. Not the proper clogs, wooden clogs. Most bloody uncomfortable.
BW: Lamsdorf had a reputation for being a tough camp. It was apparently notorious for poor conditions of construction, sanitation and overcrowding and had the highest number of British POWs there by the time of 1944 but you mentioned the sanitation conditions. Were the barracks that you were kept in were they, were they overcrowded at all or did you feel like you had enough room?
SB: Well I suppose we were overcrowded but it was all three tier, three tier bunk things and sanitation oh we’d, we’d as I say we had this forty seater, four banks of ten which used to be pumped out regularly and spread around the area to give it a bit -
Other: Pleasant.
SB: Of perfume but other than that there was no bathing facilities whatsoever. Oh no. As I say we were, we were lousy. Me and Harry, our engineer, I got friendly with him and we used to put out a blanket each and we used to have a bit of a line and we used to go and we used to stop at forty bugs.
Other: [?]
SB: I remember my mother must have had a brainstorm. She sent me a pair of pyjamas. Now, how the hell I got them I don’t know but I put them on and on the first night I’d, or the first morning when I took them off they were just polka dotted where I’d been bitten. I didn’t use them anymore. Oh no the sanitation was nil other than toilets but there was no, no shower. We’d a big trough thing with a pipe on top and water used to dribble out of it but you couldn’t have a wash. No.
BW: I’d just like to show you some pictures of a camp and just see if you think they reflect conditions or construction similar. The first, the first set show open type huts if you like. Purpose built long barracks and these aren’t the same camp as yours but do they -
Other: I think we took some pictures. There’s some stuff on the internet somewhere cause my son typed in Stalag 8b one day and came up with, oh and he instantly recognised the latrines I think. ‘Oh I remember that.’
BW: Yeah.
SB: I can’t recognise these at all. What is it?
BW: They’re, it’s a different camp but -
SB: Ah. Oh no.
BW: It’s -
SB: Totally different. That’s more like -
BW: It’s shown close to a town.
SB: I was going to say that’s more like ours. They were -
BW: Yeah.
SB: Proper barracks.
BW: Yeah.
SB: But they’d no windows ‘cause I suppose the previous tenants had bashed the bloody things out. Oh no. That, that is Stalag 8b of course. I mean, Bob -
BW: Were you -
SB: Bob Featherstone, our pilot, I mean we never saw him. He was a commissioned officer. He went to an Offlag.
BW: Ahum
Other: [?]
SB: So we didn’t see Bob again until, well I did see him again after the war. He was a, he was on the immigration situation going to Australia. Persuading people to go to Australia and persuaded me but my wife said no and that was it. Oh yes. Oh aye
BW: Were you close to a town or was, you said Lamsdorf was up on a moor.
SB: Oh it was isolated.
BW: Were you in reach of a town or just -
SB: Oh no, no it was -
BW: Middle of the country.
SB: Completely isolated. There was, what it doesn’t indicate there used to be turrets on stilts kind of thing on each corner of the camp.
BW: Similar to that.
SB: Oh there we are. Yes. There we are.
BW: These are pictures of guard towers and –
SB: Oh aye
BW: Barbed wire.
SB: And there used to be barbed wire and about six or ten feet from the barbed wire there used to be a single wire and if you went past that you were asking for trouble from that.
BW: You would be shot presumably.
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: It was like, like a trip wire I guess. And so there was plenty of barbed wire on the outer fences shown there. Were there two or three layers of barbed wire?
SB: Oh it was a fair depth of barbed wire. Oh yes. I never fancied this tunnelling business. Oh no. That didn’t appeal to me at all. I took it that changing identities was a lot easier.
BW: What put you off digging?
SB: Hmmn?
BW: What put you off digging or tunnelling?
SB: Well a bit claustrophobic I should think. And that Dulag Luft that’s an air force camp.
BW: Ahum.
SB: Well they didn’t have the opportunities like we had for swapping identities with soldiers going out to work because they were all senior NCOs and they weren’t allowed to go to work so they had an advantage but it was a disadvantage as well.
BW: It’s interesting that you took the opportunity to join a working party and go outside the camp. Was it the opportunity to get away from the camp a little bit that appealed or was it the idea of just having something to do?
SB: I think it was something to do. As I say I’d no ambitions about escaping completely because I couldn’t speak ruddy German and it was keeping the Germans occupied as well as anything else but er -
Other: If it’s alright I’m going to leave you to it.
BW: Do you want to, sorry?
SB: A grand lad. He looks after me with bills and -
BW: Yeah.
SB: He explains what, my heating, I haven’t a clue about it. I just had him on it this morning. He used to be in charge of a soft drinks factory and he used to drink like a fish but not soft drinks. It used to be beer.
BW: And this was your dad who was in charge. So, and that would, he would have died only shortly after you joined up then, presumably.
SB: In actual fact I didn’t get my first leave and I got a telegram to say he was dangerously ill and so I put an application in and I got a weekend and I always remember I was in, where was I? Duxford. And I went to see the station warrant officer and explained to him and he just calmly said, ‘And how many times is this your father’s died?’ I said, ‘As far as I know it’s only the first time.’ And I had a fortnight, a weekend, and he died before I got there. And when I went back I made an appointment to see the station warrant officer, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Now then. What can I do for you?’ I said, ‘You can’t do anything for me.’ I said, ‘I’m going to give you some information.’ He said, ‘What’s that? I said, ‘My father died for the first bloody time,’ I said, ‘And you remember what your remarks you made.’ He didn’t say anything. Oh aye. I had a brother in the navy for twenty years. One of my brothers was on mine sweepers. One of my brothers was a fireman and the other one, who was taken prisoner on Crete, he was a steeplejack and that’s the thing I can’t stand is bloody heights.
BW: And yet there you were in the mid upper position on a Lancaster.
SB: Oh that didn’t seem not the same feeling. I don’t know. It’s something different. I mean I had no qualms about jumping out. Well you don’t jump out. Well I didn’t. I rolled out but I never thought about it but Stan, my brother, who was a steeplejack I was talking to one of his workmen and they said, ‘Well he’s a bit of a son of a bitch.’ I said, ‘Is he?’ Hey said, ‘Yeah but there’s one thing about him. He wouldn’t ask you to so anything he wouldn’t do.’ But I said, ‘He’s different to me. I would be scared to bloody death.’ Oh yes. He died. Stanley died. He wasn’t ill. In fact Stuart came and knocked at my door. I answered it. ‘Yes Stuart. What’s the matter then?’ He says, ‘Stan’s died’. I said, ‘You what?’ He said, ‘Stan’s died.’ ‘My brother?’ he said, ‘Yeah.’ He was three years older than me and we used to fight like bloody hell as kids. I remember oh aye. He used to collect birds eggs. And I, and the brother in the navy he brought us a football and a pair of football boots each and of course we used to fight like hell who was going to have the ball. Is it your gang or is it mine? And he used to keep his eggs I think with a bowl on top in the bedroom and he, we’d had an argument about who was going to have the ball and I thought, ‘Right.’ So I went and took the drawer out and boom boom boom broke all of his eggs up and we used to have gangs of us and if they thought about it they’d just get us upset and say, ‘Who broke Stanley’s eggs?’ [laughs] And we, in those days we used to make our own enjoyment. I mean we had a three valve tel, three valve radio but for that we’d no nothing and we used to split up a couple of gangs and, Fox and Hounds and we’d have limits of where we could go. We’d go hide in trees and all. It was a totally different world to now. We never used to be in the house. No. And if we were, if I went home with my shoes wet. [Boing.] So I used to, I used to have socks on of course so I’d rub my bloody shoes up my socks so I wouldn’t get that bloody slap back from my mother. My father never touched us but my mother made up for it. Oh aye. Those were the days oh yes. And as I say I was, I was starting work at fourteen because well the money was seven and six a week then.
BW: And so you were working from the age of about fourteen when you left school up until the point, as you say you joined the RAF and you were a machinist at that point.
SB: Yeah. Like I, Elswick Hopper Cycle Works and I used to be in the machine shop. I was foreman’s stooge I think. The stooge was a fella called Tup Franklin and he said, ‘You’ve no need to mess about with turning Steve. Just do whatever wants doing. Put belts on and sharpen tools,’ and he says ‘Just sharpen drills’ he says and I got on very well with him and not being tied to a bench or anything like that it was just the job I wanted. And er -
BW: And then when war broke out you say you felt -
SB: Oh well.
BW: It was your duty to join up.
SB: Oh me and a fella called Donald Cook who was a pal of mine we were sat on, there used to be a drain goes past our houses and into the country and there used to be a [form sitting ?] where the road went over it and we were sitting one day and I said to Donald Cook, I said, ‘Right, Don. I’m going to join up.’ He said, ‘Right, Steve. I’ll join up with you.’ So we got on the train and the ferry. I think it was six pence and we joined up in Kingston upon Hull. Aye the old paddle steamer and the bar, of course we weren’t old enough really for drinking we didn’t drink but the bar opened up as soon as they cast the ropes off the pier. The bar opened and it used to close as soon as it got to the other side. Twenty, twenty minutes normally but as I was reading somewhere, I don’t know where, something about the estuary the Humber being very dangerous. Sandbanks. And I remember the sandbanks. If you got the ferry at low tide oh it’d take ages to get back. Only a, you could spit across nearly from Hull to New Holland and I had a friend, Noel, Noel Stamp. He was a shop assistant in Hull and the times he used to be late coming home. Two or three hours oh aye oh yeah but were no worse for it. We, we did very well. All my family did fair. As I say I met my wife in Blackpool. She was on a fortnight’s holiday when there used to be wakes weeks and Burnley used to have a fortnight followed immediately by Blackburn and there were her and a couple of cousins and I’m stood outside a pub waiting for it to open. A shortage of beer at that time and I got talking to a sergeant and an Irishman, a soldier, in, while I were in the queue and when the pub opened we dashed in and we got sat at the same table as three young ladies. One of them of course happened to be my wife. And she died though. She’s been dead forty odd years. A grand lass but it had to be, but it’s funny how things work out. I mean no one would have expected me to be finish up a manager of a ruddy weaving mill. I couldn’t, I never, I was never a weaver but I had to be a weaver to be an overlooker but Harry [Makenson], this guy who stopped and asked me what I was doing when I was shovelling bloody coal, he, he put me in to be an apprentice overlooker in [Burnley] and my wife was correct. They turned me down. I wasn’t local. My family didn’t work in the mills or anything like that so as my wife forecast they turned me down. So I saw old [Makenson] and I said, ‘Oh Harry I got turned down.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I know. Don’t worry about it. Come to Blackburn.’ He said, ‘I’ll get you in.’ I went to Blackburn. I went to the front of the committee and oh yes, oh yes and I was in and I was an apprentice. Harry [Makenson], he looked after me. He was a bit crude at times. I was his apprentice overlooker which I’d never been a weaver yet. Totally foreign to me and he said, ‘Right, Steve,’ he says, ‘Them boxes there.’ He says, ‘There’s machines in them, I want them running.’ He says, ‘You’ve got a bricklayer there to do anything you want him to.’ I opened these boxes and they were automatic [widening?] frames in them and with faults and mistakes I got them all running. He said, ‘Right, you’re coming up to [Longsham?] Mill.’ He said, ‘You’re going to be an overlooker.’ I said, ‘At last?’ He says, ‘Yeah.’ I was there about six months and I got called into the office and me and a fellow called Jack Sowerby, he was in the same position as me and Harry [Makenson’s] there. He says, ‘Now then,’ he says, ‘I know what I’m doing.’ He said, ‘I’m asking,’ I forget his name, Jimmy or Harry or whatever. He says, ‘I’m going to ask you do you want to go down to Highfield Mill and it’s shift work and this Harry said no. ‘Right. Steve, you’re going.’ [laughs] I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He says, ‘You’re going to be an overlooker.’ I said, ‘I know I am. I’m an apprentice.’ He says, ‘You’re not. Not anymore.’ He said, ‘I’ve one finished. A foreigner.’ He said, ‘He’s finished down at Highfield Mill. You’re going there’ And they were Japanese looms and I used to spend the first few days looking to see what happened and I got on very well. I had maybe good luck and good judgement I don’t know but I was immediately an overlooker and then he opened another mill. He said, ‘I’m opening a mill Steve. You’re going to look after it.’ ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘Christ almighty what next?’ But that mill it closed down through slump and then I came back to Burnley. I was in Blackburn for twelve years and I came back to Burnley and that’s where I still am. I don’t regret anything.
BW: No.
SB: No. I’ve had a, I’ve been a coal miner, I’ve been a ironstone miner at Stanton at Scunthorpe, I’ve been an industrial painter. I’ve, I’ve tried everything until I got settled in textiles. Aye.
BW: Interesting that you had a couple of jobs as a miner and yet when you were in the prison camp you didn’t fancy tunnelling.
SB: No.
BW: Did you ever feel claustrophobic as a miner?
SB: No but I, that, that, that totally different. A coal mine is six to eight feet high.
BW: Ahum.
SB: Other than the actual face and as they move the face along they move this passageway and rails so it was a different atmosphere. In the ironstone mine that was what they called room and pillar system and they’d go that way and go that way and leave a diamond shape to support the roof. That was the room and pillar and I was a a pipe fitter strangely enough but the, I forget, I think they called them eggs. I’m not sure only the pipes were made with a lip on and you put this adaptor in and it was airtight. It was all compressed air was the machinery fans and drills and everything and so I finished up as a pipe fitter but that was thirty foot high and it’s all, I think it’s closed now. Not, not because I left it but [laughs] it’s amazing what you can do when you have to do, oh aye.
BW: And were you aware of other tunnellers in the, in the camp? Were other activities going on like that?
SB: No. I don’t know of any. No but I did hear say that if they found any they’d, instead of pumping the toilet on the field they’d pump it into the tunnel. That would be a deterrent of course [laughs] but I never heard of any but as I say I was surprised I didn’t know any air force fella do the same as I did but I don’t know why. I mean to sit there and play bloody cards all day long there, Oh no it’s, you’ve got to get moving and of course there was always the chance of being shot I suppose. I don’t know.
BW: Some of the other activities here that went on in some of the other camps I’ll just show you were there similar things going on in other in Lamsdorf at all or not. They show a meal at one Christmas and they show a sports team -
SB: Oh yes.
BW: And amateur dramatics.
SB: There was. Oh we’d ladies. [pause] Oh yeah. Oh yes there used to be baseball and as I say ladies. They were fellas dressed as ladies and I knew one and the last time I heard of him he’d died on the isle of Ibiza. What did he die of? Aids. He was a queer. Denholm Elliot. And the first time I I saw him after the war I was, we were in the Odean cinema in Burnley and before the programme there used to be a screen come down with adverts on and lo and behold Denny, Denny Elliot was there advertising cocoa. But it didn’t, he was, he was definitely feminine. Oh his attitude and he was one of the main actors or actresses whatever you might call them and they used get organised and they would give a concert occasionally, oh yes.
BW: Did you sense any of that with the other guys who maybe dressed up?
SB: I didn’t meet any. Denny was the only one I met. Oh no he was a nice, nice lad. Very inclined to be a bit delicate but nature’s a queer thing. I never criticised Denny. I mean he lived his own life. He was seventy odd I think when he died but he died of aids on Ibiza.
BW: And was he in, he was in the same camp as you then.
SB: Yes.
BW: At that point.
SB: Oh yes.
BW: That’s where you met him first.
SB: Aye. No, I mean, in between times I mean we used to play cards. We knew cards inside out. Bridge. Bridge was the main game of cards and I used to, we used to cheat like hell. Like not really cheating but you might, I don’t know if you know bridge at all.
BW: I don’t know the rules of bridge to be honest.
SB: Well, it’s a case you make bids. I’ll bid one club. Well I’ll be the diamond which was over a club and then bid the heart and then the spade was the top card and we’d, we used to have, we had two packs of cards and we used to use we used to get thirteen cards each if I remember right and we’d start bidding. Well me and my partner we worked it out that I’ll bid a diamond or a diamond you missed the [?] out and of course that told your partner something about we were about a real system of cheating but there was nothing at stake. I mean it was just friendly. Well to a point it was friendly. But oh no but I suppose it was a hard life.
BW: Were there opportunities for sport?
SB: Pardon?
BW: Were there opportunities for sport?
SB: Oh, no. You were, you were pinned into your own compound. They were kicking the ball about but as a team no there wasn’t ‘cause I mean it was a transit camp. Here today and gone tomorrow working parties.
BW: Did you get to see much of the commandant?
SB: No. Oh no.
BW: Did you ever see him when you were brought back to camp having tried to escape? Were you taken to him?
SB: No. I went -
BW: For punishment or -
SB: I only saw his underlings. Aye. But no it was a fixed effort. You got seven days, you got fourteen days, you got twenty one days depending on how often you went there. I got to twenty one but er -
BW: Twenty one days in solitary.
SB: Yeah and it was solitary. They, they, you could figure out you could sit somehow and get comfortable and the guards would creep down but it was a concrete floor and they had jackboots on and it used to crackle so they gave themselves away. We’d stand up then immediately we heard this crackling. Oh yeah.
BW: And what sort of size of cell were you in?
SB: Pardon?
BW: What sort of size of cell were you in in solitary? What sort of size of room were you in?
SB: Oh only a little room. A width of a bed and another bed. About that maybe.
BW: So maybe six foot across most.
SB: Yeah six or eight foot maybe. We’d a high window and we’d hear a frog [croakus?] at night. Oh aye, the frogs kept us company at night. Oh yeah.
BW: And so was the window high up. Was it open?
SB: No. No it wouldn’t open.
BW: Oh.
SB: No.
BW: But even then you could hear the frogs outside.
SB: Oh yes. oh yes there was twelve solitary confinement cells but as I say it was solitary apart from this quarter of an hour we used to have walking around this circle which was one of the Geneva Convention rules that they had to have exercise.
BW: And do you think they treated you fairly in the camp in respect of the Geneva Convention or were there things that they should have done that they didn’t or -
SB: I think they were fair in so far as it wasn’t everybody who could have white bread. It was the sick and infirm who got white bread and this brown bread that we got which soldiers got as well it was bloody awful. It was so packed it was like clay and you could cut it as thin as a newspaper but we only got a tenth of a loaf so it didn’t really trouble us a lot [laughs] Oh yes. Yeah.
BW: And you mentioned getting the Red Cross parcels. Were they regular or did you -
SB: Oh no -
BW: Sense that they had kept -
SB: Intermittent.
BW: They were intermittent. Did you sense -
SB: Now and again and as I say two to one parcel.
BW: Do you think they were keeping those parcels behind for their own good?
SB: I don’t know. I’ve no idea. No. I never give it a thought.
BW: Yeah.
SB: No. But no I can’t say we were ill-treated they just hadn’t anything to give us. I mean, as I say, white bread was very unusual. You had to be ill or something. That was for ordinary people not us prisoners of war. No. I think, like they say, the Germans prisoners of war who we took got a lot better treatment. They got better treatment ‘cause it was available.
BW: Did you feel that you were treated differently to the Russians? You say they were in the compound next to them. The Germans had quite a different view of the Russians. Do you feel that or did you get an idea that -
SB: No I -
BW: They were treated more harshly than you?
SB: I didn’t, I didn’t have any idea to compare. I’ve no idea how they treated them. I mean funnily enough I was on the, oh Ibiza and I used to go drinking and my, I was favourite in a bar run by Germans.
BW: So many years after the war you went to a bar in Ibiza that was run by Germans.
SB: Yeah. Oh yeah. I got on very well with the Germans and they got on very well with me I suppose but no it was all over and done with and hope it never happens again.
BW: And in the years following how, how has it been when you’ve seen public response to Bomber Command and the, let’s say the commemoration of them? How have you, have you seen a change over the years that people from Bomber Command have been treated?
SB: Pardon?
BW: How do you feel the veterans of Bomber Command have been treated after the war? They’re, do you feel there’s been a change in attitudes since.
SB: Well I think just a nucleus of people forgotten. It’s one of those things that happened and that was it. I mean Bob Featherstone, an Australian. I mean he came from Australia. He was a school master and then he finished as a rep for the immigration authorities persuading people to go to Australia and I’d been mean I was working in Blackburn at the time and I went home, and my wife said ‘There’s been a man to see you Steve.’ I said, ‘Who was it?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ I thought. ‘You’ve to go down to the Labour Exchange at 8 o’clock tonight.’ I says, ‘Why? I don’t know that I applied for any position in anywhere.’ Anyway I went down and there’s Bob Featherstone sat. ‘Come and sit at the side of me Steve.’ And he was talking to people and he was telling them the truth. He said well, the whole point is you’ll get accommodation and you’ll have to, after three months you’ll have to find your own accommodation and different things and I was talking to him afterwards and I says, ‘What about me going Bob?’ ‘Oh you can go anytime’ He said, ‘I can find you a job. I’ve two houses. I’ve one in Geelong and I’ve one in Sydney.’ He says, ‘You can one for as long as you want.’ Oh I thought, ‘Bloody good.’ Anyhow, of course he was only in Burnley for a day and he came to our house and had a meal with us and then he went of course on his travels. He said, ‘Keep in touch, Steve.’ He says, ‘You can fly or you can go by sea.’ He says, ‘Let me know.’ And I was talking to the wife and I said, ‘Alice,’ I said, ‘You’ve got to think one thing.’ I said, ‘You might never see your parents again.’ I said, ‘It’s twelve thousand mile away, ‘I said and you won’t be able to pop over at weekends.’ ‘I don’t want to go Steve.’ I said ‘Ok.’ So I rung Bob and I said, ‘Bob,’ I said ‘it’s off. The wife says no.’ I often wonder what I would have done in Australia.
BW: Yeah.
SB: And Laurie. He was, he was another Australian. He worked on the railways. And Tommy Fouracre. He died. He was the first to die I think. He were a farmer in [?] or some such ruddy place. And the Canadians I don’t know what the Canadians were. I have no idea.
BW: It’s interesting that on that raid as you said before all of you escaped from the Lancaster as it was shot down and yet the three other aircraft that were lost on the same raid over Berlin all the crews were killed.
SB: That’s amazing. I’m wondering if it was as I say I didn’t think or I couldn’t remember ackack. I wonder if the ackack was kept off and the air fighters came in. I mean -
BW: And none of the other crew in your aircraft indicated to you what had happened even when you met up with them afterwards.
SB: No. All I know the plane crashed. Whether it, what it was hit, where it was hit, if it was hit I don’t know and as I say Bob only a few minutes with us and then he was off to an Offlag so I couldn’t get to know off Bob.
BW: And were you all, I don’t recall this being mentioned before and it’s only just occurred to me were you all kept together in the same camp apart from Bob who was taken off to an Offlag were the other six of you kept together? Or did you -
SB: In Stalag 8b?
BW: Yeah.
SB: We were. Oh yes we were held together. We used to play cards with one another and we used to, but nobody wanted to do what I did. I don’t know why. We all have our own funny ways.
BW: So the other guys although they’d all been taken prisoner and all detained in the same camp didn’t try to escape like you did.
SB: No. I mean the, to get out of the camp itself was impossible because there was such a depth of barbed wire and these towers on corners with machine guns. I mean it was hopeless. So there was only one way. Changing identities with somebody who got fed up with working.
BW: And when the camp was emptied and you were walking presumably westwards at what stage were you technically liberated? I mean were you taken to another camp and held there or were you -
SB: We were, I don’t know how long we were on the march. We were like bloody zombies and we finished up in this camp. There was Frenchmen in it in actual fact. There was four Frenchmen killed by a French aeroplane who mistook the camp and and we went to this camp and as I say there was a bloody great big marquee and branches on the floor for us to sleep on and in actual fact there was a young fella younger than me he got frostbite and it had -
BW: Infected his leg.
SB: Aye. He died. He died. He was only twenty one and we were there for maybe a couple of days and then the Americans came. The Germans had gone. There was nobody in the camp only us prisoners and then as I say the old Dakota came along and took us to Cosford and -
BW: And then you were back in this country.
SB: Yep. I was back to work. [laughs] Aye. I enjoyed being in India. I was in Bombay. I was in Madras and I was in Delhi and of course being a warrant officer I had a bit of a [sway?] and some of the lads they all, they always called me Red. I had red hair. If anybody was around it was sir but otherwise it was, ‘Hey Red, just a minute.’ ‘Oh Red. How about getting us on to the race, Guindi racecourse.’ I said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ And I’d get the big, I forget what they called them, bloody thing, the big van thing with windows and we’d go to the races at the weekend. Oh aye. It was useful being a warrant officer [laughs].
BW: Rank has its privileges.
SB: Oh yes. And like if I put my raincoat on and the cap badge or the same as officers and they’d salute me and I’d salute them back the silly buggers. I remember going, going to, oh I was going from Blackpool to Barton. I changed, I was travelling by coach and I changed coach at Leeds and as I got on the coach, ‘Oh very good. Right. Ok now.’ They’d been waiting for an air force officer and mistook me for him and the ruddy coach had been waiting for this fellow and it was convenient. It took me to Hull.
BW: Very good. I think that is all the questions I have for you. So -
SB: Well it is nice talking about it again.
BW: Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much. It’s been great talking to you.
SB: It was an experience.
BW: It was a good one I hope. It was for me.
SB: Oh yeah.
BW: So thank you very much for your time Mr Bacon. Thank you.
SB: It’s been a pleasure.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ABaconSG160216
Title
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Interview with Stephen Granville Bacon
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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02:21:47 audio recording
Creator
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Brian Wright
Date
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2016-02-16
Description
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Stephen joined the Royal Air Force in Kingston upon Hull. He wanted to be a pilot but became a mid-air gunner instead. He started at RAF Dalcross where he trained on Boulton Paul Defiant aircraft and went to 12 Squadron at Wickenby on Lancasters.
Stephen describes the preparations for missions, the cold and how the pilot would corkscrew as he approached targets. Following two trips to Essen and on his second trip to Berlin, his aircraft crashed. Another three Lancasters went down with no survivors. Upon landing in the snow he was captured by the German home guard and sent to an interrogation camp at Frankfurt. A person, claiming to be from the Red Cross tried to interview him but Stephen had been warned of this ruse and refused to answer any questions.
He and the other crew members were taken to Stalag VIII-B in Lamsdorf, near the Polish border. The conditions were very difficult with very little water and food. They burnt bed boards from their three-tier bunks to make tea and replaced them with string from Red Cross food parcels. The sanitary conditions were poor. Stephen, however, felt they were treated fairly.
He describes in detail the deplorable conditions in the camp. During his stay he escaped three times by exchanging identities with a member of a working party but was recaptured every time and punished by solitary confinement. He knew he had little chance of escaping as he couldn't speak German but wanted to keep the Germans occupied. He discusses some of the amusing incidents which occurred and outlines the entertainment activities in the camp. Stephen’s mother was informed he was missing, and his name read out as a prisoner of war by Lord Haw-Haw [William Joyce].
In 1945, he embarked on a gruelling march to escape from the approaching Russian army, often resorting to eating raw chicken and rabbit. Eventually the guards disappeared and he was picked up and looked after by the Americans and flown back to England for medical treatment. Stephen developed beriberi, weighing only seven stone. He was flown back to RAF Cosford in a C-47. After treatment he was sent to India as there were no flying post available in England. After the war ended, he was sent home to Blackpool for demob and worked in the coal mines, as a coal handler in the mills, a maintenance engineer and finally as a mill manager.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Poland--Łambinowice
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Terry Holmes
Sally Coulter
12 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bombing
Defiant
Dulag Luft
escaping
military service conditions
Nissen hut
prisoner of war
RAF Dalcross
RAF Wickenby
sanitation
shot down
Stalag 8B
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/566/8834/PEvansE1602.1.jpg
70edd28e823fd9b3701eb02ab8fcb037
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/566/8834/AEvansE160331.1.mp3
0f5ef1aaf69856347003131f4e77cce5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Evans, Eric
E Evans
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Evans, E
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-31
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Eric Evans (1923 - 2017, 2211558 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 463 Squadron but also served as a Captain in the Royal Tank Regiment. Also includes a letter from prisoner of war senior British Officer to Russian authorities.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Eric Evans catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BW: This is Brian Wright, I am interviewing with Sergeant Eric Evans of 463 Squadron, who served in the RAF, initially as sergeant, then warrant officer and finished as captain in the Royal Tank Regiment. It’s taking place at his home in Liverpool on Thursday the 31st of March 2016 at 10.30. So, would you like me to call you Eric or Mr Evans?
EE: Eric.
BW: Eric. If err, you wouldn’t mind just starting us off please Eric, could you confirm your service number and your date of birth please?
EE: The 31st of the first 1923 and my service number was double two, double one, double five, eight.
BW: OK, thank you. And you were born in Liverpool, is that right?
EE: I was.
BW: And, along with your parents, did you have any other brothers and sisters?
EE: I had two brothers.
BW: Ok. And how was it in your early life growing up? What was your family life like?
EE: It was very pleasant. A good middle-class family.
BW: A good middle class family.
EE: My father was a major in the Army.
BW: Right.
EE: My two brothers were err, both commissioned, one in the Navy and one in the, one in aircrew.
BW: Right, and were you the middle brother?
EE: I was the youngest.
BW: The youngest.
EE: I was sixteen when the war broke out.
BW: And you had a brother in the Navy. Was he the elder or the middle?
EE: The elder.
BW: The eldest brother was in the Navy, and so, your next eldest would have been in the RAF. Did he go straight in as an officer or did he go in —
EE: He went on training, to Canada.
BW: I see.
EE: And he flew as a navigator.
BW: Right. And what happened to him —
EE: He just got through the war.
BW: He came through OK?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, at that time it was common for people to leave school at fourteen. Is that what happened to you?
EE: No, I stayed at school until I was sixteen. I went to a private school.
BW: I see.
EE: We were all privately educated.
BW: All privately educated, right. And whereabouts did you go to school?
EE: Quarrybank
BW: I see.
EE: A local school.
BW: And what was it like there? Was it pretty strict or was it a good school?
EE: It was a good school. I didn’t like school very much it was very strict but it was a good school.
BW: And then, when you were sixteen, you say the war broke out.
EE: That’s right. My father arranged for me to do an apprenticeship. He got me a position as an indentured apprentice marine engineer.
BW: An indentured apprentice marine engineer. I see.
EE: Yes.
BW: I see.
EE: With a fee of fifty pounds.
BW: And whereabouts was that? That must have been in Liverpool as well?
EE: In the docks.
BW: Right.
EE: Liverpool docks. It was a firm called Grace and Rollo and Clover Docks Limited.
BW: Grace and -
EE: Rollo
BW: Rollo
EE: And Clover Docks.
BW: And Clover Docks. I see.
EE: Limited.
BW: Right, and how long were you there? A year or two or less?
EE: A couple of years, and then I tried to get in the Army but I couldn’t get out because I was in a reserved occupation.
BW: I see.
EE: So, eventually they announced, if you joined aircrew, you could, you could leave.
BW: All right.
EE: So, I joined.
BW: (laughs).
EE: I joined aircrew.
BW: And what drew you to the RAF? Why them and, obviously, you said —
EE: Well, it was the only one I could get into –
BW: Yeah, I see, of course.
EE: The Army wouldn’t take me.
BW: Yeah.
EE: I joined the Army twice.
BW: Any you didn’t fancy the Navy?
EE: Well, I couldn’t get in the Navy.
BW: Same, same rule applied? They wouldn’t take you from a reserved occupation?
EE: Only aircrew.
BW: And, did you err, intend to fly or did you —
EE: I intended to fly, of course, there again, I could only go into a flying branch —
BW: Right
EE: Or they wouldn’t release me.
BW: So, if you had wanted to go in as a fitter or mechanic, you, you—
EE: No, I couldn’t have done.
BW: I see, so it sounds a pretty important job you had at, in the Docks.
EE: Well, they considered it to be so.
BW: What sort of things were you doing there as a —
EE: I was just an apprenticeship, with ship repair. We did the, we did the Campbeltown, the one that did the dockade at St Nazaire.
BW: Yeah.
EE: We worked on the Campbletown.
BW: Right, and was that re-fitting the Cambletown for that raid, or —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Really?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And was the purpose of fitting Campbletown out at the time known to you, or was it just given to you as a —
EE: No, we didn’t know. It was just filled with concrete all the bows were filled up with concrete.
BW: Right.
EE: [unclear].
BW: So, were you involved in filling the bows with concrete or —?
EE: No, no.
BW: It was just part of the fitting.
EE: It was part of the fitting.
BW: Right and so, when the raid took place on St Nazaire, that must have been, I’m assuming the only time you knew that was what the purpose of that ship was?
EE: She was an ex American destroyer.
BW: Right, that’s fascinating. So, when did you join the RAF?
EE: Err 1943.
BW: Ok. When about was it roughly?
EE: I don’t know.
BW: Okay. That’s all right, there’s no, we don’t need an exact date. All right, so, we’ve just had a look at your RAF service and release book and it confirms your date of service from 13th September 1943 to the 5th February 1947.
EE: I joined six months before that —
BW: You joined six months before?
EE: I waited six months to get in.
BW: I see.
EE: I went to Padgate for all my exams.
BW: So, you did your exams at Padgate, and that’s at Warrington, that’s one of the recruitment centres, isn’t it?
EE: That’s right.
BW: Err.
EE: Six months before.
BW: Right, and once you’d done your basic training, where did you then go?
EE: I went to err oh, [pause] from Padgate to Bridgnorth.
BW: Bridgnorth.
EE: And then I did all my square bashing at Bridgnorth.
BW: Right.
EE: And then I went to um Yorkshire, Bridlington.
BW: Bridlington.
EE: And I went from Bridlington to err, gunnery school in Northern Ireland. Bishops Court.
BW: Bishops?
EE: Bishops Court.
BW: Bishops Court in Northern Ireland was a gunnery school. I see.
EE: We went from gunnery school to [pause] —
BW: And this is your log book we’re looking at now?
EE: Yeah, [pause]. Let’s see, start on my log book.
BW: OK.
EE: It was gunnery school, a continuation of gunnery school.
BW: And so, this starts in January 7th of January 1944, and you’re flying Ansons at this time.
EE: That’s right. That’s at gunnery school at Bishops Court.
BW: Uh-huh.
EE: And you turn over.
BW: This is just details, the number of rounds that you fired in practice on, on targets.
EE: That’s right.
BW: I see, and that confirms you flying twenty-one hours and ten minutes at 12 Air Gunnery School, Bishops Court.
EE: What’s this?
BW: And then a move to 14 OTU Bosworth.
EE: That’s it. And Wellingtons.
BW: Flying Wellington mark tens. This is April ‘44, so this is very nearly err, seventy-two years, almost seventy-two years to the day actually, since you started —
EE: Yes.
BW: How did you find flying in Ansons and target practice compared to flying in Wellingtons?
EE: It was all right. It was just normal [indistinct] you just gave, you just took what they gave you.
BW: And were you given much instruction about the arms, the guns that you were firing?
EE: Oh yes. [unclear] blindfold and all that kind of thing.
BW: Right. You had to take them apart in a certain time and do it blindfold.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And how did you find that? Was it—
EE: It was easy enough.
BW: Ok. And what was your, I mean, these detail your different sorties, how did you find your um, accuracy on the guns?
EE: Reasonable. I think I was average.
BW: Mm-hmm.
EE: I didn’t expect to be more than average. But err, you just went out and did what you had to do, to the best of your ability.
BW: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm So, looking at this you’ve had, you were flying pretty much every day almost, maybe the odd day or two in between and that lasted up until May, the end of May ‘44. But there’s a mark here, where you’ve got bullseye.
EE: Yeah. [pause] That’s it.
BW: I see. And some of these are marked on duty as cine, is that right so were they filming you, is, that right?
EE: We had cine instead of bullets —
BW: I see —
EE: They had cine film on. I think err, what kind of aircraft, oh no [unclear].
BW: I see
EE: We used to fly against Spits and things —
BW: And this was what they called fighter affiliation then —
EE: That’s right.
BW: So, the Spitfires would be flying dummy attacks —
EE: That’s right, and we would film them.
BW: There’s a description here, fifteen minutes, I think that will be fighter affiliation, infra-red, what does that entail?
EE: I don’t know, don’t remember, oh night time, night time I think.
BW: Right.
EE: End of 14 OTU. Operations Unit.
BW: So, same type of aircraft here now. This is the 8th of May ‘44 err, where you have moved to 14 OTU at Market Harborough —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Still flying Wellingtons, and [pause] it’s a mix of live ammunition and cine film. Were the bombers flying straight and level or were they taking part in manoeuvres?
EE: Oh no, they were doing corkscrews and things. All the manoeuvres one would normally do.
BW: And so, while the pilot is putting the aircraft into a corkscrew manoeuvre, you are still having to fire at a —
EE: That’s right
BW: At a target approaching.
EE: Yes.
BW: And I’m looking here there’s about the same time, equal time, spent day and night.
EE: Yeah. [pause].
BW: I see. And then from there, you had presumably a couple of months leave between May and July. This is when your heavy conversion unit training starts.
EE: Yeah, Stirling, horrible aircraft.
BW: What didn’t you like about the Stirling?
EE: Big and ugly. Big, awkward thing.
BW: Some crew found it quite spacious, did you -
EE: Too big.
BW: Too big?
EE: it was like a bus.
BW: [laughs]. Did it feel like it handled like a bus?
EE: Yeah, didn’t like the Stirling at all. Never felt safe in the Stirling.
BW: And that was simply because of the amount of space around you?
EE: Just a big ugly —
BW: Right
EE: Big ugly thing.
BW: And so, you’ve done between the 14th of July 44 and the 11th of August ‘44 at 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at Wigsley, you’ve done um, best part probably of six weeks training thereabouts, maybe a month’s training?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, were you, um, placed as a rear gunner or in different positions?
EE: A rear gunner the whole time. Never changed, or I wouldn’t, stayed as, never took any other position.
BW: And is that a role that you asked for, to be a rear gunner?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And was your preference for that? What drew you to that?
EE: I dunno.
BW: And then, moving on from err, the conversion unit, this is Number Five LFS,
EE: Lancaster Flying School.
BW: Lancaster Flying School, at Syerston in Nottinghamshire, and 27th of August 1944, this presumably was your first flight in a Lancaster?
EE: Yeah.
BW: How did that feel after being in Stirlings and Wellingtons?
EE: Good, but they were all clapped out old aircraft. They lost ten percent of all crews in training. Ten percent, it’s outrageous.
BW: Right.
EE: Because they were all clapped out old aircraft.
BW: Gosh.
EE: They weren’t fit for squadron use.
BW: And, did you know any guys on your courses who were lost as a result of —
EE: Oh yes, I don’t remember their names now.
BW: But there were guys who —
EE: Oh yes, ten percent.
BW: Right
EE: One out of every ten.
BW: Mm. So, you’ve not long, really, you’ve probably, only literally a few days, maybe a week at a Lancaster School thereabouts, and then you join —
EE: 463 Squadron.
BW: 463 Squadron, RAAF at Waddington. How did it feel to finally get on your squadron?
EE: Well, it was, what it was all building up towards. It was quite a, quite a do. First trip was to France.
BW: And do you recall what the target was in France?
EE: Yes, troop concentrations, it’s written down.
DW: Ah ha
EE: It’s written down there
BW: And then same again, troop concentrations around Boulogne? And this is after the invasion.
EE: Yes.
BW: Was there a sense of having missed out on what they call the big show, the invasion?
EE: No, it wasn’t a big show for the RAF. We did all the bombing for it. For the Legions of Honour. For those two trips.
BW: I see, so because you took part in raids over France, you became eligible for the Legion D’Honneur.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And did you take up the offer from the French government for that?
EE: I’ve taken it up, but I’ve not heard from them yet.
BW: I see.
EE: Very long winded.
BW: Well, I hope it comes through soon. There’s a note in your book here and it looks like you were flying in the group captain, group captain’s Lancaster, Group Captain—
EE: Bonham-Carter
BW: Bonham-Carter, over Germany?
EE: Yeah, right.
BW: And then a note about Guy Gibson.
EE: Well, he was missing. He [unclear]. He went missing on that trip.
BW: And what was he fulfilling?
EE: Master bomber.
BW: Master Bomber?
EE: Yes.
BW: Did you hear anything about what happened to him?
EE: No, they kept it quiet for about three weeks.
BW: I think he was killed in a Mosquito.
EE: He was. I’ve been to his grave.
BW: Have you?
EE: Yeah, in Holland.
BW: Presumably you never met Guy Gibson, just heard of him.
EE: No, I never met him.
BW: What was the err, I suppose the legend about him, how was it at the time—
EE: Nobody liked him.
BW: Nobody liked him?
EE: No, he was an arrogant bugger.
BW: And then, from October ’44, you are flying still Lancasters with 463. You had a regular aircraft it looks like, Q —
EE: Yes, you eventually got your own. Queenie.
BW: Queenie?
EE: That’s right.
BW: And do you recall the names of your other crewmen?
EE: Oh yes.
BW: There was a chap called Sunderland.
EE: Yeah, he was my pal.
BW: Was he?
EE: The navigator, Stanley.
BW: There was a Stanley Harding.
EE: He was a mid-upper.
BW: And —
EE: He was killed.
BW: Now your mate Sunderland, what was his first name?
EE: Cecil.
BW: Cecil? And so, Cecil Sunderland is navigator, Stanley Harding is the mid-upper, and, there was a chap called Lynch.
EE: We were pals.
BW: What was his first name, can you recall?
EE: Joe.
BW: Joe?
EE: Yeah.
BW: His first initial was a C but he must have gone —
EE: C J Lynch.
BW: And your bomb aimer was a chap called Rogers.
EE: Was a chap called?
BW: Rogers.
EE: Yes, that’s right.
BW: Do you recall his first name? It was R C Rogers, couldn’t -
EE: Can’t recall it.
BW: No problem. The flight engineer was Sergeant Haywood.
EE: Yes.
BW: And what was his first name.
EE: Don’t know.
BW: And there was a chap, he was an Aussie, the wireless operator called Woolmer.
EE: Eric.
BW: Eric. So, there were two Erics on your crew.
EE: I saved his life.
BW: Say again?
EE: I saved his life, I got him out.
BW: Really.
EE: It was in the write up. You read the write up.
BW: I ’ll ask you about that in a little while, um, do you recall any particularly memorable raids out of this lot?
EE: Yes, this one. That one.
BW: This is to Nuremburg.
EE: I could never have done that again. I’d have gone LMF I think.
BW: And, what was it that you particularly recall about that raid?
EE: Well, we flew in to a mile squared of predicted flak. A mile square of predicted, imagine what that was like.
BW: A mile square of predicted flak. So, it’s -
EE: We had to fly though that to get to the target. It was impossible, but we got through.
BW: And so, you could see, the rest of the crew could see this? You were obviously in the rear turret.
EE: We cut all our Perspex out. We cut all ours out, from the top to the bottom so there was better sight.
BW: I am just going to temporarily pause the recording because there is some background noise.
BW: So, were you briefed about this particular flak hazard at Nuremburg, did you know about it beforehand.
EE: No. They told us very little about this kind of thing. They didn’t tell us about the upward firing guns.
BW: Schräge Musik
EE: Never told us. There was a plane shot down in 1943 with complete, seventy-degree guns fitted, they didn’t tell us about it.
BW: And, in terms of um, general preparation for a raid, just talk us through what, what would happen, from the base, from your point of view. You would attend a, a briefing about a raid, what, what sort of things went on? How did you —
EE: Well, there were maps all over the wall. Loads of maps, you knew where you were going, and you just prepared for wherever it was [laughs]. Everybody moaned.
BW: So, were there particular trips that everybody moaned about, particular targets that were notorious?
EE: All the Ruhr targets. My three COs were killed on the one I was shot down on. Three COs killed there.
BW: On the same raid?
EE: Different raids.
BW: Different raids, but same target?
EE: Yes. Most heavily defended target in Germany.
BW: Gosh. And why was that? What was significant about —
EE: Dortmund-Ems Canal.
BW: I see. You obviously knew your crew pretty well. How did you get to meet them? How did you crew up in the first place?
EE: Just in the hall. Just crewed up. Found the pilot and found the navigator and we just crewed up.
BW: Just got talking and liked the look of each other. There were only a couple of Aussies on your crew and yet it was an Australian squadron.
EE: We were lucky. Best squadron of them all. No bullshit whatsoever. Superb squadron. Had the biggest losses of the war, my squadron.
BW: I read that, yeah, the Australians and your particular squadron had the highest loss rate, probably because you had such heavy targets to go against.
EE: Well, that’s it. We were 5 Group, which was one of the top groups. All the dirty work was done by us.
BW: All the dirty work was done by 5 Group. Did they have a reputation amongst the air force separate from the other groups?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And what was that?
EE: They were a bit gung-ho.
BW: And was that, do you think, because of the mix of I don’t know, let’s say, colonial crew and squadrons —
EE: I don’t know, I don’t know why.
BW: What sort of preparations would you make before actually getting on board the aircraft and taking off? What, what kind of things would you do? Were there any mascots that you took, or rituals you had as a crew?
EE: No, no. Just got on board and got on with it.
BW: So, you weren’t a superstitious bunch at all?
EE: No. Not that I knew of. I didn’t take anything.
BW: And did you socialise as a crew on base as well?
EE: Oh, always. I used to go out with my navigator.
BW: And so, whereabouts did you go into?
EE: Into Lincoln. All the pubs in Lincoln.
BW: And what was that like? Were you treated well in the pubs?
EE: Yeah, except in Yorkshire. They didn’t like us in York.
BW: And why was that?
EE: I don’t know [unclear].
BW: Mm.
EE: But Lincoln was a stinking place.
BW: Did you meet any of them before you joined the squadron, or did you meet the all at —
EE: Met them all there, met them when, when we became a crew.
BW: And what was your pilot, Joe, like?
EE: Nice fellow. He was a year younger than I was, he was only twenty.
BW: You were all young and Stanley was only nineteen at the time as well. So, you were all in your late teens, early twenties.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And what were you wearing as a rear gunner? There were electrically heated suits, did you have one?
EE: Yeah. It was a silk suit, on your sort of skin and then underwear and a pullover and pants, and a denim overall, and an electric suit. The electric suits were useless. Used to short out and you’d get a red-hot leg and a cold one. Bloody useless. They never checked.
BW: And how did you find your position in the, a rear turret of the Lancaster? They said they were made to get in to and not out of. Was it fairly cramped?
EE: Yes, yeah. Very cramped, but there was space to do everything, except if you get a bad stoppage.
BW: And did that ever happen?
EE: Yeah. I had a separated case.
BW: And how did you manage to clear the guns when you had the stoppage?
EE: Well, you couldn’t, just isolate it. Stop the feed.
BW: And the guns you were using at the time were the 303s, is that right?
EE: 303’s, they were just being converted to the point fives when they got shot down.
BW: Did you ever get the chance to use your guns in anger?
EE: Yeah, I shot down a 110.
BW: Really.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Talk us through that. What happened?
EE: Well, he suddenly appeared about a hundred yards behind me. I say I shot him down, but I don’t know if I ever did, how can you tell at night? Anyway, he got a full, full load in the face. I got two that night, I hit two that night. I don’t know how many, I don’t know what happened to them. I never claimed them.
BW: That’s interesting, that you managed to hit two separate aircraft and didn’t claim them. Why did you not go through the —
EE: Well, how could I claim them, I just fired at them.
BW: So, they didn’t go down in flames but they stopped their attack.
EE: I don’t know, they could’ve done, you don’t wait around, do you?
BW: No.
EE: They’re both down there [pause], Brunswick.
BW: Okay, op number eight over Brunswick. Two fighters, so actually on the same raid —
EE: Yeah. One, I’m certain I got him. He was only about a hundred yards behind me. Hit him full on. I could see the pilot.
BW: And, that’s a really close range for them to, to be attacking you. They’ve obviously come in to a very short distance before attacking, were there —
EE: They didn’t realise. One night we were flying along a fighter between our tail plane. Flying along with us. Main partner tail plane, we suddenly looked and we both peeled off.
BW: And so, because it’s at night, even, even so it was very difficult, so you were lucky in that case that you didn’t have a mid-air collision.
EE: Yeah.
BW: With a fighter between your tail plane [laughs]. Were there any other raids that were particularly eventful or memorable? For you.
EE: All the Ruhr raids.
BW: All of them on the Ruhr?
EE: And when we got lost.
BW: Wilhelmshaven?
EE: We went to Bremerhaven by ourselves and then turned back and went to Wilhelmshaven by ourselves. Nearly got sent to Sheffield. You know about Sheffield, do you?
BW: Not in detail, tell me about —
EE: You don’t know Sheffield?
BW: I know of the city but —
EE: Nobody seemed to know about Sheffield. It was a punishment camp for aircrew.
BW: I see.
EE: An RAF punishment camp.
BW: And this, presumably, was a result of you flying to um Bremen, instead of Wilhelmshaven, but you didn’t drop your bombs on the —
EE: We did eventually.
BW: But only on Wilhelmshaven.
EE: No, we were going to Wilhelmshaven but we went to Bremerhaven.
BW: Bremerhaven.
EE: We turned around, we saw the fires so we turned back. Went to Wilhelmshaven and dropped them.
BW: And, as a result of that, you were then sent to Sheffield which was a punishment —
EE: We weren’t sent —
BW: I see.
EE: We were threatened with it.
BW: You were threatened with the punishment camp?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And would that have applied to all the crew? Or just —
EE: The whole crew.
BW: Gosh.
EE: People don’t know about Sheffield. It was, it was, an Army camp like a glass house. You got about a couple of weeks or a couple of months of strict discipline, then sent back to the squadron. But the Argies wouldn’t stand any of that nonsense. They had their own, no Argie was ever punished by the British.
BW: I read somewhere that they were paid by their own government, not by the British.
EE: They got twice the pay that we got.
BW: So, did your pilot buy the rounds in the pub [laughs].
EE: No [laughs].
BW: [Pause]. And then, on your last mission, this was November 6th, 1944, and this was significant for a couple of reasons. Clearly this was going to be your last trip in a Lancaster, but you mentioned as well that you saved the wireless operators life, and there is a description in the book, or the memoir that you have put together. Would you just talk us through what happened on that, on that night?
EE: It’s all written up there, yeah.
BW: So, this is fairly early on. This is a target at the Dortmund-Ems canal system at Gravenhorst, and then you were hit by a night fighter, and this was just as you were on target, and it says that you were flying straight and level with a bomb load of fourteen, one thousand-pound bombs of high explosive, and the impact was just behind, your, your turret.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And so, can you describe what was happening at that particular point, did you see the fighter?
EE: No, he was underneath. He was way, far away, he would be under, under the main bar.
BW: And so, you didn’t see the fighter because it came underneath, behind your turret, and —
EE: We didn’t start firing until they were seventy degrees, so if you took an aircraft and you were firing here, and I was here — [background noise].
BW: OK. I’m just going to pause the recording for a moment briefly, partly ‘cos of background noise but just to have a quick look through the description too. So, there are bullets coming through the fuselage behind you, and your turret is partly rotated to the beam position you said. Can you describe what you recall next?
EE: We were trying to get out through one door, with the seat back, I got out and didn’t touch the sides, went out like a ‘rat up a spout’, into the fuselage and found the wireless operator. The mid upper came down and he told us to grab the—
BW: And the mid upper got hit in the second attack by the —
EE: Yeah, cut him in two, right through the middle we stepped over to the osam position. Obviously, they had all gone on the first attack, apparently everybody had gone. I don’t blame them for going, we were still there.
BW: I’m just going to pause this one moment, we’ll just continue, there was some background noise. And at this point in the raid, you said there were a number of others that had already got out and you didn’t blame them. There was you and the wireless operator left in the aircraft, is that right?
EE: And the mid upper.
BW: And the mid upper? And you describe in your account how you got him out, with the aid of a foot in the back?
EE: Yeah. I got him on the step. He passed out on the floor and I dragged him to the step and kicked him out, a hand and a leg over the step and pushed him out. I never told him.
BW: He survived the bail out, but he was unconscious when you pushed him out.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Was the aircraft still straight and level or was it going down gently?
EE: I don’t remember, she was going down. Then suddenly she banked and caught me. I got trapped.
BW: And you were pinned against the fuselage by the seat by G force.
EE: That’s right, he’d gone.
BW: And there was nobody else in the aircraft at this point.
EE: I was the last one. Had a minute and a half to go according to records, before she hit the deck.
BW: And so, the aircraft is in a steep dive, your pinned to the roof of the fuselage—
EE: Right opposite, I could see the door below me.
BW: And, at a critical point, the aircraft banked—
EE: She banked, let go of me and away I went. Hit the tail plane going down [laughs].
BW: And at that point, the aircraft banked, did you go straight through the door, or did you have to crawl to it and get out?
EE: I don’t know. I don’t remember. And then I hit the tail plane.
BW: And you were lucky, in the sense that you had a seat pack parachute —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Most gunners, fitted their chute to the side of the aircraft.
EE: Yeah
BW: Did you have choice to have a seat pack?
EE: No. Just issue. Very lucky, been lucky all my life. Very lucky man.
BW: And it saved your life in that respect.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, the hit against the tail plane didn’t knock you out. Did it injure you?
EE: No, I hit it with my back. I remember I was crouched up, and I straightened me up and skidded over the top of it, and after that I don’t remember much.
BW: You managed to pull the chute.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Did you see any of the other crew in their chutes?
EE: No, no.
BW: There were two other aircraft lost on that raid, that same night.
EE: Four altogether.
BW: Four altogether?
EE: We were the only ones that survived.
BW: So, the others went down and the crews were all killed?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, were you given an order to bail out by the pilot?
EE: No, no, they’d gone.
BW: So, there was no order, they sensed the attack because of the bullets hitting the aircraft and they just took their own decision to go.
EE: Yeah. They may have got an order to go, but I didn’t get one. They probably did, I don’t know.
BW: Do you know roughly what height it was when you bailed out?
EE: No. No idea.
BW: How long do you think you were in the chute before you landed?
EE: No idea. I can’t remember now, too long ago. Not very long [pause].
BW: You then landed on your backside, it says here.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And I think you had another lucky escape, where you landed.
EE: I did.
BW: Just, can you explain why that was?
EE: Just sheer luck. Sheer good luck.
BW: Were there sharpened spikes in the field?
EE: Yeah, they had trees sharpened, planted in the field.
BW: Trees, planted in the field, that were sharpened, specifically to stop guys like you landing there.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: And, out of all of that, you missed all of them.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: So, you’re now down, and safe, in the sense that you have survived, but you are in Germany.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What did you do next?
EE: Started looking for somewhere to hide.
BW: And, you describe here that you started to run, but you ended up in a bog.
EE: Yeah, lost me boots.
BW: Both boots?
EE: One boot.
BW: One boot. And, you tried to shelter in a, in a wood.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Can you recall, how it felt at this point?
EE: I didn’t believe I was in Germany. I just hoped I was somewhere else, but obviously was in Germany, but you just hope against hope you’re not.
BW: Did you find any of the escape kit that you were given useful?
EE: Oh, yes, I ate the Horlicks tablet and the chocolate.
BW: And, at this point, you were on your own, you didn’t run into any of the other crewmen.
EE: No.
BW: And you were trying to avoid Germans and dogs.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: And you ended up by a jet fighter base?
EE: Yeah.
BW: What was going through your mind at this point, do you think?
EE: To get away from the jet fighter base as quick as possible.
BW: And shortly after that you were —
EE: I’d been attacked by a jet over [unclear], 262’s, over Brunswick.
BW: Over Brunswick?
EE: Yeah, over Brunswick.
BW: And was that a daylight raid at the time?
EE: No, night.
BW: Night?
EE: It was over Bremen, Bremen. Five fighters [pause]. Went to Bergen in Norway as well.
BW: So, there’s a possibility, perhaps, that when those five fighters had intercepted you at night, and those jets that you had seen attacking you —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Possibly were from that base that you were now sat in front of.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What prompted your decision to approach a farmhouse?
EE: Well, I had been three days out, absolutely soaked, would have died of the cold, never stopped raining. So, I had to approach somebody, I would have died of exposure otherwise.
BW: Can you recall the moment that you knocked on the door?
EE: Yes, old lady came to the door and an old guy, they were obviously the mother and father of the farmer. I saw a picture of Hitler on the wall. I knew they were German and that was it.
BW: And how did they treat you?
EE: Okay. They were a bit frightened of me. They were worried about me, as one would be.
BW: Were you able to communicate with them at all?
EE: No. I said I was an Englishfleger
BW: You said simply that you were an Englishfleger
EE: That’s right.
BW: And from your account, they must have called somebody who then came to arrest you.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Can you talk us through that period?
EE: Well, this guy, this fella came through in a very resplendent uniform, he was a forest warden. And err, he took me off to the pub, dragged me through the wood, which I’ve since then I’ve followed my route, I’ve been back to Germany. Followed my route, and he dragged me through the woods and then he took me in to the pub to show me off to his pals, and then the Luftwaffe came for me.
BW: And were you still in the pub when the Luftwaffe turned up?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And what happened?
EE: Well, they put me in a cell and then eventually I finished up on the Dortmund, on one of the canals.
BW: So, were you imprisoned at this, at this point?
EE: Not really. It was a guard house.
BW: It was a guard house by the canal?
EE: That’s right.
BW: That you actually been attacking near the canal, you said it was the Dortmund-elms canal.
EE: I don’t think it was the Dortmund.
BW: Was it not? And you mentioned that there was an American pilot brought in.
EE: No, he was already in there.
BW: He was already there.
EE: Yeah, all his face was bandaged and his hand.
BW: And an American thunderbolt pilot joined you as well.
EE: Yeah, he was okay, he wasn’t injured at all. He would just curse.
BW: How did he take to being captured?
EE: Very badly, very badly [laughs].
BW: And then you were taken by train to Frankfurt —
EE: To Oberusal and to Dulagluft.
BW: And put straight in an air raid shelter, ‘cos there was an air raid going on.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What did that feel like, being under an allied air raid, that only a few days before you would have been —
EE: Whilst I was in, I was bombed by the Americans, the Russians, the British and the Germans during my full-time service.
BW: So, at this stage then, you are in Dulagluft and you have been ordered to fill out information, and it seems they weren’t quite convinced you were RAF, is that right?
EE: Well, they always do this [unclear], tried to frighten you.
BW: Did it work?
EE: Yeah.
BW: There were um, rules about information you were able to give —
EE: Name, rank and number.
BW: And how effective were those rules do you think.
EE: God, I just told them my name rank and number, that’s it.
BW: And you weren’t mistreated because of holding to that?
EE: No.
BW: But you were put in a cell with a radiator at the end of it —
EE: That’s right.
BW: That, that was turned hot and then cold.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Seems pretty grim.
EE: Wasn’t too bad. There was a lot worse.
BW: ‘cause you had met people who had been injured —
EE: Yeah.
BW: And then been captured.
EE: Yeah
BW: And the food was not much to go by, was it?
EE: Oh God, no.
BW: Can you describe what they fed you?
EE: Yeah, two pieces of black bread and some watery soup, that was it.
BW: And this was very thin bread.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And nothing to look forward to there for a meal each day? And somebody lent you a book while you were in there.
EE: Yes, the fellow opposite. They opened the door and this bloke pushed a book across, it was Zane Gray, western.
BW: Zane Gray, western. Did the guard do anything, did they see it?
EE: They didn’t notice, just the door opened and he pushed it across.
BW: And was that the first contact you’d had with anybody?
EE: Yeah. Anybody from England. I don’t know who the guy was.
BW: And how did it feel? Did it give you a bit of hope knowing there was some others in there?
EE: Well, I suppose so.
BW: At, at this point, you snuck a shave when you shouldn’t have done apparently.
EE: Yeah [laughs], I went down the [unclear], waved my book and he sent me down to the library at the end, saw these, these blokes shaving so I joined them, and had a good wash and shave.
BW: And apparently having a wash and a shave was only a privilege not a —
EE: You had to, had to chat with them.
BW: And the colonel who was in charge of holding you, was not very impressed with that was he?
EE: He wasn’t. He went berserk.
BW: And then then there’s an interesting incident here, where a German officer told you that you were going to be shipped out to a POW camp, asked you to swear an oath that you would not escape.
EE: Yeah, he got shouted down and that, it was a stupid thing to say to us.
BW: And were you all taken out and lined up at this point?
EE: We were in a group, in a big room.
BW: And am I right in thinking that this was must have been the first time you had seen all the other prisoners together?
EE: Oh yeah, Americans and British and Canadians, Aussies and everybody, all mixed up.
BW: How did it feel, being, you know, in a larger group of your —
EE: Very impressed, hearing English spoken again.
BW: You were then taken by train and packed into trucks um, and then during the trip, you stopped at some marshalling yards at Ham. What happened there?
EE: We got bombed by the Americans.
BW: Your guards deserted you, didn’t they?
EE: Oh yes, they locked the carriage and buggered off.
BW: And so. You’re all trapped in the railway carts while —
EE: And they were all jumping off the bloody rails. The damn thing was jumping off.
BW: Because of the concussion of the explosion?
EE: Yeah.
BW: So eventually, after the best part of a week, five days and six nights you say here, you arrived at Stalagluft 7 —
EE: That’s it.
BW: At Bankau, and you managed to get some boots and a great coat.
EE: A polish hat. A new American great coat, new boots, and a Polish hat and that was it, oh, and a pipe.
BW: A pipe as well? And you’ve still got it.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And this looks just like a regular pipe but it’s got the inscription —
EE: I put that on, carved it with a razor blade.
BW: And you carved an air gunners brevet, into the bulb of the pipe, with 463 squadron on it.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Do you still smoke it?
EE: No.
BW: Did you still smoke it after you came out of service?
EE: No.
BW: Just kept it as a souvenir?
EE: Yeah
BW: It’s wonderful. And how did you manage to find boots that fit you?
EE: Well, they, they made sure they fitted. We got underwear as well, we got underwear and socks and things.
BW: So, the Germans issued you this or was it —.
EE: Oh, yes, it was all American.
BW: Was there any indication where they got it from?
EE: The Americans. Obviously, it was all American, new American army. Boots saved my bloody life.
BW: So, you were issued with underwear, socks, shirts, towels, comb, toothbrush, razor, razor blades and the pipe which you’ve shown that you still have, and this that your showing —
EE: A dog tag.
BW: Is a dog tag, which is about two inch long by one-inch wide, and it’s numbered one, two, four, zero, and German initials, which presumably are standing for Krieg —
EE: Fangelager.
BW: Kriegsgefangenenlager. D —
EE: Number seven.
BW: D dot, LW, dot number seven. And it’s inscribed top and bottom —
EE: I broke it in half. If you died, they broke it in half and buried one half with you and the other went to records.
BW: I see. So, there’s, there’s a hole in each corner, apart from one, and there are serrations in the middle, and so the inscription is top and bottom of this and, as you say, is used if the prisoner happens to die, then they separate the two halves and send one half back and bury the other with you. Fortunately, they never had to use that.
EE: No, now here’s my —
BW: And, now this is your Caterpillar Club card. Name, Flight Sergeant E Evans. Am I right in thinking that you had to return your chute handle to get one of those?
EE: No.
BW: No?
EE: [Unclear] as a squadron, says here. Letter’s in here.
BW: Okay, and a bit of luck I suppose, in the sense that you arrived at your prison camp just before Christmas.
EE: [Laughs] yeah.
BW: You describe getting Red Cross parcels.
EE: Yeah, the only one we ever got.
BW: And was that, do you think, because the Germans were intercepting them, or they were just no —
EE: Well, when we left, we left ten thousand in a place nearby, ten thousand parcels we should have had.
BW: And it sounds as though, from what you’re saying, that the Germans kept them and just used them for themselves and didn’t distribute them [Pause]. And there was a brew made for Christmas with raisins and prunes.
EE: I don’t know who made it. Some of the old lags.
BW: And it sounds pretty potent.
EE: [Laughs], it was, make you go blind.
BW: How would you describe life in the prison camp at that point?
EE: Boring.
BW: What did you do to relieve the boredom?
EE: Nothing. Nothing, bloody boring. Just walked round and round and round the perimeter by the trip wire.
BW: When you mention the trip wire, what springs to mind perhaps, is a scene in the Great Escape where there’s sort of a trip wire in front of the fence, was it accurate what they portrayed?
EE: Yeah, you just didn’t go over the trip wire. Got shot by the guards. One fella did get shot.
BW: And do you think that was because he’d had enough or was he trying to escape or —
EE: He’d had enough.
BW: And by this stage the war is coming to a close. We know this retrospectively, but at this time —
EE: Well, there was another six months to go.
BW: And the Russians were advancing.
EE: Through the Vistula. Always the Vistula. We were jammed between the Russians and the Oder and the Vistula. We were trapped in the middle, so they had to get us over the Oder before the Russians got us.
BW: And just describe, if you can, that period where, where, the Germans decide to evacuate the camp.
EE: Well, what can you do? You’ve got to go, you’ve no choice.
BW: Did they tell you what was happening?
EE: No. We thought we were going to be shot. We thought they were going to take us to us a wood somewhere and shoot us.
BW: Did they order you out of the huts in to the —
EE: Yeah, in to the main compound. Told us we would be leaving in half an hour. The previous night we had been bombed by the Russians, the camp was bombed.
BW: Were there any hits in the camp or was it just around —
EE: No. No.
BW: And, so, you start walking, and you mentioned previously that it was about a three-week trip. Can you describe the conditions with the sort of weather or the terrain or —
EE: Well, it was the worst weather for fifty years in Germany. Twenty below and we were living out. They were rushing to get us over the Oder before they blew the bridges. We were the last people over the Oder, they blew the bridges after we got over.
BW: And you joined a long line of columns, you mentioned people fleeing the Russians.
EE: They didn’t get over the Oder. They were turned left, just turned the off and then blew the bridges. We were the last people over the Oder.
BW: So you were given preference over the civilians to cross the river.
EE: Well, they wanted to get us away from the Russians. Civilians, they didn’t give a damn about them.
BW: And you pitched up at a brick works and it seems like a bit of black humour here, where there was German aircraft attacking and —
EE: Yeah. We saw the columns, and we used to look up and [laughs] there were black crosses on them and they were one of ours.
BW: By this stage you were saying, ‘it’s one of ours’, and on the 8th of Feb you arrived at StalagLuft 3-A Luckenwalde near Potsdam, and the Germans were looking for volunteers, is that right, to join their forces?
EE: No, that was previous, that was at the first camp.
BW: Oh, I see.
EE: Oh, at Luckenwalde, that’s right, they were. They were, that’s right yes [unclear]. I’d forgotten.
BW: And there were Russian prisoners there too, but they were badly treated.
EE: Yeah, different compound. There were thirty thousand when we camped.
BW: And again, harsh conditions in that there was no bunk or beds to sleep on, just straw, and no food as such, no medicine.
EE: And they brought the prisoners in from the Ardennes, the Americans came in and they had new accommodation for them, put them under canvas. There’s a picture of them in here [taps].
BW: Let’s have look. There’s a picture in the scrap book that you’ve got [pause].
EE: They’re there.
BW: I see, so these are large, I suppose, marquee style tents —
EE: Yeah.
BW: There would be several dozen to a tent. And the pictures show prisoners just sat around on the ground around fires, trying to keep warm and cook food. There looks to be clothes hung on the fence as well on the —
EE: Yeah.
BW: Where did you get the photograph from?
EE: A bloke took them, and he, I gave him my address and he sent them to me after the war.
BW: There’s a photograph of a football match going on too.
EE: Yeah [laughs].
BW: And a picture of Russian soldiers. And I think you describe, when the Russians turned up, that Zhukov’s forces were pretty professional and disciplined.
EE: Oh, they were, it was all the ‘rag, tag and bobtail’ that came in afterwards. They wanted to jump on the tanks and go to Berlin with them. We were the last camp to be liberated and we were passaged to Berlin, about twenty miles away. We just had to ‘bugger off’.
BW: And so they left you for their err, second line, or reserve forces to pick up.
EE: Yeah.
BW: But you felt they were much more poorly disciplined.
EE: They were just ‘rag, tag and bobtail’. No rations. No official rations.
BW: And then there’s a letter here, ‘senior British officer communicating the following in writing to the Russian authorities today the 7th of May’ —
EE: We were held hostage for a month by the Russians, that’s why I escaped.
BW: And so, the Russians took over the camp, and, and this is at the point that Zhukov had arrived and you stood right beside —.
EE: Marshall Zhukov.
BW: What, what, did he look like, can you describe him?
EE: Not really, one of the guys had trouble firing his gun, so he jumped down and fired it for him.
BW: So, the firing of the gun was presumably to, was it to keep people back or was it just a celebration?
EE: No, it was a firing of the salute to the [unclear].
BW: I see. Were you able to communicate in any way, with the Russians at all?
EE: No. they were savages.
BW: And was that through their temperaments or their —
EE: They were peasants.
BW: So, these weren’t the professional soldiers that you’d seen, these were the ‘rag, tag’ ones you mentioned.
EE: Yeah, millions of them.
BW: And, on the 21sth of April 1945, there was a battle nearby, and you were watching dog fights between American Air Cobras, Russian Yaks, and Stormaviks, a German fighter. That sounds quite a melee, completely disorganised.
EE: [laughs] Yeah.
BW: And you were lucky not to be hit by the shell fire and tanks, and fighters strafing the camp.
EE: Well, the bombers were coming over at night as well. They were dropping on Berlin. There was a short fall of twenty mile [unclear], so we used to dig in. I was a month late getting home from Germany, I was held by the Russians.
BW: And what was, what was happening during that time?
EE: Well, they were just ignoring the fact that we were prisoners of war.
BW: And the point you mentioned, the Russian troops were trying to persuade you to join them, you refused and they fired over your head.
EE: Well, that was when we were, the Americans sent the trucks to enter the camp.
BW: And it was at this point or thereabouts, that you, and a Canadian and two other Brits decided to make a run for it.
EE: We did. Let ourselves out of the camp, and took off. The most dangerous thing I ever did. Stupid really. We just got fed up being amongst the, we thought we were going back home through Russia, God knows what would have happened then, I would never have been seen again.
BW: So, it was a real fear that you were going to be held properly captive by the Russians —
EE: Oh yeah.
BW: Not just temporarily.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And you picked up err, or rather, you describe a man coming towards you on a bike, it turns out he was a British soldier.
EE: Yeah. He’s still in Germany, took over a farm [laughs].
BW: And he met a girl and was quite keen on living in Germany still.
EE: Yeah. There were a few of them.
BW: And then, trying to cross the river Mulde, you were at a ferry point and a sort of KGB type officer appeared and persuaded the ferryman to take you across.
EE: Yeah [unclear] we were just wondering whether to throw him in the water, the German, we had no need to.
BW: You ended up in an abandoned inn and met some Russians there, who insisted on feeding you, and, plying you with beer.
EE: Schnapps, schnapps, there was no beer.
BW: Just schnapps. The atmosphere seems to have changed a lot.
EE: Well, they were just Russian troops, they were quite friendly [laughs]. Told them we were American.
BW: And, so, these must have been the regular professional soldiers perhaps?
EE: Well, I don’t know [unclear].
BW: And what was the town major like that you met?
EE: Well, she was ok, a woman, a middle aged, sort of, no, late thirties I would say.
BW: And she had a few grenades with her, didn’t she?
EE: A belt full of ammunition. A belt with grenades, very fearsome looking.
BW: A fearsome looking woman with a belt full of grenades.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And this is pretty close to the full end of the war now and you are um, moved on, and given bicycles, and you met a young German girl. What happened there?
EE: Yeah. Well, she was obviously going to be raped by the Russians, so we took her with us, took her to the Russian, err, American lines. Got her through in the American sector. Very lucky, you couldn’t get, once you got to the Americans, the Russian wouldn’t let anybody across, people, one fella swam and got drowned, trying to get across. We just walked across with our bicycle.
BW: There was no bridge at this point I think you said, because—
EE: The bridge was down.
BW: And so, when you say “walk across”, what —
EE: We climbed up, rope ladder —
BW: And were there remnants of the bridge, perhaps rails or whatever —
EE: It was just collapsed. Huge iron bridge, huge metal bridge.
BW: And so, you clambered across the steel structure across the river, is that right?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And, even though you had to push through the, or pass, the guards at this point, from your description, is that right?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And you weren’t stopped. So, you managed to get this girl across —
EE: They didn’t stop us, threw her bike in the air and we were on our way. Someone took a film of it, an American took a film of it so somewhere there’s a film of it.
BW: And what sort of welcome did you get on the other side?
EE: Oh, wonderful. Food and drink and cigarettes, as much as you want.
BW: And how did the girl feel when she got across?
EE: Well, we handed her over to the Americans, they took her to a DP Camp.
BW: A displaced person’s camp, a DP camp.
EE: Yeah, and she was safe.
BW: And so, you, you were obviously well treated by the Americans —
EE: Oh, very well.
BW: Well stocked, and then you flew out of Germany on Dakotas, landed in Brussels you say, and you were talking with an old soldier, but what was your view?
EE: I want to get home, as quick as possible. He was left for weeks, you’d get ten pounds a day.
BW: And you just wanted to get home.
EE: Wanted to get home.
BW: How did you manage that?
EE: Well, just queued up the next morning, shouted my name, and away I went.
BW: And you, you arrived back by Dakota into the UK.
EE: Yeah.
BW: How did that feel after all that you had been through?
EE: Can’t remember now, felt good obviously.
BW: And, so, you’re, you’re back in the UK, what, what happened from that point up to being demobbed?
EE: I wasn’t demobbed then.
BW: Not at that point, but between arriving back in the UK —
EE: I took over prison camps. I ran prison camps.
BW: And, so, you had a long leave and returned to run two camps for German POW’s, one at Woodvale which is not that far from here, near Southport and the second one was a maintenance unit at Bramcote in Warwickshire.
EE: That’s right.
BW: You mentioned before, and it says here that you joined afterwards the 40th Kings Royal Tank Regiment and served for six years as a troop commander.
EE: Yeah.
BW: What, what led you to join the Army at that point?
EE: Because of the rotten treatment I had from the RAF.
BW: And —
EE: All my thanks were, a couple of weeks before I left the RAF, I was stripped down to a sergeant.
BW: Really?
EE: Yeah, and that was my thanks.
BW: And what was that for?
EE: Oh, God knows.
BW: So, you’d been through all that, and been a, I think you were a flight sergeant, you weren’t commissioned during your service, were you?
EE: No.
BW: So, you had been a senior NCO and promoted up to warrant officer, and then the thanks you got from the RAF, as you put it, was to be then stripped down to sergeant.
EE: That was it, no thanks.
BW: And they didn’t give you a reason for that?
EE: No.
BW: Understandably, that must have been pretty galling.
EE: It was. Of course, it was only a couple of weeks before I left the service, so I was a warrant officer for about a year. Best rank in the service.
BW: And what, what gives you the view of it being the best rank do you have?
EE: Well, you’re neither “fish nor fowl”.
BW: [Laughs].
EE: All aircrew should have been commissioned. It would have given us better rights under the Geneva Convention and a decent pension in the very likely event of your demise on ops. We were all doing the same job. Do you know seventy five percent, twenty five percent of air crew were commissioned, seventy five percent weren’t? Of the gallantry medals, seventy five percent went to the commissioned, twenty five percent went to us. Seventy five percent. That’s how fair it was.
BW: And in general, the rule was that, the reason airmen were given the rank of sergeant when the joined aircrew, was to at least guarantee them better treatment as prisoners.
EE: Yeah, but we were all doing the same job. Why commissioned?
BW: Yeah, and there were even, on your crew, there was a mix, one of them, I think the pilot, was a flying officer, and the rest were all NCO’s weren’t they?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And the rule has changed in the post war years, that all aircrew now have to be —
EE: That’s not the rule.
BW: Have to be officers.
EE: I have something else to write.
BW: So, you decided to join the Army.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Did you experience a better appreciation of you as an individual in the Army?
EE: Yeah, yeah. The Army was an established service with proper ranks. Proper rules and regulations, good background.
BW: And you didn’t have to go through any other training, did you? Apart from trade training as a tank commander.
EE: I went to the War Office Selection Board to enlist.
BW: And they put you forward and you became —
EE: To be a lieutenant, and then a captain, a substantive captain.
BW: And where were you based during that time?
EE: Bootle, near here, it was a TA regiment.
BW: At Bootle?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And how did you find the um, your colleagues, your Army mates, how were they? Officers’ final dinner. This is a —
EE: Well, we were disbanded.
BW: Right. Monty’s Foxhounds, your troops called. What sort of tanks did you use? Lieutenant E Evans yeah? Presentation of the colour on the 11th of April 1954, this is a sort of service, an order of parade document. Did Montgomery, as Commandant of the regiment, did he attend this parade at all?
EE: No. Err, Err, Lord Whatsername did it. Can’t think of his name, a Liverpool man.
BW: Just pause the recording there for the background noise. I say, I’m looking here for the official who attended the parade when you were at Bootle. Presentation of the colours.
EE: We had to learn sword drill for this.
BW: You had to learn how to salute with a sword, there’s a way of doing it isn’t there?
EE: Yeah, the new colours.
BW: Uh- huh.
EE: Can’t think who it was.
BW: And what do you recall of your time with the troop? Was it all home service? You weren’t sent abroad anywhere?
EE: No, we used to go to camps every year, firing camps and tactical camps. It was good, Comets and Centurions.
BW: Comets and Centurions.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And did you enjoy that?
EE: Great, yeah, I would still have been there but they disbanded that regiment. That was the final dinner.
BW: Hmmm. And what happened after you then left the Army in 1956?
EE: I was working for my father, in his business. I was a sales manager.
BW: You were working for your father, and what was his business?
EE: A motor business.
BW: I see, selling motor cars?
EE: Yes, and a workshop. Quite a big business actually.
BW: And how long did you stick at that?
EE: About ten years. Then we fell out and I started my own company. Had four businesses, I finished up with four.
BW: Right. And what were they?
EE: [Unclear], ship repair business, hydraulic business and workshop, machine shop.
BW: Right, that’s quite a broad base of business to have. Four business in com, in pretty different sectors, so, and you had all those four companies, for twenty, thirty years maybe?
EE: Yeah.
BW: And through all that time, you were presumably married, there’s a lot of family photos in your house.
EE: Yeah, three girls.
BW: Three girls?
EE: My wife died about ten years ago.
BW: Uh-huh.
EE: All three daughters are still alive. I’ve got nine great grandchildren now.
BW: (laughs) And do you see them regularly?
EE: Oh yes, my daughter will be here very shortly.
BW: So, how have you err, heard about the commemorations of Bomber Command, and what do you think of the activities to now try and restore a bit of err, pride or honour to Bomber Command?
EE: Well, the RAF ignored them after the war. Totally. He and Churchill, they turned their backs on us. No doubt about that, everybody said ‘shouldn’t you mention Bomber Command’ and they all came up with the bloody target in Germany. I was very sick of it.
BW: How do you feel about the recent recognition in —
EE: Well, it’s about time, fifty-five thousand of us died. Biggest loss of the war.
BW: Mm.
EE: Much bigger than the first world war even.
BW: And its err, at least commemorating you and your comrades and what, what you did. Have you seen, you went to the unveiling last year. How was that?
EE: Yes.
BW: How did you feel about that?
EE: It was okay.
BW: Yeah, it doesn’t seem fair does it, that there’s, there was only a clasp awarded for it?
EE: It was ridiculous, a bloody insult.
BW: Well, I think Eric, that is all the questions I have for you.
EE: Do you want to look through there?
BW: I will have a look through your, your scrap book, I will just pause the recording. Now this is an interesting telegram, it’s, is that from Liverpool to British Army staff at Washington DC, or is it that other way around?
EE: Not it’s from my mother —
BW: From your mum?
EE: In Liverpool, to tell my father.
BW: And your mum was Madge?
EE: That’s it.
BW: And you father was abroad at the time, was he?
EE: He was on the British Army staff in Washington [unclear].
BW: So, you mentioned he’d been a major in the Army, was he still in the Army all the way through the war.
EE: Yes. You can see a photograph of him later on.
BW: There’s a photograph of him?
EE: My mother and my eldest brother.
BW: That’s it, mother and eldest brother, who was in the Navy. Now this is a, this is quite a service family photograph, there’s five of you, including, your, well there’s three sons in the family and your father and mother.
EE: Yeah.
BW: Your father’s in his Army uniform, there’s you and your middle brother in your RAF uniform and your older brother in the middle of both of you, stood in the middle of both of you, in his Navy uniform. What rank was he in the Navy?
EE: Lieutenant.
BW: And your other brother is wearing an observers brevet.
EE: That’s right.
BW: What did he get up to in the —
EE: Navigator.
BW: Navigator.
EE: On the squadron at Waterbeach. That’s the guy that saved his life.
BW: Yourself and the wireless operator, taken, taken on D Day.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And that looks like he’s wearing the Australian uniform.
EE: It’s a bit dark.
BW: It’s a bit darker than the RAF one,
EE: Better quality.
BW: And did you keep in touch with him after the war?
EE: No.
BW: Do you know what’s happened to him since, not heard a thing or anything through associations or —
EE: No. That was a TA, he became a general. General Sir Richard Lawson.
BW: Sir Richard Lawson! And he sat across a table from you?
EE: Yeah, he was my adjutant, Dicky Lawson.
BW: [Laughs].
EE: He did very well.
BW: So, he must have transferred regiment then, presumably, if your unit had been —
EE: He was a regular adjutant.
BW: He was a regular adjutant, I see, so you were in the TA branch.
EE: [Unclear]
BW: Then there’s pictures here of a V1,
EE: Yeah, a piloted one.
BW: A piloted one.
EE: Yeah. I saw a V2 launch.
BW: Where did you see that?
EE: In Poland
BW: In Poland?
EE: Yeah.
BW: So, was this —
EE: On the march.
BW: Actually during the march?
EE: Yeah. We got to Sargan and we saw it launch. It went crazy.
BW: So, when we see the archive footage of these rockets going off, and there’s a few that do spin off and crash into the ground, and this was one that did, was it? It was lucky it didn’t come over your way and —
EE: We were a few miles away.
BW: I bet you could hear the bang from where you were.
EE: Yeah.
BW: And this photo is of May Schmeling.
EE: That’s Max Schmeling.
BW: Max Schmeling.
EE: He was a world championship boxer.
BW: Who visited at Stalag 3-A Luckenwalde in the uniform of a paratrooper, 3rd March 1945. Did you get to speak to him?
EE: Yeah, he gave me his autograph.
BW: What was your impression of him?
EE: He was all right, very broad.
BW: That must be your wife.
EE: Yes [laughs].
BW: I’m just going to pause the recording. I was just going to say, this is a —
EE: An AVM
BW: An Air Vice Marshall who has his own sort of service medals, stood with you, and where was the unveiling?
EE: At Green Park.
BW: At Green Park, so this would be in 2012 in London.
EE: Yeah.
BW: There are, it looks like, these, these must be the, the Germans there are some names here —
EE: I took a trip back. Went to the Dortmund Ems canal.
BW: I’ll just pause that again. May I just briefly ask you, the scrap book contains details of your visit to Germany. How did it feel, going back, and re-tracing your route?
EE: Very interesting actually, because there was. This is a telegram.
BW: Yeah. And you actually met the pilot of the—
EE: No, I didn’t meet him, I didn’t want to.
BW: I see, I was just seeing a photo of a German pilot there.
EE: I didn’t meet him.
BW: You didn’t. I see. Was it, did he happen to be at an event that you were also at
EE: This is an escape photograph.
BW: I see.
EE: Have you seen those?
BW: These are your escape photos. ‘Escape photos, issued to air crew, and the only personal things taken on ops’, it says here under description, ‘the photographs were to be used on forged identity documents etc, in the event of an escape or invasion. It was always difficult to obtain photos for this purpose, there were extra copies left at base, usually only two were carried. Note: unshaven appearance to add authenticity to photos’.
EE: [unclear] typical.
BW: And so, these were actually taken in civilian clothes because of course, then they can be used on forged documents, but it never came to that though, did it?
EE: No.
BW: And you went back and visited the graves of Sandy who’s your navigator, and Stan, the mid upper gunner, in Germany, seems you’ve been back a couple of times, is that right?
EE: I only went back once.
BW: You only went back once? And the barn demolished, it shows here, by the impact of the Lancaster when it came down. And they’ve managed to recover a prop, or a prop blade.
EE: Yeah. And a wheel.
BW: And a wheel. Wonderful, well, as I say, thank you very much for your time, Eric. If there is anything else you would like to add, by all means, but I shall end the recording there if its ok with you. There’s a picture of, there’s a coloured drawing of a camp.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Eric Evans
Creator
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Brian Wright
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-31
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AEvansE160331, PEvansE1602
Conforms To
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
British Army
Format
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01:53:53 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Eric Evans was born in 1923 in Liverpool and was just 16 years of age when war broke out. He served in the Royal Air Force, and serving with 463 RAAF Squadron, going from the rank of sergeant and leaving the service as a warrant officer, before joining the Royal Tank Regiment, rising to the rank of captain.
At the age of 16, Eric had an apprenticeship as an indentured apprentice marine engineer at Liverpool docks, however wanted to serve, however he was classed as being in a reserved occupation, so therefore could only volunteer as aircrew.
Eric flew Avro Ansons, Vickers Wellingtons, before moving on to Short Stirlings with 1654 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Wigsley where he trained as a rear gunner. He then flew Avro Lancasters with 463 RAAF Squadron at Waddington.
He flew missions to France, Nuremburg, Dortmund-Ems canal, Brunswick and targets in the Ruhr. Eric was shot down on 6 November 1944 and was taken prisoner of war, and he tells of his escape from the camp when it was liberated by the Russian forces.
After returning to the United Kingdom, Eric ran the Prisoner of War Camps, before leaving the Royal Air Force and joining the 40th Kings Royal Tank Regiment, and served 6 years as a Troop Commander.
Eric left the Army in 1956 and worked for his father as a salesman in the motor car industry. He started his own business and by the rime he retired, he had built up four businesses which he ran for approximately 30 years.
Contributor
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Vivienne Tincombe
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Merseyside
England--Cheshire
England--Gloucestershire
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Shropshire
England--Yorkshire
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
England--Liverpool
France
Germany
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
Germany--Braunschweig
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
14 OTU
1654 HCU
463 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bale out
Caterpillar Club
Dulag Luft
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Me 110
military service conditions
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Market Harborough
RAF Padgate
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
RAF Wigsley
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
Stirling
the long march
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2215/39609/AUsherJ220428.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Burns, Bob
Denis Robert Burns
D R Burns
Description
An account of the resource
23 items. Collection concerns Warrant Officer Bob Burns (1525609 RAFVR) he flew operations as a navigator with 106 Squadron and became a prisoner of war when his aircraft, Lancaster ND853 was shot down 27 April 1944. Collection includes an oral history interview with John Usher about Bob Burns, photographs, documents, various memoirs of his last operation and captivity. It also contains recordings of his saxophone being played.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Usher and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
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2022-04-07
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IBCC Digital Archive
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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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Burns, DR
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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BW: This is Brian Wright interviewing John Usher at his home in Morecambe Lancashire. It’s quarter past two in the afternoon on Thursday the 28th of April 2022. We’re here to talk about Bob Burns’ story. Bob was a flight sergeant in the RAF but if you could just start off John, please with giving us a little summary of how you knew Bob. What your relation was to him.
JU: Well, I’m John Usher. My, my wife, my wife’s sister was married to Bob so in all the years we went on holidays a lot together most years. So we had quite a close relationship with Bob and his family.
BW: And he had quite a story to tell from his experiences in the RAF in the Second World War. Can you elaborate for us a little bit more about Bob’s background before we go on to his RAF service. Do you know when and where he was born? What his family life was like?
JU: Well, as I understand Bob was born in Sheffield. Went to Sheffield, well a grammar school in Sheffield and he then worked. He had one or two jobs before volunteering for the RAF. One was in a factory in Sheffield. But following that he had, he played, he was a semi-professional musician and played in a local dance band so I think that was his, one of his main sources of income before joining the RAF.
BW: Do you know what instrument he played?
JU: He played the saxophone and the clarinet.
BW: And you say he would go into the dance halls with the band and earn some money playing.
JU: He had, he had a regular, a regular job with one of the local dance bands.
BW: And did he ever talk about why he was interested in joining the RAF? What prompted him to join at all?
JU: Well, I think like a lot of young people in those days he was very keen to do his bit so to speak so he had always been keen on flying. I think he’d, whilst he hadn’t been a cadet he’d been to various shows and anything to do with flying. He seemed to have got himself involved.
BW: So he’d had an interest through his youth and childhood perhaps in aeroplanes and flying and that.
JU: He was very much so. Yes.
BW: And he went in to training at Padgate in Warrington when he joined the RAF. Did, did he tell you much about the training he went through at all?
JU: Not a lot. I just know that part of his training, when he first enlisted the initial aircrew tests were done at Lord’s I think it was. Lord’s Cricket Ground which, he was very interested in cricket. Probably, being a Yorkshireman you have to be interested in cricket I would think. But I don’t know if from a playing point of view. Mainly from a watching point of view but he was, he knew a lot about cricket. Whatever he was interested in he always tended to know a lot about it. He was one of those sort of people.
BW: Do you know roughly when he joined up? Would it be ’41? ‘42?
JU: It was [pause] just bear with me [pause] 1940 he joined up.
BW: So that’s —
JU: I don’t know what date in ’40.
BW: So that’s quite early on.
JU: That, well I say it was called deferred service. He applied to join up and then he had to sit back and wait before they called. They called you. In fact, he didn’t start doing any real training until 1942.
BW: Okay.
JU: And then it was basic training. Once he’d been accepted for aircrew he did training out in Canada 1942 to ‘43 which a lot of aircrew did of course because you weren’t likely to be shot down by anyone in Canada I don’t think [laughs] and it was a good environment for training.
BW: When did he join the squadron because he went on —
JU: He came back home for flying training. The full squadron training in 1943. And then he was posted then to Number 5 Group in ’44 which was where his story really begins.
BW: And he was by this stage a flight sergeant navigator wasn’t he? And —
JU: He was. By [pause] yes.
BW: And he joined 106 Squadron based at Metheringham.
JU: That’s right.
BW: Did he mention any of the guys that he trained with or how he’d come to crew up at all with with the guys he started flying with?
JU: Yes. There was. As aircrews did in those days they seemed to appear, go to a station to select. The aircrew selected their own crews basically. The pilot would see someone he liked and, or who he probably met in the mess over one or two days and liked him so they would get together. They would talk about if there was anyone available that could be selected. And through that process they finished up, finished up with between them selecting their bomb aimer, two, a mid-upper and a rear gunner and the radio operator. Two of the crew were Canadians. I’m not sure of their names now.
BW: One was Harold Brad.
JU: Harold Brad. That’s right.
BW: Another, Bill Stevens.
JU: Bill. That’s right. The crew themselves had quite mixed experiences. One of them, I’m not sure which one had been a gardener on a royal estate somewhere. I don’t know which one it was. Which was quite interesting.
BW: Well, from what I can see Percy Dore was the wireless operator and he was from Sandringham so it’s quite possible.
JU: That’s right. I think he was the one who’d been —
BW: He was the royal gardener.
JU: Who’d been the gardener.
BW: Did Bob ever mention what it had been like in the early days before his fateful flight? Did he mention any of the early raids that he’d been on or —
JU: Not a lot. Not a lot about them because before he was shot down he’d been on, the invasion had started in France by that I think and there were more or less a lot of the early raids were in France but he did have one or two over Germany.
BW: Did he ever say much about those? Did he say how they were?
JU: They were pretty well, the raid before he was shot down over Schweinfurt he’d been on a raid to [pause] I’ll look at my notes. No. The ones I’d done I think [pause] Right. On the 25th of April which was just the day before I think he went to Schweinfurt he’d just returned from a ten hour bombing raid over Munich. But to get there he’d gone over, over via Italy and across. That’s why it was such a long raid. And on the return back they were running out of fuel and had to land at an airfield on the south coast having been down the south as well because of fuel and then fly back. Came back to Metheringham the following morning to be told they were on another raid that following evening. The same evening. So there was very little time between the two raids.
BW: And 106 Squadron had been Guy Gibson’s former squadron before he left to form the Dambusters. Did Bob mention any influences within the squadron from Gibson’s time? Were any guys still around from that time?
JU: Well, he’d made that very very strict was Gibson and so it was. Bob was very surprised how strict it was because Bomber Command was said to be a little bit relaxed because of the of the job they were doing. So they were given a bit more free time but Bob found he was in the first oh forty eight hours he was in the air for nearly thirty of it and when they weren’t flying they were still doing dinghy drill, parachute training, all sorts of flying drills on the ground. And he reckons it was because of these drills that later in life it probably saved his life. His quick reaction to certain, to the circumstances which he met with later.
BW: So you mentioned that his fateful trip was to Schweinfurt on the 26th and 27th of April which is almost exactly seventy four years to the day I think. Is that right? Eighty four. Have I got that right? No. We’re very nearly on the, on the anniversary of that particular raid in ’44.
JU: Yes. Yeah.
BW: Seventy eight. My maths is there now. Seventy eight years. The raid itself was quite disastrous in a way for the, for the squadron. There were a number of losses but just talk us through what Bob’s experiences were. What Bob’s experiences of that was. What he’d, what he’d told you. What, what happened?
JU: Well, I got the impression from Bob that it was one of those raids that I wouldn’t say it went wrong but there were problems from the start in that they were taken on a route which supposed, was supposed to be clear which it was clear of ack ack and that sort of thing but it took them, took them very close to German fighter squadrons on the ground. So they had one or two interceptions en route with with fighters. Not that they were hit or anything but that was one aspect. The main aspect I think was that the forecast winds were entirely the opposite direction to the ones that they came across so that they were delayed. They were about an hour late arriving at Schweinfurt which apart from the obvious problems like that are that the, it was quite a large bomber raid. There was quite a lot of bombers on this raid from other squadrons and you were all supposed to be going obviously going on different heights and if you’re not spot on time you run the risk of being bombed from above by other ones who were on time releasing their bombs. So I think that that was one of the main problems. Bob referred to it that when he finally arrived it was like flying in to hell. There was fires down below. There was smoke being released now we know by the Germans as a camouflage. There were flares going off to identify the particular bombing targets and so all in all as I say he referred it to as like flying into hell. It was one of those experiences that it’s hard to imagine in our everyday civilian life now.
BW: And this was only his seventh operation wasn’t it?
JU: It was, yes.
BW: Not long into his tour and you mentioned the night fighter units that they, or the airfields that they flew past to get to the target and it was a night fighter that shot them down wasn’t it?
JU: It was. Yes.
BW: Did he talk about what had happened in the aircraft at that, at that point?
JU: Well, when they, when they released their bombs over Schweinfurt almost instantly after that they were, they were hit by a night fighter and at the same time the rear gunner shouted out, ‘I’ve got the bastard. He’s going down.’ So he, it was a tit for tat or appeared to be a tit for tat situation. So following, following that almost immediately after that because they were hit the pilot told them to, the aircrew all to bale out because they were going down. So they started to make their way to the various exits. Either the front ones for the front crew or the rear door. Now, Bob had always been told by this navigator training although the RAF recommended that the navigator goes out of the front he was advised if he can get over the main spar which is an obstacle in itself. Bob said you had to be a trained athlete to get over the main spar if you got over the main spar. He got over there and he was making his way towards the rear door when the plane went into a spin and the centrifugal force pinned virtually all the aircrew to the floor and I think Bob had resigned himself to, you know how could he possibly get out of this so that’s the end of it when there was sudden enormous an explosion and he was blown up through the roof of the aircraft. The aircraft must have just cut in half. So he went up through the roof which knocked him unconscious but this was he reckoned at three thousand feet and but the cold night air soon brought him around and this is where all the training which you referred to earlier kicked into practice because he was he automatically pushed the ‘chute away from him, pulled the rip cord and he drifted gently down in to a ploughed field in in Germany.
BW: And was he alright on landing? Did he injure himself at all or —
JU: Well, he’d gone out through the roof of the aircraft which he knew had given him a nasty bang on his, on his thigh. Inside his thigh. But when he felt around when he’d landed in the airfield he didn’t feel any pain but he could feel there was a lot of blood in his thigh. And so what happened really at that stage was he, you’re trained or told you must bury your parachute. Bury it or hide it. Hide the parachute so that the enemy don’t know that you have landed et cetera and were still alive. So that’s what he proceeded to do. He buried his parachute and then took stock of himself. He did make one comment about it. He said he looked up into the air just to see the last of the bombers heading back to England and then he just said out quite loudly, he said, ‘Lucky buggers. They’re going home now and I’m stuck in this bloody ploughed field in Germany.’ So that was his reaction on landing in the ploughed field.
BW: Did he know at that stage whether anybody else had got out from the aircraft?
JU: No. He’d no idea. He hadn’t a clue at that stage. In fact, he didn’t find out until the end. Until the end when he came back. When he was released from a prisoner of war camp what had happened.
BW: So Bob’s on his own in the, in this field in Germany in the middle of the night and he’s bleeding from his leg. What happens then?
JU: Well, as I say, he said he didn’t, he didn’t feel any pain and he could hear this, this clanking of engine, railway engines in the nearby well, marshalling yard as we know them as and they were always taught in the, back home that if there was any, if if you want to escape try and get away by train if at all possible. So Bob thought well obviously he is here now to follow the noise and make for this marshalling yard and see if I can find a train and get away from the, from the site as soon as possible. So that was his objectives but it didn’t quite turn out how the training back in England had said it would because he was making his way across the marshalling yard amongst the trains when suddenly all the lights went on and he found himself looking at about I don’t know ten or a dozen rifles pointed at him because in England apparently railway stations weren’t guarded. Certainly not. Whereas in Germany every station and depending on how, what priority it was, depending on how many guards there were so this must have been quite an important one because as I say he was looking down at ten rifles pointing at him.
BW: So he’s then obviously captured. Did he go straight to a camp or was he taken to hospital? What? What happened?
JU: Well, once the guards realised that it had turned out that his wound was obviously bleeding a lot so it was becoming more obvious and a bit of pain so the guards took him to a local hospital which was run by nuns oddly enough. And they more or less patched him up and he spent a couple of days while they sorted him out and following that he was taken to a military hospital and I don’t think, well it was while he was there or en route that he was then taken for interrogation by the German [pause] the German Army or security people which apparently one member was part of the SSS but asking the usual questions about what were the squadron numbers and one thing and another.
BW: So he was interrogated.
JU: He was.
BW: First.
JU: He was for quite a few days. In fact, he was, he was in a solitary cell for quite a few days during his interrogation.
BW: Did he say what that sort of experience was like?
JU: Well, not very good because he did, he didn’t shave and there was very little facility to wash so at the end of his spell there he was quite dishevelled and in fact some of the photographs we have of him tend to show him as being not the Bob Burns that we know anyway.
BW: So, from solitary what happened to him then? Was he presumably he was taken then to his first imprisonment camp.
JU: No. He went, after the solitary he went to a major hospital. He was, he was there for a few months really while his leg recovered and when it had recovered sufficiently for him to go to, then to a prisoner of war camp they made the necessary arrangements and he was to go to Stalag Luft 7. The Luft being ones which were run by the German Air Force really where he seemed apparently to get better treatment than the general prisoner of war camps. So he was, along with three other prisoners, three of them were taken by two guards but en route they had to change. Change stations. I’m not sure of the place but where they changed stations was that particular town had been bombed the night before. So the local people on hearing that there was some RAF prisoners of war in the local station being transported to a prisoner of war camp all as you can understand headed for the station to register what they thought about that at all. Now, it was quite an interesting situation here because the station was probably about oh fifty, a hundred feet up in the air from the road and at the back of the station it was quite open dropping down to the road below. Now while they stood on the station with the three guards a lot of the local people suddenly arrived on the scene knowing they were there and they were shuffling along the platform obviously with the objective of trying to force the prisoners of war off, off the platform down on to the road below. And the guards seemed to have no control over this so one of the guards quite quick thinking in a way suddenly handed his rifle to Bob because Bob was about six foot four I think so he was quite a towering bloke. And the German propaganda was that the British flyers were horrendous people really. They would, you know murder their own mothers if they had to. So they had quite a reputation so as soon as Bob was handed the rifle the crowd shuffling down the platform they all, they disappeared. So they could carry on with their journey. Also the guards, what reason you think , why would the guard possibly hand the rifle to Bob. One of the theories was that if, it was obviously frowned upon if guards didn’t deliver their prisoners intact and if not one of the punishments was that they would be sent to the front line. They were sent to fight the Russians which none of the German guards wanted to find themselves in that situation. So you can understand why he did this. And then of course Bob handed him back the rifle and things carried on as normal.
BW: So literally a lucky escape for him at that point.
JU: Yeah.
BW: And his first camp I think was at Stalag Luft 7 as you say in Silesia. Did he talk much about what life was like in the camp there? Did he describe any conditions there?
JU: The conditions as I gather were, were quite good. There was a lot of sport. A lot of games played a lot of cards, things like that. But Bob hadn’t been there long when one day there was this delivery. These crates arrived from the Red Cross and amongst them was quite a lot of musical instruments. They were all very good quality musical instruments and going through them Bob found that there was a saxophone and clarinet which were his speciality if you like. They were the instruments he used to play back home in the, in the brass bands. So Bob acquired the saxophone and the clarinet and then there was no sheet music or anything of course but he then trawled around to find out how, what musicians were also in the camp and he set up his own orchestra if you like. I think it was about a ten or twelve piece orchestra I understand. In fact, there is a photograph that will show that. So a lot of Bob’s time was spent writing music for the different musical instruments to play in the dance band. And I don’t think really they hadn’t been there many weeks I don’t think before they had to break camp so to speak.
BW: The, the only other member of the crew to survive was Jack Pickstone. Did Bob come across him in the same camp or did he find out what happened to him?
JU: He never ever saw Pickstone again. Never came across him even when he, when he was demobbed back into civvy street. Pickstone did survive and, but he never ever came across him even though he tried to find him he never, he never, never met up with him again. And the rest of the crew of course were all killed. There was only Bob and Pickstone. He didn’t and he didn’t discover that until he was demobbed. What had, what had happened.
BW: I believe Stalag Luft 7 was quite a large camp for American airmen too. Did Bob mention any interaction with the Americans at the time? Did he —
JU: No. No. The only [pause] not that I can —
BW: They kept to themselves.
JU: No. I don’t think he mentioned anything about the Americans. The only thing he mentioned about the Americans was when, from the camp near Berlin when they were finally released by the Russians. The Russians handed them over to the Americans. That was his main contact with the Americans.
BW: So just going back to his time in Stalag Luft 7 he’s got to that stage where he’s I suppose settled to life in the camp and he’s writing and performing music for and with the band and then at the turn of 1945 the camps as you say were broken in that the Germans decided to move prisoners west and north in his case to retreat from the Russians.
JU: Yes. Yeah.
BW: And this involved a, quite an arduous journey for him. Did, did Bob talk much about that and what did you learn about that?
JU: Oh, it was an horrendous journey because on a particular date they were all paraded at about 5 o’clock in the morning because the Russians were advancing and quite quickly. It was decided they would move the prisoners from Stalag Luft 7 to a camp near, near to Berlin which was oh something like a hundred and, about a hundred and fifty miles. Something like that. And because there was no transport all the transport was required to move German troops to the Russian Front it was decided they would have to walk. At this as I understand was the most horrendous journey imaginable. The day they set off was the middle of the hardest winter they’d had on record. So it was hard frost, snowing and around fifteen hundred prisoners were moved out of camp. This the first one started moving out about I think three or 4 o’clock in the morning and the last ones didn’t leave the camp until mid-afternoon so the line of prisoners moving out must have been well, amazing when you think of the time period taken to move them with enough rations for about two weeks which the Germans had on trolleys or trucks, what have you. But the prisoners were just marching with what they could carry and in Bob’s case having acquired this saxophone and clarinet which he said was very good quality, he said better quality then the one he had at home he said he decided he was going to keep this whatever happened. So he carried this through this horrendous weather across [unclear] into Germany. By the time they got to, well they used to sleep in barns or whatever the Germans could acquire during the, during the journey. I suppose they would have an advanced party go ahead and select a farm or buildings where they could accommodate this crowd. One or two prisoners would disappear on the route but they were mainly people like the Pole, ex-Polish aircrew who had been prisoners of war because they were travelling through their own countryside so to speak. So they could disappear and they could find people to talk to and hide them or look after them. That sort of thing. So one interesting anecdote about the journey was there is always a humorous aspect to these sort of things I expect was that on this particular time every now and again they would stop for one or two nights at these farms whatever they’d taken over. They had taken over, and this was on a two night stay and the German commander paraded them the following morning to say that the previous night the farmer reported that half of his chickens had disappeared from the hen house and if anyone was caught they would be shot. No messing. Just couldn’t do things like that. So that was said. So they then stayed on as I say another night and the commander paraded them again the following morning to say that the farmer now reported all of his chickens had disappeared [laughs] and the hen house where they were housed obviously being used for fuel on the fires. So nothing more was said and on they went. But the journey because of the weather conditions and very little food apparently was horrendous and by the time they progressed more and more they had dysentery, frostbite and by the time they moved on things were getting worse and worse. And finally they ground to a halt after roughly about a hundred miles and still about forty or fifty miles from their destination and were then taken the rest. Those who were still able to stand while they were taken by train to Luckenwalde I think it was. A prisoner of war camp near to the edge of Berlin. Any of the prisoners that obviously a lot were taken ill en route and it would appear that they were dropped off at local hospitals or somewhere where they could be taken to a local hospital if their injuries were considered serious enough. But very few, I haven’t seen a record of how many died but how many did die en route but they were in a terrible condition by the time they arrived at the other end. But Bob was still hanging on to this saxophone and clarinet which apparently had dropped from his fingers many times on the route because of the cold and but good for him he finally brought his saxophone and clarinet back home to the UK and he used it again. Well for the rest of his, for the rest of his life really.
BW: And it’s testament to his resilience really because going back to his experience in the Lancaster. He’d been shot down and the aircraft had exploded. He ended up with a bad wound to his right leg.
JU: He did.
BW: And then although he’s recovered it was still giving him pain wasn’t it so he —
JU: Well, right ‘til, right ‘til he died he still had problems with his leg.
BW: And he’d undertaken that walk while still in effect in recovery.
JU: Oh yes. It hadn’t healed. It still reared a bit. Reared a little bit occasionally, I think.
BW: So when they get to Luckenwalde what happened then? This was the camp you mentioned near Berlin. How long were they there do you think?
JU: I think two or three weeks because it was, the conditions there as Bob said, he said, they weren’t much better than on the walk. There was very, there was hardly any food and it was grossly overcrowded because there were prisoners coming in from all over the place. So the Russians finally arrived when they were in there and well the German guards had disappeared overnight and the Russians moved in. Took over. And then the Russians finally handed them over to the Americans and arrangements were made to send them back home to the UK.
BW: That seems fairly straightforward. Did [pause] did Bob have any issues returning to this country. Was it a quite a straightforward process when he got with the Americans?
JU: I think the process of getting out of Germany as far as I know seemed to be reasonably straightforward. It was a case of getting on planes and getting them to where the different prisoners of war were wanting to head for.
BW: So he would have arrived back in England in probably mid-1945 then. Presumably just as the war is about to end or possibly had ended. What happened to him from there? Did he talk about, you mentioned that he had gone on to any [pause] work again in the UK.
JU: I think he was sent on two, they were all sent on two weeks leave and then I don’t think they did a lot of serious, well serious flying after that. At the end of the 1946 Bob and I had been promoted to warrant officer and at the end of 1946 he returned home. He returned back to his musical career. But it wasn’t what he wanted to do long term I don’t think so he then retrained as a civil engineer. A job that he continued to do until his final retirement in South Devon along with his wife Ann and two sons Peter and Tim. He carried on playing his treasured saxophone. Not so much the clarinet but certainly the saxophone with all its memories. He used to play for families and friends and on special occasions really until he died aged ninety-five in 2015. But —
BW: But he'd been back to Germany hadn’t he? And he’d had a couple of meetings at least with people involved with his, with his own personal experience because he I think he met the pilot who shot him down didn’t he?
JU: No, not the pilot. What happened in 1990 I think it was Bob returned to the site at Arnstein. Arnstein, where he’d been shot down and he met with the residents who had been children at the time of his crash so could tell him a bit about it. And strangely enough he received a very warm welcome and was treated to official lunches by the mayors of Arnstein and Schweinfurt which he found quite embarrassing. Now when the Lancaster crashed the local pastor arranged for the dead crew to be buried in the local church which was very brave of the pastor because Hitler’s decree oh Hitler said that Allied airmen should not have a Christian burial and yet we have photographs showing the flowers and everything on his grave in the German town that he’d just been bombing so to speak. After the war the graves, the crew were reburied in a military cemetery at Durnbach. Now on this same visit to meet with the families who’d been bombed so to speak he met with a German researcher who was seeking information about a German Junkers or a JU88 night fighter pilot called Hauptman Walter Bernschein who had been shot down over Arnhem, over Arnstein sorry during the raid and he thought was probably the pilot who had shot down Bob’s Lancaster. Now, this pilot of course was also killed so it’s supposition but he seems reasonably certain from the fighter pilots that were shot down that he was the one that had shot down Bob’s Lancaster. But that’s meeting with the family who had been witness to the event.
BW: Yeah. As you say the other crew members were all, were all killed with the exception of Jack Pickstone. Did Bob ever get to meet any of the family related to any of the other crew members? Did he get to know them at all or was it just those return trips that he’d made to Germany where he’d met the people from the —
JU: No, he met with [pause] he met up with Bishop the pilot quite a lot. And later, later on when they started to form squadron reunions and what have you but I think Bishop was the only one that I can recall. He might have met up with others that I don’t know about but he was a big man in going to the squadron reunions and he went on to one big reunion in Canada in one year and it was very well organised. Almost a national reunion of for such a lot of aircrew were trained in Canada of course weren’t they?
BW: And he was, he was surprised to have been met by the mayors of this, of the towns that he’d actually been attacking or well Arnstein where he’d crashed but also —
JU: Yeah.
BW: Schweinfurt. That must have been quite a surprise to be received favourably let’s say in those terms.
JU: Yeah. I think we’ve got to appreciate that a lot of people and also Germans had lost their families hadn’t they on bombing raids over England and I think that to one extent is probably why the Luftwaffe set up their own prisoner of war camps. As a, to reciprocate what was going on with their crew hopefully over in England. So I think, I don’t know I can only assume that the feeling wasn’t so much against the aircrew as by then as against Hitler and the, and the Nazis so there probably was a little a little bit of sympathy towards the Allies.
BW: I think that’s, that’s all the questions I have. You’ve summarised Bob’s career and experiences very well. I don’t think there are any other questions unless there’s anything else that you may have recalled during the [pause] our discussion that you wanted to add about.
JU: No.
BW: No.
JU: I think that’s pretty well, well covered it. No. I think in Bob’s case it was almost out of the frying pan into the fire wasn’t it? Having been shot down he then after a few months he finds he has to do a hundred mile walk in the middle of the worst winter on record which —
BW: I guess, I guess he must have been pleased that although it took a number of years for the Bomber Command servicemen to be remembered did he mention anything about the Memorial or the plans to commemorate Bomber Command veterans?
JU: Well, I think, I think he was like most Bomber Command. He felt that Churchill and Bomber Harris, more Bomber Harris I think seemed to abandon them in a way. I think what I find is disappointing is that I’ve been to the Memorial in London to Bomber Command which shows the crew and the inscription of Churchill’s speech which fair enough speaks about how the fighter pilots saved the country but nobody goes on to the rest of the speech which says that it was the bomber crew who enabled us to win the war. And that, that bit of it seems to have disappeared from a lot of with all that goes on now I know people talk about you know how especially with the Ukraine business and the civilians being killed and the number that we killed when we were bombing German cities but I think you’ll agree that was a completely different situation. But no I think like the bomber crews I think they were disappointed in what recognition that they got after the war and I think it’s still there that really. I think it’s still felt whatever. You know there was no war medal for people and that sort of thing as I understand it.
BW: Yeah. It was just a clasp.
JU: Just a Memorial was put up.
BW: Great. Thank you very much.
JU: Okay.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with John Usher about Bob Burns
Creator
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Brian Wright
Date
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2022-04-28
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Format
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00:48:26 Audio Recording
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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AUsherJ220428, PBurnsDR1806
Coverage
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Civilian
Royal Air Force
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Burns trained as a navigator and was posted to 106 Squadron at RAF Metheringham. His aircraft came under attack from a night fighter and the centrifugal force pinned the crew down and making escape impossible.
Suddenly the aircraft broke in to two and Bob was blown out of the aircraft. He managed to activate his parachute and land but had injured his leg. He was caught and became a prisoner of war.
He narrowly avoided losing his life to an angry crowd of locals at a train station as the German guard gave him his rifle and he was able to hold the crowd at bay, until they were able to catch the train. He gave the rifle back to the guard.
Bob was a musician and played the saxophone and clarinet. One day the Red Cross delivered a selection of musical instruments to Stalag Luft 7 where he was being held, and amongst the instruments there was a saxophone and clarinet, both of which he played. He wrote arrangements for the camp bands and orchestra playing both instruments. He took part in the long march taking his saxophone with him.
After the war he worked as a civil engineer and continued to play his saxophone.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Luckenwalde
Germany--Schweinfurt
Poland--Tychowo
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Carolyn Emery
106 Squadron
bale out
bombing
entertainment
Ju 88
Lancaster
lynching
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Metheringham
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/878/11118/AHolmesEA160129.2.mp3
6370a9b710f91955ac01de568b0cbea5
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
Holmes, Ernest
Ernest A Holmes
E A Holmes
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Ernest Holmes (1921 - 2021, 1058581, 157389 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a pilot with 35 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-01-29
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Holmes, EA
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
BB: Testing one two three. I’m here in Perth to interview Ernest Holmes, ex Pathfinder pilot, what we’ll do Ernest is just, I’ll get you just to tell me your name, what you did in the RAF in your own words, just try and tell your story as best you can
EH: What story is it you want?
BB: When did you join the RAF and just not in great detail but just talk it through.
EH: I am Ernest Holmes and at the age of nineteen I volunteered for service in the RAF to train as a pilot and on the 10th of June 1940 I then left home which was on my mother’s birthday to go down to Padgate. From there I eventually did training in Blackpool, the square bashing, then I was posted to Hooten Park where I was working in operations room. Then I eventually got interviewed and accepted for training as a pilot. I went to Desford where I did the, sorry, I went
BB: That’s ok.
EH: Squire’s gate I think it was to ITW, from there I went to Desford to do the initial training on Tiger Moths after thirty hours accomplishing, then went to Canada for further advanced flying on twin engine aircraft, I went there on a [unclear] factory that was called Swen Fine and that was torpedoed in 1943
BB: God!
EH: But I went there on a I think there is a photograph
BB: We will have a look at those later. Thank you.
EH: I don’t know where I then
US: Can I just interrupt, do you take sugar?
BB: I take sweeteners.
US: Perfect. Right.
BB: Thank you very much. So, you went to Canada.
EH: Went to Canada. And then returned to the UK after six months in Canada
BB: You got your wings in Canada.
EH: Got my wings in Canada [unclear] sergeant. Then I went to Abindgon on Whitleys
BB: That was number 10 OTU.
EH: Yes. There I was assessed as exceptional and proof is in my logbook [laughs] and from there I went to train on the Halifaxes and from there I went to 76 Squadron
BB: So, that was the Halifax XCU.
EH: Yes.
BB: Where was that? Somewhere in Yorkshire?
EH: Outside Oxford.
BB: Outside Oxford, ok. Remember that. And then from there you went onto the squadron which was 76.
EH: 76 Squadron.
BB: So you crewed up at the OTU.
EH: We crewed up there and from 76 Squadron I had asked to go onto the Pathfinders so we eventually moved, I can’t recall the actual dates but the logbook [unclear]
BB: Right. Was that the whole crew or just you? Sometimes the whole crew would [unclear]
EH: The whole crew, the whole crew went.
BB: Ok. Now was that a end of tour discussion well chaps what we do [unclear] or do we go onto Pathfinders?
EH: No, it was just a posting.
BB: Oh, you’re posted?
EH: But I had already asked.
BB: [unclear] Oh, you requested it. Ok. That’s good.
EH: And we went.
BB: [unclear]
EH: And then we had to do the training on the Pathfinders and then from there I was moved to 35 Squadron. [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
EH: So we’d already completed about twelve operations or so on 76 Squadron, then we started the training with
BB: Pathfinders.
EH: Yes, the operations with 35 Squadron.
BB: And I suppose that was pretty intensive, all the instructing the markers and sky marking and ground marking and all that.
EH: Yes, it was just a job for us.
BB: Yes.
EH: But I still recall quite clearly the change of attitude of each person, we were all friends, we referred to each other by name, nick names, I was known as Shirley, short for Sherlock, for a long time I was Sherlock, and there was no Holmes came along, so differentiate I am Sher-ee.
BB: Ok, I got you, yes. Ah, ok.
EH: No. And times operations you had on the crews and on my last operation when I was shot down we had a mixed crew. I had two Canadian gunners, my navigator became station officer now deceased and he had DFC DFM and the engineer DFC DFM also deceased., they became chief engineer and also chief navigation instructor, so they came off my crew and I got Johnny Stewart, Derrick came with me but that night I had eight of a crew, not seven.
BB: yes, I counted that up on the [unclear].
EH: Pardon?
BB: Were you carrying an extra wireless op?
EH: The wireless operator wanted to learn how to use the radar
BB: Right.
EH: There was no special training so he came along. Training, been trained on operations and I had a second wireless operator
Bb:
EH: But I also had two gunners. The two Canadian gunners had previously had asked for me to finished their tours with me, they finished, the Canadian scheme was after thirty ops they went back home, they were no longer required to do anything or get involved in any activities in the war unless they chose so but they too wanted to go back home [unclear]
BB: So they did.
EH: They went back home. So I had two new gunners and also a new engineer, the engineer was on his first operation
BB: God!
EH: And I’m not quite certain if the gunner was. David has my logbook.
US: Yes, I got wartime and I’ve also got the flight plans.
EH: You have.
BB: That’s
EH: No. You’ll have to know. Ask the questions and I’ll give you a brief [unclear].
BB: Ok. From the information that I had already, from David, plus my own research material, I’ve sketched out here a tabular form, your career is by unwonded from the information I had.
EH: Yeah.
BB: You enlisted on the tenth of June 1940 as an AC2.
EH: That’s right.
BB: Service number 105851.
EH: Yes, 105851.
BB: And you were a UT pilot basically at that time.
EH: Yes.
BB: And then you went to ITW and then on to number 7 EFTS at Desford.
EH: That’s right.
BB: Where you learned to fly Tiger Moths and they had some Miles Magisters there as well.
EH: That’s right.
BB: And then you went to number 35 AFU North Battleford, Saskatchewan
EH: That’s right.
BB: Where you learned twin engine aircraft on the Airspeed Oxford.
EH: In the Oxford.
BB: In the Oxford. And you were made a sergeant at that stage.
EH: Yes, when you got your wings.
BB: Yes, that’s right. And then you went, came back to the UK, you went to number 10 OTU at Abington Whitley
EH: That’s right.
BB: And your station commander was group captain H M Massey, who happened to be later on in the same prison of war camp as you, as the senior RAF officer in Stalag Luft III.
EH: North compound, yes.
BB: Yes.
US: Did you know that, Dad?
EH: I did, no, I didn’t know it.
BB: He was senior British RAF officer, he was shot down and taken prisoner, I got it here, I can let you have all of this and then you went to HCU on Halifaxes and was promoted flight sergeant.
EH: I was a flight sergeant at Abingdon.
BB: At Abingdon, ok, so, ok, [unclear] and then you went on to the squadron and were commissioned pilot officer on the squadron shortly after you arrived, I think.
EH: it’s on 35 Squadron.
BB: Yes.
EH: Yes.
BB: Yes. And by the time you got to 76 you were already commissioned, you were promoted to pilot officer with the new service number 157389. And then you did your Pathfinders, you went missing on the 22nd of May in Holland on a raid to Dortmund
EH: That’s right.
BB: Shot down and evaded capture, fought with the French resistance for a while but you were betrayed by the Gestapo and taken to Stalag Luft III.
EH: Yes.
BB: Prisoner of war number 0288.
EH: I don’t know the number of prisoner of war.
BB: Here we are. And you were involved in the long march.
EH: Both two marches.
BB: Two marches. Ok. Your aircraft was MD762 code E for Edward.
EH: Can’t recall
BB: Yeah. And it crashed, obviously a night fighter got you and you had to get out of the aircraft and landed in a place near Middlebeers in North Bravent.
EH: Yes.
BB: At 0522 in the morning.
EH: Yep.
BB: And then obviously you made it on the 21st of May ’44 you became an acting flight lieutenant [unclear] gazette illustrated on the 10th of October 1945.
EH: I knew nothing about that till a year later.
BB: I got all this stuff for you. And then you were liberated at Lubeck and then you opted for a permanent commission and went on to do lots of other things, flying on Yorks and
EH: yes.
BB: All sorts of nice things and then you were at [unclear] in Kinloss for a while. I was a member of the RAF reserve for thirty three years, in the maritime world and spent a lot of time at Kinloss briefing and debriefing crews as an intelligence officer and then I went on to, after maritime I went on to fast jets, doing the same with fighter [unclear], I did that in both Gulf Wars and it is very interesting and If I hadn’t actually researching the RAF for years and years and years, I knew about the intelligence cycle and debriefing crews and that interest stood me in really good sted when I had stop the aircrew to deal with in their flying suits, and they just wanted to get to the bar and I wouldn’t le them go to the bar [unclear] they had been debriefed so it’s funny how life but that’s a fascinating story.
EH: That I was [unclear] again.
BB: So.
EH: Can I speak about?
BB: Of course you can. Yes.
EH: When we were shot down, there was no warning, no indication, there was no warning, interception, [unclear] just [mimics a noise] and I lost control of the aircraft, went into a dive, I had my feet on, trying to pull it back but one thing fortunately, I had the loose fissing harness, eventually I was on the [unclear] panel trying to pull the aircraft up, what I was doing of course pulling myself out of the seat, now I had already abandoned the walk southwest, I was somewhere getting near the coast and I choose south west but if I was near the coast walk around the German defences and I also broadcast on my radio so that crews would recognise my voice and this was so, whilst I was on the underground, now is this the part that you are interested in?
BB: yes, yes please, yes.
EH: They started and I landed and I started walking but there was a lot of cloud around, I had to stand and wait to wait till I could see the North Star decide which was North South East and West and I walking South West and I saw someone, this is out in the countryside, light a cigarette and I heard dogs barking so I walked away from that, the person lighting a cigarette a later found out was Derrick, we went away [unclear] because at the time that the second explosion took place where the engineer was in the hatch [unclear] under the escape hatch, Derrick was there, standing with his parachute clipped on, Donnie Stewart the navigator pulled the curtain back, touched me on the shoulder, which was the sign and I am still trying to point [unclear] and then there was a third bang, big explosion, I lost unconscious and I woke up hanging over the nose of the aircraft still strapped to my side with the loose harness fitting your arm and your arm [unclear] I pulled myself back and found my legs were trapped with the control column so I kicked them free, released my harness from the seat and then eventually released my leg and pushed myself off and then pulled my parachute and I just waited, I didn’t know where it was going to land and lot of mud, I don’t know if you [unclear] at that time, we could wear what we liked on our operations, I had an old style army trench coat but I used to use it as cover, the Canadians had leather jackets, leather coats, so some of us did dress up in the hopes that if you were shot down some camouflage, now whence I came across this farm and I knocked on the door, didn’t get an answer but there was a well, water well, I didn’t get an answer so so I opened this gate and the thing about the gate that struck me was a concrete bomb had been used as a pillar to the gate unknown to me the Germans had been using that farm area as a precious bombing range [laughs]
BB: Gosh! [unclear]
EH: So I continue walking and I hear dogs barking and I start walking through water think if there were dogs they would get my scent water would help, remember I am still I once shock I was fighting
BB: Sure but you, you know, it’s a big experience that kind
EH: And then I came to a wood and I started going through the wood, it’s amazing the noise you make at night time when you walk through and I heard dog was barking again, so I came out of the wood and I continued walking
BB: You still have your flying boots at this stage
EH: No, I never used my flying boots
BB: [unclear]
EH: Normal shoes.
BB: Ok, right.
EH: In fact the only gear I had was the roll neck clover on my blazer and my roll neck clover on my jacket and underwear I had my pyjama trousers on, that was all. And my shoes but in my socks I had a Bowie knife, I lost that and I know when I landed and [unclear] I was [unclear]
BB: You couldn’t find it
EH: And then I came to this [unclear] and was the only [unclear], I could hear noises and I thought it was a blacksmith that must have been, I heard this and I thought that’s a blacksmith I think I was thinking that’s the blacksmith and he will have a big handkerchief with a sandwich and I think I was going to steal that, however I came to this [unclear ] and I could see this church steeple and I thought I gotta find a place to hide, twelve hours earlier I could have just jumped across I couldn’t I was so worn out, so I waded across up the ankle deep, knee deep [unclear] to the other side to get rid of any dog scent now I saw walking up to this park, the corn was growing high now and then oh I hate this bank noise I heard and there came a girl, she must be seventeen, eighteen cycling, she was going to and she had a runny bicycle which had small wheels in the front with a flat tray and she had a milk and she was the one that was and when she passed she said, Guten Morgen, and I thought she spoke to me in English, and I said, you speak English? nein, so I said, RAF, Flieger, and she pointed for me to hide in the corn and she went off back to the farm and I’m hiding in the corn as she was quite high at the time and I heard all the voices come by and eventually I stood up and there was [unclear] the father, he was a little man and along with him was [unclear] and was Jan, the elder son, well, the elder son was probably be about thirteen, fourteen, that was Jan, and then there were three others with him, they were all students, one was Willy [unclear], he was hiding form the Germans because the students were over the age of sixteen were to go to work in the defences so all the students went into hiding and [unclear], he was actually studying medicine at the time and he was in hiding and then there was another [unclear], we called him the painter, he was an artist, we could pick him out in a million, he wore a [unclear] type hat, it was a huge hat and a cloak, he didn’t speak English and I took an dislike him because he spoke to the others who spoke English [unclear] and [unclear] and
BB: Willy
EH: Willy and they laughed and then they asked me, I said, what did he say? He said, he wants to know if you have a gun, no, have you got any cigarettes, don’t smoke. And then it was laughter when this related to the artist or painter, I took an dislike to that chappie because he had said, he hasn’t got a gun, he hasn’t got any cigarettes, he is no bloody good to us, let’s kill him.
BB: I could see you take to dislike him, yeah.
EH: I took an instant dislike to that chappie, I met him once or twice after that, but then he said that they were going to help me so they took me to the farm and there they had the old tin bath hanging on the wall, they had to untie my shoelaces and help me take my clothes off and when my clothes were off of course I’d been circumcised, no reference me to that, far my concern, from the RAF and they were trying to help, well, a few things happened, I would say, I mean, I would say they had a fireplace, a brick thing found underneath water in this and on the top of that was a lid and that’s where they used to put the milk [unclear] once it had been because it had been and taken away but they held in that for a couple of days and then I went in the pigsty and that and then he came up to me one day and this is up to six days that’s the farmer, he came up to me with a bottle, a small bottle of whiskey and sixty gold flake cigarettes 1944 didn’t have the money to buy it, any ideas?
BB: Black market.
EH: SOE.
BB: SOE, oh yes, of course. The escape alliance.
EH: And he was tied to the SOE and was the only way he could have got it but anyway I didn’t drink and I didn’t smoke so I told him he could have them. And then they walked me into they called it the orchard, there was and there were about six beds there, this is where the students [unclear]
BB: Right.
EH: They were hiding, came to sleep and during the daytime they disappeared, look the headmaster of the village school had a spare room and the headmaster go to the library to get the medical books for Luke that continued his study and but I only saw him at night time and at meal times so I’m on my own most of the time but then Naty I come across at one time used to buy the biscuits came in a big tin box, in packets inside that box, and she used to bring one of these different types of grain and my task was to sort out those that were edible for humans and the rest for the animals so I used to sort these out, this she would have to do it cause she, she run that farm, she milked the cow, she did the shopping, and she was the one that had to go to the to get the licences to get the nes free papers for the family because the sons couldn’t go otherwise they were under and [unclear] himself couldn’t go so that, you know, she was the real workhouse I can write a book about her but I can tell you what happened I was there and eventually became when I was to get go to the next place, no whilst I was there I had a haemorrhoids and the doctor to come and he prescribed just a little tablet to insert
BB: Yes
EH: And he wanted something to remember me the only thing I had was a small protector [unclear] to give to him and then on the sixth of June which by chance was to be the date I was to be best man at my wife’s, at that time my girlfriend’s brother who was in the RAF, he was getting married and I was to be best man but [unclear] thought it was my marriage
BB: Right.
EH: But he came up to me and envasi, envasi, I knew the invasion had started
BB: 6th of June, D-Day.
EH: On the 6th of June, yes, so I said to him, whiskey so he went back and we had a little drink, just he and I, had a little drink and then, when I had to leave the farm, decided to take me a photograph, now a business man provided Frans with a suit, is that the photograph?
BB: That’s the photograph of Frans.
EH: Of Frans?
BB: Yeah, yeah.
EH: Yeah, well, the photograph of the dog,
US: [unclear]
EH: So this business man provided me with a suit but said to me, leave here, leave, get away from here or all be killed, they’ll all be killed, they and he give me ten guilders which was no use to me, I couldn’t use anyway but then my conscience risking their lives but they had to make the arrangements or point me in the right direction, true enough they made arrangements and the next place I went to was [unclear] the family Faro, the family Faro, they are all deceased, a woman, she had a son, she ran at a village a shop and to a different people coming in that’s people hiding and moving to the next place, I was then moved from there to, it was a big house and a little Dutchman but he had an American wife she was very tall and I don’t think they were happy to have me hiding in their house I was only there I don’t think forty-eight hours and I don’t think they were happy but he himself said that he flew aircraft in the First World War
BB: Alright.
EH: But then I got the impression this American lady, she was a bit concerned about me staying there, then I moved from there to a farm, it was just a single wooden building and there was an old man wearing clogs he didn’t speak English but his son I did discover was in the Dutch navy and this chappie asked me, you know, could I get him shoes, of course ration back here and he also on the tie of that suit I was wearing, he wrote his son’s name and address, service number so that if I got back to UK we could contact them through the embassy. Unfortunately I must continue now and then from there I was moved again, I lived in Holmegrun, you see, that’s a drawing, it’s a forst, and there was a hole on the ground and they actually made it into a, lined it with straw and then so that the wooden perch with and we were locked in there and at night time they would come give us something to eat and drink and then we would wonder round the woods to attend to mother nature and then come back and were locked and meantime I knew from the underground, four members of my crew had been killed, one had been captured, that was five of us, myself was six, then I was introduce to Derrick, is tappest, tappace place, Moregas I think was the name that, we later went back, Derrick had been hidden inside in this monastery and we were brought together with the underground to see if we were the persons we claimed, he recognised me, I with him, so from then on that accounted for my crew, there were seven now, the sixth man, the eighth man must still be evading capture, that was my hope. And the only man I wanted to hope was the original, Mack was the original wireless operator but he wanted to learn how to operate the H2S so that’s why unfortunately didn’t find discovered after the war was also dead. But then to this the last place in Holland I’ve forgotten the name now but somewhere in the records of my and there I gived them ten guilders that I had, that I couldn’t use into Belgium eventually came along and was a female and came half way and we were told she doesn’t speak English, she doesn’t speak French, for a person living in Belgium, however we were not to try to speak to her but just follow her so I was unhappy because this wasn’t the sort of reception that I had when I was moved to another place I was introduced, I wasn’t even introduced to this person, eventually we, to the bus and sitting on the back of the bus were youngsters, seventeen, eighteen years of age, all dressed the same, I think that they were Hitler Youth movements and they were all sitting at the back of the bus, we the only ones, I think that they were part of the ploy, that we were being betrayed, and they were there to ensure that tried anything funny they would have shot us, I’ve no proof of that, just a feeling, hunch I had, thinks are not going the way they should and I said to the French Canadian, he’s the navigator, he came from Montreal, I asked to speak to her in French but she declined, she didn’t understand, she didn’t understand English, she knew fine well what was happening, I didn’t but Derrick and I were a bit suspicious so we eventually were driven into Antwerp and she got off the bus and we followed but we went together, we just followed so he followed, I think the French Canadian first, then Derrick and then I behind, eventually we take into this large shop, it msut have been a big shop like McEwans, shop or something, but it was a coffeshop high ceilings and everything, lots of people in uniform and three people in civil clothes and there was an empty table with four chairs or fice chairs and we were told to sit down, then a chappie came and sat beside us, the girl we had followed, she produced a piece of paper and he produced a piece of paper, put them together and I knew straight away this is not, this is not right, Derrick knew, he wasn’t happy and the French Canadian, he didn’t pass a word about it, but I felt that there’s something not right, al these people around me, there was a slight hope cause I had been told underground possible at some stage in German uniform and take me down to Switzerland I was hoping that was it.
BB: But it wasn’t.
EH: But eventually this girl got up, they put the two pieces of paper together word or something it was a poor imitation of the real thing however the chap she went off and we were told to follow this chap and we went through a back entrance so this, just let me borrow something
US: There’s a photograph. You’re ok?
EH: This was the shop, you see, the woman here and we were taken through the back road down here and directly opposite was a church and the church was not on level ground, was raised, visible wall around it but raised.
BB: yes.
EH: I didn’t get the name and they went three people standing there and we were introduced to him, this chap that had met us inside and then we were told to get in the car so the three of us got in the back of this car and some girls went by in uniform, I hadn’t seen a female in uniform and I asked that young girl, oh, are those young ladies Germans? No, they were girls that work on the telephone section, they had their own dress.
BB: Uniform.
EH: So we start the car and we start driving on oh I would say about four, five hundred yards and they just pulled into an archway and they are standing outside with two [unclear] and this chap gets out of the car, follow me, we follow, I’m still thinking, oh, they gonna put me in a German uniform and take me into, when he got us inside he turned around, right gentlemen military police.
BB: Luftwaffe police?
EH: That was it. And they separated us and they put me in a room upstairs, I would say, it reminded me of my old school, a big room, high ceiling
BB: Master study.
EH: But aside of that, triple bunk beds and I was posted into a single room, there was one window, I tried to open the window which had been screwed tight, oh, I couldn’t open it, but in any case there was only, there was [unclear] downstairs, a space between the buildings and I could see a drain of pipe running from upstairs on that wall but I couldn’t open the window even trying and I wanted to try and go down but I was so exhausted by this time, I just [unclear] and fell asleep. And I was woken by kicked, of course I jumped up then lying dreaming rifle pushing my teeth.
BB: Were you still in your
EH: Civvy clothes?
BB: Yeah, but did you have your uniform underneath your civvy clothes?
EH: No, just civvy clothes.
US: That’s the suit, my dad was wearing, you can see the double two tails
EH: That dog belonged to the business gentlemen’s
BB: The one you didn’t like.
US: The one who, the business man who gave him the suit
BB: Who gave him the suit, sorry, [unclear]
EH: So, he then took me, stripped me and he took me I was both individually to this and then he turned round, he says, right, who are you, you are a spy. I got my dog tags, he took the dog tags off, he just threw them across the room, and he said, [unclear] my grandmother, I will see with lots of and two dog tags oh I am so and so this, I’m meaningless, said he. So I am now without my dog tags.
BB: Was he Gestapo or Luftwaffe please?
EH: Just something, the German military police, I think he was trying to
BB: Provoke you into something
EH: Well, it wasn’t physical but then he said, you’re a spy, we shoot spies, and then he stripped so I was stripped naked, he saw I was circumcised, he said, ah, you’re a Jew! Oh, we have special treatments for Jews. Note, at that time we didn’t know what was happening in the concentration camps, so we had thought so I could either be shot or there is a special treatment for Jews. And there was a little pressure put on me, asking questions but they are trying to scare you, frighten you and then they pushed me into a separate room, this big room with lots of bunk beds, obviously they were using it as a sort of barracks but there was no, I think it must have been a school or something at one time, but they put me in this room and I put my head out the door, everything was quite at the end of the corridor was a guard, German guard and he had a rifle and he start pushing the [unclear] up and down, Jew, Jew, [mimics a noise] obviously [unclear] from Berlin, we were in a terrible mess and I went back to the window was a chappie, I think he was a blacksmith cause he had a little fire there and I sang, my name is Ernest Holmes, I am RAF, just singing, [unclear] and there was only one occasion when he turned round, he was nodding but I hoped that would be the a blacksmith not a German but I think I got the message through to him that I was there but I didn’t want to be there and then, eventually from there they put us in a truck, it’s a fifteen hundred trucker [unclear] and there’s a gate and we had to go, they closed the wired type of gate so that we were trapped and then sitting outside there was a German with a machine gun and from there they took us into from Antwerp they took us to Brussels and they took us to a place called the castle, that used to be prisoner of war camp, no, used to be a prison, but then the Germans had taken and the three of us were then locked in a room and then you could see quite clearly a microphone and the window like a prison was high and we were given little food, little liquid, and we had biscuits, we can buy them over here, they’re nachabrot, it’s just, that was it, no food, no meat.
BB: How many of you were there at this point? How many people were you at this point?
EH: Three of us in this room. And then we were taken out, I can only speak for myself, I can tell you what happened to Derrick cause we were separated and then I was taken downstairs naked, no, before that the intelligence officer was there and he was dressed in an RAF type uniform but he had buttons with a red, white buttons with a red cross on,
BB: Oh, ok.
EH: He spoke very good English but he was huge. I think I described him as a fat however he [unclear] you know, oh they want to know who you are and I said, I clear my protection to the Geneva Convention, prisoner of war
BB: [unclear]
EH: No, he was quite content to sit and just wanted me to sit and speak, you know, and get frightened cause you know, then he started putting [unclear] oh, you’re a spy, we’ll kill you, Jew special treatment we are building up and when he stripped me and I was taken into the dungeon, when I got into the dungeon there was a German with a machine gun standing and he [unclear] on, what’s the name of the thing that you are standing on? You give, someone is giving a talk,
BB: A [unclear].
US: [unclear]
EH: There, against the wall, was a was this person but dressed as a [unclear], you could smell the newness of the suit, and I thought, no, I’ve seen that shape before but I didn’t want to admit he was the chappie the first as a red cross man you see but this chappie, Jude, Jude, Jude, Jude, and then I was there for some time, five, six minutes, with this harassment coming from this coming and there was this person and I think this is part of the ploy to actually test me to see if I was a Jew, cause he had been dressed in this suit there is no other a Jew in Brussels in 1945
BB: Very rare.
EH: So, I just as I went by, I said, don’t lose faith, don’t lose faith but in such a loud voice, eventually I was taken back and then I was asked to sign a form and this was to be a form that was printed from the red cross, but printed on the top of that form was printed in Berlin, so I knew straight away this is a show trying to get information so eventually we were, Derrick went through the same process, Derrick also had bene circumcised, now I don’t know about the Canadian cause from then on we were separated but eventually he decided that we were prisoners of war and this was after about seven, eight weeks, we were then, we were going to prison of war camp and it was whilst we got in the prison of war camp the escape had taken place on the 23rd of March,
BB: Great escape.
EH: I wasn’t shot down until the 22nd of May. And the prisoners were wearing black armbands they told me the story of what had happened but I was in the same hut, have we got the book?
US: I’ve got it, yes.
EH: There is a little logbook I was given.
BB: Yes, I [unclear]
EH: Now, I had been was given a logbook and the first thing that was in my mind was my crew, there’s lots of just the people
BB: Gosh, yes, go on. [unclear] the shower.
EH: The first thing I did was thinking of my crew, I tried, I was mainly concerned about this eighth men member and I hope that it was Mike, can you find the page David?
US: [unclear] which is the poem?
EH: Yes. One left.
US: Carl wrote a poem expressing his feelings about what had happened
EH: The drawing was on that side, the poem’s on the right.
US: Do you want me to read it out, Dad?
EH: Yes. It was [unclear]
US: [unclear] to sent a photograph of the crucifix
EH: Oh.
US: So, it is in memory of those members of the crew flying Lancaster E for Edward who sacrificed their lives for their country on the 22nd of May 1944, so I will remember, when the sun sets and darkness falls, I will remember, when the sun rises and another day is born I will remember, for remembrance is all that I possess of those I knew so well, those who flew with me into the silent night to fight the foe, they asked not for bloodshed nor did they start the fight, but when they heard the bugle call they jumped to fight for right, after they prepared for missions flying into the sleeping night to bring death and destruction to those who called right might, they did their job right, they did it well but this couldn’t last for on the 23rd of May we fell and became as the past, four aviator missing, these we know are dead, three more accounted for, the eighth man is still ahead, making his way for his own homeland, keep going, my friend, Tommy, Johnny, Mac and Jock have left this earth but we who live will remember, I with Derrick and Ron, from the setting of the sun to the rising of the [unclear] we will think of those who kept up England’s fame, will you and England remember.
BB: Moving. And we do remember and Bomber Command [unclear] a very bad deal at the end of the war
EH: Yeah.
BB: And I blame Churchill for that. Cause Harris, Harris had defied Churchill on a couple of occasions and Mr Dowding had done as well sending more Hurricanes to France and I think he was quite vindictive in that respect occasionally, great man but I think you know he’s human when he’s doing things but I think that Harris and Dowding got a raw deal.
EH: The whole of the RAF got a bad reputation but for what has taken place but if it hadn’t taken place, we would all be speaking German.
BB: exactly.
EH: Ah
BB: I mean, when you listen to contemporary newsreels of that time, particularly after the Blitz, the Blitz on other cities, the populations of those saying, go and give it back to them! Go and give it! And so Harris did exactly that, he was doing what he was bed by the war cabinet and by Churchill and he went and he fulfilled that as best as he could and then it all got [unclear] after the war cause [unclear] so well. But that’s all been, I think, Bomber Command went through that darkness
EH: Yes
BB: And then it came out at the other end and here we are
EH: There is a little gap
BB: That’s what these guys at Lincoln are trying to do
EH: Yes, but there was a little gap, someone [unclear] resentment as I did because a medal was produced that cost fifteen pounds and this was to, and I bought one
BB: This was the Bomber Command memorial, this
EH: No, no, this has nothing to do with Bomber Command,
BB: I beg your pardon.
EH: Someone had produced to say a thank you, to say that we had done a good job
BB: Oh my god, Right, right.
EH: But that was replaced seventy years later with the Bomber Command crest.
BB: Clasp.
US: The bar and the
BB: That didn’t [unclear] till 1945, yeah.
EH: So in a fact, I have, I told you about this medal, it’s now meaningless but that was the resentment that we had and that’s why I bought it
BB: Quite right.
EH: I have it, it’s hidden
BB: [unclear] let down by
EH: The thing
BB: Did you apply for your Bomber Command clasp?
EH: Yes, I have, we have the medal, but the sad thing was, after the war I went to Bomber Command, to Pathfinder headquarters [unclear] give me the choice of either going back at the squadron or going into Transport Command but he warned me, the squadron is preparing to go out to the Far East and being [unclear] tropical [unclear] I said at the time I think I have had my fair share of war, I remember that two forced marches and [unclear] so he arranged to go to Pathfinder, to the
BB: Transport, Transport Command
EH: To [unclear], I’m sorry Bournemouth, I went there with the squadron and who was the CO of the squadron? The squadron leader and Wing Commander Dan [unclear] he sent me on my last op and he was waiting for me coming back from that last op to show me the London Gazette and he gave me my ribbon to put on
BB: Oh, how wonderful.
EH: And he repost me, he said, you are improperly dressed, oh, I don’t know what I had, all I had was the thirty nine forty five, and he, from there he didn’t tell me but he took me with his we sat down and we went through all my operations experience through, I finished up with up with a France Germany medal and also the Italian star and I was wearing them until Kinloss when a group captain Caddy, a Canadian, he was a gentleman, he wanted normal story to, [unclear], the reason he wanted me was there was the coronation and there was seven medals allotted to Kinloss and I was to get one of them, so I had to get my other medals, when I applied for them I discovered I wasn’t entitled to the France Germany medal because I’m in Holland trying to get through, but I wasn’t in France, I wasn’t entitled to it, and also I had done [unclear] to Caen to [unclear], there is a bridgehead to Italy and the railway lines from Caen were feeding that and we went to destroy that railway line in Caen itself and we went down to four thousand feet to bomb and it was in aid of the [unclear] bridgehead
BB: Right
EH: And so I took those down, I had to apologize to the CO I had been wearing this because they told me I wasn’t entitled and he got really annoyed with the and he said, oh, I’ll speak to the OC, we already trained through the Pathfinder force [unclear] you went there so you didn’t get it, so I wasn’t entitled to the France Germany because I hadn’t been stationed in Italy, I couldn’t
BB: But you clearly got the France and Germany clasp, you get the aircrew Europe?
EH: No. No, I haven’t got a France Germany at all.
BB: No, I met sometimes
EH: I got a victory medal
BB: Right, didn’t get the aircrew Europe?
EH: Didn’t get the France because I am in Holland
US: But Dad, listen to the question again. Listen to the question again.
BB: Did you get the aircrew Europe star?
EH: Oh yes,
BB: Cause that would have been where you would have worn the France and Germany clasp on that star, had you been able to
EH: No, I didn’t have the, there was no recognition at all for the France Germany, the, I got the victory medal
BB: I see [unclear] put that right
EH: I actually, the many things that freshen my mind but when I think of my story that I have, can I tell you a little more?
BB: Sure, of course you can.
EH: Frances, Frances von der Heyden,
US: [unclear]
EH: After I left
US: She was Francis daughter
BB: Francis daughter
EH: And she was the girl that found me, she was the workhouse on the farm, she looked after us, she made food for us, and [unclear] for us, for the undertakers and there were six children, she was the elder but let me speaking two separate stories [unclear] after I left, the bridge too far does it ring a bell?
BB: Arnhem. Yes.
EH: Well, the aircraft going passed nearby, near the [unclear] where I was and [unclear] and she comes across an American airman who was wounded on a shoulder ands he made arrangements and she took him in the farm and he was in the pigsty where I had been but then [unclear] by this time the troops were not too far away and [unclear] went across, no, I didn’t see this, I am told by the family, he went across the fields to the British and said he had an American and he wanted help, take him away but they didn’t believe him, they thought that it was a trap and the Germans would be [unclear] of him but they gave him some dressing [unclear] so he went back somehow somewhere the Germans found out he crossed the line and they came to the village and there they found them in the church and they were going to shoot the whole family and France argued, he was master of his house and the family had to do he was [unclear] not them and they shot him in front of them
BB: Yeah, was that ever followed up after the war because if they went in and did all this stuff after the war [unclear]
EH:
US: There is a memorial to Frans
EH: Well, what did happen with I had to be taught but they what happened when I first went back however the family unfortunately went [unclear] dispersal remember was nature and young baby sister I think she is still alive and one of her brothers and that’s left and there’s grandchildren after them [unclear] I’m in contact with and I have been on contact with her family for over seventy years
BB: Oh, that’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. Other Bomber Command aircrew I have interviewed, were they, had they similar experiences to yours, have kept up with their people as well. It’s amazing the bond that existed, you know, there was these young, frightened aircrew, had the horrendous experience of getting out a bomber, landed in a foreign country, had done all the theory about what to do and you know Mi9 teaching them all sorts of things but at the end of the day, you know, they were given help and shelter and food and help you know by the resistance, well the escape line I should say.
EH: But what they did for me is not my story, it’s her story, there was Frans murdered cause he had helped this American, the same thing could have, if I had been there the same thing could have happened to [unclear] but there at one point came when I will switch now from Frans to [unclear], [unclear] was invited to go to America where the some Dutch friends of hers and while she was there, she fell in love with the brother in law of this couple she was staying with and she wanted to get married but she was visiting the States and was not allowed to stay so she in actual fact gave us a [unclear] I should have it somewhere, the second page of the [unclear] Express, and this was where they had approached someone in the government to ask permission and she was told by the senator that if she could prove that she was a fit and worthy person to enter the States, he would try to do what he could for her and she sent me the cutting of the paper where this article was in and I went to my lawyer and explained to him the position and he then [unclear], he actually wrote the letter and she got permission to stay and they got married. But that wasn’t the end of the story because Jan and her brother who was back home he found, he didn’t speak English but he and I, he and I could converse, we understood one another but he, he had an American correspondence [unclear] information so he approached this person and he give them the name and address and the service number of the American that was there and law and behold that American was [unclear] and the family went across, Nat was living in the States, and the family, members of the family, they went there and they actually saw,
BB: Oh, that was good.
EH: Yeah, Jan asked them, [unclear] and make sure so he showed them the wound and he asked, why didn’t you, oh, I thought you were all dead, I thought they shot all, he hadn’t even reported the fact that [unclear]
BB: Yes
EH: So that was a sad tale.
BB: That was a very sad tale, yeah.
EH: Yes.
BB: Well, Ernest, thank you very much
EH: Can I tell you one, just one more?
US: Dad, just two seconds. We are going to have fish and chips for lunch.
BB: Right.
US: I was just going to go and pick them up.
BB: Yes.
US: Would you like to join us? You will join us.
BB: I’d be delighted to, thank you very much indeed. Yeah.
US: I’m going to slip away to get some lunch. Alright?
EH: [unclear] tell the story that I could see it as a [unclear] for a love story [laughs]
BB: Ok, on you go.
EH: [unclear]
US: [unclear] if I leave at this point.
EH: When we were, when we had our last meal, you know, after operations and before operations you go and you have your meal, there was normally sausage, bacon and eggs, well, that night when we sat down, Derrick and I sat together and there was no eggs, and I said to the [unclear], you’ve forgotten the eggs, and she said, Jock he said, [unclear] I can’t go ops without eggs, I got the chop, and she said to me, I’m sorry there’s no eggs and I apologised to her
RH: While we are on the subject of things that crews took with them, good luck charms, whatever you want to call them, my uncle was in 9 Squadron during the war, Australian, he flew from Bardney and did his full trip with 9 and then married my mother’s sister and then he went off to an OTU to instruct staff pilot as an instructor but unfortunately he was killed in a mid-air collision at the OTU, he flew, he flew with apparently, the photograph of my aunt, was later his wife, which he put on the panel of the Lancaster in front of the control column and he swore that got him through every op that he did but that [unclear] did the last one at the OTU [unclear].
US: These are letters that we found that have been written by somebody from [unclear]
BB: Right
US: After the war and we don’t know anything about this person, perhaps Dad will tell you
BB: Okay.
US: I’ll get some lunch.
EH: Can I finish this?
BB: Of course, you can.
EH: I was telling you about this that was on my conscience, when I was hiding that [unclear] that girl
BB: Yes
EH: Was on my mind and I was [unclear]
BB: I can imagine.
EH: [unclear], received the [unclear], I mean I am an emotional person, but by God if anything gets up my nose I just [laughs] however when I went back to see Bennet after the war, he said to me, give me the choice and I said that I’d go back to Holland and he said, right [unclear] go back, go to [unclear] and tell the CO to fly you to Holland but you make your own way back, oh, I accepted that but then when I went onto the squadron I didn’t know a face a part from the navigator I had previously
BB: Right
EH: Gibbs and the [unclear] saw me and he called, don’t move! [unclear]! She’s still here! And he disappeared through the door of the kitchen and he came back with the girl that had served me last meal and the one that I’d said would get the [unclear] and she came right across and the mess
BB: Full
EH: I didn’t know a face other than the [unclear] and my crew member he came across and flung her arms around me and I held her, I [unclear], I apologised for [unclear] and she had seen the [unclear] and she said, oh, I’m glad you’re back and she turned round and tears streaming down her face and they were also mine but I left it to the navigator and the [unclear] to answer any questions about my [unclear] was, there was no physical connection
BB: No, no.
EH: Just that eggs [laughs]
BB: Yeah. That’s interesting. Well, that’s a very interesting story now David passed me this letter, must be to do with someone in the Netherlands, that’s interesting. Anyway thank you for talking to me
EH: No
BB: And it’s a fascinating story and it’s probably the best interview which describes the whole prisoner of war initial interrogation
EH: right. I hope it hasn’t swamped you
BB: Not at all, not at all, because
EH: [unclear]
BB: That’s probably the bit than your Lancaster
EH: Yes, that’s the bit of my Lancaster because after the war we went back this is years later because I’m in Transport Command
BB: Yes, flying your
EH: And then the [unclear] had started but before that we went, [unclear] came with us, and we went, the, Jan, that’s the elder son, now deceased, he had [unclear] with some [unclear], every year the [unclear]
BB: Yeah.
EH: And he had mentioned the fact to these people that he called me Shirley [laughs] and he told his folks that that was, where the aircraft was and we were the undertakers that were alive, Willy and Luc and [unclear] and Jan and they came with us to the farm and the farmer, the farmhouse [unclear] and I couldn’t recognise it, if this is the place, my aircraft came down there and I was in the field here and I came across [unclear] but there was a well here and the farmer said, you are standing on it, the story was lightning put the farm on fire so the farmer had to [unclear] the whole place and [unclear] not just the farm building [unclear] the animals the whole and there was another personal build, I have a photograph of that, we have a photograph of at the farm at [unclear] and we also have photographs of [unclear] got after the war but I had to give everything to David because with my sight gone
BB: Yes, yes
EH: I felt so helpless
BB: I know but I mean, well, fifty-five thousand [unclear] aircrew in Bomber Command didn’t make it
EH: Didn’t make it, no
BB: And the chances of survival of a bomber crew in at the height of the Battle of the Ruhr was four trips
EH: yeah
BB: Four trips
EH: Yeah
BB: So, if you survived four you were already dead.
EH: That’s right
BB: And all the aircrew that I interviewed and tracing my late uncle’s crew as well, who survived the war, they all had mechanisms that distanced themselves from that [unclear] and it was to live for today, everything
EH: [unclear]
BB: Everything was that, don’t think about tomorrow, don’t think about the next op, don’t think about the Grim Reaper, no, it’s just live for today, and they said, they guys that worried about it, were the ones that, you know, that weren’t concentrating, that made a mistake or something and it was just, I don’t know, a luck of the draw, but there was a certain, I perceived a certain mental attitude which got people through,
EH: Well, but after the war I [unclear] because there was only one survivor, Derrick and I, Derrick and I were in contact, but Derrick now is dead and but the chappie who was my wireless operator, her also has died but I got he was interview by a chappie who collected stories from DFCs and DFMs.
BB: Alright.
EH: And he, the same chappie asked me more information and he told, I said ,there was no indication [unclear]
BB: God!
EH: Yeah, seconds
BB: Was it Schrage Musik that got you at the end? You know, the night fighter with the upper firing gun? Below the Lancs?
EH: Yes. You see, I can’t
BB: You can’t answer that because it just so instant
EH: I can’t answer
BB: Yeah, it was just one big matter
EH:
BB: It probably sounds like Schrage Musik because as you know, they went underneath the [unclear]
EH: Yeah
BB: Between the two inner engines, straight in the bomb bay [unclear]
EH: Well, we had two close encounters, but we never had to fire the guns
BB: No
EH: Never
BB: No
EH: So the wireless operator [unclear] had been fighting this [unclear] and the other but there was no guns fired, there was no warning, within thirty seconds the whole lot was over
BB: Yeah. Lucky, you were lucky.
EH: He, no, is dead so I can’t, but I went round to visit the families of them so [unclear] the widow of Johnny Stewart, he was the navigator, he kept a diary and he’d written every time in his diary trips that he went on and he always mentioned my name and his wife asked me who Shirley was, he spent, a lot of people thought my name was Shirley
BB: Yes, yes, yes.
EH: Was Sher-lee
BB: Eee, yeah, and the wife was wondering who Shirley was.
EH: Now then we, this is part of the aircraft, the farmer after the Germans had taken away the aircraft, bits and pieces so David actually took this as a memento
BB: Oh, that
EH: That’s it, I found the aircraft, I’ve been there, and this
BB: You went back to the crash site for the family
EH: Yeah
BB: Not only that, my great grandson, my daughter lives in Belgium and she had a daughter and she was [unclear], Alison was my [unclear].
BB: Gosh!
EH: And but he’s a great guy but he died playing tennis
BB: Heart attack.
EH: He and I got on fine and a lot of people use do think, oh, any with Alison [unclear] but there was no, in fact when he wanted to get married, he wanted to come over to us for my permission, I thought it was pointless in coming just for me to say yes or no.
BB: Yeah.
EH: So I said, don’t bother coming. You come over and have the marriage here and that was all over. So their daughter, so my granddaughter, my grandson and Alison went to the place with, along with one of the grandson of the Van de Hayden family, Hank, this is his name and he’s the one that kept in contact, he is the one who actually took them and they went to the farm and they walked all the way back to where I found, where [unclear] found me but instead of wading across the stream there is a bridge [laughs] and of course there’s no well, is all covered over
BB: All covered over, yeah. How interesting. And of course, you took a permanent commission in the Royal Air Force and you went on to do lots of other things. I mean, flying the routes with Avro York, long haul to Singapore and all sorts of [unclear]
EH: Yeah,
BB: And everything in between
EH: Yes
BB: How did you find the York, cause the York was really a
EH: Well, the armed forces
BB: Basically a Lancaster
EH: The armed force thing was, either the country flying and I’d be away three weeks, back for a few days, come up to Scotland and flew back again, so I couldn’t keep in contact with Derrick, he could go to Holland, I couldn’t
BB: yeah
EH: Cause when I was [unclear], I was [unclear] the CO to take me there, I said, I, eventually you realise that you can’t go empty handed
BB: Yeah [unclear]
EH: You can’t go empty handed, I need money, I didn’t have any money, I don’t think I had my check book with me at the time and we didn’t have cards at that time and I thought, I can’t go across there empty handed so I decided not to go. And then [unclear] Berlin airlift of course, my boss Ben was flying his own aircraft there as a civilian
BB: Yeah.
EH: So I met
BB: Avro Tudor [unclear], is that American Airways [unclear]? No, he started up the South American
EH: That’s right
BB: Airways
EH: That’s right. But then he was
BB: Tudors, Avro Tudors. And Lancastrians and Yorks.
EH: Yeah. He was flying [unclear] petrol
BB: Yeah.
EH: And now, when I visited the other members of the [unclear] I found that the widow of Mack who was the original wireless operator now training on the H2S, he had written a farewell letter to his wife which I gather he wrote every time and kissed this is my last trip, I didn’t know that till his wife told me she was most concerned because he had a baby and there was something wrong with the baby I remember that when we went out as a crew, we, they gave us some little bottles of oil of olive,
BB: Yeah
EH: For the use, for the baby was something wrong but her problem was she didn’t have access to a bank account, it was in his name, she couldn’t get it and I was only visiting there for a short weekend and I couldn’t help her so [unclear] so trying to get the Pathfinder club, he wasn’t even a member, he was in the Pathfinder but he wasn’t a member.
BB: [unclear]
EH: He died so I hope someone did have a [unclear] because Derrick tried to find her living in London, went back, no one in the area knew what had happened to her but the humorous part was that I went to Derrick’s folks, his father was a navigator in the First World War, and he too was shot down, he too became a prisoner of war, now, my story is we were having a dinner with the Pathfinder organisation and now where was the dinner?
BB: RAF club?
EH: No
BB: Pathfinder club?
EH: I, we had, I couldn’t go to the many [unclear] living, I was flying back and forth [unclear] whenever I had time and [unclear] I was with the Pathfinder club in the [unclear]
BB: [unclear]
EH: But with Derrick’s father, there’s a book written by [unclear] Broom.
BB: Oh yeah, Broom. Yeah [unclear]
EH: [unclear] The Battle for Berlin.
BB: The Battle for Berlin.
EH: [unclear]
BB: Alright, I’ll make a note of that [unclear]
EH: And at this time, I was now pilot officer.
BB: Alright. And of course you clocked up seventy hours on Yorks and so the transition to civil aviation was multi-engined experience flying the routes with Transport Command
EH: Yes, but my experience was an actual fact trading fuel, I did a tour with [unclear]
BB: Yes, [unclear]
EH: [unclear]
BB: By the [unclear]
EH: Unfortunately, you see, I held senior appointments but not the rank, I was interviewed by the but I have forgotten [unclear] Scotland [unclear] Scotland at [unclear]
BB: Yes, I used to be at [unclear]
EH: And he, it was a good [unclear], thought I had a raw deal, you know, interview with him
BB: Yeah
EH: But then he said to me, you should just tell the fuckers to stick it up their [unclear] ass, that was the words he used to me, yeah, [unclear] at the time but then I later met him again when I was on Glasgow University [unclear], when I went there the [unclear] was actually using the old typewriters typing things and printing, print out with these
BB: Yes, yeah. [unclear]
EH: And I said, oh, this is nonsense, [unclear] so I want and I got a lot of equipment, I got a camera, projector and also a [unclear] and my esteem went up with the squadron and eventually the OC at the time, I’ve forgotten his name, he came round and I heard wing commander [unclear], not a nice man, he was singing my praise and the OC said to me, [unclear] we are in, and I thought, well, and I think I should have said, Coastal Command. But I said Transport Command cause it [unclear] the end, if I had said Coastal Command and he would have brought precious memories up and that was a third recommendation for me [unclear] so I held senior posts but not the rank.
BB: Yeah, well that was, that’s a shame, no, I went, I started my intelligence work at [unclear] Castle, it was sent HQ NORMA, Northern Maritime Region
EH: Yes.
BB: And I reported directly to the admiral and they received [unclear] the coast of Scotland and Northern Ireland [unclear] and yes, the black huts, the black wooden huts, [unclear] we used to sleep in those and walked down to the pits, down those stairs, yes, it was interesting time, was very busy but ,[unclear] mainly spent hunting Russian submarines in the North Atlantic. With Shackletons initially, the MR 1 Shackleton and then of course [unclear] and so on.
EH: Well, I flew the Shackletons at Kinloss.
BB: Was it ten thousand rivets flying in formation?
EH: When I first came to Kinloss and were only doing coastal cross I was [unclear] at the time.
BB: Yeah, so you were [unclear]
EH: And then I suggested, [file missing] Winston Churchill was coming back on the Queen Mary I think it was from America and I arranged for a flight on Shackleton to go and greet him
BB: Excellent
EH: We got full of praise for that.
BB: Excellent. Yes.
EH: That was the first time the Shackletons had actually flown over [unclear] wartime, was just doing coastal crawls all the time do to the intensive trial period but was an easy aircraft to fly
BB: Yeah
EH: And I flew them, I didn’t fly as captain but I flew the aircraft, take-off, landing and flying around and I did even did practice bomb runs on the Moray Firth
BB: Yeah, yeah.
EH: And well I didn’t do a lot of flying in it but I did fly the Shackleton.
BB: [unclear] it was [unclear] the Lincoln, you know, it went from Lancaster, Lincoln, Shackleton
EH: Yeah
BB: So it was lovely aeroplane.
EH: Oh, Yes. Oh, the Lancaster.
BB: Shackleton, [unclear] Shackleton.
EH: Well I had Mark I, II, Halifax, and the Mark III, now the Mark III was a complete change, it was a [unclear] aircraft, it had sixteen hundred horsepower Hercules engines radials
BB: Yeah.
EH: It was a heavy aircraft, what a difference was from the [unclear] so I got three stitches of [unclear], and then the Lanc, I flew the Lanc, that was a beautiful aircraft to fly.
BB: Did you fly the maritime version as well?
EH: Pardon?
BB: Did you fly the maritime version of the Lancaster as well?
EH: No.
BB: No.
EH: No. No, but I did visit one, there was one in a museum here
BB: Oh, that’s right [unclear]
EH: David was nursing at the time, was training at the time, [unclear] hospital and he heard about it and we went out to visit and there’s a photograph and on that photograph there’s the name Holmes and I reckon it’s a pity they hadn’t put they date on and I reckon as a photograph of an operation, you know, the names were taken off.
BB: Yeah, what a shame.
US2: Can I interrupt? Sorry. We need to [unclear]
BB: Ok, right.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Ernest Holmes
Creator
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Bruce Blanche
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-01-29
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Sound
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AHolmesEA160129
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Pending review
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01:37:23 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Ernest Holmes joined the RAF and served as a pilot, flying operations first with 76 Squadron and then on Pathfinders. Gives a vivid and detailed account of when he was shot down over Holland: how he was given shelter by a farmer’s family and moved to different locations; his eventful escape to Belgium; his capture and interrogation by the Gestapo and internment in a prisoner of war.
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
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1940-06-10
1943
1944-05-21
1945-10-10
10 OTU
35 Squadron
76 Squadron
aircrew
animal
anti-Semitism
bombing
evading
fear
Halifax
Halifax Mk 3
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Abingdon
RAF Kinloss
Resistance
Shackleton
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1700/33142/MElliottJD19200425-210211-01.1.pdf
6660bcb55ce3271637d50dcaab4b52c6
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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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Elliott, John Dale
J D Elliott
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. A memoir written by Flight Lieutenant John Elliott (b.1920, J20710 Royal Canadian Air Force) and 'The LOG' . He flew operations as a navigator with 428 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by Gail Elliott and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-12-10
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Elliott, JD
Transcribed document
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Transcription
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THE LOG
STALAG LUFT III
BELARIA SAGAN
Editor :
SQUADRON LEADER BRYCE COUSENS, R.A.F.
1939 1945
Illustrations and Marginal Sketches :
FLYING OFFICER TERENCE ENTRACT, R.A.F.V.R.
Chief Additional Contributors:
SQUADRON LEADER J. PRESTRIDGE, R.A.F.V.R. (F/O. PEPYS)
FLIGHT LIEUEENANT ROGER DE WEVER, ROYAL BELGIAN AIR FORCE (MILITARY SUPPLEMENTS)
(I)
[Page Break]
R.A.F. OFFICER PRISONERS OF WAR ASSEMBLING FOR COUNTING ON A WINTER MORNING.
[Page Break]
FOREWORD
This book was originally to be printed and distributed shortly after our return from Germany in the summer of 2945. It was impossible to do so owning to paper shortages and other difficulties of which most subscribers will be aware. I am sorry there has been this delay but hope, nevertheless, that you will be pleased to receive your copy and that it will revive memories of some of the happier moments in a life that now seem far distant and much less unpleasant in retrospect.
You will notice that there are very few copies of the “LOG” in the book, owing to the fact that I divided the copy during the 1945 march and the other half was lost by the Officer who kindly offered to carry it to Luckenwalde. I have endeavoured to fill the gap by a short account of the march, from Sagan to Luckenwalde, and trust you will agree with my summary of that experience.
To those who were not Prisoners of War I hasten to explain that this book has not been published because of any supposed literary or historical merit but purely as a tangible souvenir to remind us of some of the joys, hopes, sorrows or disappointments which made up our days in Stalag Luft III: as such it may interest you.
I am sure that I shall be expressing the feelings of all my companions at Belaria in dedicating this book to the memory of those fifty-one brother officers murdered by the Germans after escaping in 1944. A facsimile of the front page of the “LOG” on that occasion, together with the Memorial Sheet, is published on the following pages.
BRYCE COUSENS
“THE EDITOR”
August 1947.
(3)
[Page break]
THE LOG
BELARIA 19th April, 1944
In Memoriam
THE CAMP WILL HAVE BEEN SHOCKED TO HEAR OF THE DEATH OF *FORTY-ONE OF OUR COMRADES WHO DIED RECENTLY IN THE PERFORMANCE OF THEIR DUTY. AS A MARK OF OUR ESTEEM, AFFECTION AND RESPECT, IT HAS BEEN DECIDED THAT ALL ENTERTAINMENTS WILL CEASE UNTIL A MEMORIAL SERVICE HAS BEEN HELD.
THIS SERVICE WILL TAKE THE FORM OF A PARADE SERVICE FOR THE ENTIRE CAMP AND WILL BE HELD ON THE SPORTS GROUND IMMEDIATELY AFTER MORNING APPELL ON THURSDAY, 13TH APRIL; OR, IF WET, AFTER THE FIRST FINE APPELL SUBSEQUENTLY.
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”
SENIOR BRITISH OFFICER
*This tragic figure was subsequently learnt to be fifty-one. – ED.
(4)
[Page Break]
Memorial Service
TO THOSE OFFICERS SHOT AFTER ESCAPING FROM STALAG LUFT III,
MARCH, 1944
HYMN
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast
And our eternal home.
Beneath the shadow of thy throne,
They saints have dwelt secure,
Sufficient in thine arm alone
And our defence is sure.
Before the hills in order stood,
Our earth received her frame,
From everlasting thou art God,
To endless years the same.
A thousand ages in thy sight,
Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night,
Before the rising sun.
Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all it’s sons away,
They fly forgotten as a dream,
Dies at the opening day.
O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast
And our eternal home.
PRAYER – PSALM 23
The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing,
He shall feed me in green pastures and lead me forth besides the water of comfort.
He shall convert my soul; and bring me forth in the paths or righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me: thy rod and thy staff comfort me
Thou shalt prepare a table before me, against them that troubles me; thou hast anointed
My head with oil, and my cup shall be full.
But thy loving kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Glory be to the Father…….
(5)
[Page Break]
PRAYER
Minister: May the souls of the faithful, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Congregation: Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord : and let light perpetual shine upon them.
PRAYERS
THE LESSON
ADDRESS
HYMN
God of our father, known of old,
Lord of our far flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
LEST WE FORGET, LEST WE FORGET.
The tumult and the shouting dies,
The captain and the kings depart,
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
An ancient and contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
LEAT WE FORGET, LEST WE FORGET.
If, drunk with sight if power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not thee in awe,
Such boasting as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the law,
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
LEST WE FORGET, LEST WE FORGET.
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word
Thy mercy on they people, Lord:
THE GRACE
LAST POST
REVEILLE
THE NATIONAL ANTHEM
(6)
[Page Break]
THE LOG
BELARIA 22nd, May, 1944
NUMBER SEVENTEEN
EDITORIAL
An interesting week – two new purges and the consequent news from home. Things over there would not appear to have changed much in the last year, except that such commodities as oranges, lemons, Americans and eggs are more plentiful then they were. In the camp there has been little of note except the great popularity of the new sports field. This will undoubtedly increase as the weather improves.
The Service Education Scheme has also proved very –popular – in fact over seven hundred and fifty names have been taken on the rolls of the seven subjects offered. The Senior British Officer will open the series today (22nd) with a lecture on the “History of the Royal Air Force.” All those who have enrolled are invited. The promoters of the scheme regret that they cannot invite the whole camp to such an interesting lecture but the space in the wash house next to the Chapel is not large enough. Incidentally, this building is now out of bounds as a wash house at all hours. Will you please assist by observing this rule?
We are all looking forward to “Arsenic and Old Lace” and one who was privileged to see the dress rehearsal has promised us first-class entertainment. An immense amount of work has been put into the production and a novelty is introduced in that the producer and the Cast provided their own back room boys for design and construction of the set.
(7)
[Page Break]
DAY BY DAY
Monday 22nd May
1830 hours –“Arsenic and Old Lace” Theatre.
Tuesday, 23rd May
Wednesday, 24th May } 1830 “Arsenic and Old Lace” Camp Theatre
Thursday, 25th May
Friday, 26th May
Sunday 28th May, (Whit Sunday)
0930 hours – Holy Communion, Chapel.
1115 hours – Morning Service, Theatre.
Hymns : “Our Blest Redeemer”
“Gracious Spirit, Holy Ghost”
“Come, Holy Ghost our Souls Inspire”
1825 hours – Evening Service, Chapel.
1930 hours – “The 1936-38 British Antarctic Expedition” by Corporal M. Walker.
…
A letter recently received states that Professor Felix Ehrenhaft, of New York claims to have established the existence of currents of magnetism flowing like electricity. Other researchers however, are dubious if his claims; as he had previously claimed to have proved the existence of charges smaller than the electron, a discovered which turned out to be invalid.
GREEN FINGERS
A further supply of English seeds arrived last week from Sagan. They consist, mainly, of types of vegetable seeds already distributed. All the cucumber, celery, parsley, dwarf beans and radish have been issued through block gardening officers to whom anyone requiring more seed should apply.
CUMCUMBER (Ridge). The principal requirements for cucumber are an abundance of organic matter with moderate moisture. In dry weather they must be kept well watered, or they will be attacked by Red Spider. The seed should be planted in groups of three, about 18 inches apart. If convenient, it
(8)
[Page Break]
is better to raise them indoors; sowing now and transplanting outside in June. Seed should not be planted in the open till the end of May.
PARSLEY. Seed can be planted outside immediately. The ground must be deeply dug. Parsley makes and excellent boarder to the vegetable plot. Seeds must be sown very thinly and covered with ½ inch of soil.
DWARF BEAN. Sow singly, 6 inches apart, covering with two inches of soil. This bean likes moist soil in a sheltered place. The fair period of germination is about 10 days.
We are trying to get a supply of string for tying up peas, if we success it will be distributed to blocks.
…
A letter received here and dated 26th March says that all next of kin have been advised that Air Mail to P.O.W. will be stopped w.e.f. 1st April, 1944.
…
The cheese ration has been reduced, at home from four to two ounces.
(9)
[Page Break]
CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Now that’s what Colonel Lovelace said
When Cromwell in a rage,
Committed him to prison for
A rather lengthy stay.
He, to his sweet Althea wrote
That it was quite O.K.
He didn’t mind as long as he
Was master of his soul
And left alone with ink and pen,
Her virtues to extol.
It would be nice if we could have
Friend Lovelace with us now,
A “Kriegsgefangener” today,
He’d change his tune. And how!
If Tommy-guns, barb-wires and guards
Are not an implication
That we are in prison, they’re
A DAMN FINE IMITATION!
BEHIND THE SCENES
Many hours of hard work have been out in on the “Arsenic and Old Lace” Set, and the final results should be delightful to the audience as it as it has been to the back room boys. However, you will be able to judge for yourselves as the play starts a five nights run tonight. As a play, it is easy to understand why it has enjoyed such as very long run in London and New York. Finally, as a point of interest, the monstrous character in the play, which was played by Boris Karloff for a year or so in New York is now played by the somewhat faded movie director Erich Von Stronheim.
The band will play during intervals. The overture, which is arranged by Leonard Whiteley, is snappy if a little bizarre.
(10)
[Page Break]
The band are also working on rehearsals with the revue music, all of which are new compositions. The title of the revue is taken from one of F/O Ryders numbers – “Give us the Air” – F/Lt. Hill and W/O Lawrence are now satisfied that the chorus are in absolute precision and that reinforcement work on the foundations will be quite unnecessary.
…
The Prisoner of War Fund shop in Cirencester, Glos, took over £900 0s. 0d. in December of last year.
Members of the Canadian Forces, whose medical category is C3 or below are being discharged. No compensation or gratuity is being paid.
…
Colonel Knox, U.S. Navy Secretary, who died recently, left an estate valued at 2,000,000 dollars.
V.B.
THE DIARY OF P/O PEPYS, P.O.W. XV.II.
Tuesday, 15th May. A.D. 1644
BELARIA
Can at last out pen to paper as the alcoholic vapours have left me: never before in this life was I so troubled, but not I alone, for I can clearly recollect a short man with twinkling eyes and round face who, as Adjutant, did hold the right hand of My Lord the Group Captain and trip a pretty measure, perchance by accident; see how the madness spreads for the Editor of the LOG, a gaunt man, well versed in navigation, did roll erratically to his room, and many more besides. ‘Tis whispered even that my Lord Parselle and Tuck did sleep uneasy. But enough that it did signal the German fears that our invasion was nigh upon them; still, it has not come yet, though hope runs high. This day seems suspicious by its multum in parvo; our guarded opening play by a search in Parselle Place, followed quickly by the cessation of water supply for the morning. But this did not bother many, as we all queued, like women at a table sale, for our parole cards, which will simplify the
(11)
[Page Break]
manner of entering the sports field; though the spectators are few and they are ordered to watch the play and not the Reich maidens without. After noon I did watch one wretched guard, on the road, who was charging his musket, and even as he did so it exploded in his hands, the shot travelling fast towards Sagan. But how astonished he looked and quite embarrassed by his exhibition.
Thursday, 18th May
Oh! dismal day, nearly continuous rain and grey skies kept us confined to our quarters. The only happy ones amongst us were the ten newcomers, who arrived last night. They brought little news, though one, at least, left England only a few days ago; in fact, he was so new that he asked an elderly prisoner where the Gentleman’s Lavatory was – to receive the suave reply: “There’s no Gentleman’s Lavatory here – We all use the Abort.”
Tonight we hear that Casino is on our hands – And so to bed, pleased that the Brown jobs have got their finger out.
…
Prime Minster de Valera opened his election campaign last Saturday in in [sic] Co. Clare. He declared that the neutrality question had nothing to so with the poll, which should decide purely internal issues, General Richard Mulcahy, Leader of the Opposition, echoed de Valera’s words in his opening speech in Cork, saying that the result of the election was purely domestic consequence. K.Z.
…
Last Friday the Stockholm Police confiscated 134 kilogrammes of gold, it was found in a house in the city. The origin of this gold has not, as yet, been announced. D. Ang.
…
“….. despite the Badoglio betrayal which was the cause of all our reverses, from Stalingrad to Tarnopol…” (From an article buy D. Ley) D. Ang.
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[Page Break]
England has directed an appeal to Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Finland to withdraw from Germany’s war and to make their contributions to the coming Allied victory. B.B.Z.
…
By the provisions of the “Statute for the Safeguarding of Marriages, Families and Motherhood,” the penalty of abortion has been reinforced, with the effect that the death sentence is now applicable in certain cases. Heinrich Schulz has already been sentences and executed under this order, B.B.Z
…
A Squadron Leader has suffered at the fangs of the “Lodgers” in Block I. We are reliably informed, however, that there is no cause for serious alarm. It was a very senior bug.
BAND AND MUSIC NOTES
After the success of the bands, “new music” for “Hay Fever,” we are following the same lines for the interval music for “Arsenic and Old Lace.” We are delighted by the ovation we received after playing the old timers in a new style and shall, therefore, continue in that style.
Two days ago the bass fiddle was completely wrecked; it has been seen lying on a shelf in the band room. This is a loss that deals the orchestra a hard blow; and, whilst it is assumed that the occurrence was an accident, we deplore the necessity for having to store such instruments in an insecure spot. This was entirely due to the threat of the casual onlooker who has no business in the theatre but insists on playing every instrument in sight. Several instruments have been damaged in this manner and feeling in the band is running high. * Made in 1844!
…
The largest head seen in the district of Armstrong has recently fallen to the gun of Herbert Bannister, who brought down a 48 point deer, (Armstrong is in B.C.).
(13)
B
[Page Break]
IN THE LIBRARY NOW
ANTIC HAY. By Aldous Huxley.
Mr. Huxley’s novels are a mixture of the laboratory and lecturer’s dais. He takes a collection of characters, experiments with them and then uses them to expound his theories on life.
Antic Hay has no plot to speak of, it is a loosely connected series of incidents which show a number of people under various circumstances, their reactions are closely studied and analysed. They are artificial characters living on a world which is a laboratory approximation to reality. Their conversation is intelligent and witty; they discuss a number of subjects and propound Mr. Huxley’s theories in delightful polished dialogue.
A charming display of wit and erudition, with a quiet vein of satire running through it; intended to convey, apparently a suggestion of the utter futility of life.
…Written in the 1860’s :-
“The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge presents his compliments to the Directors of the Eastern Countries Railway and begs to inform them the he has learnt with regret that it is the intention of the Eastern Counties Railway to run excursion trains to Cambridge on the Lord’s Day with the object of attracting foreigners and undesirable characters to the University of Cambridge on that sacred day,
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge wishes to point out to the Director of the Eastern Counties Railway that such a proceeding would be as displeasing to Almighty God as it would be to the Vice-Chancellor or the University of Cambridge.”
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[Page Break]
SPORTS NOTES
SPORTS’ EQUIPMENT. (Soccer). We have sufficient shirts, boots and jerseys to equip two teams, but it quite obvious that if the equipment is used for every match, it will not last very long, therefore only those playing in the First League or other equally important matched will be issued with this equipment. Second League players will be issued with soccer boots only and will play, as at present in whites or colours.
If more kit arrives this arrangement will be modified. We have a reasonable stock of soccer balls in spite of the wear and tear on the small pitch.
(Rugby). Balls are the main problem and the soft shoes a secondary, but important . As regards the balls, apart from the two shapeless ones in use at the moment, we have a new practice ball and one “puntabout”. As a last resort I have four new American footballs. Urgent demands have gone on for standard rugger balls and I hope that some will arrive in the near future.
The shorts and coloured shirts will be worn in all important games and boots will be supplied for the forwards and full-backs.
(Hockey). The 36 hockey sticks which arrived recently are of very poor quality and it is necessary to keep the number of games down to the present figure in order to keep the game going as long as possible, There will be three games every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday and four per day for the rest of the week. No sticks will be issued for unorganised practice, I hope that hockey enthusiasts will appreciate and understand the position. These are the first sticks to appear in 2 ½ years and may well be the last. Equipment is on order and, before long, we may be able to have full games on the sports field.
(Baseball). We have a good supply of balls at the moment, three baseball bats and twenty softball bats, We are very short of mitts and gloves, but can expect no help from Carlswalde, who are equally short,
(15)
[Page Break]
Baseball uniforms are coming through now, compromising shirts, trousers and shoes and we are first on the list for the next consignment,
We have a good stock of volley balls and teniquoit rings, but are short of basket balls. No fencing masks have arrived yet, so instruction in still impossible.
The inter-block soccer league starts on Monday 22nd – weather permitting. Block 3 has combined with Block 4, and 1st and 2nd League teams will be fielded by the combination and all other blocks. Various games of general interest will be arranged. An international series – Officers v. N.C.O.’s, etc., etc.- and it is hoped that many more spectators will be on the touchline by the time the series begins.
After a number of practice games of Rugger, it was decided to open the season with a Block Knockout Competition. The fist games have already been played with the following results:-
1st
Block 1 v. 2 – 6-0
Block 3 v. 5 – 3-3 (re-play).
Block 6 v. 4 – 3-3 (re-play).
2ND
Block 6 v. 3 – 12-0.
Block 2 v. 1 and 4 8-0.
It is very gratifying to see the enthusiasm displayed by all players and the rugger season has really opened with a swing. It is hoped that this interest will be maintained and that the field and weather will permit a series of international games in addition to the Block or Club fixtures,. A 7-a-side tournament will be arranged later in the season.
Oberfeldwebel Hentschel, until recently Major Rudel’s air gunner, has been killed in Russia. V.B.
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COUNT YOUR COUPONS
He met her at a party and instinctively he knew
That she was acquiescent and adorable,
He manages to persuade her, before the party broke
That for him to drive her home was not deplorable[delight,
He made a slight reconnaissance and found to his
Topographically her contours were caressable,
But, as the mileage mounted, imagine his dismay-
Geographically the wench was not accessible!
The Rt. Hon. Mr. Fraser, Prime Minter of New Zealand, recently declared “Although China, at the moment, represents no great factor in world power, she is destined to become a great nation.” V.B.
Lord Halifax, British Ambassador to the United Stated, speaking recently at Denver, said : “India’s progress has reached a point where only one obstacle remains in the way if the total independence offered by England, The attainment of this goal has been delayed, not because of English reluctance to delegate their power, but because an agreement between the Hindus, Moslems, Princes and other Indian groups has not yet been reached.” V.B.
…
Severe frosts, which set in recently, are reported to have destroyed 50-90 per cent. Of this year’s fruit harvest in England V.B.
STAGE AND SCREEN NEWS
Gary Cooper has been visiting Australia to entertain the troops; he also made several broadcast while there.
Deanna Durbin’s latest picture “the Butler’s Sister,” is said to be very entertaining.
A new film “My Friend Flicka,” in technicolour with a youthful star, concerns the friendship of a young boy and his worse. Although it sounds to have all the makings of a nauseating story it is said to be good. The shots include some fine scenic views of Oregon Country.
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Glen Miller and his band were in the Marines as entertainers. One night they played a swing version of “Star Spangled Banner.” Glen Miller and his band are in the army now.
Irving Berlin’s London Show “This is the Army” has been filmed. The cast of the film version includes George Murphy and Irving Berlin.
…
United States Forces Military Police in England wear white uniforms and belts. We are told that they are universally known as “Snowdrops.”
…
Wing Commander Gibson is engages in making speeches up and down the country for various good causes. It is said that he is to be nominated for a constituency.
The following translation is taken from the paper Das Reich of Sunday, 21st May, 1944:-
“After the failure of the Soviets to break though towards Galatz, they have now regrouped their forces preparatory to a big offensive at three points. At the same time 3 ½ million Americans and Englishmen are ready to embark, partly with new weapons, on the long planned invasion. On the bridgeheads at Nettuno the re-inforced allies are ready for an offensive similar to the one which has begun at Cassino.
Stalin has publicly insisted that these operations be synchronised; this can occur in two different ways:-
(1) The starting of these concentric thrusts on the same date; considerable technical difficulties stand in the way of such an undertaking.
(2) Or these operations can occur successively; the question arises whether the attack at Cassino is the first thrust in this plan, which would be followed by similar blows in the East.
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The plan is that these two simultaneous thrusts should draw large numbers of tropes from the west wall, in order to simplify the attack there. It is anticipated that there will be two major attacks the first in the area between Jassy and Tarnopol, the second on the European West Coast in the proximity of England. This does not mean that possibilities in Italy, the Balkans, or the South Coast of France should be overlooked. Nor should the mention of Norway and Western Sweden, in Allied propaganda, be cast aside.
The Anglo-American air forces have prepared these two points; firstly, the bombing in South East Europe is calculated to seriously affect the supplies to our troops fighting Tito’s forces and the Russian forces on the Southern portion of the East front and to cut the East-W Gest traffic. Secondly, the bombing of certain coastal areas in Belgium and N. France is intended to keep the German West front in a state of siege and, literally, throttle any internal troop movements. The bandits in the Balkans are pressing towards Serbia with an obvious aim and the bandit army in France has the task of holding down substantial forces if our troops.
The political offensive against the Axis and its allies is designed to beat breached into the Ventral European defensive systems. The political pressure against the neutrals is intended to stop the supply of materials to the Germans.
The state of weather, moon and tide will give the signal for the enemy invasion machine to burst forth, unless the whole invasion propaganda is a bluff, in which caser, of course, it will rebound on the enemy.
However, the enemy plan contains certain definite mistakes; neither the bombing of raw material and industrial centres, nor successes on the neutral front can seriously affect the German defensive power, in view of the Central European policy of building up huge reserves of these commodities. Over a long period this object might be achieves but the attack has not, as yet, been carried on long enough.
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Intensive attacks on the Western, Northern and Central European railway cannot, in the long run, success in seriously affecting the movement of troops or supplies, because relatively short sketches of railway line are involved and these temporary gaps can be bridged by other of transport; and such damage can be quickly repaired.
Over and above all this – sufficient reserves are available in the centre of the theatre of operations, to give the Higher Command all possible support in the event of a concentric or general attack.
Lastly, a synchronised attack on the continent might, possibly, show better than ever before, the political tension in the Allied Camp – This is true of the Anglo-American-Russian discussions about claims on Norwegian and Swedish territory and also the divergence of views over the Spanish question and, especially, over the Balkans.
And, in addition to all these factors Germany has not yet shot her last bolt on land or sea.” Das Reich.
EMPIRE DAY RUGGER
BRITISH 0 : DOMINIONS 3.
The solidarity of the Empire was displayed to Silesia on May 24th, when representatives of the Dominions (and “far-flung outposts”) played a hard game of Rugby against the Mother Country in even harder foreign soil.
Conditions were not ideal for players or spectators, due to the well-baked soil and the prevalence of a strong cross-wind.
The game got underway with the Dominions winning the toss and electing to play with the wind. The British forwards, using their weight, established superiority over the Dominions and, for the first quarter of an hour, controlled the ball well in the tight and loose. Several resultant three-quarter movements were broken by the Dominions’ stubborn defence, particularly on the wings.
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Neither side was in danger during the first half, except for two threatening drives started by Walshe, British centre three-quarter, which did not develop. A penalty was taken dangerously near the British goal, but Lissett’s kick failed to rise. The first half ended with the Dominion forwards establishing their superiority in the tight scrums, getting the ball back well.
Play was resumed with the dominions on the offensive, both sides producing several very good movements, The British attempted to drop goal from a mark by Bell, forward, which rebounded from the post; a concerted forward and centre movement was only defeated when the ball passed the “dead ball “ line, with Strong, British half-back, in hot, but unsuccessful pursuit. The Dominions made several breaks through instigated by Lissett, centre three- quarter, which failed on the wing; a dangerous forward movement in the British goal ended in a five yards scrum.
A penalty awarded against the British in front of their goal was successfully kicked by Lissett to produce the only score in a very well fought game.
The hooking of Gericke, the defensive play of MacDonald, and hard work of Lissett in the Dominions team were counted by the safe handling of the ball by Strong, the tackling of Hamilton, substituting on the wing, and the British centres.
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The “Trap”, or entrance to a tunnel, after discovery by the Germans.
DOWN A TUNNEL.
Photographs were discovered among German records.
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[Newspaper images]
Deutsche Allgemeine Beitung Berlin, Mittwoch 7. Juni 1944
Die Invasion hat begonnen
Abwehr und Kampf in vollen Gange
VOLKISCHER BEOBACHTER, Berlin, Mittwoch 7, Juni 1944
Nach Längerem Zögern dem Drägen der Sowjets nachgegeben
Die Schlacht im Western hat begonnen
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THE LOG
BELARIA 12th June, 1944
NUMBER TWENTY
EDITORIAL
PRESENT indications point to a successful conclusion of hostilities within a short time and tend to focus our attention on the secondary, but none the less important, considerations of post-war re-establishment if service personnel.
It will obviously be necessary to maintain large land, sea and air forces for a long period after the final armistice is signed. Such forces, however, will be composed of a relatively small proportion of the numbers now actively engaged and in all probability will be reduced to a practical minimum, in political concurrence with the demands on long suffering tax-payers.
The problem of the readjustment of the civilian employees of war industries will be coincidental with the problem raises by the absorption, into civilian employment, of the demobilised soldiery. Millions of new jobs must be found to accommodate these people. The question has not been overlooked by several governments of the Allied Powers, nor have they been shelved while the necessary attention is devoted to the essential business of winning the war. It would appear that our governments have borne in mind, to some degree, the experience gained after the armistice in 1918.
It is a matter of great interest to consider the various means that may be employed. We are able to visualise to some extent the broad basis on which the problems have been approached, although this information is far from complete.
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The primary consideration must be that of assuring everyone a livelihood during the period of social re-adjustment. To achieve this it will be necessary to prevent the demobilisation of personnel who cannot, for the moment, be absorbed into economically satisfactory employment,
There are several factors which have received attention in the industrial sphere, It has been realised that the changeover from war industry to the manufacture of consumer goods must be well in hand before the termination of hostilities, Definite steps have been taken to ensure that this will be the case, and- while it is a matter more directly affecting, those employed in war industry – it should have a most salutary effect on the problem of providing suitable employment for ex-service personnel.
Further, it is confidently anticipated that the increased industrial developments resulting directly from war-time technical advances in aircraft production, plastics and radio communication – to mention only a few of the more obvious possibilities – will provide opportunities for re-employment on a large scale.
It is interesting to note that inter-allied co-operation after the war will not be limited to the military sphere, this would seem to contrast with the generally gloomy views as to trade conditions after the war, and recognition of the fact that Great Britain must have adequate share of the world trade is more than a step in the right direction. It seems to substantiate the prognostication that there will be, among the Allied powers, a definite planned economy directed towards effective stabilization of foreign trade and exchange on a mutually beneficial basis.
The various other plans and consideration, such as educational schemes planned on effective functional lines, agricultural assistance provisions and subsidized emigration to less thickly populated areas, are all directed towards achieving satisfactory rehabilitation with I minimum of disruption.
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CHURCH SERVICE, Sunday, June 8th, 1944
(2nd Sunday after Trinity)
0930 hours- Holy Communion, Chapel.
1115 hours – O.D. Service, Theatre. (Conducted by F/O Cribb)
1815 hours – Evening Service, Theatre.
Hymns : “Holy Father, cheer our way”
“God that madest earth and Heaven”
“The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended”
THE FOOD SITUATION AT BELARIA
It is extremely probable that internal rail communications in Germany will be considerably affected by current events and many officers will have wondered whether this will affect the Red Cross food parcel supply. We sent a reporter to interview the parcels officer and his views are published hereunder:-
Q. How long will the present stock of parcels at Belaria last?
A. About nine weeks at the present strength of the camp.
Q. Have you any news of the 14,000 parcels ordered direct from Geneva?
A. we have now been informed that this shipment has, in error, been unloaded at Sagan and is now in their store. In view of this we have written to Geneva asking for a replacement to be sent here direct.
Q. Will Sagan supply us if we run short?
A. They have been asked to do so until our supplies arrive, we have not yet had their answer, but I have no doubt that the will comply.
Q. In view of possible difficulties with rail transport ans also with local cartage from Sagan, do you recommend that messes try to build up a stock of non-perishable foodstuffs?
A. Yes, by all means.
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The Victoria Cross has been awarded To:-
CAPTAIN PHILIP SIDNEY
F-Lt ? HILL
F-Sgt. ? AARON
We regret that we are unable to supply the names of the R.A.F. holders or details of the citations. Captain Sidney was awarded his V.C. for serviced at Anzio.
Distinguishes Flying Crosses have been awarded to :-
F/Lt. Lazenby, F/O Middleton, F/O. Buckonridge, S-Ldr. Marshall, F/O. Hill. Group Captain N. Pickard, D.S.O. and 2 bars, D.F.C., is reported missing.
THE DIARY OF P/O PEPYS, P.O.W.
Monday, 5th June, A.D. 1944
BELARIA
During the Appelle this morning did see the guards in the Vorlager wearing their gasmasks, a premonitory symptom, for to be mindful of an invasion is one this, but to be expectant of gas is an odious matter. At this time we did learn of the foreclosure of the sports field, some rumoured for the building of heated showers and a swimming place, but it was all a falsity, for nothing was further from our minds of the builders. I learnt that one of the new “purge” which did arrive yesterday approached my Lord Tuck, whist my Lord was in is undress uniform and said “I say, old boy, were you a fighter type?” The crisis is now past and our physician says that they are both doing well – though knowing our physician, he may have has his bridge opponents in mind, or his is rapacious where cards are concerned – oft playing two games at once. What news this day, for we learn of the making over of ROME to us, a capital moved in the right direction. Tomorrow is the official birthday of our Sovereign Lord the King and we will parade in honour; so this night a great cleansing of our brasses and boots.
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Tuesday, 6th June
This morning it did rain and our parade for the King was cancelled – all our cleansing in vain – But the news did not damp our spirits, for to-day we did learn that our soldiers are, even now, fighting on this continent and progressing towards is. They were put ashore early this morning on the coast of France and now the battle rages; for this is the determinate struggle and our patience will soon be rewarded. We can now dare to hope to be home for this Christmas, as an old and senior officer, inured to false hopes, whispered to me. Even our Adjutant’s eye did gleam and I believe he has been asking new prisoners for details of the trains to London town. HOPE AND FACT MAY DIFFER BUT HOME IS IN SIGHT. And so to bed, in a room full of rumours and preparations for the morrow’s parade.
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GREEN FINGERS
Some of the tomato plants were found to be broken at the growing point. If you received any in this condition they should be left to push out a lateral from one the axils of the leaves and this shoot should them be trained upwards and treated as they normal stem. If all the laterals have already been removed no shoot will appear and the plant is useless and should be discarded as it will no produce leaves and, possibly, one small bunch of under-sized fruit. The SPINACH is running to seed very quickly. There is no way of avoiding this in out soil. Crinkled leaves mean that your plant has been attacked by blackfly.
PARSNIP will benefit from a dressing of soot, fresh manure (if you know a horse) should be avoided.
All vegetable seeds have now been issued.
Only with greatest of difficulty was Churchill dissuaded from following the invasion troops to France; so affirmed Admiral Ramsay, who directed naval operations. Only when he has been convinced that his personal protection would impose a great added burden on the invasion forces, would he give up the project. Since the first landings it has been almost impossible to induce him to rest, even for a few hours. B.B.Z.
…
One or two of the more enterprising London newspapers have chartered private aircraft to fly their latest editions across the Channel to the troops in France. B.B.Z.
…
In the East we have been forced to the painful recourse of evacuating wide areas won by the blood of German and German Allied soldiers. But this was necessary for two reasons; firstly, to hold up the politico-military drive on Italy and secondly, and more importantly, to be assured – in keeping with the military tenets of Napoleon and Moltke – of adequate strength on the decisive theatre of war. V.B.
C
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According to an announcement by the ministry of War and Transport 588,000 persons have been killed or injured in the street accidents since the beginning of the war. This figure exceeds the total English ware losses during the same period. B.B.Z.
…
The Revue – “Give Us Air” – opens on Tuesday and will run for five nights. This show will be followed by the presentation of “French Without Tears.”
THE ATTACKON WESTERN FRANCE
The following items of news and information on the above subject are taken from articles printed in the German papers during the week:-
Neutral reports have stated that the date of the invasion was decided upon as long as August, 943; when Roosevelt and Churchill met at Quebec.
The American Major General J.F. Miller has been reduced to the rank of Lieut. Colonel and sent back to the United States. At a cocktail party he revealed the approximate date of the invasion by remarking: “I give you my word of honour that the invasion will take place before the 13th of June.”
The only German naval forces opposing the British concentration were speedboats. The British forces totalled at least 280 ships of all kinds, among them 6 battleships, cruisers, destroyers, armoured cruisers, landing boats, etc. The Warspite, Nelson, Ramillies and Rodney were named among the British battleships and the Nevada, Texas and Arkansas among the American. A German bomber attacking the naval forces reported that: “the scene is lit up, at times ,as bright as day. Captain T. shouts in astonishment to his observer, “You can throw them out where y like, you’ll hit a ship anywhere.”
The parachute troops, who were landed in Normandy, included a group of Red Indians who called themselves the “Dirty Thirteen” and are trained specially for demolition work. They have the traditional red and black wat paint on their
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Faces and their heads are shaven smooth. Also included were life size dolls, loaded with explosive, which were thrown out by parachute East of the Orne.
Early reports of simultaneous landing between Calais and Dunkirk proved to be false. The invasion fleet which was seen to be approaching this area proved to be a diversion.
A British press photographer is reported to have spent half an hour on the Orne bridgehead on Tuesday, and to have said, among other things: “I was at the Anzio landing too, but that was nothing to this hell. The Germans had a cleverly worked out system of machine gun nests and held their fire until the first Allied soldiers had landed; then they loosed a hurricane of steel and fire upon the swarm on the beach. At the same time the artillery fired on the boats on their way to the shore.”
From D.A.Z.: “The German people has received the news of the start of the invasion with calm, almost with a sense of relief. It will continue to bear the burden even if the present front is followed by others and even if Churchill should call to his aid the war sabotage in the Occupied Territories, as proclaimed two years ago.”
“AT LAST:” is the only phrased to sum up the feelings of the man in the street in England, on hearing the news. There were no demonstrations, no declarations of optimism. People felt too tense and serious. Neutral correspondent remarked: “Everyone knows what is in front of him: too many have relations and friends among the men who are off to France to have anything left over for enthusiasm or for rejoicing over victory in advance” The churches were open for prayer. Kind George broadcast to the English people and the Empire, urging them to pray. English publicity was sober. Churchill’s speech in the House was made without any dramatic effects. The few other speakers said very little. Mr. Gallagher, the Communist M.P. who has persistently demanded the second front, wanted to address a vote of thanks to Churchill but his feelings were too much for him; he was overcome by tears, and, breaking off in the middle of a sentence, sank back to his seat.
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The British Broadcasting Company found itself compelled to re-broadcast German announcements, to keep the British public abreast of the situation. It was not until 9 o’clock (a.m. or p.m. ? Ed.) that any official news from British sources was forthcoming.
From THE O.K.W. COMMUNIQUE FOR 6.6.44
In the course of last night the enemy began his long prepared and long anticipated attack on Western Europe. After an initial heavy bombardment of out coastal defences, the enemy landed air-borne troops at several points on the N. French coast, between Cherbourg and Le Harve, at the same time carrying out sea-borne landings supported by strong naval units. Bitter fighting is in progress in the coastal sectors under attack.
THIRTEEN TO THE DOZEN (1st in the series)
CAPTAIN LEVY
I’m walking around this here compound minding my own business when up comes one of them guys called Economists. He tells me this that when we get home a government guy is coming to you to assess all your possessions, (That means everything that a guy’s got). This guy is going to let you know how much cash your possessions are worth. Then he takes only thirty per cent. of it from you and pays the war debts just as quick like winking an eye. Now let me warn you, be careful of what you pack in the old kit-bag and I also suggest that we should submit an application now for a nudist camp preferable the mix type for exkriegies. Because the less you have the less you have to pay. But I feel sorry for those chaos this got them Rolex timers instead of paying £10 like they thought. “It’s going to be £13,” I says this economist guy, “they can’t do that to me.” Then he says, “That or else inflations. “ So I keep quiet and think to myself, And this is what, says my brain box. Pay it, it’s a good thing. Now first thing, a good full glass of beer with a rich snow scene on top of each mug for 4d. instead of 1s., also 10 smokes for 6d. instead of
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1s. 6d. But if youse [sic] guys that’s packing your kitbags to go home in six weeks bring to much possessions you’re going to pay lots like a Rolex watch guys, therefore get less beer. A second thought maybe inflation would be a good thing because we all have to join the nudist camp even Hedy Lamarr.
The day of the utility suit is past. It is no longer compulsory and one can now order suits with the usual number of packets, trouser turnups, etc.
…
Sir Montague Norman has resigned his position as Governor of the Bank of England.
…
“LILAC DOMINO” has been revived at the Haymarket Theatre.
SHOOT YOUR LINE
If you’re just a brand new “kriegie”
And you’re feeling kind of dazed,
When an “old boy” tells a story
Never show that you’re amazed,
It’s a line.
When he tries a bit of baiting
Just to see if you will rise,
Keep right on with what you’re doing,
Show no traces of surprise,
It’s a line.
Don’t go asking foolish questions
(You’ll be wised up soon enough)
‘Cause you’ll get sarcastic answers
Which are known as “heavy stuff,”
It’s a line.
Should you hear someone suggesting
That you “haven’t got a clue,”
Don’t let on you even heard him
N ever let it bother you
It’s a line.
One day you will find a “new boy”
And when your turn has come,
Don’t stand around and gape at him,
But extricate your thumb,
Shoot your line.
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BASIL BEETON’S CORNER
4 Cups Semolina. 1Pkt. Can. Raisins.
2 Spoons Sugar ½ Tin Oleomargarine.
Work margarine into semolina very thoroughly. Add 4 or 5 spoons of cold water, until mixture is a workable dough. Take care not to get mixture too wet, add raisins and mix thoroughly.
Roll dough into sausage shape and place in a greased baking dish, cover with greased paper, bake slowly for 435-60 minutes.
Cut into slices and serve with hot ginger syrup sauce (1/3 water).
OUR STOVE
It wasn’t as though I wanted to make a stove, I didn’t even suggest the idea. The other chaps suddenly remembered all sorts of gravely important matters which demanded immediate attention; being a new kriegie I was scarcely in a position to question them. Before disappearing on their vital errands, however, the proffered much advise. Which incinerators to get the tins from, where to dig up the clay, how to acquire the bricks whose scissors to borrow for he tin-cutting and so forth. They started to drift back again, just as I cut myself for the fourth time. That was after I’d collected everything including a few pointed remarks from the Squadron Leader whose bricks seemed to be his dearest possession. Not that I was suspicious, mark you; but it did seem funny that all their important engagements were so well timed.
I thought that I was doing pretty well but evidently, in their eyes, my efforts were pathetic. They looked significantly at each other, with sorrowful shaking of their heads and the air of glum disapproval was very discouraging.
Admittedly they started to help, though couldn’t help noticing that their efforts were mostly verbal, and involved nothing of a messy, dangerous or tedious mature. I scarcely liked to point out that we couldn’t afford to break to many bricks, or to spoil the tins I’d cut, but when, inadvertently they
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knocked down the one wall I’d built, I was moved to suggest that they applied the benefits of their experience and finish the job themselves. His caused some umbrage and led to pointed remarks and muttered references to “Needless Sarcasm,” “only trying to help,” “New Kriegies,” “Clueless types” etc., etc.
The strained atmosphere had worn off by the time I had finished the job. Enough, anyway, to enable them to kindly enlighten me as to what was wrong with the stove; what I should have done instead; why it would never burn properly and how I would learn these things, with experience.
By late brew time they were actually boasting about their stove to our visitors, describing its virtues and how they built it; I must day that they were good enough to say I had assisted them.
REFERENCE LIBRARY
We have been asked to announces that books on technical subjects are in the technical reference library and are retained so that officers wishing to study specific subjects may be able to refer to the appropriate text books at any time. Only the officers teaching under the educational scheme or those studying for a particular examination are permitted to withdraw books, and only on the recommendations of the Education Officer. It is to be regretted that two books removed without authority, are still missing from the library.
…
From the Illustrierte Zeitung, April, 1944:-
Written by the German Philosopher LAGARDE in 1881:-
“A conflict with Russia will free land between the East of Poland and the Black Sea, for German settlers.
It is unbearable that history should always go to the West, whilst excellent land is lying fallow in the East; which the Sarmations, who are a burden on Europe, could acquire by a simple migration; while
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room can be found for the Germans – now vanishing into America – by throwing the Muscovites back from our doorstep.”
…
“There is nothing new under the sun.”
…
On the occasion of the fist German success against the invader, Hitler received a telegram of congratulations from the Japanese Prime Minister TOJO. P.Z.
THE BELARIA CRAWL
In a brief interview with the principal and their envoy plenipotentiary some illuminating information was obtained. It appears that the “crawl” was on settle of a wager over the probable date of the invasion; May 31st having been the “deadline.” Our readers are reminded that the preservation of dignity was the first consideration of the protagonists and their staff who made the arrangements.
The Envoy Plenipotentiary, in reply to a question assured us that feelings of the utmost cordiality existed between the principals. The winner remarked that, delighted as he would have been to lose this wager, he was of the opinion that we should se the invasion before the end of the month. The crawler endorsed this opinion and added, as a last remark before dashing off on all fours, “ALL IS LOST, SAVE HONOUR; I HAVE BEEN DOUBLECROSSED BY EISENHOWER:”
On the sound of the alert by the Master Herald, the crawler assumed the prescribed position, preceded by the Master at Arms, flanked by the Guard of Honour and followed by the Winner, the Master Buckler, the Envoy Plenipotentiary and the representatives of the Fourth Estate. Another fanfare was sounded, there was a tense hush, then a crash of cymbals the signal to start, from the Master Starter. The large crowd roared and the long awaited Belaria Crawl was under way. The crawler made good time over the first lap, 5 mins. 31 1/5 secs. At the first dormer her was greeted by the Master
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Victualler and was suitably refreshed by courtesy of the winner. The Fourth Estate was suitably and properly victualled.
The required procedure was carried out on the second and third laps, with due regard fort dignity and ceremonial. The home stretch was crawled to the strains of “Blaze Away,” the principal sustaining a smooth gait and easy rolling action; he finished the feat to the acclamations of the onlookers, having done the last lap in 4mins. 16 1/5 sec., making a total crawling time of 21 mins. 36 1/5 sec. – a record likely to stand for some time. The crawlers’ final remark was brief but to the point: “I AM SURE,” he said, “THAT IF THERE HAD BEEN 15 MORE DAYS IN MAY, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A DIFFERENT STORY.”
The Residential Physician, Dr. Everard Monteuuis, the carried out an examination in chambers and advised the crawler to take things easy for a long time and to have an immediate and complete change of air.
The serving of refreshments, supplied to all participants by courtesy of the crawler, marked the conclusion of a most satisfactory event. Everyone now looks forward to the repeat performance, with embellishments, scheduled for next October.
DUM VIVIMUS VIVAMUS
THE ROCKET RACKET
The alleged menace of the (hitherto) secret weapon has been fully exploited in the German Press and we quote a few extracts:-
“According to the British Embassy in Stockholm, the English capital had the longest air-raid of the war on Thursday night and Friday morning (16th and 17th), new German explosives have been used. The Londoners spent sixteen hours in shelters
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And underground stations… The Home Secretary was forced to make an appeasing statement, in which he tried to minimise the damage caused… The London Press calls this “unaimed Bomber” new German trick, which will not have the desired effect…An observer, who claims to have seen one of the pilotless aircraft, stated that it looked almost like a toy and moved at a low altitude with flames shooting out of its tail.” (D.A.Z).
“The eye-witness reports, although they differ on many points, agree that the shells are filled with high-explosive and explode a few seconds after they hit the ground. The mysterious aircraft, they also said, developed a fabulous speed, they flew in groups of two or three, occasionally singly, at a height of 3,000 feet, others just at roof level.. An analysis of the different accounts results in the following composite picture:-
The shells develop a tremendous speed.
All had a bright light at their tail end.
Behind the shells a sparkling tail develops,
This – according to British suppositions – originates from exhaust gases.” (D.A.Z.)
“According to the Svenka Dagleblatt it is not only difficult, but also dangerous for the British Fighters to engage the ‘Robot’ aircraft. The latter are much faster than was originally believed and when the British fighter approached too near, it may happen that he destroys himself at the same time as the ‘Robot.’” (B.Z.)
“The Daily Herald says ‘it is clear that we have no means to fight these rocket bombs.’” (B.Z.)
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[Image MURDERR INCORPORTATED]
ARSENIC AND OLD LACE
The fact that the play is mentioned in the Editorial Mr. Pepys’ diary, and the letter on page 40, would appear to render a lengthy notice redundant. The production was well up to the high standard we have some to expect of F/Lt. Hall. Other producers would do well to note the small touched such as the dust on the shoes of Dr *Epstein after the interment in the cellar and roving eyes of Grandfather above the cellar door.
Your critic has recently seen the play in London and the outstanding difference between the
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production were portrayals of Mortimer and Jonathan. The latter was, on the professional stage, a subtly sinister person and, as such, was much more effective than the overgrown “school bully” effect presented here; the former-Mortimer-as portrayed on our stage, was a burlesque of Nauton Wayne’s playing of the part, even to the make-up. This was probably deliberate and, in view of the lack of professional talent, may have been wise. The audiences will have judged for themselves.
The Aunts, Abby and Martha, were delightful and stood out well above the rest of the cast; this does not imply that they lacked support. The minor parts were filled, mostly, with new talent, and it is obvious that, with experience, we shall have the makings of a really good selection of players which to cast.
*(ED.NOTE: The mistake is not mine, for Ep. Please read Ein.).
…
We have been asked to publish a reminder to all those rehearsing for forthcoming productions. Please be punctual. Delay in starting rehearsals plays “merry hell” with the schedule.
…
3,000 allied prisoners-of-war were present quartered at Stalag Luft I, Barth. It is reported that this number includes 600 R.A.F. personnel. A recent letter from the Senior Allied Officer at Barth acknowledges with thanks Reich Marks and other gifts from Stag Luft III. The S.A.O. states that they are short of necessary equipment for repairing boots, clothing, etc., but the food position has improved slightly.
…
It is interesting to note that “Arsenic and Old Lace,” written by two Americans, Moss Hart and Kaufmann, has been running for 18 months in London and 3 ½ years in New York, Boris Karloff played the part of Jonathon in the New York version.
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VOLKISCHER BEOBACHTER
Berlin, Sonnerbend, 17 Juni 1944
It neuen Sprengkörpen größten Kalibers
Gegen London und Südengland
GERMAN NEWSPAPEWR HEADLINE WHEN V1 WAS FIRST USED.
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A GENERAL VIEW OF THE CAMP AT BELARIA.
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THE LOG
BELARIA 19th June, 1944
NUMBER TWENTY-ONE
EDITORIAL
It is obvious that the joint planning of post-war industry and trade with a view to providing maximum re-employment is only one of the many problems which have confronted the governments of the Allied powers in their efforts to prepare for the forthcoming demobilisation.
Governments assistance in the education and technical training of ex-service personnel has already provided form to a standard where they may have re-absorbed into civilian life properly equipped to face the future with confidence born of knowledge and ability rather than optimism. In some cases this assistance will take the form of bursaries and scholarships; in others it will take the form of free educational facilities plus adequate living allowances. Alternatively, and almost certainly, there will be substantial payment in the form of rehabilitation subsistence allowances or gratuities sufficient to finance the period of instruction.
Modern warfare demands that we have a lengthy and vigorous training for its successful prosecution; the modern industrial and commercial world, too, will find room for those who can prove themselves skilled and competent. It is an unavoidable and unpleasant circumstance that the exigencies of war should require the services of a whole generation of young men, just as they arrive at the crucial point of their education or training, and that they must be asked to sacrifice these all important formative years. There seems to be, in official circles, a
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Growing appreciation of this sacrifice and its extent; in some cases definite steps are being taken to offset or compensate for the resultant disadvantages.
It only remains to point out that those members of the services who do not intend to remain on the permanent strength and who do not have essential background or training, will do well to consider seriously ways and means of fitting themselves for future employment. Wherever possible, savings from pay and gratuities, should be regarded as capital and be reserved for this purpose.
In addition to the plans already discussed, extensive preparations have been made for providing assistance for those wishing to take up or resume farming. Naturally the countries most interested in these plans for setting up returned men as farmers and ranchers are those Dominions and Colonies which have large available areas of land suitable for agriculture. This does not mean that ex-servicemen from other countries will be excluded from participation. Although no definite statement has been forthcoming, it seems certain that they will be encouraged and assisted in any plans they may have for emigrating, as potential farmers, to these dominions. Prospective farmers, with previous experience, will find no difficulty in obtaining adequate financial assistance from the state. Those lacking this experience will be able to obtain it under the most favourable conditions, with the assurance of further assistance when the training period has been completed.
It is reassuring to note that everything possible is being done to avoid the tragic errors of the ex-solider settlement schemes introduced after the last war; when men, absolutely unsuited for farming were allotted holdings of land and then left to fend for themselves.
The new plans aimed at achieving permanent and economically successful re-establishment of the returned Service men; in such a manner that they are assured of a reasonable opportunity to become independent, satisfied member of the community.
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TO ALL AT BELARIA
I am glad to take the opportunity, kindly given me, of introducing myself through the LOG.
I have come here to be a Camp Chaplain along with Padre Powell, whim I had the pleasure of knowing at Oflag IX A/Z.
I am Church of Scotland and Parish Minister of St. Andrews. The Services I conduct will be according to the Presbyterian form. I hope that these services (similar to those which F/O Cribb bas been conducting) will continue to be welcomed by members of all denominations to whom they are familiar through custom and so dear by association.
There is no room, however, for denominational separateness and I look forward to sharing the Services and other Ministerial work of the Camp with Padre Powell, and desire to be of use in whatever directions I can. W.E.K.RANKIN.
…
FUKUDA, a member of the Japanese Army Headquarter Intelligence Staff, recently gave a lecture on the Japanese offensive operations in Honan. He stated that the object of this offensive was not so much the subjugation of Chunking as the prevention of the American intention to use Chinese bombing bases for the attack on Japan. D.A.Z.
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General Eisenhower, Marshall, Arnold and King of the United States Forces, have paid a visit to Normandy during the last few days. D.A.Z.
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“GIVE US THE AIR”
Your critic attended the third night of this revue and came away from the theatre completely baffled as to the objects of the author-producer. The music, some original and some, new arrangements of old themes, was excellent. The band were on the top of their form and a delight to listen to.
The script was well larded with stock jokes of the “Waterworks Engineer” type and with broad digs at some of the personnel of the camp. I was left with the impression that “Anything for a Laugh” has been the guiding principle of the author. If this was his intention, he succeeded beyond all doubt, the audience laughed heartily at many of the jokes – possibly without remembering that they had been doing so for many many years. The humour (?) was, at times, very broad, noticeably in the Brain (T)rust sketch, and a little originality and subtlety would have been welcome.
The chorus were a popular troupe and their well-drilled performances pointed to may hours of unremitting labour on the part of the de ballet Professor Woad’s performance, too, was the high-spot of an otherwise sticky sketch.
The honours of the evening go to the author-producer, for all the hard work he must have put into the production; to the composer of the music which we enjoyed so much; to the band who put it over so well, and to W/O Wagstaffe, for his pleasant renderings of songs with little appeal and less meaning. The settings were well designed and executed; particularly the opening set and the “Boogie Woogie” background.
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The One-Act okay completion takes place during this week. Details will be announced.
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THE DIARY OF P/O PEPYS, P.O.W. XXI.
IIth June, A.D. 1944
A Long sleep, this morning being Lord’s Day. After church did see the Senior Naval Officers who was much relieved that the new arrivals of yesterday did not include any Naval officer more senior than himself. His crew is increasing and there should be sufficient to man the boats if it is a wet autumn. Our cook tells me that as he was collecting flowers in the sports field a postern did approach and ask if he was going to make tea from the; he could not have been well informed, for we have three pounds of real tea upon our shelves.
Monday, 12th June
Once again our family increases, for we have drawn the lowest card and, a large body of men having arrived for Heydekrug, we must have two more quarters. Twelve in a room is a swarm and we live likes bees in a hive; as there are no beds for the newcomers they must sleep on the tables and benches, with their belongs tucked into every corner. This evening did ensue a worthy sight; there is one of our number who insists on violating the air with the screech of his practice on the bagpipes, during the day out ears are tormented by the melancholy shrieks and squeals of the pipes, which, I learn, turns Scottish men fighting mad. Driven to desperation, out brave Senior Belgian Officer led the Legion of Tuck Tenements in the opposition against the strident cacophony. But they must needs retreat, for the would-be piper, an Antipodean to boot, blew so hard as to drive them away. Now out gallant Allies, so adapt at sabotage, are concocting a satisfactory end to this bag of wind.
Wednesday, 14th June
Last, night I did see the new revue at the theatre, this was a new brand of amusement for us and many like it much; for the chorus was very attractive and the music, which was home-grown was excellent in composition and execution. A dull day again. And so to bed, wondering why there was no German communique to cheer our spirits.
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QUIET PERIOD
“Oh, hello there, come on in. How’s everything going? I haven’t seen you for ages – you must be studying to be a hermit.”
“What’s that? Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Come on over here and sit down beside me.”
“Oh, you knocked three or four times. Now isn’t that funny. I never even noticed.”
“What’s that? Oh, no, I’m not getting deaf. At least, I don’t think so. S[peak a little louder. People seem to mumble so much these days.”
“Do you know everybody here? What? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you. Oh, yes – a bit noisy, but you get used to that.”
“That fellow over there? Oh, he’s just doing a bit o tin-bashing. Yes, he’s quite good at it. Makes all kinds of things.
“What did you say? A blacksmith in civvy life? Oh no, I think he was a book keeper. Oh, I see it now. You were joking. Ha, ha. You always were a wit weren’t you?”
“That dark chap? Just learning? Oh, no, he’s been playing the violin for at least two months. He’s just practising scales now.”
“What’s that you say? Sounds like a cat on a tin roof?> Well, I guess it’s a matter of taste.”
“Those four? Well, you see, they’re playing kin. Not din, old boy, kin –K-I-N. A game some Belgians brought from the Congo.”
“What did you say? Should have left it there – But, really, old boy, it’s a lot of fun.”
“What? Why do they make so much noise? Oh, that’s all part of the game, you see- Pardon – You think chess would be better. I don’t quite follow you.”
“Him? What? Oh, he’s just showing how he used to attack. What’s that you say? The noise? Well, that’s just his way of imitating a Merlin. Yes. He’s really very interesting. You should hear him do an air-raid siren. Perhaps he will if you ask him.”
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“Pardon? What did you say? Can he imitate an Oyster? How do you mean?”
“What? You won’t stay for tea? But I thought you said you…”
“Well, really, old man, there’s no need to shout about it – Well, I know it says “Quiet Period,” but…”
“What? A madhouse did you say….”
“Well, really, old boy…..!!”
POLITICAL EDUCATION
We frequently hear the suggestion that many of the world present difficulties are due to a lack of political education among the masses of people of the leading nations. There is a widely held view that if the general public were competently instructed in political and administrative affairs, it would be less susceptible to specious propaganda and less prone to such manifestations of mass hysteria as have marked history since the last war, and that a politically intelligent electorate would make the taks of modern government more simple.
Political education, obviously, cannot be taught in the same manner as mathematics or English literature. The needs if an expanding, changing civilisation and the steady evolution of the administration apparatus call for some sort of curriculum which would have to be adaptable to current development. Equally obvious is the necessity for safeguards to prevent any scheme of political evolution becoming a political instrument of the regime in power.
It is interesting to speculate upon possible means of providing a curriculum of political education for, as an instance, our secondary schools. A curriculum might be prepared by a special committee, headed by a permanent official of the Board of Education, The members of this committee would be representative of all shades and colours of political opinion; the courses of study which they would prepare would assure that every student, on attaining
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Matriculation standard, would have a thorough grasp of both the machinery of administration as it exists and of the aims and objective of all the leading political groups.
Education, along these lines, might go far towards reducing the incidence of prejudice and emotion upon modern problems of statecraft and ensure a rational approach to the nation’s affairs.
BAND AD MUSIC NOTES
A meeting of entertainment officers was held at Sagan during last week as a result Belaria was allotted several new musical instruments. These include a new piano, our outstanding need, and a new bass fiddle, the present one being in a very sorry state. Other instruments include a set of drums, 3 saxophones, 1 trumpet, 3 clarinets and miscellaneous effects. The instruments will complete every section of the band with new instruments.
The interval music for the forthcoming show – FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS - will be played by the Tango section, directed by Flying Officer Ryder.
FLIGHT SERGEANT CLOVER, R.A.F.
Those kriegies who know S/Ldr. Cranswick, D.S.O., D.F.C., may be interested to hear that both he and Flt. Sgt. Clover are now screened.
This gallant N.C.O. is particularly fine Alsatian dog belonging to the Squadron Leader, they have just retired from operations after ninety-six trips by the latter and one by the Flight Sergeant. They joined the squadron together and Clover participated keenly to be a born airdog, never batting an eyelid in the tightest turn.
It was decided to take him on an operational flight; oxygen raised rather a problem but Clover insisted that he could cope and proves it by sleeping soundly at all altitudes above 15,000 feet. The aircraft returned safely to its base, but unfortunately, was forced to make a belly landing. The crew
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escaped unhurt but despite this it proved to be Clover’s first and last ‘op.’ A.M.F. case? Not on your life. Just Flight Commander’s orders.
Clover maintains a log-book which is handed in for signature with those of other aircrew at the end of each month and all his trips have been properly authorised by the Flight Commander. The ‘Duty’ column in the log-book contains some rather unorthodox entries such a: “Getting cheesed as second Wop – moving to second engineer’s position.” etc.
When not operating himself, Clover maintained a keen interest in the safety of his crew; on operational nights he would watch take-off with a critical eye from their dispersal point, whence he refused to budge until the long awaited drone raised his head. Soon aircraft were landing in quick succession remaining unidentified by ground crews until they were nearly in the respective dispersals. By some sixth sense, denied to mere humans, Clover knew immediately Cranswick had touched down and passed on the news by barking loudly and excitedly wagging his tail. This happened not once or twice but on every trip and he was never found to be incorrect.
We wonder whether he has been commissioned yet, it must be great fun for him shooting his operational line to less ambitious types of his kind and we don’t doubt it has been worth many a pint of its canine equivalent in the Sergeant’s Mess of the O.T.U. at which he and his master now serve.
THE ATTACK ON THE WESTERN FRONT
The first reports were confused and often contradictory but following main outlines have emerged. The actual invasion consisted of four main episodes:-
(a) Heavy bombardment from the air.
(b) Parachute landings.
(c) Reinforcements of parachutists by transport aircraft and gliders.
(d) Coastal landings under the protection of naval artillery.
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The landings were spread along the coast from Le Havre to Cap’de la Hague; there were, in addition, numerous airborne attacks all over the peninsula of Cotentin. These resolved themselves into two main areas, the British positions north of Bayeux and the Americans north of Carenton and up the east coast of Cotentin. A second large series of landing occurred on the evening and night of Tuesday, 6th; a noticeable feature of these landings was the vast number of gliders and transport aircraft used; a third followed on the afternoon and evening of Tuesday, 8th. The British forces pushed South and, on Thursday, had taken Bayeux. They had a bulge East of Orne, but it was here and at Caen that the main German resistance was encountered, no further progress has been reported from this region. N Saturday, 10th the British and Americans joined up at Isigny. Since then there have been three main thrusts:-
The Americans pushed West and took Carenton on Monday, 2th. Since then their main attack has gone North-West supported by further attacks and heavy artillery from the navy on the North-East corner of Cotentin, on Thursday, 15th; their main advance reached a point between Valognes and Montebourg.
The main British attack has gone along the roads radiating South, South-East and South-West from Bayeux and on Wednesday, 14th, fighting was reported South of Tilly and Balleroy and as far as Caumont, about 30 kms. inland.
The Americans on the British West flank have advanced South-East from Carenton and have crossed the Bayeux-St. Lo road.
The allies have been supported by a continuous naval and air bombardment. The Germans report that a big battle is impending.
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BEHIND THE SCENES
The entertainments officers of all six camps met at Sagan during last week and were informed that further meetings of this sort are forbidden by the German authorities.
We have succeeded in securing another piano, anyone wishing to practise should see Flying Officer Whiteley.
The electric gramophone is still in the Vorlager, we hope to get it in =when some new classical records are available
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The film projector, plus films (titles unknown), will start a tour of all camps during the week. Dates of showing are not yet decided for this camp.
…
The Rushcliff Commission has recommended that high rates of pay should be made to the members of the Queen Alexandra Nursing Service. The present rates are about £350 per annum for an experienced and certified nursing sister.
CHURCH SERVICES FOR 25TH JUNE, 1944
3rd Sunday after Trinity.
0930 hours – Holy Communion, Chapel.
1115 hours – Camp Service (C. of E.) Theatre.
Hymn: “Christ, whose glory fills the skies.”
“Thy Kingdom come, O God.”
“Rejoice, the Lord is king.”
Preacher: Rev. C.P. Powell).
1815 hours – Evening Prayers, Chapel.
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You are reminded that there is a meeting of the Belaria Branch of the Northern Heights Model Club every Wednesday at 1630 hours in the Fiction Library.
…
The German A.R.P. Association has published an explanatory statement about the ever-recurring assertion that terror-bombers spray the target-towns with phosphorus. It appears that target marking bombs have given the deceptive impression of raining phosphorous. Distant and close observation leads to the erroneous impression that phosphorous is being sprayed. Sometimes fires or direct hits cause the bombload to explode and the liquid burning mass is the resultant spectacle. Similar result is produced when a phosphorus bomb gets stuck in the ground and throws its contents upwards, the burning mass is violently ejected to a height of sixty feet or more and comes down in the firm of a flaming spray. In no case will an actual rain of liquid phosphorous be observed. D.A.Z.
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General Montgomery crossed the Channel by destroyer on the 8th June, his tactical H.Q. are now established somewhere in Normandy. D.A.Z
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Darnars, Secretary General for the Maintenance of Order and Chief of the Militia, has been appointed Secretary of State for the Interior but will retain his previous duties. D.A.Z.
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The French themselves know that the recent air-raids on French cities were for the purpose of destroying possible French Industrial competition after the war. P.Z.
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During the period of rationing 26th June to 23rd July, the quota of 100 grammes of animal fats will be omitted. The deficiency will be made up by an increase of the butter, margarine and salad oil ration. B.B.Z.
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The official British News Service reports from Allied Headquarters that the situation in France is regarded there with “cautious optimism.” B.B.Z.
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British War Correspondents report that, on the fall of Bayeux, invasion troops were greeted by the jubilant populace with garlands of roses and apple blossom. The streets of the town were said to be covered with a carpet of flowers. On their entry into the town the soldiers were stopped by the joyful inhabitants and regaled with ham and red burgundy. P.Z
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The Rt. Hon. Herbert Morrison has stated that England has spent £19,000,000,000, on the war. V.B.
HOBSON’S CHOICE
32 year old Mata Schindler, of Suszenback, Silesia, has been employed by a farmer since 1933 as an assistant in the house and also to help with farm work. The latter part of her duties ceased to appeal to her and she decided to give up the
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position. Her employer could not, however, find a replacement and she, Mata, was compelled to stay on in the job. Despite this order Miss Schindler got the idea of burning down the farm buildings and she set light to sheds containing equipment, cattle etc. By good fortune the wind changed so that the farmhouse and a mill with reserve of grain were saved. The culprit appeared before the court in Leignitz and was sentenced to 8 years’ imprisonment to be followed by 8 years’ “Loss of Honour.” It was only the fact that she was considered to be slightly mental that prevented the court from enforcing the Death Penalty, which would have been normal in such a case. V.B.
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German Reparation bonds have increased in value on the London Stock exchange, since the Invasion, while shipping shares have gone down. Shares in French Railway Companies have increased in value from £15 to £75. D.A.Z.
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Although the enemy, who has been steadily concentrating his forces has been attacking at many different points, these offensive and defensive actions serve, at bottom, the purpose of testing the relative strength on all fronts so that focal points for greater operations can be found D.A.Z.
LITTLE TALKS – I.
(With apologies to A.P. Herbert)
“Hello, old man.”
“Hello there, where have you been all these ages.”
“Oh! I don’t know…. It’s been weeks since I saw you.”
“Yes, it is …. You know it’s damned funny how two people living in the same camp can go for weeks without so much clapping eyes on each other.”
“That’s funny, I was talking to a man only yesterday about that. He had some mad scheme about ‘boarding out’ and ‘kriegie holidays’ and ..”
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..
“Kriegie holidays!.... sounds alright. What was the big idea?”
“Oh! It was a system of boarding out one man from each mess to some other mess for a week… quite well worked out, on the whole… but I had to tell him you’d never get everyone to agree.”
“You know, that’s not a bad idea – can you remember how it works?”
“Well I can give you a rough outline, but you’d really have to see the man to get the lowdown. It went something like this…Each Mess would set aside one bed as a holiday bed and it would be occupied, for a week, by a mess visitor who would not do any work in the mess during this stay. Of course, it would be a different visitor every week.”
“But what would happen to Joe? I mean the man who gave up his bed for the visitors.”
“That’s easy! He would be out visiting himself for the first week and when he came back, one of the others in the mess would go for his holidays, leaving his bed empty for the first fellow or Joe as you call him.”
“Oh! I see… it’s quite simple really – it’s a wonder it hasn’t been thought of before.”
“It has, I think. I heard that in one camp, squadron leaders would move from mess to mess a month at a time. It’s much the same.”
“It would be a good thing, you know. Have you noticed how new kriegies seem to bring new life to a mess? There’s always such a lot of new things to talk about.”
“Yes, that’s true – but I think the big thing would be a complete change for the visitor, one week out of every eight.”
“Yes, I get awfully tired of the same old faces, week after week. There’s one aspect that would be rather difficult. Wouldn’t it be a bind for the adjutant, never knowing where anyone was?”
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“Well of course, if the scheme came into practice, there would be an officer i/c Holidays, who would keep check on all the names and messes and make out lists from week to week; the numbers in the blocks would always be the same.”
“Look, old boy, I’ve got to go now, will you come over and natter to the mess about this to-morrow? I like the idea – come to tea.”
“Thanks a lot. I’d like to come. About four?”
“Yes, that’ll be grand – cheerio old boy!”
“Cheerio!”
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Sunday long-distance day trains have been so poorly patronised for some time that in view of the heavy burdens places on the German Railways at the moment, their continuance seems inadvisable. Consequently all fast express trains, on Sundays, will be cancelled on the railway systems of Germany, the Protectorate and General Government area. The locomotives and railway personnel this released will shortly be diverted to essential good traffic. B.B.Z
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Officers, Warrant Officers and N.C.O.’s who are attending classes in the Service Education Scheme are asked to note that a new programme of lectures has between posted in the usual place. This will take effect from 19th June, 1944.
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“APPELL” OR ROLL CALL, WHEN, TWICE DAILY, WE WERE COUNTED BY THE GERMAN OFFICER IN CHARGE OF THE CAMP.
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SET-BUILDING AND ORCHESTRA PRACTICE IN THE THEATRE.
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THE LOG
BELARIA 10th July, 1944
NUMBER TWENTY FIVE
EDITORIAL
The foreclosure of the theatre has brought the building and the entertainment staff into the front line of Camp politics. There is a large section of the community who consider that the theatre should now be administered by a committee which should supersede the autocracy at present in power. The feeling is a great tribute to the success of theatrical developments under the existing control; implying, as it does, that the whole matter is now too large and complex for one man to handle.
The LOG agrees with the opinion which advocates the institution of a committee and feels that this is a good opportunity to present its views on the subject. While recrimination is fruitless it is hoped that our suggestions for the future may prove helpful to those who will decide the policy.
We are informed that there should be no difficulty in replacing the floor horizontally, other than the replacement number of the piles upon it rests; this change would be a great boon to the general public because it would make the building suitable for such general activities as boxing, fencing, gymnasium, reading room and library, to mention only a few of the possibilities. It is realised that these activated would have to be fitted in with rehearsals and band practice, making it desirable that the membership of the committee should consist of an equal number of (theatrical) laymen and professionals.
There may be a feeling, particularly among the entertainments staff, that the LOG should not
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interfere in such matters; we can reply that these pages are only public expression of camp opinion and, as such, should deal with and discuss any non-officail matters affecting the general welfare. It should be remembered that the value of the theatre to members of the audience is, at present limited to two hours of amusement every 15 to 20 days, and, delightful though this may be, there are many who feel that the building is not being fully exploited for “THE GREATEST GOOD OF THE GREATEST NUMBER.”
We are sure that the people to whom these remarks apply will rise above petty annoyance and view the whole matter from a detached point of view. This expression of opinion is not designed or intended to detract in any way from our gratitude for the joy and amusement which they have, repeatedly, given us – we are sure that they will continue to do so. When the original plans for the theatre were accepted we had no idea that the camp would ever be so overcrowded; the present upheaval would seem to be a good opportunity to adapt ourselves to the new conditions.
…
Martin Glinberger, from Hohenwart, was recently inducted into the Landwacht for temporary emergency service. He arrived late at his first appell and also left before the order to dismiss had been given, so that it was necessary to send home a second notification, which he ignored.
He was similarly absent from a large scale muster doe a search for escaped prisoners-of-war and from a parade for allocation of guard duties. The Amtsgericht charged with his case very properly consideration a prison sentence justifiable and awarded him three months detentions. D.A.Z.
…
The harem has now been abolished in Iran. The new marriage law allows a maximum of two wives to every man, and only this is the consent of the first wife is forthcoming for the husband’s marrying again. K.Z.
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A BIRDS-EYE VIEW OF THE GREATEST MILITARY UNDERTAKING IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND
“I couldn’t understand it at all. It was raining and visibility was very poor. Then I saw that it wasn’t land at all, but a vast fleet of landing barges, literally thousands of them, They were packed so close together it looked just like solid land; I realised that the Invasion was on but I couldn’t stop to watch – I was on the way to bomb a coastal battery in France, I saw them again on the return trip and, as I crossed the English coast, I saw thousands of English aircraft heading South, while over England there were lights flickering in every direction as glider trains were being manoeuvres into position for the great attack.”
In these words one of the recent arrivals summed up his impressions. He added that the whole operation was started in extremely poor weather conditions and the low cloud hampered air operations to a great extent. Bomber crews were instructed to fly beneath the cloud base I the target was not visible from the predetermined bombing height. Numerous aerodromes and marshalling yards were bombed from heights between 1,000 and 2,000 feet, despite these tactics the losses from flak were negligible.
On the Sunday following the invasion Mr. Churchill said that the Light of London would be shining again for Christmas, 1944 and in a final message to the troops General Montgomery stated that they were entering the final battle against Germany, for all time, and declared that he had every confidence that the wear in Europe will be brought to a victorious conclusion by the autumn of this year.
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created by a 2,000 pound aerial bomb. Their speed is thought to vary between 350 and 450 miles per hour and many have been shot down by flak and night-fighters. London is her usual calm and phlegmatic self and carries on as usual. In England the weapon is regarded more as an instrument of propaganda for the German Home Front than as a major factor in the campaign.
In a recent statement Mr. Churchill said that prisoners-of-war in Germany would be repatriated to England within three weeks of the cessation of hostilities.
The war in the Pacific is progressing favourable. The Americans are establishing numerous air bases on the Chinese mainland and it is reported that two heavy raids have been made by B.29’s upon Japan. It is confidently predicted that this activity will increase during the next few months.
His MAJESTY THE KING made a personal visit of inspection to the Normandy bridgehead several days after the Invasion.
General (Field Marshall) Smuts and Mr. Churchill have also been seen in the battle area in France.
A large contingent of English girls who have married members of the Canadian Forces in England have left for Canada to get to know the country and prepare homes for their returning husbands.
The Americans have set up a special organisation in London to arrange for and assist with the affairs of the thousands of English girls who have married Americans.
…
“Young Canadian girls only report for military service because in this way they can travel overseas and thus not let their best prospects out of their sight, reports the News Chronical of Ottawa. The Canadian girls are very much disturbed because 16,000 of their by friends have already married overseas, particularly in England.
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These facts make them afraid that even the greatest love may not withstand the test of several years’ separation, coupled simultaneously with keen competition.” D. Angr.
…
D.F.C.’s. have been awarded to :- F/Lt. C. Pearce. F/O. R. Rogers.
RETREAT
CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH, ON, ON… how tired the men are, yet we go on… why is it the other eight way up in front don’t look so tired as we do… they couldn’t so…perhaps with my thumbs under the straps the pack will be easier… no, I’ve tried that before… hot isn’t the word for this… better on the grass perhaps… look back again, they may be …Karen and the children must get back for them.. wish I was a kid and could have a good blubber … oh, it’s hot… helmet’s tighter … funny how I’ve got through two years of retreat without being caught .. wonder if I shall get home … oh darling, I must, I must.. a pilsner, a month’s pay for just one of’em now … pity to disturb these flowers with these bloody boots … still no on behind, but … oh, hell, why are they scattering in front – a tank – a Tiger? NO! – it’s THEM – yes, it’s them – run, run back again … but I can’t … down, flat, dust, flowers, choking …Karen, Karen, where are you?... where?...you …you…
…
Three years ago in Australia, two Avro Ansons collided in mid-air. Everyone bailed out except LAC Fuller, a trainee pilot of the lower aircraft. The two aircraft were locked together, but the pilot by using the controls of his own aircraft and the engines of the other which were still running managed to make a safe belly-landing.
Sequel: F/Lt. Fuller, D.F.C., was killed recently while riding a push bike.
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Beatrix Potter, the well known English author and illustrator of the famous children’s books, “Jeremy Fisher,” “Squirrel Nutkin,” “Pete Rabbit,” etc., died recently.
…
Stephen Leacock, Canadian professor of economics and popular humorous writer died a short time again.
THE DIARY OF P/O PEPYS, P.O.W. XXV
Monday, 3rd July. A.D. 1944
Another Monday, how the weeks do fly, for it was this day last week that we lost our theatre, the wash-house, aborts and classrooms, too. After some days we regained our wash-house and aborts, for if they had been taken apart as was our theatre, it would have been an odorous as well as odious prospect for us. Did this morning peep into the theatre and did see the shambles of the last week; some say it will remain so until the war’s end which may be true unless they quickly return it to us; this interference is not so well appreciated outside the camp. In spite of these disturbances and disruptions we are adaptable, even yestermorn our padres held an al fresco service, where the few rain drops only damped the organ. This evening two inhabitants of Tuck Tenements, that verminous Augean stable of the compound, did make a protest by choosing to sleep out of doors; but our guards, perturbed lest take cold, took them to the cooler – a seemingly illogical proceeding – however, due to the recent arrests and storage of our Red Cross food, the cells were full; so our two conscientious objectors were returned to their tenement, there being no gain to either side.
Thursday, 6th July
Today there was no search of our quarters, as there has been these last two mornings and some books arrived to while away our few remaining hours. I did learn that we shall be losing our Reference Libraries, for though the size of our compound is further reduced the numbers increase,
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So the libraries must move to other quarters. Came one to ask if I should prefer that we play cricket for three months, instead of football, to which I readily agreed. Tho’ I do not play either it would at least be good for a spectator, if we are to see the last match of the season at Lord’s. And so to bed, the O.K.W. communique reporting a steady closing of our friends upon all sides.
BREAKFAT ; 1015 hours :-
One Tin Salmon
One Tin Sardine
Biscuits (Canadian) and butter
Coffee
LUNCHEON: 1200 hours:-
½ Tin Bully Beef
Biscuits, butter and marmalade
Coffee
1400 hours:-
½ Tin Bully Beef
Biscuits, butter and marmalade
Coffee
1600 and 1800 hours: (each)
½ Tin York Roll
Biscuits, butter and Marmalade
Coffee
200 hours:-
Biscuits, butter and marmalade
Cheese
Coffee
Dry prunes, raisins and chocolate at frequent intervals.
This was the menu for the officer who, to clinch and argument, attempted to eat a full Canadian food parcel in 12 hours. The conditions stated that evacuation, other than by normal methods, disqualified the principal. The parcel contains some 14,000 calories and the normal kriegie’s daily diet provides at most 2,500 calories. It is of interest to mote that a lumber jack consumes, in one day, meals with a calorific value of 7,000. Apparently the butter was the most difficult item, to get down;
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It is reported that the officer ate a hearty breakfast the next morning and is now none the worse for his “bash.”
We are informed, by old kriegies, that this feat has been attempted many times, but this is first successful one. The point that is t can be done has now been proven and it is hoped that no further food will be wasted in this way.
…
General Montgomery is now in command of all British and American troops in France.
THE BOOMERANG CLUB
The inaugural meeting of the Belaria Boomerang Club took place during last week. It was attended by 34 Australians who selected the title of the club and proceeded to elect officers.
Various titles were suggested, “Abbo Club,” “Wallaby Club,” and “Kangaroo Club” being among these which were rejected. A chairman and secretary were appointed and additional posts of entertainment, sports and education officers were filled. The “Social and Entertainment Officer “ will, in addition to his other duties, welcome and assist any new Australian prisoners who may arrive.
The membership of the club is open to any Australian at Belaria and its avowed objects are to look after the sporting, educational and social activities of Australians in the camp.
Meetings will be held fortnightly and will include a short talk of general interest. The first of these talks will be given by F/O Carmody, who will discuss the achievements of the R.A.A.F. cricket team in England
….
The present personnel of the camp is 728 officers and N.C.O.’s. The figure is made up as follows:-
British Isles (Including Brit. Nats.) 449
Canadian “ “ “ “ 184
Australian “””” 40
New Zealand “”” 28
South African “”” 27
And three rabbits of uncertain parentage.
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Joe Lewis, who is still in England, has stated that he is not going to defend his title. His present engagements are confined to entertainments for the Troops.
…
Five-day Test matches are to be abolished. County cricket will be restricted to 2-day matches
…
The question of demobilisation has been discusses in the House and we are informed that the following conclusions were published :-
Servicemen are to be discharged in the following order –
1st Preference : Married Men
2nd “ Men with their own businesses.
3rd “ Prisoners of War.
4th “ Length of Service.
…
The Daily Worker is in circulation again in the United Kingdom, its reporters are not, however, allowed within the fighting zone.
…
The Duchess of Gloucester has cancelled all her engagements.
…
Douglas Fairbanks, Junr., has been awarded the Silver Star for Gallantry in the Mediterranean theatre. He has recently visited Corsica.
…
Mr. Winston Churchill recently asked the House for a vote of confidence. The voting of 360 – 4 in favour of the motion will ensure that the Education Bill is passed by the Commons. The school leaving age of 16 has been one of the moat controversial points of the debated on this Bill. One of the speakers in this series of debated found it necessary to remark that : “Of Course the Public Schools are open to all classes.”
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THEY’RE SAYING IT IN GERMANY
Dr. Walter Trautmann in the Pariser Zeitung:-
“The enemies in the East and West will not take the fences built in front of them. For a year and a half the Reich has been taking blow after blow, without being diverted from the preparations for the decision which is now at hand. We have reached the point when the last cards in this unequalled conflict are played and the far-sighted German policy will bear fruit.. So take your course
Destiny…We are sure of this – that History will judge that we Germans have done more than our duty towards the land of the setting sun.”
…
The Borsen Zeitung: “Although our armies, in the frame of the difficult retreating movements, have taken up the approximate position when we the advance in 1941 started battles have had the important result of weakening the Soviet Armed Forces, so decisively, that it is only with a crushing numerical superiority that they are able to take up the fight with the German and their Allies.
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From Hitler’s funeral oration over General Oberst Dietl :-
“May his example pervade and inspire many German officers and Generals; may they learn how to be hard as well as, occasionally, gracious; how to be ruthless in their demands as well as considerate for the soldiers and their trouble. May they above all, learn how to radiate confidence under all circumstances; especially in periods of crisis – in order to exalt every single man - and how to repudiate every single thought that a battle backed by the fanaticism of a whole nation, would end otherwise than in victory, no matter how the situation might be at the moment.
…
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From a speech by Hitler at a reception held last week:
“One day Victory will compensate us all for what every single man has had to sacrifice; the troubles he has had to bear and the blood he and his family have had to pay.”
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Der Angriff reports that the English defence is so helpless before the attacks of the weapon VI that the King has “given private instructions to his subjects, which ignore the Royal Air Force, the A.A. and the Balloon Barrage. He declared, plainly and simply, ‘I believe the only possibility of protection, if one sees the thing flying at one, is to throw oneself on the ground, and, in a crouching position, to await developments.’”
…
The Vice-President of the U.S.A., Wallace, during the recent visit to Chungking, prophesied that the Sino-Japanese war would end within the next twelve months. Das R.
…
“And so the task of carrying on the offensive devolved mainly on the U-boats, with their familiar great success, which, since the middle of 1943, were temporarily checked by technical defences. With our available means it was impossible to come up against the enemy’s overwhelming sea-power, which finally enabled him to send considerable striking forces to England, North Africa and S. Italy – and this defines the present naval situation. It may be asked:” Where are the battleships and the U-boats now?; as to the latter, the closely watched Channel area, unfavourable for operations under water, offers but limited possibilities and it is much more profitable for them to engage the enemy on the open sea-routes and at the Western Exit; thus forcing him to take maximum security measures and rendering his supply problem acute.
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The bulk of the U-boats are still being modified. To engage the few heavy units against the superior forces concentrated in the Channel would mean their immediate loss without corresponding gain. They are more important elsewhere.”
(From an article about naval aspects of the Invasion, written by the German Rea Admiral Gadow).
…
The bane “V.I, “ in which “V” stands for “VERGELTUNG” (retaliation) is an indication that the weapon is but the first of a series of retaliatory weapons, with which the enemy will have to reckon in the near future. D.A.Z.
DIVINE SERVICES for Sunday, 6th July 16th.
(Fourth Sunday after Trinity)
0930 hours – Holy Communion, Chapel.
1115 hours – Camp Service, C. of E.
Hymns: “Immortal, Invisible, God only wise”
“Lead, kindly Light”
“Love Divine, all Loves excelling”
Preachers : Rev. W.E.K. Rankin.
1815 hours – Evening Prayers, C. of E.
Hymns: “All praise to Thee, my God this night”
“Father of Peace and God of Love”
Address: Rev. W.E.K. Rankin.
Last month’s total of 2,363 incoming letter hits a new level. 70 per cent. of these letters were from the Dominions. A few early April letters have arrived from the U.K., and it appears that, earlier in this year, our letters were taking about 2 ½ months
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to reach their destinations. The S.B.O. in the East Camp has made very strong protests to the mail department and an improvement is hoped for.
The “Express” forms are taking just as long as the normal mail.
475 Reichmarks was paid to the Germans for air mail charges in June.
…
The Swedish athlete, Gunder Haegg, has beaten one of his own world records by covering two miles in 8 mins. 46.4 secs.
…
The Daily Mail reports that land workers in South East England have been issued with steel helmets to protect them from continual fall of A.A. barrage shrapnel. D.A.Z.
LITTLE TALKS
(with apologies to A.P.H.)
“Fifteen two … fifteen four and two’s eight…”
“God! You’re driving me mad with that blasted game.”
“Sorry, old boy… I didn’t quite catch what you said?”
“Oh! Nothing, I’m sorry…I’ve got blackout blues. Don’t take any notice of me.”
“We’ve finished now, what are black-out blues?”
“Don’t you know?... doesn’t it ever worry you?... this 10 to 12 shoulder to shoulder shut in, swearing, sweating, sardine tine of a barrack house. It’s the same every night: and what can you do? You come in at ten o’clock and sit down to supper – you get up from supper, you pick up a book, you put it down again…noise!! …noise!...noise! The House of Stone was nothing to this…ten till twelve from now till the cows come home.”
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“Yes, I know, but it’s the same everywhere. All over the world, in War and Peace, people curse these two hours. They are the lowest ebb of life’s disappointment…think of London… business has ceased and entertainments are dragging to a close.. too late for dinner and too early for the night clubs… trains and buses crowded with people who are wishing that they were at home without the bother of getting there, most of them thinking of the horrors of the morrow…I read a good description of it somewhere…or maybe it was a play.”
“thinking of other people being miserable doesn’t make me particularly happy.”
“I’m coming to that…First of all, you’ve got to realise that being in prison camp isn’t the only cause of your particular ‘low’ although I’d be the last to deny that this place is pretty bloody. The, when you’ve managed to isolate the causes, you can start thinking about the counter-measures… I don’t like to shoot the “old kriegies” line, but how do you think we got through the winter. You may not have to face that problem but you can tackle your present difficulties easily.”
“And what does the Oracle suggest?”
“Well you’ve got to accept the fact there will always be noise and if it disturbs your reading, you must find something to do where the noises makes no difference. There are lots of different ways… I knew a fellow who used to spend each evening in a different mess and worked round the rooms in rotation, another fellow made a list of all the things he had to do next year, John makes model aircraft and Jimmy fills up his log book. I play cards myself…It doesn’t matter what you do, so long as you make it a routine, Treat is as something which must be done, like washing up and so on. Form a ten to twelve habit and you’ll find the time passes… but you must excuse me …I must get my bed before the lights go out.”
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BEHIND THE SCENES
The situation in theatreland is causing a lot of speculation and rumour, these latter vary from the people who say it will open this week to those who contend that it will not open again as a theatre at all. “FRENCH WOTHOUT TEARS” will be presented as soon as possible, if it does open again. The new instruments, with the exception of the piano, have arrived and the band is enthusiastically rehearsing the new music which arrived simultaneously.
The visit of the Y.M.C.A. representative was of little interest, the only business being the placing of orders to meet our future requirements.
…
A haystack was burnt in Piccadilly recently, during a large harvest workers’ rally.
[Image- Spring time for Henry]
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PORTS NOTES
The Germans show no sign of commencing their building operations on the Sports field so it may be worth while laying down a running track; if there are enough keen athletes to justify the trouble, as meeting will be held in about six weeks’ time. As soon as the track is completed the field will, doubtless, be put out of bounds for construction work, this is a risk that cannot be avoided. The football season closes on Tuesday and work will be started on a cricket pitch; we have no roller but attempts are being made to hire one.
Net practice is a problem as we have so few balls, tennis balls (soaked in water) will have to suffice.
Preparation of the pitch will start on Wednesday and it is hoped that enthusiasts will give their full support.
[Image –Famous Last words 3.]
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ROUND AND ABOUT
One of our reporters strolled around the camp last week, it was the first time he’s ever done it with his eyes open (we didn’t mean to tell you his name) and some of his observations were amusing.
He spent the last two days, since his epic walk, trying to find the moral portrayed by seven kriegies leaning over the walls of the rabbit’s play pen and laughing like help at their efforts to escape. He also made a note that, although the temperature has risen, the efforts at keeping the swill bin areas clean seem to have decreased, while the abort sported a large number of open and unoccupied seats. This will lead to inevitable trouble unless everybody will really co-operate.
Since the theatre was ripped apart, we have been wallowing in reprisals, even worshipping and washing being subjected to the jack boot. We are an adaptable community, however, and the news and weather took the edge off these incidents, helping is to realise that such futile behaviour had no ultimate consequence.
One other point upon which a note was made, is it possible to divert a little of our gardening energy and enthusiasm to clear the paths and other wasted acres of the weeds, thistles, dandelions etc., which abound there.
At this point in his observations the reporter passed the sports field wire and buttonholing an interpreter, he became so absorbed in listening in to Canada’s national sport that he forgot his assignment. If we can wake him up in time we’ll send him out again this week and report his opinions in the next issue.
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The orchestra will be giving an open-air concert next Wednesday.
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F
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[Image Glimpses into the future. 1.]
[Image – Glimpses into the future.2.]
This and the following pages contain some of the weekly “ENTRACT” cartoons from copies of the “LOG” not republished.
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[Image – Glimpses into the future No.3]
[Image – Glimpses into the future 5]
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[Image - Popular misconceptions (at home ) 1]
[Image – Popular misconceptions (in Camp) 2]
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[Image – Popular misconceptions (at home) 3]
[Image – Popular misconceptions (at home) 7]
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THE LOG
BELARIA 4th September, 1944
NUMBER TWENTY-NINE
EDITORIAL
WE are told that the war is not in its sixth year and that we should take Editorial notice of the fact. What is one to say about it? It would be easy to moralise or wax sentimental, or even, perhaps, to talk about the tots who are wondering, like the child of our cartoon what the word “Peace” means. It could be great theme and – for that very reason – your Editor refuses to tackle it. Our contemporaries like the Times and Manchester Guardian will doubtless carry leasers on the subject which you will be able to read when you have returned and con no longer get your LOG. It would seem that our ample stocks of food and cigarettes, etc., are causing embarrassment to our custodians and that the amount we may keep in our rooms is to be limited. The only logical reason we can find for this action is that the Germans which to be in the position to withhold all or some of our food and tobacco should they ever wish to force our hand.
The office boys is reflecting out feelings when he explains to visitors that he is not in his usual state of torpor because every time he wales up another few towns are written off in France and it is such a bother catching up, we only hope that the troops don’t ever come to feel the same thing. Our military adviser has authorised us to say that it is his considered opinion that we are unlikely to be here next September, unless you are considering a tour of Silesia under the auspices of Strength through Joy – and, , if you must have Joy – well, charity, after all, begins at home.
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THE LAST PHASE
An article under the title “The Secrets of the last Phase of the War” was published in the D.A>Z. of 30th August. Owing to its length we are only able to publish extracts:-
“In six months, at the most, we shall all realise what few now know – that this last phase of the war, which commenced on 16th June, 1944, has a secret – and that the last three months have a character very different from that which we believe. This period is the most dramatic that is was a matter of seconds and millimetres and that is must have been possible to calculate why Germany won. It is fantastic… as fact look very much otherwise for us now. Kharkov fell, Stalingrad fell, etc., … and the Russians still came on …Kiev fell.. they are in front of Warsaw, Cracow and East Prussia… Divisions were thrown against them and had to withdraw… Regiments disappeared … Supplied vanished in the Russian more… there is a shortage of guns and tanks… something must stop them… but they still advance. In Italy… Rome falls .. the English are on the march… bringing up their crazy masses of guns and aircraft, and now they are in Florence.
On the 6th June… The Invasion … with its raging inferno of bombs and shells .. the counter attacks collapse and increasingly the bombers roll over Germany and Lay our towns in ruins … A frightful picture … but the picture is false, if we did not know this then Churchill could teach us, as it looks very different to him too. In six months everyone will know this. We came very close to forcing a decision in 1940, it failed due to Soviet Russia…joining forces with capitalism ... England breathed again… “General Time” began to work… Now we know why we are making the final effort and it is not beyond our strength. We have never given up in a critical position. The last price we have to pay will be paid, with every method and all out strength.
VICTORY IS REALLY VERY NEAR.
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“OUR OWN LITTLE SHELLS”
“All I want to do when I get back is to crawl into my own shell and lead my own life within my own small circle. To hell with the British Empire.” So spoke an officer friend of mine, a man of considerable experience, on the circuit a few days ago.
One (being English) wonders how many Englishmen subscribed to this point of view and how many will devote much thought to the business of governing the country after the glad return.
Here, in a prison camp, are to be found many people who will talk, intelligently and otherwise, about England, her political shortcomings, her economic problems, and her social evils. Some with rare feel, even vitriolic; others with a curious sense of detachment, as though reluctant to realise that such problems exist and are theirs to solve.
It is difficult to judge whether the unusual conditions under which we now live tend to focus extra attentions on these questions, or whether it is that world events of recent years have awakened a new sense of civil responsibility in the minds of hitherto regardless citizens.
On our return to England and the resumption of normal life, many subjects of thought and discussion which loom large on our present horizons will assume minute proportions against the distractions of re-discovered freedom and, in many cases, the bustle of return to civilian careers. How many minds will be diverted this from the pressing problems of the nation? With the grim and bitter example before us of personal indifference to national and world events of the pre-war years, resulting in the greatest of catastrophes, can we afford not to display the keenest of interest in the affairs of Britain and the world at large?
It is to be hoped that, in the very near future, the pressing need for enlightenment and instruction and stimulation in the art of civil administration, both local and national, will be met by revised
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curricula in all of our schools. Meanwhile, a gap remains to be filled. It is abundantly clear that our generation must fill it.
Should we crawl into our own little shells?
ALLES IST VERBOTEN
These extracts from the D.A.Z. will give readers some idea of the restrictions which were recently introduced. It is emphasised that these are only a few from a most impressive list:-
All theatres, variety shows, cabarets and dramatic schools etc., to be closed.
All circuses to be reduced to the minimum necessary to keep animals alive.
All orchestras, music schools, etc., to be disbanded or closed forthwith. The only exceptions to this ruling are some of the leading combinations who will be used for broadcasting.
Creative Art – All exhibitions, competitions, academies and private art schools to be closed forthwith.
”The daily press to be limited to a few four page “rational” dailies who may only publish one edition per day. The Illustrierte Beobachter and the Berlin Illustrierte are to be the only magazines. All non-technical publications and writings are prohibited, with the exception of school books and standard political works.
All the “Strength through Joy” (ENSA type) entertainments for the Forces are to be stopped, with the sole exception of radio and film programmes.
The Minister of Public Instructions has introduced restrictions in education to enable tens of thousands of boys and girls whose comrades have long been working for the war effort to be freed for this effort.
A single basic ration card, to cover all the essentials, has been introduced. This will save 200,000,000 cards in every six-monthly rationing period.
Working hours in public administrative offices, etc., to be standardised at a weekly minimum of sixty hours.
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General stoppage of all leave, with the exception of men over 65 and women over 50 years of age.
The introduction of a new” Order of Security of the total War Effort.” Whereby the law can proceed with the utmost severity against those who carelessly or intentionally, sabotage the war effort, Imprisonment or fines can be imposed, with penal servitude or death, in severe cases.
Recent arrivals report that a memorial service for the fifty R.A.F. officer= prisoners-of-war who were shot by the Germans was held at the famous London church, St. Martin’s-in-the –Fields.
…
Bicycles must be very scarce at home. A man who bought a second-hand bicycle for £1 in 1937 has just sold it for £7 10s. 0d.
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The Australian Government is now controlling the price of second-hand cars throughout the country.
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The New Zealand Government has discharged a number of men who have over four year’s war service. In some cases these men were recalled from the Middle East.
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Scottish shipyards are reported to be in full production, and even to be putting in full overtime.
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A film biography of Gentleman Jim Corbett has been made, with Errol Flynn in the title role.
The film version of “Dear Octopus” has been showing in South Africa.
…
English and South African churches held daily services during the early days of the invasion.
There are very few new books in the Fiction Library shelves at the moment, and there is little prospect of getting more from home. We therefore appeal to you to donate any personal books with which you have finished.
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TEST MATCH
13th August, 1944
The hour’s postponement of this early awaited game was scarcely enough to allow our ire to subside at the sight of dozens of frolicsome Germans cavorting heavily on the carefully prepared wicket. However, no great damage was done and the many spectators settled down in the warm sunshine with great hopes of some interesting cricket. They were not disappointed.
England won the toss and elected to field, the bowling being opened by Wainwright from the Sagan end. Australia’s opening pair, Grimbly and G. Smith, seemed well at home right from the start and out on 24 runs before Grimbly’s wicket fell to Wainwrights’s consistently good-length bowling. Grimbly’s effortless 20 showed us some fine strikes, while Smith scored a useful 11 before Kelshall send his ball flying. Kelshall was replaces by Norrie, but by now, with Hogg and Carmody obviously on top of bowling, Australia seemed set fort at least 200 runs. However, the unexpected dismissal of the latter, l.b.w. from what appeared to be ab easy ball, closely followed by Hogg who scooped another back into the bowler’s hand, gave matters a different aspect. Particularly so when the Kangaroo’s tail didn’t even quiver, and with the rapid fall of the last seven wickets the went only from 107 for 3 to 126 all out, of which Carmody scored a polished an forceful 62 and Hogg a well-needed 17. England’s fieldling included some remarkable pick-ups and was irreproachable throughout. Norrie’s bowling took 5 wickets for 25, while Wainwright bowled valiantly through the who innings, capturing 3 wickets for 60.
England’s inning was a tale of dogged effort in the face of very accurate and difficult bowling. The opening pair, Strong and Rice, clearly were ill at ease, and before lunch the latter feel to Keen, brining Kelshall in to bat. Pearson’s spins puzzled him at first, but he made himself at home and scored 57 in a very polished innings before being
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bowled in the moist simple of fashion by Pearson. Carmody replaced Keen at the Sagan end, and later Todd, with his curious action and vicious spins. Both held the batsmen down, though Goodall scored a stylish and badly-needed 12 for England before being caught by G. Smith off Pearson. At this point England’s chances looked very good, but wickets fell quickly for very few hard-won runs, leading to the climax when England’s last batsman went to the crease needing to make but 4 runs to win. Barely had these been wrested from the bowler hen Hogg caught Turner of Pearson, leaving England winning the winner by one solitary run. Among others, Strong’s opening 15 and Pease’s 12 were invaluable.
Australia’s bowlers, of whom Pearson was most successful, with 8 wickets for 70, kept the English batsmen worried from the start to finish, and has their field been up to standard of England’s the result would have been very different. As it was, England deserved her victory, and the spectators enjoyed the first-class cricket played, as well as the tense finish.
May we have more!
BEHIND THE SCENES
Reconstruction work in the theatre was completed well ahead of schedule, but unfortunately sickness of some of the musicians prevented the band giving an early performance. Consequently “Someone at the Door,” a comedy in three acts, produced by W/O Lawrence, open on the 28th.
Following this is a programme which includes radio plays =, band shows, straight plays, films and “music hours,” providing entertainment until the end of October.
A second One Act Play competition is being run, this time open to all, and it is hoped the actors and producers, new and old, will make this at least as successful as the last competition.
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[Image – Belaria Theatre Dressing Room – 1944]
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“IN FRANCE 280 TERROISTS WERE KILLED...”
It was in August of 1939 that I started a mountaineering holiday in the Haute Savoie district of France. A holiday during which I was to learn of the contempt with which the French of those parts held the enemy; a holiday which was to terminate so suddenly with the news of the German advance through Poland.
And now all I have left of those days are the memories. Memories of old friends and the grandeur of the scenery. Jean, who was the fat postman of St. Gervais; Renee, the student at the Grenoble University; and Georges, my drunken friend of the Chasseurs Alpins. Those rugged peaks, a natural frontier between France and Italy, and those deep, narrow valleys, so cool in the evening.
War dared to intrude into those parts and the world deserted them. It was then that “the Maquis” was formed. They called themselves “the Maquis” because in Corsica the maquis is that undergrowth which covers the interior of the island, very wild and secretive.
They obtained arms and ammunition and became so powerful that, when the Germans refused to release the 80 hostages taken in Grenoble, at the expiration of the time limit proposed, the army barracks on that town were blown to pieces. 200 Germans were killed.
They were hunted down, trapped, dispersed, and still they reformed, an eternal flame of liberty in that corner of France. Jean must now be carrying messages for them. Renee has probably nursed their sick; and the drunken Georges will certainly leas a group of saboteurs. And those rugged mountain – what hiding places they conceal; those dark valleys – what natural ambuscades.
It is now August of 1944, an August which sees the Germans going through Poland again – this time in a different direction.
And so, these evenings when we stand in from of the communique, pencil in one hand and cigarette
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packet in the other, excitedly noting down the great Russian drive and the Allied attacks, let us remember the debt we owe when we read “ …. And in France, 280 Terrorists were killed.”
SPORTS’ NOTES
ATHLETICS. The running track should be finished by Wednesday, and a plan showing distances, etc., will be shown on the sports notice board. A jumping pit will be constructed for high and long jump practice. An effort will be made to arrange a training period before morning appel, and in addition, if there is sufficient interest, a further hour each day.
FENCING. Masks have not yet arrived so an expert “tin-basher” is busy working on the Mark 1. Until a set is available, only preliminary instruction will be possible. Will all those desiring instruction give their names to F/Lt. G. Sproates, (hospital) who will arrange classes. The names of those with previous experience are also required.
BASEBALL. A second diamond is to be tried out in the bottom left-hand corner of the sports field, and if the outfield is not too complicated games will be played on both diamonds at the same time.
A young woman has been brought to justice in Aix-La-Chapelle for falsely describing herself as a mother, and thereby obtaining extra ration coupons. A friend of hers had swapped these coupons with her for cigarette. Both girls received appreciable prison sentences.
??????? BRT. VERSENKT
The English Merchant Navy must admit that it has lost the war – this is clearly proved by an article from the pen of the British Naval expert Sit Archibald Hurd in the London monthly Nineteenth Century and After. Hurd state point blank: “Germany has succeeded in overthrowing England from her proud position on the seas” The English Merchant Navy suffered the heaviest losses – hundreds of big
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liners, oil tankers, et., were lost. About 28,000 experienced officers and men of the Merchant Navy have lost their lives. In this war the British Merchant Navy has been crippled. D. Ang.
…
According to a report from the American Periodical News Weekly, the inflexible and proud attitude of German Prisoners- of -War in England and America is causing concern in Washington.
These young men, the article points out, are Nazis to the core. When they return to Germany after the war they will form a firm nucleus, around which a strong Germany will gather. News Weekly says that “realistic” measures are being prepared in Washington – although, as the paper admits, political education of P.O.W.’s is probibited [sic] by the Geneva Convention. D. Ang.
“ONE THING AT A TIME” or “KRIEG IST KRIEG UND SCHNAPPS IST SCHNAPPS”
The United States Army Command has warned American soldiers that it will take a poor view of any marriages between then and French women.
The Washington Post carried an article amount a brochure which has been issued to all American soldiers warning them of the undesirability of relations with the women of the country which they would be passing. The Frenchwoman, it said, is not the frivolous person portrayed in Hollywood films – most of them wish to get married and settle down.
The soldiers have been warned that they cannot expect free transport for women whom they have married in defiance of these instructions and that it may be difficult for them to get into the United States.
…
The Reichsminister for Air has issued a new order relating to “public Air Raid Warning.” All business and public activity and all traffic is to
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continue normally during these periods. It is not permissible, therefore, to resort to air raid shelter or more distant refuges when the sirens sound. Only when the seeking of shelters is recommended by radio may factory air raid wardens order people to the shelters. V.B.
…
1,577,000 voted against 1,396,000 rejected the Australian Government’s plea for retention of its special powers for five years after the war. V.B.
…
EXTRACTS FROM “NOWOJE SLOWO”
During the last terror attack on Berlin counterfeit ration cards were dropped. They were meant for travellers and restaurants. Anyone who finds these cards and does not give them up is liable to the heaviest punishment.
The dropped ration cards are easily distinguishable from the official ones. The headings are larger, the writing is less legible and there is brighter. Above all, the counterfeit meat coupons are made of white tissue, whereas correct coupons are printed on a coloured background.”
The Berlin Emergency Court sentences the couple Arthur and Marianne Peikert of Guterberg to two years imprisonment for attempting to buy sausage and cheese with counterfeit ration cards, dropped form enemy aircraft. The sentence of 15 months imprisonment and two years loss of honour was imposed on Anna Domke, of Blankenfield, for similar offence.”
“At 0500 hours on the morning of 1st August the insurrection of the Polish ‘Bandits’ erected barricades, or coerced the civilian population to do so. They had their strongholds in buildings, covering the streets with their fire, hampering the traffic of the city, and obstructing the main cross-roads.
The Wehrmacht freed the vital centres with immediate counter-measures, re-took the Power station and inflicted heavy casualties upon the
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‘bandits’ The bandits put up a strong resistance despite Stuka attacks against their main points of resistance and , in some cases, fought to the last rifle to maintain their blockade of cross-roads etc., they even continued to resist in bombed and burning houses. Their methods are cunning and ruthless. Their aim is to create chaos, especially among the “East” troops serving with Wehrmacht. The bandits are mainly recruited from young men between the ages of 15 and 21 years.” V.B.
…
On first looking into a British Red Cross Parcel and seeing the Meat Roll:-
From time to time the human race
Has tampered with its meals,
And teeth have clamped on even worse
Than tripe, or jellied eels.
Sweeny Todd, with sharpened blade,
Whipped “bods” beneath his floor,
Then Mrs. Todd with skilful hands
Made pies of them next door.
An ancient witch, with dark intent,
Abducted Hans and Grete;,
And named them for her plat du jour
Buy roasting them in metal.
A dusky Amazonian tribe
So something quaintly sicking -
Catch beetled under mossy stones
And munch them while still kicking.
More recently, an Aryan race,
In search of something news,
Make bread to feed their hungry mobs
From sawdust, rye and glue.
But all these gents are somewhat old,
Their history rather musty,
We have an entrant to the ring,
Presenting – Mr Lusty.
…
Now that we have a “warning wire to keep us from touching it, that old term “warning rail” seems rather redundant. Why not the “no-warning rail?”
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Internal Abwehr reports a very daring and successful escape participated in by the S.B.R. and two other rabbit of junior ranks. The attractive reward offered has produced no results, but a distinct odour of rabbit-stew could be detected escaping from Block Ones’s kitchen the other day.
The needles, please, Watson.
“SOMEONE AT THE DOOR”
“Beggars can’t be choosers” and the producer made the best of an uninspired play with his most enjoyable presentation of “Someone at the Door.” Farce fought realism to carry melodrama without mustachios.
“Ronnie” gained on the swings of laughter what he lost on the roundabout of dramatic effect; had he used a little more restraint he would have been very convincing, nevertheless he was laughter-maker-in-chief.
The acting and female mannerisms of his sister Sally were was marred by lack of dramatic feeling, consistently good and showed great promise.
The confident portrayal of “Bill Reid” was marred by lack of dramatic feeling, but Sgt. Spedding showed admirable restraint in a part which would have been spoiled by burlesque. His subordinate, Constable O’Brien, was his equal in characterisation and serves as an excellent foil to his stolid official dignity.
I was delighted with the superb portrayal of “Price” by the producer. He made us laugh, thrilled us, horrified us and yet in the end had our sympathy
.
The only complaint, and that was a small one, was with the performance of “Kappel,” the squire-villain. He was less successful as the villain than he was as the squire, this shortcoming, couples with badly written third act, was responsible or a slight fall of interest towards the end of the play.
The setting designed by F/Lt Allen, the lighting, the backstage effects and the costumes were well up to the highest standard we have come to expect.
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In looking forward to W/O Lawrence’s next productions I suggest that he should consider the play as a whole rather than as the vehicle for individual character parts and aim for a cohesion which does not allow interest to lag for a moment. Nevertheless, he gave us two hours of excellent entertainment, which we thoroughly enjoyed.
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
Who are the people who have the infernal impudence to write factious and would-be intellectual remarks in the margins of our library books? The book A more than Happy Countryman is a case in point. Certain opinions are expressed by the author, and some vandal has seen fit to annotate all points of disagreement. This is one of the more unpleasant forms of selfishness and an expression of intellectual snobbishness.
…
A camp grocer has been appointed which will combine these duties with that of tobacconist-in-chief. This officer will be responsible for the storage of food, etc., under the scheme. We are informed, although, we don’t believe it, that he is racket-proof and a non-smoker.
…
The busy rush of affairs is the camp seems to make it impossible for many members of theatre audience to arrive punctually. We are certain that of these same people had paid a guinea or so for the seat they would arrive on time – anyhow, it’s damned bad manners.
Who said “Autumn for Henry?” –
…
General der Infanterie Arthur Hauffe, General commanding an Army Corps, has been killed in the battle of East of Lemberg. D.Ang.
…
Officers who wish to order a copy of the LOG, souvenir edition, are requested to call at Room 2, Block 6, between the houses of 14500 and 1530 on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.
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SQUANDERED YEARS
Of the many pressing questions which will call for attention after returning to England in the near future that of education is one to be placed very high on the list.
As we all know, some only too well, this subject has been food for endless controversy for many weary years.
Of all its aspects, however, it would seem that insufficient constructive attention has been paid to the question of school curricula, to decide whether generally they are outmoded and, if so, to instate measures designates to revise the subject matter being taught in the majority of schools.
There seems to be small room for doubt that the war years, bringing with them new and hitherto unknown, responsibilities, have inculcated into our generation a different perspective, broader knowledge and a revised, if not entirely new, set of values. The majority of us may say, at the risk of appearing smug, that in the light of our wider contact with other people from all counties we are better able to realise the value of our respective educations and to judge what proportion has been of any practical use since our classroom days. Many realise the futility of much that we learnt. Other recall with bitterness, the lack of guidance from disinterested teachers and unwise parents at a time when their own values were juvenile and they were unable to appreciate the potential worth of the subjects they we restudying, or neglecting to study, as the case might have been.
War-time environments and the contemplation of the fast-approaching problems of reversion to civilian careers tend to recall these shortcomings of our educational syllabi. Thus we can more readily appreciate the advantages that may accrue to future scholars by timely consideration of this aspect of the education systems.
Many people feel that much more attention in our schools should be devoted to subjects of practical value, such as civics, international affairs, physiology….
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[Image – MAJOR BARBARA]
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[Image – FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS]
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NOTICE
INFORMATION HAS BEEN RECEIVED FROM THE GERMAN AUTHORITIES THAT CERTAIN AREAS IN GERMANY, APPARENTLY IN THE VICINITY OF THEIR ARMAMENT AND WAR INDUSTRIES, HAVE BEEN PRESCRIBED IN WHICH ANY UNAUTHORISED PERSON IS LIABLE TO BE SHOT ON SIGHT.
A REQUEST FOR MAPS SHOWING THESE AREAS HAS BEEN REFUSED ON THE GRUNDS THAT IT IS UNDESIRABLE FOR THE GERMAN AUTHORITIES TO PUBLISH AREAS IN WHICH THEIR ARMAMENTS INDUSTRIES ARE SIUTATED.
ANY PRISONER OF WAR WHO ESCAPES OR CONTEMPLATES AN ESPACE IS ADVISED TO AVOID SUCH AREAS IF POSSIBLE.
GROUP CAPTAIN,
Senior British Officer,
28th September, 1944
This notice was publically displayed, much to the bewilderment of the German Staff who tool it all very seriously – ED.
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[Image – MUSIC SOCIETY OF LOWER SILESIA]
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THE LOG
BELERIA Christmas, 1944
VOLUME TWO
NUMBER FIVE
EDITORIAL
We hope that the repatriates who left on Friday last are now well on the way home, speeded by our good wishes and hopes for the recovery when they achieve civilised conditions. One or two members of each of these parties has promised to write news letters from home they have never materialised, but we may hope that one at least of this party will be able to spare us the time an thought.
The skating rinks have been very popular and it is no uncommon sight to see several of the camp personalities flat on their backs in various corners of the rink at the same time. I am told that this is an essential part of learning the art and am reminded of happier days on the staff of a wartime flying training school, where a large number of the pupils seemed to think that the same qualification applies.
The Christmas show is over and has been generally voted the best of its kind. Whilst agreeing with this vote of approval I would suggest that, if all shows are now going to last for more than two hours, the signature tune of the band might well be “Cheek to Cheek.” The innovation of “brews” at half-time was a success and we feel it is only a matter of time before the backstage experts have entered a stalls and pit bar.
Our producers are becoming more ambitious ad we hear that G.B.Shaw’s “St. Joan” is going into rehearsal. This should be very interesting test of ability for the producer and actors involved and we are understand that the stage may be widened to enable an adequate set deign to be built.
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FOR THE MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR THE 50 OFFICERS WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN MARCH, 1944
The ceremony held at the Stalag Luft III cemetery during the afternoon of 4th December, 1944, was attended by the Senior British Officers of the three Royal Air Force compounds, two padres and thirty other Officers, representative of the nationalities of the fallen.
A memorial, as shown in the accompanying illustration, has been erected. The three tablets shown in the drawing are engraved with the names of the Officers who were killed and the large inscription across the front of the cairn is shown at the foot of the sketch.
The Service was also attended by the Swiss Minister to Germany and M. Naville, of the Swizz Embassy, accompanied by Major Dr. Simoleit, of the Lager Staff at Sagan.
At the conclusion of the Service, which was conducted by Padres Goudreau and Jones of the North Camp, a trumpeter sounded the Last Post and wreathes were laid by the Senior British Officers and by M. Neville, on behalf of the Protecting Power.
The Swiss Ambassador shook hands with the three Group Captains before leaving and expressed the sincere sympathy of the Swiss Nation,
“At the going down of the sun
An in the morning,
We shall remember them.”
…
Wreaths were laid on the tombs of Clemenceau and Marshal Foch by Winston Churchill, during one of his recent visits to Paris. D.A.Z.
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THE LAST TRUMP
Whether “fanfare” was a Requiem for the Old Year or a salute to the New remains in doubt, that the production fulfilled our expectations and earned it’s title us clear – (loud and clear).
Some people, quite a number apparently appreciate crooners and twitch kids, other tolerate them, of course this is a season of almost unlimited good will. Humour from Bow was well driven home and “Home Town” deserved it’s applause. “One man in his time plays many parts,” but Carmen Miranda was a new “High”; the lady herself will have to look to her laurels, that is if she wears any. Guying the Womens’ Services is_____________, well anyway, there are very few old kriegies here to whom the W.A.A.F. might still be a novelty, if not an experience.
Had the Andwell Sisters sung “Bei Mir Bist du Schon” twice more, we should have been word perfect, but even that wouldn’t have lessened our enjoyment of the act.
Antoinette would no doubt be at home in almost any dockside tavern, while drunk compensated us for our dry Christmas and unobtrusively, but convincingly showed us a glimpse of what might have been.
Perhaps one of two members of the band forgot that they were therefore the eight evenings to amuse the audience, and indulged in private by-play at the expense of the show; but it was a good band show, well played and produced – but so loud.
The raffle which was organised to raise cigarettes for the Communal Cigarette fund was a great success. More than 14,000 cigarettes were raised by sale of tickets. The winning ticket was numbered 64 and the prize of 1,000 Sweet Caporals went to a room in Block 15. Cigarettes will be distributed every Tuesday, between 1400 and 1430 hours; those who are in need should apply to Room 5, Block 21, at this time.
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BASIL BEETON’S CORNER
Stuffing to serve with Xmas Turkey. (For 12)
½ Bowl Barley.
2 Cups of Breadcrumbs.
3 Tablespoons Thyme or mixed herbs.
1 Teaspoon Salt
2 ozs. Margarine.
Work margarine into breadcrumbs and barley and mix together. Then, add thyme and salt and mix well. Line dish with margarine and bake in slow for 1 hour. Do not burn.
Icing for the Christmas Cake
As we shall be getting and buts in the Xmas Parcels you can now make your cakes look attractive. An excellent white sugar icing can be made as follows:
1 Packet Canadian Sugar or equal amount of Reich sugar.
½ Cup water.
Mix sugar and water thoroughly and add Klim to make heavy white paste. Spread over cake with a wet knife and smooth carefully to 1/8” thick. Garnish with cherries and nuts. This icing will set hard.
A soft icing can be made by adding ¼ lb. of Reich margarine to the above mixture. Beat the margarine with a fork until it reaches the consistency of clotted cream before mixing with sugar and Klim. This soft icing can be spread to any required thickness.
HOUDE, a former Mayor of Montreal, was recently re-elected to what office with a majority of 14,000 votes. He was sent to a concentration camp in 1940, because he had encouraged French Canadians to refuse military service. He was released very recently. V.B.
Enemy transports, under the protection of very strong naval units, penetrated into the Sea of SULU in the Philippines, on the 15th December. The landed 1 division in the vicinity of SAN JOSE and one the S.W. corner of the Island of MINDORO. Heavy fighting is in progress. V.B.
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THE DIARY OF F/O PEPYS, P.O.W.
20th December, A.D. 1944
BELARIA
Yuletide nearly upon us and we did have a great debate on the decoration of our chamber, some holding that it was too bitter a parody of the old days; while others wished to capture some of the essence of this time of rejoicing. But after all peaceable to bed, we shall have decorations and suffer our nostalgia silently. Now to make the best of our plight will spend this week a-cooking. To have the largest dinner ever, for which we have been saving, and all this despite our special parcel issue which will add turkey, sausage and face flannel to our menu. Did discourse with Basil Beeton on the latter and he, uncertain of American custom, did think they would make good garnishings. To-day from the Vorlager did receive our Christmas store of food. ‘Twas good to see our store of eggs safely back, unbroken; but what envious looks from those improvident neighbours who had eaten their reserves – as they say here: “Wie gewonnen, so zerrinnen.”
I did see the play by St. John Ervine, in the theatre, but it was lacking in interest and the building was cold; more stoves are being now fitted, so we shall see the Christmas revels in comfort, for rumour hath it that “FANFARE” is two and a half hours of excellent variety. Soon too it is hoped to improve our gramophone and, as more records are here, we shall have more musique.
Did learn from the O.K.W. this evening of the big new German counter-attacks to drive or armies back to France. This did remind me of the gigantic German counter –attacks at Sitomir in the Russo-German War, which did give the enemy breathing space for the further withdrawal. So the war goes on, the certain end coming nearer though some are blind to this.
This morning a big search – even extending to the complement of the flagship on morning Appelle. The only serious loss was suffered by the Commander
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of the ship, who did lose his cellar of wine, despite the pleas that was for medicinal purposes. And so, finally, to bed. Wishing all good men a Happy Christmas and a Happier New Year in the homelands.
THE GERMAN COUNTER-OFFENSIVE
Owing to a shortage of information it is too early to form any conclusive opinion on the German counter-offensive in the West. We will, however, endeavour to suggest a few lines of thought along which the subject might be pursued.
On the 16th December the Germans started a large-scale offensive, between the HIGH FEN and the North of LUXEMBURG. That is to say between the two points, in the North on the River ROER and in the South on the River SAAR, where the Allied pressure was, and still is, the strongest. This portion of the front, held by the American 1st Army, was necessarily thinly garrisoned. The attack followed a strong artillery preparation and is supported by large tank forces and an intensive air screen.
Although the Germans claim to have taken the Allies completely by surprise, their preparations cannot have wholly escaped the notice of Allied air reconnaissance.
It is clear that the Germans expect more than local gains; they pursue strategical gains, unknown to us, but which we will try to guess.
Attack is often the best form of defence, especially when the element of surprise can be used successfully. A successful attack would also bring the initiative, always a favourable element in warfare, back into German ands. It is also probable that the Germans wish to relieve the pressure, both at DUREN and on the SAAR.
Did the German High Command want to disorganise an impending Allied attack? We doubt it; it would precipitate the rouble rather than avoid the danger, as the offensive would move into concentrations of considerable strength.
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On the contrary, the German offensive might well have been the result of Allied weakness in this sector, strong attack with the maximum available forces would be a natural reaction. Finally, this attack as been a vast factor in improving the German morale, this was undoubtedly on of their arms.
After having retreated and ….. and retreated ever since AVRANCHES, sometimes slowly, often very fast indeed, German divisions are again on the offensive.
The Germans appear to expect no less than the re conquest of FRANCE and BELGIUM. It only goes to prove the heights and depths go German morale.
If this German offensive fails, the re-action will be terrible indeed for Hitler’s Reich.
Eisenhower had the necessary room and the necessary reserves to manoeuvre and master the situation should it become serious. On the other hand, will the Germans, even if their hope are exceeded, venture far into BELGIUM, with the danger of large forces on either lank, waiting to cut them off?
In any case, the main task for the Allies is to fight the enemy, wherever he is. They have superiority in men, material and aircraft.
We are convinced that the German counter offensive only means a precipitation of the final issue.
From a letter:-
Here is a quotation from a booklet called “HUMANITY KEEPS AN APPOINTMENT.” It says: “ A member of the educational committee of Stalag Luft III summed up the attitude of Prisoner Students when he wrote ‘Without the aid of your Educational Service this P.O.W. life would be one of stagnation, but through the efforts of the New Bodleian Library it is a period of praiseworthy effort in adverse conditions.’” The booklet having quoted this letter, adds:
“If I had the power I wold inform everybody and every employer in England and the Dominions that the letter P.O.W. can, and often do, imply an added qualification.”
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A CHRISTMAS LETTER
I’d like to be home for this Christmas, my dear
To share all the sweet joys with you;
The laughter and fun of a happier year,
The same as we once used to do.
We’d put up the tree on the parlour again,
All tinsel and colour and light;
With ribbons and popcorn and striped candy-can
And crown’d with a star shining bright.
In the evening we’d sit by the old fireplace,
With the children all tucked in bed
And smile as we thought of tomorrow’s mad race,
To be first with that shiny new sled.
Then I’d kiss you again, my dearest of dears,
And whisper my thanks, just to you,
For the courage and patience and love through the years,
That have meant more than you ever knew.
Yes, I’ll be there for Christmas, the same as before;
Wherever you are I’ll be near.
In my dream I’ll be with you to tell you once more-
Merry Christmas, God Bless You, my dear.
From TOUCHSTONE, Oflag VII B’s monthly magazine:-
“Regarding rank, the New Zealand officers are the only ones who have regular promotion and nearly all of them are brigadiers. However, they are all very reasonable and democratic …. I sometimes wonder whether the old days weren’t perhaps, better when Germans were Germans, Britons and Canadians were chained. We felt darn sorry for them – I mean as far as one can feel sorry for a Canadian – their sufferings welded us into a real community.”
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“IT’S THE LAST LARST VORD IN PITCHERS”
Dr. Goebbels has said, “the film…. Is a cultural bridge between nations…..” but after viewing “Dixie Gugan” and The Spoiler,” one can feel that the bridge is creaking badly at the joints. Presumably the Moguls of Wardour Street, with a fat benign smile, despatch the reel as suitable entertainment for a long-suffering and helpless kriegie audience. Perhaps they are right. For officers, presumed to be intelligent adults appear to find pleasure and stimulation in the vapid hip-swingings of the curiously inept taxi-driver or the synthetic tinkling of a dance-hall harlot (Goodbye Roy – Splash, sob, choke, splash – Cut to fight in Gold Mine).
It makes one distinctly apprehensive. In England, after all, one can escape the high-pressure sex programme of La Grable or the persuasive machinations of Victor Mature by seeking immediate sanctuary in a tavern or the waxworks. But here one is compelled to swallow the celluloid offerings and be grateful.
The modern American film is calculated to entertain an audience with an average mental age of twelve years; in England, for obvious reasons the mental age is put at fourteen years and the average film with Hedy Lamarr as Elizabeth, Lana Turner as Mary Queen of Scots and Red Skelton as Essex, makes a great profit, although the film has a much inspirations and aesthetic value as a Group Captain’s hat. Even the strangely wooden Mr. Flynn has ventured into history and pantaloons for the benefit of the public at large and Warner Bros. in particular.
So, shall we at Christmas join reverently together in a quiet prayer of grateful thanks to the kind donor? No Sir – not if they continue this supply of tripe. Far less injurious to be in a top bunk, breathing mountain air and Edgar Wallace – which, by comparison with Randy Scott, has the constructive value of Aristotle.
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[Image – SEEING OUT THE LAST OF THE WAR YEARS]
[Image – THOUGH THE WIRE – WINTER, 1944.]
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[Image – The first Mrs Fraser]
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THE FIRST MRS. FRASER
The play itself was, perhaps, an unfortunate choice for cosmopolitan audiences, but we realise that the choice is very limited, both by scripts and performers. It was equally unfortunate that the playgoers, with frozen feet and numbed minds, were not in their usual receptive mood, a fact which does not help but greatly hinders amateur performances. Perhaps audiences will remember that and be a little more generous with laughs and applause. This would be easier now that the heating system of the theatre has been improved and you will be adequately warmed.
Janet Fraser was well taken, the best performance of the evening and undoubtedly the best we have had from this actor. James Fraser ha moments of conviction but, yet again, he appeared to be moving by numbers, his strictly stylised performances must be loosened up before he achieves a convincing stage presence. Elsie, the second Mrs. Fraser, appeared to have been greatly influenced by the manner of a certain Miss West, this was not your critic’s idea of the part but, if such an interpretation was intended, wit was quite well done.
Ninian stood out from an undistinguished lot of minor performers, if he can curb a tendency to gabble the latter half of long speeches he will be a useful addition to our dramatis personae.
The set was well designed and the props, particularly, were good. The colour scheme of pink and blue was, perhaps more suited to a boudoir then a drawing room, even though it was a feminine drawing room.
We now look forward to “FANFARE” the Christmas show. We do so with confidence, since the production is in the capable charge of F/O Whitely who has never failed to produce the goods.
A one-legged man won the high jump by clearing 5ft. 7ins. At the College Sports at Pretoria recently. He lost his right leg, two inches below the knee, when he was a boy. De Villiers who normally uses crutches, stands square before the bar, hops to it, springs with his left leg – an astonishing performance.
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RESOLUTION
I don’t see that there’s much point in making many resolutions for the New Year that is almost upon us. It seems a better idea to wait a few months until we are back in circulation again and then make our resolves, in accordance with the new conditions and surrounding that we shall find. Our lives here are pretty much ordered for us and there is little room for further restrictions, however well intended they may be.
There is, however, one habit of ours that we might are to alter. We might get a little more joy and correspondingly less melancholy if we focussed our attention more upon the future and less upon the past.
It is a curious fact that bygone events seen happier as they recede into time. Nothing ever seems so good as it was “Way back.” Thus we find ourselves at this time thinking wistfully of Christmases of old; progressively, from childhood up to those wizard mess parties and the attendant pleasure. Seldom are the unenjoyable hours recalled.
Now I thought it would be a good idea to adopt the same scheme, but in reverse. For there is much to look forward to now. A reasonable Christmas compared with what might have been. Longer days, with Spring in the offing. Home pretty soon, and happiness that we shall never have known before, even in retrospect. The company of our loved ones, getting the car out, wearing a decent suit of clothes and dozens of smaller pleasures that we can all readily visualise.
So I think I’ll make just one Resolution. To dwell on the future, instead of the past. Christmas 1939 was a joyous affair but Christmas 1945 cannot fail to be the best ever.
Although I suppose that even then, reclining and replete after the family Christmas dinner, we’ll be shooting a line to an admiring (?) audience about the advantages of being able to roll onto the “pit” straight from the table, etc, etc,.
Perhaps it is nice to look back sometimes.
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Untersturmfuhrer RAILTON M. FREEMAN,
alias
*Pilot Officer RAILTON M. FREEAN,
Alias
The Rat that left the ship that will not sink
An article appeared in Der Angriff of 23rd December 1944, purporting to be written by the above-named individual. We had intended to publish excerpts from this article but have decided not to do so. It contains no remarks which are worth reproducing dealing chiefly with the medical treatment of seriously wounded British and Germans behind the Allied front line. It quoted an article from the Daily News of 1929 to support the argument, and says: “how a captured solider who was wounded would be treated by the Anglo-Americans can easily be estimated when one reads the point of view of the British doctor on the treatment of their own soldiers.” – A point of view written in 1929 by an individual who was writing of Army Medical Services from the outlook of an Army Commander, trying to view the situation dispassionately.
The mentality which will allow a man to desert his country, however dangerous her position, has been well applied to the type of propaganda which the article tried to put across. The arguments would not convince a child of five and the spite and fear in the mind of the writer can be clearly recognised. We presume that the profession of such spite is a necessity to continued existence. The fears are certainly well grounded.
The article says a lot about Prisoner-of-War- among other things: “good food! They (The British) are nor even interested in feeding their own people; especially enemy prisoners-of- war,” many such inaccurate statements and false arguments.
This “Freeman,” ironically names, is now an officer of the “Waffen S.S.,” his alternative to becoming a prison-of-war. He and his loathsome brotherhood, who have violated all codes of deny and military ethics, wold do well to remember that we shall return home as “Freemen, “ he will continue to be Freeman.
*Sentenced to death at the Old Bailey in 1945.
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JOB DOESN’T LIVE HERE
I grow weary of these “Realists.” They are in their elements now, with mud all around, half-parcels in their bellies and yet another Xmas in Kriegiedom nigh is upon us. Winter shadowing the light at the end of the tunnel and the days marching by in slow procession. How smug they are, these cold comforters, with their widening smiles and their unspoken “I told you so’s.” How patently pleased with themselves as they explain the futility of hoping at all and as they superciliously decry the “childish refusal of face facts” of the cheerier souls who are happy to see the world and the war with rose tinted vision.
Perhaps we should have paid more homage to the profundity of these lofty gentlemen. Possibly they haven’t been accorded their due measure of respect for their long-sightedness. Though it does seem a pity that they couldn’t have foreseen their arrival in Germany and taken suitable preventive measure, thereby depriving is of their cheerless company.
For of that use are such gloomy prophets among us? Going around and inflicting, unasked, their wearisome theories on the erstwhile hopeful kriegie. Seizing upon the slightest display of optimism and carefully proving it’s lack of foundation, gazing with increasing pride at the lengthening face of the unwilling victim. If self-appraisal alone is not enough for these comforters of Job, then let them write books of their convictions, not to be published until the events have taken place.
We don’t want to listen to them. They defeat themselves with their own arguments. For it is so clear that this “realism” is naught but a clock for their lack of courage to hope and the fear of being disappointed, should any hitch keep is here for a few months longer. The very people who loftily decry the “refusal of the facts” are themselves the refusers. Let them gather courage and a different sort of smile. Let them bash the store of “D” bars, which they have undoubtedly saved against their beloved “rainy days.” Let them stop making
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Dozens of fivers from the faith of others. I hope that the war will end this year and am happy in my hope. I don’t want anyone to go to the bother of explaining to my why it will not.
THE AMERICA – CANADA QUIZ
Intended as a stop-gap to fill in the theatre schedule, QUIZ was a howling success in more ways than one and the capacity audience was quick to show it’s appreciation.
The Canadian team was frequently stumped by the, questions propounded by eh six Army Corps opponents, but managed to nose out a closely contested victory
Has the Americans known that George Washington made the original survey for the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, that the Hawaian[sic] Islands are also known as the Sandwich Islands, or that you don’t have to cross a State border to go from Buffalo, N.Y. to Detroit, Mich., it would have been a different story.
One the other hand, the Canadians were unfamiliar with smokeless electric trains and national anthems and lost points of the “King” who runs their Government.
The frequent “I pass” surrenders produced gales of mirth from the audience, particularly when some luckless contestant fell for an old gag. We still are not quite sure whether it is the Yang Tze or the Hoang Ho which is known as China’s sorrow and maybe Port Moresby isn’t in New Guinea, but it was good fun.
For a “first-time” presentation QUIZ provided excellent entertainment and subject matter for any number of arguments. We look forward to a return match between these contestants and more of the same with teams from other nationalities and services participating.
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WEST FRONT VIGNETTES
He left England in a fighter, as one of the escort to 72 Marauders who were doing a tactical raid….After being hit by Flak, he baled out over the target area and landed, by parachute, in the middle of the area which was still being bombed…With his bare hands he scrabbled a hole in the soil and had barely settled into it when a large force of Liberators followed up and showered bombs around hi,….
He was not hit. A few moments later a low rumbling noise made him peer over the edge of his hole…
An enemy Tiger tank was rolling towards his hole, the cupola was open and the commander was looking backwards – the Tiger was retreating-! The Englishman, 22 years old leapt out of his hole and the tank rolled by without seeing him… more aeroplanes in the vicinity forced him back into the hole…. The sound of voices raised his head again and he saw Allied infantry approaching from the East…. Leaping out of the hole for the second time, he asked them the way back to our lines…. They told him and asked him to escort four prisoners. He undertook this and set off…Four hours later a weary and harassed Pilot Officer reported back in our lines and handed over 160 prisoners, who – as he puts it – “Had been slung at him en route” He was unarmed.
…
Seen from a patrolling fighter on the evening of “D” day ;-
Two battleships standing about six miles off the coast with a screen of fighters above them… every naval craft within range joining them in pouring fire over the beachhead…. A bomber force on the way to bomb the marshalling yards at Caen… Thunderbolts screaming sown to strafe retreat enemy forces…. Vari-coloured parachutes being dropped with supplies for the airborne troops….a tank bottle going on between Caen and the Beachhead, with 15 or so in flames…. and, one mile from the centre or this scene, a solitary Frenchman with two horses drives a straight furrow over the land he has been tilling for 35 years… And adequate comment?
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[Image – This year – next year – sometime…]
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To the Editor – THE LOG
I am taking this opportunity to convey to all ranks of this Camp my sincere greetings for Christmas and New Year.
Most of us were convinced that we should be spending them at our homes with our families and I am most heartened and impressed by the way everyone has accepted the severe disappointment and has refused to indulge in fruitless self-pity.
In a message received from Her Majesty the Queen, the certainly of a very early reunion with our loved ones is expressed, and this, I know, finds an echo in the hearts of all of us.
It seems an appropriate time to thank, on behalf of the whole Camp, those who have carried out Camp tasks voluntarily throughout the year, and, to choose only one of many such jobs, especially do I congratulate the road building party for their stout efforts in building and bettering the Camp roads.
I am delighted to find that the American contingent is still with us over this period of good-will, and that we have the opportunity of further cementing the friendship and understanding between our two great nations, and most particularly do I include them, and all other of our Allies within the Camp, in these most Cordial Greetings.
GROUP CAPT.
SENIOR BRITISH OFFICER.
20th December, 1944.
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[Newspaper Image]
The Camp, BERLIN, AUGUST 5, 1944
World and War News
HOME NEWS IN BRIEF
A facsimile of the front page of “THE CAMP” – produced by the Germans and distributed to British P.O.W. Camps – The reproduction on the opposite page is the front page of the Christmas 1944 number.
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[Newspaper Image]
The Camp BERLIN DECEMBER 1944
HOLY NIGHT, SILENT NIGHT
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The selection of “Editorials” which occupy the following pages are taken from issue of the “LOG” which have not been reprinted in full in this book, They are included in the hope that some of the remarks and events noted therein may serve to remind ex-inmates of Belaria of some of our domestic problems and amusements.
THE EDITOR
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THE LOG
BELARIA 14th February, 1944
NUMBER THREE
EDITORIAL
The most notable feature of camp activity this week is, undoubtedly, the remarkable stride mace in the reconstruction of the theatre. I was privileged by an invitation to visit this seat of industry on Friday last: my former visit has been on the previous Sunday. I opened the door – walked in – and promptly turned round to walk out again, thinking I was in the wrong hut; or perhaps, round that familiar bend. A second glance reassured me and my amazed sense took in the transformation. An orchestra in the dressing room provided a suitable background, with what appeared to be “concerted individual instrument practice,” to the melody being played by sundry carpenters, electricians and general factota.
The floor has assumed a “gor-blimey” angle which will enable all the audience to see the stage which is well on the way to completion, and the orchestra pit is nearly finished.
Although we are asked to bring stools to the band shows tonight and tomorrow, I am told that there will be Red Cross armchair seating for a house of one hundred and fifty.
This is a great feat for the common good and I am sure that I shall be expressing everybody’s opinion when I render thanks and congratulations to the Entertainments Officer and his staff for a good job well done.
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THE LOG
BELARIA 21st February, 1944
NUMBER FOUR
EDITOIAL
Several incidents of importance to us all have occurred during the past week. The question of the cut in German rations has been dealt with elsewhere and since that was written we learn that the macaroni ration has been reduced by 75 grammes per fortnight.
One item of information which we have received, however, deserves special treatment. Foodacco has been open for less than a week and I regret to have a report that is it already being exploited by those among us who take advantage of that mutual trust which the very foundation of harmony in P.O.W. life. In one instance a customer sold 500 cigarettes to Foodacco in Player’s 10 packets – thirty of these packets were found to contain inferior grades of cigarettes of mixed brands. To quote another case – two tins of cocoa were accepted from a man and bother were subsequently found to be half full. One of these had been resealed.
We should all like to believe that these occurrences were accidental, but, in the case of the cigarettes and the resealed time of cocoa, such belief would amount to foolishness.
Gentlemen – I present these cases to you as one of the most abominable types of theft and only do so because you can assist in stamping out such practices – DO not distrust your fellowmen without very good reason – but, if you have such reason – it is imperative that you take immediate action. The best action being to report to it your Block Commander.
We are all convinced that 99.9 per cent. Of the personnel of this camp would not stoop to such practices and by dealing with it early we hope to kill off the tendencies of the other 0.1 per cent. In conclusion, I should mention that it is the S.B.O.’s intention to publish the name of any offender caught hereafter: in addition to any other action he may deem necessary The LOG will gladly give additional publicity to any such incident.
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THE LOG
BELARIA 5th June, 1944
NUMBER NINETEEN
EDITORIAL
The reprisals instituted last week are still in force and severely restrict the activity of our educationalists and horticulturalists. The latter, however, show more ability to rise above the difficulty, prodigious feats are performed daily with table knives and forks. Indeed, one sometimes wonders of they are horticulturalists or merely hungry kriegies “going back to the land.”
The wager which ended in the crawl will, doubtless, be the forerunner of other such incidents. One can only hope that they will be as well arranged and conducted.
The mail situation is still deplorable and letters from home make it apparent that out mail is taking longer than ever to reach it’s destination.
The new purge brought some interesting news pf home and it was particularly gratifying to hear the food situation is very good. They report that the greatest optimism prevails, but it is not having effect of slowing down the pace of production or preparation. It was also reassuring to hear that the raids on London and other English cities have caused little or no damage.
We are now approaching the summer solsticial day which will herald the shortening nights and the paling of those tanned torsos, now such a common sight. Opinion would seem to indicate that this paling will be completed under our own skies – or shall we be re-acquainted it under the Pacific sun?
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THE LOG
BELARIA 16th June, 1944
NUMBER TWENTY-TWO
EDITORIAL
The possibilities of emigration, subsided or otherwise, as one mans of providing satisfactory rehabilitation for ex-service men, particularly those of the United Kingdom, have received a great deal of attention from Government organisations entrusted which the planning and preparations for the re-absorption of service personnel into civilian life. It is generally accepted that there will be a large scale voluntary transfer of population from the British Isles to the Dominions, in furtherance of the inter-Allied planned economy.
In the past, migration was promoted and encourage largely for political reasons or the benefit of vested interests and with little or no regard for the welfare of the emigrants or the country of destinations. One of the principal abuses inherent in this system was the deliberate creation of false conceptions as to the opportunities available or prospective settler. Latter day economic conditions have some away with most of these ill-founded beliefs, clearing the way for planned migration designed to get the requirements of those countries willing to accept new citizens.
Three principal factors suggest themselves as criteria of the suitability of prospective settlers in these countries. They are adaptability, ability and permanency.
The recently pioneered countries place a premium on “doing,” People are judged entirely by their capabilities and the greatest rewards go to those with the most initiative. In consequence “push” is more important than “pull,” and skills or specialist training is a most valuable asset. Prospective immigrants will do well to bear in mind that these countries usually have a more than adequate supply of unskilled labour, but will always be able to provide opportunities to those who can offer skilled craftsmanship or specialised training.
While there is a definite tendency to minimise the importance of nationalism, it must be remembered that emigration to another country presupposes a willingness to accept and conform the customs and traditions of the country, with a minimum of individious comparison. It is most desirable that the settlers should make every effort to become absorbed into the national entity, avoiding any tendency to form isolated communities with the nation.
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No country is willing to absorb immigrants into it’s [sic] national economy and them to sit back and witness their departure “back to the old country,” as soon as they have accumulated sufficient capital for retirement or whatever other plans they may have formulated. The younger nations want citizens, not transients; people intending to establish themselves as permanent resident will be afforded every reasonable assistance, and the achievements of their aim will be dependent on their own efforts and capabilities.
Wartime contracts have afforded services personnel many chances to acquire a fair knowledge of conditions and probable post-war trends in other countries. Large numbers have had the important advantages of contact with members of the overseas forces and should have formed a reasonably accurate estimate, upon which to base future plans for emigration.
In conclusion, it may be said that although we know that the streets of the cities in the younger countries are not “paved with gold,” there are and will continue to be excellent opportunities for those willing to and able meet the essential requirements.
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THE LOG
BELARIA 24th July, 1944
NUMBER TWENTY-SIX
EDITORIAL
The Editor has been constrained to move into Sick Quarters for a short time. It was, of course, entirely coincidental that this should take place the day before he was due to commence a weeks stooging, and an issue of THE LOG due to appear. Fortunately, he has ordained that, for the time being, THE LOG will be published fortnightly. It is felt that this will help materially in overcoming production difficulties caused by the present dearth of suitable copy.
Definite steps have been taken to meet out need of greater privacy. The appearance of wooden screens along those sections of Camp exposed to the road would appear to indicate that there is no local shortage of scrap lumber. The vegetable issues of the last week have been rather overwhelming, and one could wish that the Protecting Power would send their representative more frequently. We now have unrestricted use of the classrooms and the education schemes are forging ahead. The news that nine of our fellow-prisoners are leaving to be repatriated is most welcome. With them go our best wishes for a speedy journey home and the hope that we will be seeing them again very soon in more pleasant surroundings.
The editorial which appeared in out last issue advocating the changes in the administration and availability of the theatre has occasioned a number of Letters to the Editor. Several considerations have altered out original intention of publishing the. Until such time as The Editor is back on the job, the publication of these and any other letter on this subject which may be submitted will be left in abeyance.
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THE LOG
BELARIA 21st August, 1944
NUMBER TWENTY-EIGHT
OVERHEARD comments from new arrivals indicate that there exists some misapprehension as to certain of the “news items” appearing in THE LOG. The publication of informative material of this nature is obviously dependant on three sources: Extracts from letter; information received from recent arrivals; and translations of extracts from German newspapers. Information received from the first two sourced is, if possible, checked and verified before insertion in these columns. Translated extracts from German publications may be identified by the appended initial of the newspaper source, and readers are expected to evaluate these with reserve.
With the appearance of the most optimistic “new Purge” to date, our strategists have been enjoying a field day deducing substantiations for pet theories. At last we seem to have achieved Mr. Churchill’s “the beginning of the end.”
We are pleased to note the presence of F/Lt. J. Reid, v.c., among the more recent arrivals on camp.
An undesirable demonstration of the futility of arguing right versus might took [ace last week. The innocent party most concerned escaped with painful and possibly permanent injury thanks only to his own good fortune. So long as the present condition prevails, it can not be emphasized too strongly that prisoners must take every precaution to avoid anything remotely resembling an infringement of the warning rail regulations. Casuistic submissions afford no defence against bullets.
The regrettable breakdown of projection equipment resulted in some of the camp not seeing the film, but we are told that it will be repaired and retuned next week, when extra showings will be given.
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THE LOG
BELARIA 18TH September 1944
NUMBER THIRTY
EDITORIAL
Since the publication of our last issue there have been several important changes in camp life. The closing of the sports field was a great loss, but this is undoubtedly offset by the opportunity, this created, of going for walks outside the wire and seeing something of the countryside.
The inmates of Block One had a short return to their winter quarters, but found that the enemy has not yet been driven out. At the time of going to press they find themselves scattered all over the camp in other peoples’ blankets. Neither of the blocks have yet caught fire and se we may hope that this treatment will be effective.
Those who were fortunate enough to see the bandshow will agree that it was quite the best entertainment of it’s [sic] type we have yet seen or heard. We anxiously await the re-opening of the show, in the hope that it will be possible to sneak in with a stool and hear it again.
Most people are not yet feeling the drop in rations. This is probably due to the abundance of vegetable. Messes are, however, strongly advised to try and avoid the uses of their reserve Red Cross food; against the day when the vegetables are no longer available or in the unlikely event of the complete failure of the parcel supply.
Betting over the end of the war seems to vary between the 5th and 30th October, expecting those confirmed pessimists who gloomily pronounce that “We shall probably be home this year.”
It is a great relief to most of us to note that the dead-end kids and their fezzes have gone to ground, we can but hope that they are not thinking another “Secret Satorialism.”
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THE LOG
BELARIA 6th November, 1944
VOLUME TWO
NUMBER ONE
EDITORIAL
The editorial and sub-editorial of last week’s Wire will explain our apparently premature withdrawal from retirement. While we are delight to welcome a youngest to the ranks of Kriegie journalism, we cannot agree that the Camp will “Have the benefit of two papers” (sic). We trust that you do not look for benefit in THE LOG; you are doomed for disappointment, we haven’t any to spare.
The heroic cuspidor in the extension to the Camp had led us to expect an American occupation but, as yet, none of the many rumours as to the identity of our new readers has crystallised into fact. The block which is open, Number Eighteen, will have to be filled before the others are inhabited and there is still no certainty about the occupants.
The Senior British Officer has been informed that the food parcel situation is becoming acute; in fact the S.B.O.’s at Calswalde are seriously considering whether we should be reduced to quarter parcels weekly. The present stock of parcels will take us to December 25th at the existing rate of issue and with our present strength. Letters have been received from the International and British Red Cross saying that every effort is being made to forward more food and that personal parcels are also coming through. We may, therefore, cherish a reasonable hope that, even if we drop to the quarter issue, the position should improve before long. Spero meliora.
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THE LOG
BELARIA 20th November, 1944
VOLUME TWO
NUMBER TWO
WE must open this issue by extending a hearty welcome to our American colleagues, those among us who come from the Centre Camp will remember what pleasant companions they were and it will be most refreshing to hear their point of view on questions which have been on our minds recently.
We have devoted a lot of space, three pages, to the article on President Roosevelt in the hope that it will provide, to British readers anyway, some enlightenment on the significance of this re-election. America has come to appreciate his shrew pre-vision and a different election result, with it’s interferences in a long-term policy, might well have proved disastrous to American and international affairs.
Public debated, now a weekly event, will give people the opportunity of getting a broader view and a new outlook on national and international problems. Many of the better thinkers of our generation have perished in the war, we shall have to take their places. Here is your chance to study the problems and incidentally, to practice the expression of your views; the latter, however shrews are of no value if you cannot put them over.
The food position, a prisoner’s greatest pre-occupation, seems to have resolved itself into a state where the issue will be the same as before, with the exception that tins must be returned within 24 hours of issue. The question of communal messing, should we drop to quarter parcels, is still under consideration, this may happy within the next fortnight but we still hope that “reinforcements” will arrive in time.
In conclusion, we must apologise that this issue will have to be published in two parts, those pages which are missing today (November 20th) were held up by the unserviceability of the typewriter and will be published as soon as possible.
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THE LOG
BELARIA 4th December, 1944
VOLUME TWO
NUMBER THREE
EDITORIAL
The senior British Officer has asked us to let all new arrivals know that various services on the camp such as watchmaking, hair-cutting, shoe and clothes repairing, etc., are one on a communal basis. The officers and N.C.O.’s who carry out these jobs do so on a voluntary basis and the tools and materials they use are supplied by the Red Cross or Y.M.C.A. You need, therefore, feel no hesitation is asking for such things as watch repairs, etc., and, of course, there is no question of payment. The Officer who does the watchmaking is most anxious that new prisoners with broken watches should take them along to him as soon after arrival as possible. This often prevents further damage and lightens his task.
At the time of going to print, we hear rumours about a film which is thought to be coming into the camp. The theatre officer has been advised that one, probably a Dietrich, is due – but we’ve heard that one before. However, it may arrive Morgen Fruh.
Conversation with the representative of the Y.M.C.A. discloses the fact the 3,000,000 Red Cross food parcels from America and United Kingdom have passed through Sweden. They are destined for camps in the Eastern part of Germany and we may expect our share as soon as the local transport can cope.
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Readers of these military news commentaries, of which two specimens are included, who were not P.0.W. must realise that they were based on facts (?) obtained from the German Press and information obtained from newly-arrived P.O.W. Any news we obtained from our secret wireless could not be incorporated since the “LOG” was always read by the Germans in the hope that we should disclose knowledge of events only obtained by “unorthodox” means.
SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
THE OFFENSIVE ON THE WEST FRONT
Out last summary on the offensive in the West said little about the fighting itself. It would probably be better, therefore, to start from the beginning. Many interesting details have come to light since.
Readers should be reminded that mistakes may occur when commentaries on military events are made so shortly after their occurrence, there is only one source of information and much guesswork and reading between the lines has to be done. Those who feel great interest in the matter must wait for a few years, until the generals on both sides have published their memoirs, etc.
Where was the front before the offensive started?
From the MOERDYK (Bridge on the Waal, S. of Dordrecht) along the WALL to NYMWEGEN, then back to the MAAS at GENNEP. North of BENLO it left the MAAS to form the so-called German Bridgehead S.E. of HELMOND. The front went round to WEERT on the NOORDER KANAAL, then crossed the MAAS in the region of MAASEYCK until it turned South, West of GEILENKIRCHEN. So to STOLBERG, ECHTERNACH and the MOSELLE, which it more or less followed to PONT-A-MOUSSON, leaving a bridgehead to the Germans West of METZ. From PONT-A-MOUSSON, to CHATEAU-SALINS (Salzburgen) BACCARAT, GERARDMER, CORNIMONT, West of BELFORT, MONTBELIARD and the SWISS frontier.
THE ARMIES AND THEIR COMMANDERS
Canadian 1st Army. – General CRERAR, from the MOERDYCK to NYMWEGEN.
British 2nd Army. – General DEMPSEY, from NYMWEGEN to North of GEILENKIRCHEN.
If the original arrangement of the Invasion armies has not been changed, these two armies constitute Field Marshal MONTGOMERY’S Army Group.
American 9th Army. – General SIMPSON, from GEILENKIRCHEN to STOLBERG. This army was intended as left wing to :
American 1st Army. – General HODGE, from STOLBERG to ECHTERNACH, possibly to DEIDENHOFEN.
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American 3rd Army. – General PATTON, from ECHTERNACH (or DEIDENHOFEN) to the RHINE_MARNE CANAL.
American 7th Army.- General PATCH, from the PHONE-MARNE CANAL to the BELFORT GAP (BURGUNDISCHE PFORTE).
Gaullist 1st Army. – General BETHOUART, from the BELFORT GAP to the Swiss frontier.
The above-mentioned Armies constitute General BRADLEY’s (12th) Army Group. The disparity in size between the two Army Groups is obvious. It is possible, therefore, that SIMPSON is included in MONTGOMERY’S Army Group.
The fighting started on the 650 kilometre line, between NYMWEGEN and the SWISS frontier. EISENHOWER’S bid, in the opening stage, was 20 divisions. These were not spread out equally, but a greater concentration of troops and material was made there, where main points of fighting were desired or expected. Whereas both wings were still in front of the SIEGFRIED LINE and had to close in on it, the Allies in the AACHEN area had been in contact with the SIEGFRIED LINE for some considerable time, (first and second battles of AACHEN). Consequently a breakthrough in this area would be decisive and it was here that EISENHOWER concentrated his forces. We shall return later to this subject.
Other concentration points were built South East of HELMOND, METZ and BELFORT.
I. The American 1st Army. – General PATTON’s attack was the prelude to the general Allied offensive.
The main intentions were :-
(1) The fall of METZ, a fortified position of some importance, commanding the historical invasion route between the ARDENNES and the VOSGES (Louise XIV – Von Moltke).
(2) To close in on the SIEGFRIED LINE, running parallel to and behind the SAAR.
On the 8th November two spearhead were sent across the MOSELLE, on both sides of METZ, with the aim of surrounding the town.
The first spearhead built a bridgehead at KONIGSMACHERN, North East of DIEDENHOFEN. This advance as, at first, checked. The second spearhead was more successful. Starting along a line between PONT-A-MOUSSON and SALZBURGEN, it took NOMENY, DELM, SALZBURGEB itself and DIEUZE is quick succession. Advancing to MORCHINGEN, PATTON, delivered a frontal attack against DIEDENHOFEN, which was soon taken against, METZ, and against the MOSELLE, between these two towns.
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The frontal attack on the MOSELLE was repulsed on both wings, but in the centre the Americans forced the bridgehead over the river at UECKINGEN. It is probably this spearhead which swung round and finally cut off METZ from the EAST. But we cannot be sure. The frontal attack on METZ caused heavy fighting to develop, especially at GRAVELOTTE. The Americans then slowly closed in and took the town leaving behind a few isolated strong points in the outer defences, which the Germans claim still holding out. The fighting for METZ itself had so much relieved the pressure of North East of DIEDENHOFEN that by the 17th the bridgehead at KONIGSMARCHEN has been widened and deepened and SIERCK was threatened.
On the 18th, PATTON was able to renew his attack East of DIEDENHOFEN on the direction of the lower NIEV and of the SAAR between MARZIG and SAARLEUTERN. The Germans had to give ground and, on the 19th, the front was back eastward of SIERCK to BUSENDORF (west of SAARLAUTEN) and to the East of MORCHINGEN.
At the moment PATTON is firmly established on a line running near or along the SAAR, from the south-west of TRIER to about FINSTINGEN. There seems to be a deep penetration to BITSCH. On the other hand neither FORBACH nor ASSRBRUCKEN have been mentioned. PATTON’S initial aims have been fulfilled.
2. The British Second Army. – The Germans have, so far, given little detail about this offensive under the command of General DEMPSEY. The attack started on the 1th along the NOORDER-KANAAL, South East of HELMOND. It was preceded by an enormous artillery barrage. The German, have expected the attack, had very cunningly evacuated their positions before the barrage began.
On the next day a bridgehead over the KANAAL was established at WEERT, and by the 18th the Germans had only a bridgehead over the MAAS, including the two towns of VENLO ad ROERMOND. On the 23rd they mentioned British attempts to cross the MAA in the region of VENLO. Nothing more has been heard of this venture. At the present moment, the Germans refer to their small bridgehead at ROERMOND, which seems to imply the VENLO is now in Allied hands.
On the 16th of November, three other thrusts started, one on the RHINE-MARNE KANAAL, one in the BELFORT GAP and one in the region east of AACHEN. As the latter turned out to be the main Allied push, we will leave it to the last.
3. The American 7th Army.- General PATCH’s attack again on the 16th. It was part of EISENHOWER’S scheme of engaging the Germans on the entire front. Preventing them from shifting beg reserves along it.
A main point of fighting was built on his left wing, which as still on the plains (RHINE-MARNE KANAAL), but he brought his army to bear on the entire front of the VOSGES. The Americans slowly worked themselves up to the crest, the first significance event occurred on the 18th, after two days of intensive preparatory fighting. The Americans broke through from EADONVILLERS along the road to SCHIRMEK. Fighting was continued for this very important pass and it was taken on the 22nd.
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The road to STRASBOURG was in danger; and the Germans had to send some of their local reserves in an attempt to save the town. Meanwhile, another breakthrough has been forced, slightly North of the first one, Emerging from the PARROY forest, the Americans broke through West of SAARBURG, along the RHINE-MARNE KANAAL. The Germans, taken by surprise, were checkmated. Pushing swiftly on to PFALZBURG on the 22nd, the Allies took ZABERN on the 23rd, and made 30 kilometres on their last triumphant dash to STRASBOURG, which, except for a few fortifications, was taken on the 24th. During that time the first spearhead had only reached OLSHEIM. PATCH’S effort on his left wing had the effect of a beautiful “Disengage – double and lunge.” The advance on the remainder of the front was not so fast, but in the light of what had happened in the BELFORT GAP it is much better to let the Germans stay where they are, at least for the time being.
4. The Gaullist 1st Army. – This army under the command of General BETHOUART (of NARVIK fame), consists of Moroccan troops, Free French and a few American regiments. Their offensive also started about the 16th. On the 18thm heavy fighting developed on both sides of the DOUBS in the MONTBELIARD area and the French broke through on the 19th, South of BELFORT. Leaving a mask South and South West of the town, they pushed on and reached the RHINE North of BASL on the 23rd.
They then turned left and three divisions reached MULHAUSEN on the 24th. The French did not have the necessary reserves to push on further. This seems to indicate that a success in this area had not been expected and the exploitation of the De Gaullist success had to be improvised. The Germans, on their part, with an attack from the West of Altkirch towards the Swiss frontier, tried to cut the French off from the bases. The available reserves were used for the frustration of this German counter-move and the French attack along the RHINE was slowed down slightly. The Germans now feel the disadvantage of having to fight with a major obstacle in their rear and few avenues of retreat leading to and over this obstacle. With the Allies at STRASBOURG and at MULHUSEN, their position might soon prove, hopeless, but they will do everything in their power to disentangle their Army of the Vosges. We look forward to a week of spectacular military events in the area.
THE OFFENSIVE EAST OF AACHEN
The offensive is called the Third Battle of AACHEN. EISENHOWER has employed the greatest possible concentration of troops and material. The bulk of the fighting sustained by the American 9th Army under General SIMPSON between GEILENKIRCHEN and STOLBERG. On the left flank of this Army substantial portions of the British 2nd Army have been thrown in North of GEILENKIRCHEN, and on the right flank, the greater part of the American first Army under General HODGE. This, on a 72 kilometre (42 mile) front, nearly two whole armies are engaged. We estimate this force at about 450,000 men,. The artillery barrage prior to and during the fighting used 20 tons of explosive per hour. Numerous squadrons of the Tactical
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Air Force were used in support and attacked every imaginable target – tanks rolling stock, supply columns, bridged, machine gun nest, flack emplacements, troop movements and troop concentrations.
The intention underlying this offensive was very plain; to widen the sent previously made in the SIEGFRIED LINE; to make this line yield under the repeated massive blows, to pour strategical reserves through the gap and to disorganise the German resistance on the left bank of the RHINE, between DUSSLEDORF and BONN.
The offensive started at 1100 hours on the 16th of November , on a 30 kilometre (18 mile) front, between GEILENKIRVHEN and GRESSENICH (3 ½ miles East of STOLBERG). On the first day the Allies achieved two penetrations about two miles apart.
On the second day, the 16th, the fighting spread North and South over a 70 kilometre front. The Germans put up a stubborn resistance, only yielding inch by inch. They could not prevent Allied success near WUERSELEN, along the AACHEN-JULICH road. On the 18th the strongest pressure was in the area of GEILENKIRCHEN.
On the 19th further pushes were made to the Eastwards in the Southern sector, East of GRESSENICH, in the forest of HUERTGEN and slightly South of it at VOSSENNACK.
So it continued all along the AACHEN front. One the 21st a big effort was made to crush the German resistance East of GEILENKIRCHEN; at GERONSWEIDER 120 tanks attacked on a 1,500 yard front. It must be this force, with infantry following up, which as reported to be nearing KINNICH (on the RUR) on the 25th.
To deal with ESCHWEIDER, the Americans had recourse to the usual tactics. Two spearheads outflanked the town to the North and South on the 22nd. They met East of the town on the 23rd, and stormed it on the 24th. The force, attacking from the South and South-West, consisted of two armoured divisions and three infantry divisions. This is indicative of the concentration on other points of the front.
At the same time, on the 24th November, the Americans who had scored the initial success North-East of WURSELEN on the 17th, appeared in sight of JULICH.
At the moment the fronts appeared as the bend from the North of GEILENKIRCHEN to LINNICH, JULICH, West of DUREN, East of Vossenack, then joining the old front probably West on MONSCHAU. The Americans are slightly less than halfway between AACHEN and COLOGNE, but their aim is not achieved; fighting continues with unabated fury on both sides.
In conclusion. – Although the greatest successes have been scored in the Allied right wing, our chances lie on the Central sector. Another week of fighting should bring both wings into direct contact with the SIEGFRIED LINE and, we confidently hope, the rupture of this line by the American 1st and 9th Armies. We are waiting for EISENHOWER’S rebid. Meanwhile fighting continues.
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SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
THE OFFENSIVE IN THE WEST
Those who did not expect an Allied offensive before next spring ad quite a few arguments in their favour. Firstly, a winter offensive would demand special equipment for the men, special coolant for armoured fighting vehicles and rolling stock, and the shorter days and bad weather would considerably restrict the telling effects of our air superiority. Lastly, we had plenty of time, so why hurry? But those who patiently and confidently kept waiting for an offensive before the winter set in with all its rigours, at last saw their hope materialise and their arguments prevail.
The enemy must not be allowed to recover from the blow he has suffered in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The new general call-up in Germany must not bear fruit, the men of the German Volkessturm must not be given the opportunity of becoming well –trained and well-equipped soldiers.
The respite was given to the Germans was unavoidable. The disrupted communications in the liberated countries had to be repaired and re-organised. Above all, ANTWERP has to be cleared, the free flow of supplies into this vital port had to be guaranteed. Even if, through other Atlantic ports, enough reserves could be piled up to start a general offensive in the West, ANTWERP was the only port which would ensure that the hell-fire about to break loose would be adequately fed.
Meanwhile tanks, rolling stock, general equipment and armaments could be minutely overhauled. Well employed, the time would not be wasted.
A few days after the channel into ANTWERP was freed, the offensive started along the whole part of the Allied front, which was directly facing Germany; on the 8th of November in the region of METZ, on the 14th November South-East of HELMOND, in Holland, and on the 16th around AACHEN. It is difficult to say where the heaviest fighting is going on. General EISENHOWER probably wants to test the whole German line; to engage vigorously everywhere and to find a weak spot. He will then attack, with all his remaining strength, at the weakest point.
The possibilities of developing a successful war of movement after a break-through is in the different sectors depend largely upon the topography of the country. It might be interesting to discuss them.
On the extreme right wing the country is mountainous – about 4,500 feet above sea level – in such areas, as a rule, roads and railways are few; this would mean certain restrictions on the strategical exploitation of a break-through, where fast mechanical forces must advance on a broad front, must be able to manoeuvre freely, causing confusion in the enemy’s rear.
Apart from the fact the nearby RHINE might break the swing of a fresh “war of movement” affording as it does good conditions for a determined rearguard action, we must consider the possibilities of effective defensive warfare in the fortified
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SCHWARDWALD, a mountainous wooded country with comparatively few roads. Those who argue that the scarcity of the roads in the event of a breakthrough would give full scope to the Air forces must remember that the first aim of any offensive is the destruction of the opponent, by killing, wounding or capture, and only an army can achieve this on the scale required.
One the left wing, between NYMWEGEN and ROERMOND, a break-through would be very effective. The distance from this sector to the RUHR, is short, about 30 miles. The communications, roads, etc to and from this vital industrial centre are plentiful and good; a war of movement in this area, a quick thrust towards the RUHR would endanger Germany’s economic and military position.
There are two setbacks:-
(1) The Allies have not yet completely mastered the left bank of the MEUSE, let along crossed the river. The main German defences are undoubtedly on eh right bank.
(2) The RHINE is comparatively near, and consequently there is little space to cut off the Germans on the left bank of the river. The latter must be regarded as a serious obstacle.
A break-through in the area GEILENKIRCHEN-STOLENBERG would smash the German central sector, the collapse of this would have immediate and far-reaching repercussions on both wings, particularly on the extreme left wing, between MOERDYK and NYMWEGEN.
The German advance bastion would be in a hopeless position I the event of an Allied break-through East of AACHEN. While on both wings the Allies have not yet contacted the SIEGFRIED LINE, in the AACHEN area they have been fighting in the line for some time. The German communiques repeatedly referred to pill boxes, dugouts and fortifies positions. A break-through in this area would, certainly, be decisive.
An Allied success in LORRAINE would probably yield the best strategical results. The distance to the RHONE (between STRASBOURG and MAINZ) is greater than from the other sectors. The region East of THIONVILLE-CHATEAU SALINS is flat and open, with good communications leading towards the mining district of the SAAR. General PATTON in an attempt to cut off the German retreat towards the RHINE, would have ample manoeuvring space. With some luck it might be possible to destroy the German forces opposing PATTON before many of them had crossed the RHINE, which would be left undefended.
Furthermore, at a moment when the Germans have to distil every drop of their fuel from coal, the loss of the SAAR coal-mines would be a serious blow to their war machine.
Let us now consider the various components of the whole offensive:-
(1) General PATTON’S 3rd American Army delivered the initial blow. His first intention was to outflank METZ from the North and South and make the two
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pincers meet East of the town. The Northern spearhead crossed the MOSELLE at KINIGSMACHERN, North of THIONVILLE, but German resistance then slowed up their advance. The Southern thrust was more successful. Starting from PONT-A-MOUSSON, it successively took NOMENY, DELME, CHATEAU-SALINS-MORCHINGEN and is now in the region of DIEUZE. The Germans prevented these two pincers from meeting.
To relieve the pressure at the bridgehead of KNIGSMARCHEN, PATTON attacked the MOSELLE between THORNVILLE and METZ and established a bridge head at UECKINGEN, halfway between. At the same time he delivered a frontal attack at THIONVILLE, which was taken on the 16th November. Soon GRAVELOTTE fell, and at present the Allies are closing in on METZ from all sides. We must bear in mind the fact that PATTON has not yet reached the 1939 German board, and that the SIEGFRIED LINE lies beyond. PATTON’S intention, therefore, is the acquisition of an easy jumping-off place for the carrying of the war of movement into the heart of Germany.
(2) On the 14th November, General DEMPSEY, with the British 2nd Army, started for the MEUSE in the direction of VENLO and ROERMOND, with the intention of clearing all German forces from the West bank of the river. This offensive seems to have met with great success. The Germans, at first, talked about an Allied bridgehead over the MOORSER CANAL at WEERT an now about their own bridgehead over the MEUSE at ROERMOND.
(3) Two days later, on the 16th November, activity flared up on the VOSGES front and the 3rd battle of AACHEN began.
(a) From BELFORT to BACCARAT we should regard PATTON’S attack as intended to pin down the German forces, preventing them from drafting reserves to the other sectors.
(b) The Germans, so far, have announced few details of the fighting in the STOLBERG area. Ferocious fighting with masses of artillery and tanks is going on over a 50 mile front; but no new names have yet been mentioned; the Germans have, however, claimed that an average of 40 tanks per day have been destroyed.
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THE LOG
ON THE MARCH
GREAT SELTAN 30TH January, 1945
VOLUME TWO
NUMBER FORTY EIGHT
We must apologise for being a day late in publishing this issue. It should have been on the boards of Belaria yesterday; since we do not speak Russian it is perhaps as well that it wasn’t. It is strange how men adapt themselves to changing conditions and there could be no more convincing proof of this than the production of some two or three hundred sledges in thirty minutes, their variety of design and efficiency is a credit to Kriegie ingenuity.
The first day’s march seems to have been found difficult by most people but everyone agrees that the next was much easier, I tis only a matter of getting used to it apparently, if you heat anyone grousing remind them of our troops sleeping and fighting in the open on the West Front or the Russians on the East, not very far East either. Rumour puts them about 30 kms. from here, but she always id exaggerate.
We should like to advise everybody to go easy with their rations. It seems quite likely that we shall be some time on this march and it is suggested that you budget for a minimum of 14 days; do not stint yourself on this account, with the full parcel you have and extra rations you brought, it should be possible to feed very well.
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Readers may be glad to hear that the manuscript for the Souvenir Edition has been brought along, we do not guarantee that it will be carried indefinitely (it weighs 9 ½ lbs.) but every effort will be made to get it home.
To-day is a Heaven-sent chance to get yourself set up for the rest of the great trek. Get your socks etc., dry, the best way is to put them near your body, possibly between your shirt and tunic under the arms. When we start marching again you should on no account, sit in the snow or on milestones, etc., this leads to rheumatism, piles or other frightful trouble which will aggravate the difficultly of walking.
In conclusion, don’t let it all get you down – all you have to do is to keep your bowels, ears and mnd open.
R.O.T.F.B.
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THE MARCH
January 27th Stalag Luft III. Sagan
AT 9.30 tonight the camp was warned to be ready to leave in 30 minutes. This was the usual German timing, however, and we finally paraded at 0015 hours on the morning of Sunday the 29th. This was a lucky delay as it gave is time to make sledges upon which to tow our kit, enabling us of course, to carry much more. The greatest ingenuity was shown in constructing these vehicles and everything from coal boxes to Red Cross arm chairs when into their making.
It is impossible to describe our feelings when we were told to march and I won’t attempt to do so but the immediate reaction was interesting. We had never been in such a situation before. We were about to leave behind an accumulation of books, equipment, food, clothing, cigarettes, etc., which had been accumulated during the past five years and officers who had hoarded every safety-pin, nail and bit of broken glass were to be seen trying to give away thousands of cigarette, brand new clothing, and all other things which they could not carry but did not wish to burn or leave for the Germans. We felt that this move indicated that the war was very nearly over and were accordingly in the highest of spirits.
The 0015 hours parade was eventually dismissed at 0145 and we were told that we should be really be going in about an hour and a half, so went we back to our quarter and rechecked boots, pack, etc., and had a good meal. One very bitter aspect of this move was that out much looked forward to British Red Cross Xmas parcels which had arrived later were to have been issued the next day. Of course, we never got them.
We eventually left at 5a.m. on the Sunday, and a very strange procession would its way across the German countryside for 20 kilometres to a small village called Kunau – the drawing will give you some idea of the variety of clothing which we were wearing and we must have been a very strange
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sight to German eyes. Many people had decided that overcoats were much too heavy for a long march and had made capes or hoods out of blankets – others were wearing home-made puttee, some were in Balaclavas, some in the remains of flying kit, and a few- very few- in R.A.F. uniform of various types. Most of us were smoking pipes and everybody was towing or carrying odd looking bundles of kit and equipment, to which were attached kettles, jugs, milk tins and water bottles. All our pockets were filled with things we had decided at the last moment we could not leave behind and it was strange to dip your hand into a conglomeration of raw potatoes, razor blades, black bread and probably a fork or spoon seized at the last moment.
On arrival at Kunau we were put into barns. The march itself had not been bad – the roads were frozen and sledging was easy, but many of us were very foot-sore and everybody was extremely tired. We cooked meals over small fires and made a brew f tea or coffee. (I should have mentioned that we each had a whole Red Cross parcel which we had collected on marching out. Owing to the fact that the Germans, throughout the whole march, gave us little or no food, these parcels undoubtedly saved many of us from serious illness and possibly from the fate which occurred to other less fortunate groups of prisoners who were also on the march.)
The lucky people in the barns were those who managed to get a cow to sleep with – they were delightfully warm and very friendly. But most people found it very cold and did not sleep much that night. Another thing which many of us discovered was that n these conditions it is very dangerous to sleep with your boots on because they freeze solid and contract, and one wakes up in agony.
We were up early next morning and set off again about 9 o’clock and marched through Wiesau to Gross Selten. We arrived there at about 1600 hours and were put into a large farmyard with much netter barns than the night before and plenty of straw. The German people along the road were
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All very friendly and at times it was almost like being a unit of a liberating army – they would rush out with hot water and anything they could spare ad barter with us for cigarettes. Our guards, who were Volsturmers of an average age of about 65, were apathetic about this, as indeed they were apathetic about this, as indeed they were about the whole match, but the Luftwaffe officers in charge of the column got extremely annoyed and tried to prevent fraternisation by reminding the civilian that we were the very gangsters and child murderers of whom Dr. Goebbels had warned them to beware. This had no effect whatever. As soon as the officers’ backs were turned the business was resumes and we were sent on our way with a wave and a smile.
There was plenty of scrap wood about in the farm yard at Gross Selten and we made meals of corned beef etc., and settled down for the night. We were very lucky in our barn since it had electric light. The farmer was very irate when he discovered we had it on, but one cigarette seemed to placate him over this. We did not make the mistake of keeping our boots on this time, and by struggling together in the straw had a really warm and restful night – except for those whose ashes and pains from unaccustomed marching kept them awake.
We were wakened at 7.30 the next morning, and having made coffee with hot water which we bought from the farm labourers’’ wives exchange for cigarettes, we were paraded for counting at 0930 hours. To our delight we were told that we would be staying here all day for the rest. There was great rejoicing over this and the rumour mongers who had not been idle since we left Sagan really came into their form. “…. The Russians were 3 kilometres away …. The British and Americans had crossed the Rhine ….Hitler had gone completely round the bed and Goering had taken over and was discussing peace terms, etc., etc., “ We could, of course, get no German papers, and owing to the fact that the column had split up, the wireless, which had been dispersed among several people, was also split and we could not use it, so that we could get no real news to confirm or deny
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these rumours. I published o one page log on the lines of “it could be worse” – this is included in this book. It amused people to see it in these odd surrounding, but as the oil in the typewriter was frozen the printing was tricky. Entract did a drawing of a Kriegie with a sledge – very good considering that his hands too were frozen from the cold.
An interesting part of this day’s stay was that a motorised section of a German Panzer Division. Chased out of Lipmannstadt by the Russians, arrived in charge of one officer. It consisted of several lorries and the officer’s car, The troops were all very friendly and only too anxious to trade their rations for our cigarettes or coffee – they assured us that the war would be over in a day or two ( this was January 29th) and there was only one incident with these people, which occurred when somebody removed a goose from the officer’s car. He complained to the Group Captain and threatened that strong measure would be taken if this bird was not returned. An appeal was made for this return, but it was not forthcoming – the truth of the matter was that it had already been cooked and eaten The German officer grew to feel, however, that a 4 ounce bar of chocolate and 100 American cigarettes was ample compensation and the matter was settled this way.
The farmyard around which our barns were built looked like a Gipsy camp, with hundreds of little fires heating jam tins of water and people stirring a has or stew. It was altogether a very happy day because the German opinion that the war would be over in a few days had spread around and nothing could have dampen our spirits
We left there the next morning at about 0800 hours and did 20 kilometres through Tappferstadt, to Birkenstadt. The temperature rose in the afternoon and a slight thaw set in. The sludge made sledging much more difficult, and we did not arrive till 1700 hours. We were put into barns again – these barns were unheated and unlit, and even in the daytime there was little light – in sharp contrast to the adjacent shed which housed 98
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Friesland cows and had central heating, running water and electric light: We had by now got wise to the fact that it was far better to group together and make large communal meals, and we fed better from then on; but since we were locked into the bard at 1700 hours we got very hungry during the night, as of course we could neither smoke not light fires owing to the great danger of fire in the straw. Another inconvenience of being locked in the barns at 1700 hours every night was that these barns contained no water taps or any form of sanitary arrangement. A note in my diary written that night echoes the general feeling “Although dead tired, I feel very well – my feet are holding out well and apart from al the aches and pains inevitable after so much marching, everything is fine.”
I gave a small girl of eight a piece of chocolate and she looked at me very suspiciously when I told her to eat it and refused to do so until I had nibbled a small piece off the corner to demonstrate its edible properties. She then ate some herself and the ecstatic expression on her face as she got the flavour was wonderful to see. She had never seen chocolate before: She became very friendly after this and I showed her photos of my two children, which excited her very much, and she gradually became less nervous of me, until when we left I found it quite difficult to shake her off as she followed me down the road, hoping for more chocolate.
February 1st
We spent the whole day there again because, we understood, the parties marching ahead of us had slowed down and there was no accommodation on the road. We got one fifth of a loaf of bread that day – the first German rations for 5 days. The farmer in whose barn we were billeted got very annoyed at the way his straw, etc., was being moved about. He shouted and bellowed at everybody n German to no effect – he then told the Group Captain that he was surprised at the conduct of British officers in a foreign country. It was pointed out to hi, that the officers concerned were in completely strange circumstances and they the Germans had
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[Image – ON THE MARCH]
[Image – BARN AT BIRKENSTADT]
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[Image – 8 CHEVAUX, 40 HOMMES. SPREMBERG – LUCKENWALDE, 1945,]
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Broken nearly every article of the Geneva convention in their treatment of us during the last 5 days – we therefore felt under no obligation to be of good behaviour. One of the members of our “mess” begged, borrowed or stole a chicken from somebody and it was boiled and divided among 21 of us – I got the wish-bone and thought that I was unlucky until I saw someone with the beak.
A great blow fell in the afternoon when it started to thaw rapidly – by 1600 hours the thaw was complete and we realised the worst had happened. From now on everything had to be carried on our backs.
The next day we set off over very heavy country and owing to the thaw the mud was ankle deep. Nobody was very cheerful by the time we arrived at Schonheide where we were split into parties of 100 and thrown into damp strawless, unlit barns. The doors were immediately locked and therefore we could not cook a hot meal. Everybody was dead beat, however, and after some biscuits and margarine settled down to sleep.
Next day we marched to Spremberg where we were taken to a very large German Tank Corps depot and locked into the empty tank sheds. An hour later we were given half a litre of hot liquid containing no meat or solids but having a faintly cereal flavour. This was the first “hot meal” the Germans had given us since leaving Sagan 7 days previously. We entrained during the afternoon into empty cattle trucks and at 1630 hours we were locked in – 50 men to each, which made it quite impossible for us all to lie or sit down at once, so we took it in turned to do so. Seven hours later the train left the station and we were told that our destination was Luckenwalde, a large Stalag 32 miles south of Berlin and about 60 miles from our present position. Next morning we were still going, with frequent stops in railway sidings, and we arrived at Luckenwalde Station at about 1700 hours.
It was just beginning to get dark and the Germans had great trouble in counting us before marching off to the camp. When they had done so four times
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with different results, none of which was the figure they expected, we marched off in the rain to the camp where we spent an hour and a half standing outside the gates waiting for admission - there was no apparent reason for this. When we finally got into the camp 2000 hours we were searched, deloused, etc., until 0600 hours, the next morning when we were shown our new barracks.
It is impossible to describe the revulsion and disgust we all felt on seeing them – they were squalid and sordid buildings with great parched of damp all over the inside walls and ceilings. The door would not shut and most of the windows were broken. Three tiered beds in sets of 12, accommodating 200 men in each room, were indescribably filthy, with dirty and half filled paliasses. There was nowhere to cook our food and the water was turned off so that we could not even wash.
During the train journey from Spemberg the senior British officer of our party was visited by a German Foreign Office official who, without giving any reason, asked for a statement from the British that the German had made every attempt to improve condition on the march and that we were quite satisfied with their behaviour in this respect. This was undoubtedly an attempt to offset the indignation shown by the World Press over the whole incident, and, with typical German propaganda methods, it was implied that the giving of such a statement would greatly improve our living conditions at the new camp. The statement was, of course, refused. On arrival home we were dismayed to find that our relatives had been greatly upset by the very exaggerated stories of this march which has been splashed over the cheap “dailies”. It is regrettable that the people responsible for this type of press sensationalism cannot, for a moment, put themselves I the other people’s places.
Stag IIIa, Luckenwalde
This camp contained many nationalities including British, American, French, Russian, Italian, Jugoslav, Czechoslovakian and Norwegian officers and soldiers.
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We were the only R.A.F. contingent and it turned out that the Group Captain was the senior British officer in the camp. He immediately made representations to the Commandant to get in touch with the Red Cross authorities of the protecting power. This was the most urgent since there was no Red Cross food and we were having to live entirely on German rations, which at the time consisted of one fifth of a loaf, half a litre of soup, about 6 potatoes and one ounce of margarine per a per day. This diet contained just over half the calorific value of a man’s minimum daily requirements but apart from feeling hungry we found that we were quite fit on it provided that we did not exert ourselves in any way at all.
A far greater lack was that of literature. We had no books of any sort- they had been too heavy to carry – and there was no camp library. This period of just lying about with nothing to read, no mail coming in or out, and a perpetual hunger, was very trying and it is interesting that the topic of food was the only one discussed by anybody – people used to spend hours discussing the meals they would have when they got their parcels or when they got home and although it was a form of self-torture, everybody found themselves doing it. This was slightly relieved on February 23rd, three weeks after our arrival, when the 600 Norwegian officers gave us a gift of some Danish Red Cross parcels. It worked out at about one fifth of a parcel each and included small quantities of butter, cheese, Ryvita, sausage, sugar, molasses and oatmeal. The generosity which promoted this gift from those who were already short can only be appreciated by those who were there. It was a splendid gesture for which we shall never cease to be grateful to our Norwegian friends.
The lack of literature and educational facilities forced people to seek other occupation and it was interesting to watch how people one knew well reacted to these new condition. Many started to learn language from the Polish officers who were in our compound – they were very anxious to learn English of which many had a smattering, and were
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Willing in exchange to teach Polish, Russian, German or Spanish which most of them spoke fluently.
The Doctor from our camp at Sagen had marched with us – Capt. Montuuis R.A.M.C. – and had used nearly all his portable medical supplies during his valiant work caring for those who fell ill or had foot trouble on the march. His hospital at Luckenwalde consisted of a small walled-off section of a barrack without any heating or water in it (although this was later improved) and the Germans could not or would not, produce any medical supplies. We were fortunate, however in that the general health of the contingent was food and there was a German run hospital in the immediate neighbourhood of the camp which could deal with really serious cases. Nothing could be done, however, for the hundreds of people which suffered from an epidemic or sore throats and bad colds – luckily this cleared up without any serious development.
A regular supply of American Red Cross parcels began to come in about the middle of March and this, of course, improved the general conditions enormously. There is no question that, whatever one’s normal environment it is possible to out up almost indefinitely with the utmost discomfort, dirt and squalor provided that you are reasonably fed and warmly clad. The arrival of this food, together with the improvement in the news, which we were getting daily through our secret wireless, enabled us to ignore the unpleasant side of the life.
There were persistent rumours throughout our stay at Luckenwalde that we should move again when the Russians came close and we allows held reserves of food against this possibility, which took shape when we were marched to the station on Saturday, April 14th, where a train was waiting, ostensibly to take us to Moosbery near Munich – this journey did not see, at all pleasant in view of the great activity of R.A.F. and American aircraft. We did, however, manage to persuade the Germans to provide the paint and allow us to embellish the tops of the carriages with the letter “R.A.F.- P.O.W.” in yellow.
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[IMAGE – PER ARDUD AD ASTRA! A THREE TIER NIGHTMARE]
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We were locked in the train on Saturday night and told that we should leave as soon as the engine was available to pull us out. The German civilians living round the station were very friendly, and once again, only top anxious to trade their meagre rations for our coffee and cigarettes. The German railway staff looked upon the whole thing as a huge joke and had told us on arrival at the station that there was no hope of an engine ever arriving to take us to Moosberg. This proved to be true when we were marched back to the camp on the evening of Sunday the 15th.
It was now becoming apparent that the war could not last much longer and our “Defence Scheme,” which had been long planned to cover the moment when the Germans fled, was reviews and brought up to date. The German staff of the camp were becoming increasingly polite and obsequious – many of them going to the extent of asking for “good conduct notes” which they could present to the oncoming enemy, and their one prayer was that the British or Americans would arrive first.
And here I will digress to tell of one German interrogating officer who, when asked by a British prisoner whether he thought the Russians or Western allies would reach Berlin first said: “the Western Allies – even if we have to send transport for them” (this remark was made in September ’44!)..
The Defence Scheme, which I have already mentioned, was organised in secret and designed to keep the vital services of the camp going after the German left – it was also necessary in a camp of this size to have some systems of picketing the perimeter to prevent prisoners wandering off individually or n groups and endangering themselves in the local fighting. It was realised, too, that large numbers of displaced persons for the military commanders of advancing forces. While still in German hands we managed to contact the senior representative of each nationality in the camp and got their agreement to our proposals. The situation,
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As we foresaw it, was that we should awaken one morning and find the Germans had gone. Things turned out very differently because on the morning of Saturday, 21st April it became obvious that the German were about to leave. The first indication was that the sentry boxes were no longer manned, and then, one by one, the guards and sentries in the camp were withdrawn. At about mid-day the Germans paraded just outside the main gate in full marching order and the Commandant sent for the Senior Officer of the Camp, General Otto Ruge, Commander in Chief of Norwegian Forces. There was some delay in finding the General and the Germans were in such a hurry that they would not wait and selected the nearest senior looking officer who happened to be an American and formally handed over to him. They then marched out of the camp and were not seen again until some of them re-appeared in the Russian prison cages.
It should be appreciated that we were now completely surrounded by Germans, although they had officially evacuated the camp. There were not Allied Forced in sight, and there was some doubt as to how long we should be left in this sort of No Man’s Land. The water and light had been cut off at the mains in the local town, but the Works Service of our organization found some fire trailer pumps and pumped up water from static pools to maintain essential services. The light question could not be overcome until the power station was going again. A report from the patrol in Luckenwalde says “Quiet and orderly throughout the time. By 1100 hours all available food was distributed, and the factory manager of an armament works making breech blocks was yesterday ordered to destroy the vital parts of his machinery – which was done. Civilian are being evacuated by Police order, but the Volksturmers are still in the town. In the woods near the camp is a party of 7 or 8 S.S. troops and 100 soldiers who have visited the came and stated that anyone outside the wire would be fired upon and that any overt acts of hostility would bring drastic reprisals.” There was a light artillery unit in the woods north of the camp
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under a German general and we were not a little surprised when his officer visited us to say that unless the 8 rifles stolen from his men were immediately returned he would open fire upon the camp. The rifles had apparently been taken by some of the members of the camp and an appeal was made. They were found and returned to hm. The day was generally very quiet and, of course there was plenty to do inside the camp organising food distribution, cooking, reception of refugees who were pouring n from working parties, etc., etc. There were no incidents inside the camp – which is a great tribute to the discipline of the 25,000 inhabitants of all ranks and nationalities. Everyone went to bed that night wondering whether the morning would bring Russians or Americans. From the activity around they appeared to be about equi-distant from us. This later proved to be a false assumption.
At about one o’clock on Sunday morning April 21st a German aircraft strafed the camp This was the first time during the whole of our stay in Germany that we had been in any way directly affected by air warfare. However, the effect of this was fortunately not very serious The pilot flew up the main street of the camp and most of his shells fell in that street – it was amusing however to see people baling out of top bunks and landing on people who were simultaneously baling out of the tier below. Another amusing incident during this night was a visit from the Mayor or Luckenwalde who wanted to hand over the town to us. This offer was of course, refused by General Ruge. It was probable that the townspeople felt that this might in some way hold off the Russians, of whom, they lived in greatest terror.
At about 0500 hours on the Sunday a light Russian armoured car drove into the Camp at a high Speed, pulling up with a jerk outside our headquarters. A small and very dirty Russian emerged and was immediately surrounded by delirious prisoners who felt that at last they were on their way home. He, (the Russian) seemed to be very excited and grabbed
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everybody in sight, kissing them and slapping them on the back. They left about 20 minutes later and took General Ruge to report to their headquarters. They also took the senior American officer and an interpreter, who were perched up on the outside of the viehicle [sic] but ended their journey rapidly when fired upon just outside the camp. They did a smart roll into the ditch and the armoured car went on to Luckenwalde.
By this time there was continuous fighting in the woods all around us, but somehow none of the shells or bullets seemed to land in the camp. At about 10 o’clock a party of several Russians tanks and armoured cars drove in. As they were driving through the camp the German party in the woods just to the west of the camp opened fire on them, but caused no casualties. We could get no information from these people as to our evacuation since they were spear-head troops but they told us that the occupation forces would be along very soon and our position would be made clear. With this party of tanks and armoured cars was a large troop carrier filled with Tommy Gunners and it was very strange to note that one of these was a very attractive 19 year old girl, dressed like a man in a short smock ad breeches. It was incongruous to watch this women very battle stained and with a Tommy Gun across her knee, produce a dainty white handkerchief. She was asked to what unit she belonged and replied with obvious pride, “I am a soldier of the Red Army” but would say no more. Here it should be mentioned that the security observed by all ranks of the Red Army was of a very high order. They must have been extremely well trained on the subject and the penalties for leakage were, of course, very severe.
While this was going on the Russians were occupying the town of Luckenwalde and passing through in great numbers. Several independent reliable witnesses stated that apart from the firing of pistol shots into the air the occupation was quickly and effectively carries out. The discipline and behaviour of the Russian troops was reported
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as being correct in every way and the Germans were undoubtedly astonished and very relieves at this.
By 1100 most of the Russian troops had passed through and the German civilians began looting shops, taking particularly footwear and linen goods. White flags were flying everywhere and civilians were asking: “Where are the Americans?” The German civilian’s also looted the town bakery taking all the flour.
All Russian prisoners in the camp, approximately 9.000 were released today and anyone who could walk were given rifles and told to go and shoot Germans. One party of these Russians ex-prisoners was ambushed by German civilians I the wood near the gate and four of them were killed. The civilians responsible were subsequently captured. The German neighbourhood were now being broken up into small parties and many of them came and tried to surrender to the British or American camp. We took these prisoners on for subsequent handing over to the Russian authorities. One of these Germans, who had been the driver of a food lorry, said that he considered himself better off now under them than he had been in the last days of Naziism. [sic]
During these next few days we were frequently visited by Russian officers but could not get our position clarified. They also brought a film unit and photographers who took photographs of the various groups of prisoners and filmed the funeral of the eight Russian soldiers who had been found starved to death in a barrack in the camp. Another visiting Russia officer told us that there were still four German divisions in the area – two tank and two infantry – but that since the tank divisions had no tanks and the infantry division no boots they were only employing one Russian division to mop them up.
On the 26th April, Major General Famin of the Repatriation Board on Koniev’s staff visited the camp – he was accompanied by a bodyguard with a tommy-gun who posted himself outside the
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S.B.O.’s office throughout the interview. He said that he believed that owing to the approach of the two armies and the congestion of the lines of communication in the Russian rear it was most probable that we would return home via the West and assured us that whatever our route everything was being done to get us home as rapidly as possible.
A Russian girl interpreter, youthful, attractive and very smartly dresses in a tailored uniform and wearing Russian boots visited Camp yesterday. She remarked on the smartness and bearing of the British and American prisoners. She said that this camp resembled no other which her unit has yet liberated. Other camps have needed a Russian administrative staff to run them and on occasions the prisoners immediate on liberation have abandoned the camps for luxurious German quarters which they have badly despoiled. The interpreters, whose name is Maya and rank sergeant, visited some of our barracks and said that she considered them disgusting accommodation and that in view of the difficultly in living in them they were kept in remarkably good condition and the officers appeared to keep themselves smarter and more presentable than might have been expected. Sergeant Maya only began to earn English five months ago. Sher applied to join a fighting unit but was posted as interpreter. A number of Russian officers have expressed their gratification at the discipline and administrative organisation of the camp and for the past few days of continual stream of Russian officers has been reaching the camp to see that British officers look like and how they behave. The Russian officers who are not on duty are very willing to speak on political matters. One Russian major deprecated the pre-war propaganda which he considered had misled both British and Russian in respect of each other as individuals. He said that the Russian people have a genuine respect and admiration for Mr. Churchill whose “personality is very sympathetic” to them. They had all considered the death of President Roosevelt a great loss. This officer, however, preferred more
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than anything to talk about his small two-year-old son, of whom he carried a large photograph.
Another Russian officer said that his wife and three children had been shot by the Germans in Murmansk and his own main interest in life now was the pursuit and extinction of Nazis.
Senior Russian officers, including a political officer and senior Allied officers yesterday attended a funeral near this camp of a number of Russian ex-prisoners of war. No religious service was held at all but a number of speeches were made and a firing party of Russian ex-prisoners of war fired a number of live rounds which included a burst of a tommy-gun fire, over the grave. The Russian political officer made a rousing speech which ended in the words “Death to the Fascist Invaders.”
The following is an account of a visit to Luckenwalde by one of our officers yesterday:-
“There is very little damage In the town and only two buildings damaged by shells or bombs were seen in a five hour visit. Both of the damaged buildings were factories. There were a few traces of street fighting where house were spattered with machine-gun bullets and some trees on ether sidewalk had been uprooted by passing tanks. Convoys of tanks and 3-ton lorries were still passing through the town mostly arriving from the south-easterly direction and going west. Life in the town appears to be extremely quiet, even dull. The civilian in the streets are almost all women ad old men. Those of Russian extraction wear a res arm-band for security and as a symbol of peaceful intentions.
“German civilian are continually stopping British officers to ask them when the Americans or the English will arrive. The reaction to the reply that they will probably not come to this area is dismay and sometimes tears. The German civilians appear to be gathering in their houses and having large number of gloom sessions. Requests to Germans for articles which are being requisitioned are very swiftly met without hesitation or question. All photographic and radio stores have been looted by
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the Germans and during yesterday’s tour to requisition sets for the barrack blocks of tis camp, very little success was met with. The Russians in units attached to Luckenwalde all seem to be most anxious to talk to officers about their captivity and will even listen with great interest to anyone’s ‘shot down’ story.”
Our problems were being increased by the hundreds of civilian refugees who were applying for permission to enter the camp -these included a large number of women and children and we had no facilities to look after them. One barrack was, however, allotted to them and everything possible was done to make them comfortable and to feed them. They were all interrogated before admittance and any who were doubtful cases or obviously German were thrown out. This caused not a little heart-burning in some of the most difficult cases - where, for instance, a Belgian arrived with his German wife whom. Of course, we could not admit. We were lucky in having a quantity of unclaimed parcels which had been sent by relative to women in German internment camps these were opened and their contents distributed to the needy. It was a new experience for the R.A.F. officers to hold clothing parades and distribute feminine civilian clothing.
The situation in Luckenwalde continues to be extremely quiet. The Russians were reported to be searching civilian’s’ houses for arms. Civilian were appearing more in the streets, though usually only in groups – women shopped but did not go out alone. The resistance groups in the woods were losing their ardour and little firing was heard. During the day a German leaflet entitled “The Avenger” was dropped by a German aircraft. Its main theme was that the situation was not so bad and that no attention should be paid to the enemy’s lies on the wireless – Hitler and Goebbels were said to be in Berlin directing and decisive battle of the war.
At 1330 hours today the Senior Allied Officer was called to Luckenwalde to see a Senior Russian Officer.
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The Senior Allied Officer left with the intention of requesting:-
1.Representatives from this camp should be allowed to go by car to Marshal Koniev’s Headquarters to try to obtain more information, and to try to get in touch with the British and American Liaison Officers to the Russian Army.
2.Representatives from this camp should be flown to Allied Headquarters.
The Senior Allied Officer has neglected no opportunity for obtaining information concerning evacuation plans concerning the camp. He has continually stressed to all the Russian officers whom he has interviewed how unsatisfactory it is for all those in camp to remain here for any length of time and how bored and discouraged everyone in the camp feels.
All the Russian officers to who, he has spoken have shown the greatest sympathy and understanding and willingness to make our situation tolerable and to expedite repatriation.
SIGNALS
The various Security Signals Services of the Oflag and Stalag have functioned according to plan from the beginning. As a result of this the Allied authorities in the West should have been in full possessions of our conditions and local situations for some day. The Allied Signals Service of the Camp has picked up a number of prisoners of war stations working according to the prepared plan. One of the strongest signals received has been from a prisoner of war camp near Regensberg.
No replies have come in to us or any other prisoner of war camps but this is not unexpected as there has been no immediate emergency.
Among other signals picked up have been intercom. conversations between air crews.
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SUPPLY
The Allied Supply Officer with a staff of 50 including leaders if the foraging parties has to cater for approximately 15,900 men.
Although he has the greatest assistance from the Russian authorities who have made every effort to respond to his demand notes it has not so far been possible to organise food issues on a 48-hour basis.
The new Russian Base Organisation with which the Supply Officer is already in contact has promised to facilitate this. The Supply Officer states today that the food organisation and the food situation generally shows improvements with the arrival of the Russians’ permanent administration. Hitherto food issue has been working on an 8-hour cycle which has meant the issue of food almost immediately on arrival. Food is issued by the Supply Organisation direct to the 5 camp kitchens where it is divided on a pro-rata basis for the whole camp. Most of the bread has been coming in from Russian stores. Flour has been commandeered and bread is also being baked in Luckenwalde by Russian and other Allied bakers. Yesterday a quarter of a loaf was issued by the changeover of Russian administration caused some delay and at mid-day today it was not known what the ratio would be.
The following are a few figures of supplies received in a the camp for the whole period April 24th to April 26th inclusive:- 9,015 loaves of bread; Pork -95 kilogrammes and 82 sides of pork; 7 head of cattle; Potatoes – 4 tons; Beef and beef tallow – 854 kilogrammes; Flour – 3,000 kilogrammes; Corn meal and wheat – 5,375 kilogrammes beef tallow – 854 kilogrammes; Flour – 3,000 kilogrammes; Corn meal and wheat – 5,375 kilogrammes; Salt – 625 kilogrammes; Pudding Powder – 625 kilogrammes; Butter – 1,850 kilogrammes; onions – 150 kilogrammes; Soup Powder – 150 kilogrammes; Dried vegetables for soup – 15,700 kilogrammes; Sugar – 6,000 kilogrammes.
It is hoped to make arrangements under which members of the camp shall accompany Russian
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Police Patrols in the town. The large number of French Commandos which arrive in the camp for orders from time to time will be dealt with by French Patrols.
The new Russian Town Major yesterday sent for the German Mayor of Luckenwalde and expressed his disapproval of the water supply. There has been water in the town, but the Germans have not taken the trouble to build up a head of pressure for the camp. The Russian Town Major told the Mayor that it would be unfortunate if pressure for the camp was not built up immediately. The Mayor of Luckenwalde appreciated the point.
In the past few days Polish Officers in this camp have received visits from several Russian officers including one from the Political Affairs Department. The Polish Officer were told that the Western boundary of the new Poland would be the Oder and East Prussia and Danzig would be Polish thus eliminating the old Polish Corridor. Poland’s Eastern boundary will be the Curzon Line. The Russians stated that all Polish towns are now under a Polish Commandant. The Russians promised all the Poles in the camp a quick return home and said that letters would be forwarded to their families in Poland and agreed to supply them with Russian and Polish newspapers if they could be obtained. Three Polish Senior Officers arrived here yesterday from a camp for high ranking Polish Officers near Berlin. They said that the rest of the party was on the way here.
A German civilian who came to this camp requesting shelter yesterday told the Camp Intelligence office that according to a Czech railway worker whom he met on his way here there has been fighting in Berlin between S.S. and Wehrmacht troops and Volksturmers.
The Camp supply officer said this evening that among the stores bought on today were 20 tins of potatoes, enough bread for an issue of one sixth of a loaf per man tomorrow and enough sugar for an issue of 50 grams per head. About 800 pounds of meat had come in so that there would be meat in
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the pea soup tomorrow. It is hoped t obtain enough bread for the next issue to be a quarter of a loaf. Forage parties have located several more sources of supply and permission is being sought from the Russians to work them. These stores contain sugar, jam, barley, oatmeal, potatoes, rice and canned meat.
Works Department Staff from the camp, in Luckenwalde this evening met two American War Correspondents, a man and a woman, both in khaki with green U.S. War Correspondent tabs. They were on their way through to Berlin there whey hoped t be the first American War Correspondents to enter the city. They have heard about Stalag IIIA and they sent good wishes to everyone in the Camp for a safe and quick return home.
Latest news of the camp water supply is that the authorities hope to have town water up here within two days. The electric booster pump for raising the pressure to supply the camp has been out of commission because the wires in the woods had been cut and repair was difficult because of local snipers.
The first Americans from the Western Front have arrived in Luckenwalde.
A Russian woman lieutenant who is a Medical officer attached to local forces of the Red Army called at the camp at 2215 hours and requested details of all sick by 0600 hours this morning. She required the list to be divided into 3 sections – 1. Seriously ill; 2. Patients confined to bed; 3. Patients not bed-ridden. The return was made to her at the required time and it showed that there were 215 seriously ill, 177 other patients confined to bed and 881 other patients – a total of 1,273. Their nationalities were: British, American, Polish, Norwegian, French, Yugoslav, Italian, Czecho-Slav, Rumanain [sic] and Belgian. The Russian officer who was blond, smartly dressed and appeared to be very efficient was not able to give any information about the time of the evacuation of the sick.
There is still more evidence that the open countryside around us s very much an operational area.
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A Russian Colonel paying a social call on the S.A.O. last night said that there were estimated to be approximately 15,000 Germans still loose within a 16 mile area of Luckenwalde. They are wandering about in disorganised bands and attempting to drive West. They have been without food for five days and are inclined to be rather desperate. One member of this camp who had taken off on his own to try and get west ran into a group of them about 5 miles from here yesterday and had to talk rather fast before he could get away. They warned him that there would be a lot of shooting going on in the woods. A member of a camp Forage Party who had difficulty in identifying himself to a Russian patrol also found himself in a rather difficult situation. German civilians around Luckenwalde are only too anxious to have members of the Allied forced living with them as they are under the impression that this gives them protection and exemption from Russian occupation orders. In fact, any member of this camp who takes up residence in a German house opens himself to being suspect by the Russians and foregoes the protection from military operations which the camp affords. A few members of this camp have already paid for their misunderstanding of this with their lives.
FOOD
The Camp Supply Organisation this morning had enough bread for an issue of one-fifth of a loaf. Other dry ration issues will be : 100 grammes of sugar, 30 grammes of pudding powder and 300 grammes of potatoes. 30 pigs weighing approximately 200 pounds each are also coming in. A stock of peas has been located at a Hitler Youth Camp near Juterbog. The Supply Officer says that the camp is poorer by some considerable amount of sugar and potatoes which were in a store at a village close to the camp. These supplies were awaiting collection by a Camp Foraging Party but they were removed by an unofficial foraging party: Unofficially foraging and requisitioning is, in fact, nothing but robbery of camp supplies. Every assistance is being given to our foraging parties by the Russians. A foraging
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Party leader said today: “The Russians are not very keen on paper work but when they are told to do something they go flat out, through all obstacles will they have done it.”
The following is a description by an Allies representative from the camp who was present this morning in the Luckenwalde Municipal Offices at the interview between the Russian Town Major and the Burgomaster of Luckenwalde.
The Town Major is a man of about 40 years of age, of rugged appearance and well over six feet tall. During the interview two other Russian officers, both very operational types, and each as tall as the Town Major sat beside him at the head of the Town Council Room table. The Burgomaster of Luckenwalde, a harassed looking little grey-haired man with spectacles, who is collaborating as hard as he can was accompanied by his assistant and his interpreter. The Town Major spoke quietly and firmly and did not raise his voice once. The only shouting was done by the three Germans who shouted at each other. The Town Major told the Burgomaster that the obtaining of meat, food and water supply for this camp was to have priority over everything else. He requested a complete inventory of all farms, farm stock, food and equipment in this area and ordered the delivery of 15 cows to the camp today. When the Burgomaster protested that the water situation was too difficult owing to lack of fuel the Town Major said that transport and workers would be placed at his disposal at once so that a search for fuel could be made. The Burgomaster was given permission to use his own car and was told that the Russian authorities would supply him with all his fuel and service and repair the car whenever he wished. When the Burgomaster asked if he might keep his radio set the Town Major asked why. The Burgomaster replied that he wished to be able to know the correct time. The Town Major was highly amused by this reply and told the Burgomaster that he thought the Russian authorities would be able to tell him the correct time whenever he wished.
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There has been a big crowd of German civilians delivering their radio sets to the Russian authorities at the Town Major’s office all day today. A number of these are being serviced and repairs by the camp staff and the cocks in the Stalag and Oflag have priority for them.
Some Russian officers who visited the S.A.O.’s offices this morning has just come from Potsdam. They said theta the town was not as badly smashed as Berlin and quoted a Red Air Force pilot who had been over Berlin this morning and said that the capital was ablaze from end to end.
They were asked why Marshal Stalin has never come to England or outside Russia to meet Mr. Churchill. Their reply was “Mr. Churchill and the American President only have one job each. Marshal Stalin is Commander in Chief of the Forces, Prime Minister and Leader of the nation and he cannot possibly spare the tome to leave the Soviet Union.” The Russians do not like their political officers to be referred to as Political Commissars. They are known in the Red Army as “Officers in charge of Military Morale and Political Education.”
The Russian Colonel who visited the S.A.O. last night asked the S.A.O. why the Germans fight the Russians to the death, but are anxious to surrender to the Anglo-American forces. The S.A.O. replied that this was due to German propaganda attempts to split the Allies and to the fact that the Germans were well aware of the devastation and terrorism which they has spread in Russia. He added that surrendering to the Anglo-American forces would in no way protect them from their just punishment for their crimes in Russia. This reply met with great success and the Colonel commented “That is a very good answer.”
The Colonel related that he visited two caps in Poland, one near Lublin known as “The Camp of Death.” In these two camps alone, he said 11,000,000 people had been slaughtered by the Germans. The Lublin camp had eight large crematoriums for the burning of bodies, The Germans’ method of
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execution was to take large groups of prisoners to a building which they said was a de-louser. They took all the prisoner’s clothes away and locked tem in the shower room and then turned on the poison gas system. The ashes of the burned bodies were sold as fertiliser and used in the manufacture of road-making material. The Commandant and the S.S. staff of the camp were captured. After a court martial they were all hanged in the main square of Lublin. The Colonel also stated that he had seen direct evidence of a German atrocity when a mother was forced to watch her child being hung and was them raped in the presence of her father and afterwards shot.
A member of the Foraging Party from this camp yesterday passed a coulomb of German prisoners of war being marched south. The first half a dozen files were officers. In the middle of them was our late Appel Officer, Hauptmann Lien, known as “The Porker.” It was raining and he seemed to be finding his pack and blanket very heavy. An unconfirmed report says that the late Security Officer of this camp is shovelling coal in Luckenwalde.
Today the first elements of the Russian Repatriation Committee arrived in the camp. They had been on the road for five days and were much too tired to discuss detail that evening.
At 1 a.m. this morning Captain Medvedev visited the Senior Allied Officer again and gave him a few more details of his organisation and plans. An account of this interview was given later this morning by the Senior Allied Officer to the Senior Officers of national groups.
Captain Medvedev told the Senior Allied Officer that he has brought his own wireless station with him for direct communication with his Commanding General at Marshal Renier’s Headquarters. He said that later in the morning he wanted to visit the British and American Oflags and Stalags, and the other compounds as soon as he has time, when he wold also meet Senior Allied officers and Compound Commanders. He said that he would discuss later with the Russian authorities in the
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town, the possibility of bringing all the French prisoners in the area under one single command.
He asked a lot of questions and was somewhat surprised and gratified to find the general organisation and administration which exists in the camp. He appeared to have come with the impression that he might find here a conglomerate mass which he would have to sort and organise.
He had no news about General Ruger, which has now left the camp, and said that he and his convoy has been five days and nights on the road and even his military information was five days old. He said that he hoped that it would be possible to get entertainments going such as concerts, films, lectures and dances while awaiting repatriation orders. It is hoped the some Inter-Allied Committee will be organised for entertainments. The camp has two theatres, one of which is still under construction.
At 0230 hours, by which time 33 lorries of his convoy had arrived, Captain Medvedev, who is a hard driving and hard working officer, told his men “You can dismiss now and as you are very tired, you need not start work again until 6 a.m.” They were back at work at 6 a.m. t continue unloading, sorting and distributing, and 17 more lorries are arriving today.
The camp organisation for the reception of the Commission last night, although it was turned on with very little warning, worked very smoothly. The Norwegian Kitchen Officer and his staff supplied a good meal to all the Russians during the night and are continuing to look after them and new arrivals today. The Camp Accommodation Officer managed to find quarters and bedding for all the Russian officers and men and for the 15 women other ranks and the two women officers who love by themselves and mess with the officers.
The Garrison Commander has just informed the Senior Allied Officer that he is expecting high officers dealing with repatriation and accompanied by and International Commission to visit the camp shortly.
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In respect of other work by the camp for the reception of Captain Medvedev’s Commission during the night. Allied Officers, N.C.O.’s and men did a very fine job in helping the Russian unload and park their lorries with great dispatch. A staff of 25 Allied interpreters was on duty, meeting the trucks at the gate as they arrived, supervising unloading and helping the Russians to find their food and quarters. 50 pigs were unloaded and were billeted in the counting pen outside of Oflag. In spite of the protests of the Senior Pig, nothing could be done to give them better accommodation. Among the supplies which the Russians brought with them there is a large quantity of clothing, musical instruments, entertainers are also on their way.
Captain Medvedev’s second in command is an Officer in Command of Military Morale and Political Education. He has already promised us Russian, English and American films and concert parties and is arranging for Russian airmen to visit the compounds as soon as possible, It is quite clear that the Russian intend to give the best possible time until repatriation arrangement are complete.
When interviewed this morning, the Camp Supply Officer, as he watched stores pouring in from the Russian transport under the direction of a girl officer said “These girl lieutenants are very efficient, they certainly keep their men on the run and get things done.” They seem to have everything we need – margarine, noodles, barley, rice – which will go to the sick – and four. There are at least ten tons of flour unloaded and there will be an issue of 50 grammes of margarine and 100 fresh meat this morning. We have received three truck- loads of live pigs and 12 head of cattle. There is corn meal for soup thickening and the Russians have promised us ten tons of bread a day. We are hoping to get every man in the camp two good meals a day and the kitchens will probably work on a 24-hour bass. There will be plenty of peas from now on as any amount will come in.
Among other things the Russians have brought three truck loads of brand new blankets, a load of
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white sheets, two trucks of pots and pans, knives, forks and spoons, and ten bags of tobacco. It appears that the lorries started out empty in many cases and filled up from German towns and villages on the way as all the supplies seem to be German. More loads are coming in and we intend to push it out to the camp as soon as possible beginning this morning.
During the morning Captain Medvedev, in accordance with his intentions last night visited the American and British Oflag and Stalag. For the information of those who did not see him, he wears khaki uniform and breeches and high boots and carrier a map case. He comes from the Caucasus, is 24 years of age and wears the Stalingrad Defence medal and the Soviet Cross for gallantry. Above these decorations are three wound stripes, one in gold for severe wounds, one in red for light wounds and one in black for shell shock.
Captain Medvedev was completely horrified by our conditions inside the camp. He considered all barrack blocks depressing, gloom and very overcrowded. The tented camp conditions he considered terrible and was visibly shaken by the tented camp’s water supply, toilet arrangements and overcrowding and he said that he would do everything possible to move these men away to better quarter at the earliest moment. The Senior American Officer entirely agreed with him about this. In respect of the barrack blocks he said that where were four or five camps in the neighbourhood which he would go and inspect at once to try and find better accommodation. In this respect he Senior Allied officer told Captain Medvedev that he felt that the inconvenience of a move would raise an unnecessary amount of personal difficulties and inconveniences as well as administrative problems for a few days of comparative comfort. He told the Captain what when we move, which he hoped would be as soon as possible, it should be a move straight home.
Captain Medvedev was satisfied with Oflag and Stalag kitchens and examined the food that was
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being cooked as well as the food on hand. In his inspection of the barracks he was particularly interested to know which contained aircrew and which ground personnel. He referred to the Aircrew Barracks as “The place where eagles live.” He said he would obtain brooms and equipment for the cleaning out of Barrack Blocks but that, in his opinion, a move to better quarters was essential and he is going to report our conditions at once to his commanding General with whom the decision rests. Immediately after his visit around the camp, he left to visit neighbouring camps to see if there was any good accommodation. He was most interests, during his tour, in the pressure cooking stokes which he saw at work.
An English woman and her two children re now living in the camp, the arrived after a four day journey from Berlin. They had great difficulty reaching here without getting involved in front line fighting and on several occasions they were under fire. The English woman’s Name is reported to be Thomas and she is a native of Blackheath.
Mrs Thomas was riding on a cart through Luckenwalde with two Dutch youths who were giving her and her children a lift to Torgau and the Americans. As they were passing through Luckenwalde Mrs. Thomas spotted the Union Jack on the British Liaison Officer’s car. She shouted to the car to stop and as a result she is now being looked after here where she will stay with her children until repatriation has been arranged. The children are John, aged ten, and Diane, aged seven. Their experience has not in the lease affected their high spirits and they are both perfectly fit except for blistered feet.
During the day, 10 armed German soldiers came up to the gate to surrender and asked where they American forces were. When told that they were at Torgau, they left the camp in a south westerly direction and many parties of German soldiers were seen to be heading for the American lines. Today also saw the first order of the Russian Occupational
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troops posted in Luckenwalde. This requires all German civilians to hand in wireless sets. They were told that these would be modified so as to receive only one station and then returned.
General Famin, who is in charge of repatriation of prisoners of war in this area, visited the Senior Allied Officer today.
Shortly after his arrival he sent for the Senior Officer of each national group in the camp and to each one issued an order regarding the discipline of his unit. He confirmed that Wing Commander Collard should continue to be responsible for the whole camp and act as Senior Allied Officer. He said that his verbal confirmation of this will be followed by a written order which will be published she said that our own governments have been informed of the numbers of their own nationals in the camp, and the respective governments in consultation with the Soviet Government will decide time and method of repatriation. This has not yet been decided and General Famin said that he had no information concerning it. The Senior Allied Officer told the General that all nationalities in the camp were becoming rather bored and were anxious to get home. Though they realised the difficulties due to transport and communications, they would like some information and the Senior Allied Officer asked General Famin for his personal opinion on two points: 1- How long it would be before we should leave here to go home. To this General Famin replied “There is no immediate prospect.” Point 2 was concerning our route home. To this General Famin replied that he thought it would be west through the front although the possibility of going by Odessa still esixted. [sic]. He stressed that both his replies were only personal opinions.
According to his information General Famin said that he had never heard of any Allied Liaison Officer with Red Army formations and the repatriations of prisoners is dealt with through diplomatic channels. In spite of this he said that Allied officers might well come to visit the camp and in fact he enquire if any had yet arrived.
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General Famin next told the Senior Allied Officer that he considered the conditions of this camp were intolerable for us ad he could not allow us to love here in such uncomfortable circumstances. The Senior Allied Officer while agreeing as to the discomfort of the camp, said that he doubted whether the administrative difficulties involved in moving the camp would be justified, and as we should be in our new quarters for such a short time, he felt that on the whole most members of the camp would prefer to remain here. However, General Famin was clearly very concerned about our welfare and insisted on the Senior Allied Officer accompanying him to visit the Adolf Hitler Lager, about six miles from here on the road to Juterbog. The Adolf Hitler Lager is a German Officer’s Rest Camp and Training School. The Senior Allied Officer reports that it is built and equipped on a most luxurious scale. It is quite evidently a showplace, with a sport stadium, showers, baths, a swimming pool and officer’s club and a canteen. It is situated in very pleasant woodland surroundings and has excellent buildings, which clearly could accommodate the whole of the camp without the slightest discomfort or overcrowding. It has been looted a good deal and on the whole is in good repair and condition.
At the conclusion of the visit to the camp, General Famin said that he had decided that everyone in this camp except Poles and Italian move to the Adolf Hitler Lager, and he issued on order to that effect.
The opinion of the Senior Allied Officer on this move is that there are a great many administrative difficulties in the way and it should not be regarded as immediately effective. Allied Headquarters in the camp has already sent a party to investigate the Adolf Hitler Lager and it has been found that before we can move there the water and electricity will have to be made serviceable and cleaning and billeting parties will have to spend some time there.
The party which went to the Adolf Hitler camp found that some 15,000 French civilian had been
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lodged in there about six hours before we arrived, with the inevitable results that the place has been very thoroughly looted before we wold stop it. This, added to a great amount of wilful damage, made the prospect of living there seem very unattractive. However the advance party got to work and attempted to clear it up. The biggest difficulty as getting the French to evacuate the barracked which has been allotted to British and American officers. This was quite impossible until Marushka came to our aid, (she was an interpreter of the Russian forces but was always dressed I mufti) and it was amusing to have to admit that where our efforts had failed to move the French she did it quite easily by slinging a tommy gun over the shoulder of her blue dress and just appeared in the doorway of each building. The French were out in about 15 minutes.
It was while we were at this camp that we saw German forces moving down one road and the Russian Army moving down another half a mile away – the camp being situated between these two roads. They appeared to be unaware of each other and our efforts to tell the Russians that the Germans were so near were ignored by their commander.
We were now beginning to realise that the Russian forces carried no food with them at all. Our rations had been decreasing steadily since their arrival, for although the quantities given earlier may sound impressive, it should be realised that this had to be divided between the 30,000 or so who now comprised the population of the camp. The whole food position was causing some concern as it was obvious that the local resources being found by ourselves and the Russian would shortly be exhausted, while there was no sign or our immediate repatriation. The general outlook was unsatisfactory and prisoners were feeling very hopeless, with the inevitable results that large numbers of all nationalities were leaving the camp hoping to find their own way west. This, of course, was happening all over Germany and resulted in General Eisenhower’s broadcast orders to stay put.
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The question of the move to the Adolf Hitler Lager has by now become a major issue between ourselves and the Russians. They had reduced the accommodation originally booked for us and it had been completely overrun and ransacked, so that it really seemed that a move would be no improvement. The Russians would not see this point of view and it was necessary to persuade Captain Medvedev to go over and inspect the proposed accommodation before he would agree that it might be better to stay where we are.
A new arrival today was the Russian officer in charge of morale and political education, who announced that he was detailed to provide entertainment and lectures for our delight. He also told us that a cinema would be got going and said that the first film would be “Hurricane.” He was anxious to organise amateur dramatic societies for all nationalities. This looked to us like a very long term policy, and caused people to feel more unsettled than ever, and more inclined to move west under their own steam.
On the morning of May 2nd, fighting seemed to flare up all round us, many shells passing over the camp and several landing inside. Machine gun bullets were whizzing about and people were warned to get under cover. One of our foraging partied on its way to a village near here found some German front line reinforcements dug in behind camouflaged machine guns and 40m.m. guns. They were a despondent crew, and once again asked the inevitable “Where are the Americans?” to whom they wished to surrender. The Russians subsequently reported that all Germans in the area had been captured and told us that they believed American Forces were only 12 miles to the west – this unfortunately proved to be false. Large numbers of German prisoner were passing all day, in a worse physical; condition than any we had seen before – they were so tired and starved through hiding in the woods that they could hardly get one foot in front of the other. They were a mixed lot of S.S. infantry and Luftwaffe aircrew. One column of about 5,000 of these prisoners was escorted by
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Only two Russians near the front and one at the rear – and yet seemed to be making no attempt to escape into the surrounding woods, which would have been very easy.
One of the occupations of the Intelligence branch of our organisation was investigating all the German files and documents. These contained a lot of interesting information and gave a good insight into the curious working of the official German mind. One file told of a prisoner charged with consorting with a German woman and paying her with chocolate. The German woman claimed that she was only exercising her profession. This was investigated and found to be true, but since chocolate was an irregular form of fee, she was sentences to a year’s imprisonment whilst the prisoner of war was sentenced to 10 days’ solitary confinement: Another strikes a plaintive note when complaining of the lack of tact in official propaganda leaflets. It appears that one day large placards were placed by the Germans in this camp and other Stalags saying “…Will the enemy land? He has tried before. Dieppe is the answer! And then, in triumphant words “Let him come!” The propaganda officer complained that the enemy obeyed the invitation the very day that the placards were posted up and that propaganda was only useful when carefully handled. Another document tells of a prisoner faced with a charge of living at various times with twelve German woman all the women denied the charge and the prisoner was found not guilty, with the comment that he must be boasting.
Other volumes told stories of successful escapes, but one contained a long bad luck story of six Frenchmen being swindles by a mysterious railway official in Berlin whom, according to orders from the escape organisation, the Frenchman met in a small café in Berlin – having successfully escaped from the camp. They were met according to plan by an alleged French civilian dressed as a German railway worker. He collected 400 marks from each of the prisoners and promised to send them home to France. That night he took them to a small
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local station and sealed them into a truck. After a for day journey they had become tired of waiting and were puzzled to find their compass indicating a southerly direction, so they broke open the wagon and looked out, to find that they were just crossing the Danish frontier. They travelled back to Berlin by passenger train after spending a couple of days riding about the Berlin underground to keep warm they contacted their railway worker again. Once again he took them to a siding and sealed them into a truck. By now they were thoroughly suspicious, and climbing out of the truck they read it destination label which showed that it was going to Russia. A little later the six prisoners. who were captured by Railway Police, denounced the men who had taken their money and send them the wrong way home.
Another German order on discipline among the documents found read “The best way to maintain discipline among the Russians is to beat the, but as the High Command has forbidden this, it should be done by the Camp Police.” One Camp Commandant was posted away after a number of his officers had made a joint complain about his manners and behaviour – the chief complaint seemed to be that he was bad tempered and ill-mannered at breakfast in the mess, and refused to say good morning to his officers: Another document told of the examination of a crashed American bomber just outside Berlin and how a German Hauptman ordered a number of Volkstrumers to climb into the aircraft and inspect it. They hesitate, until assured they had Hauptman’s full authority and then one of them climbed into the aircraft. While examining the controls and instruments in a gun turret he pressed the trigger and another Volksturmer who was standing outside looking in had both his legs blown off at the knee by a burst of fire. The German report added than among the objects found in the aircraft was a copy of instructions for pilots landing behind the Russian front.
On May 3rd and 4th, the battered and weary advance guard of the Norwegians, British and Americans at Joe’s Place folded their monogrammed
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sheets, and with a last regretful look at the cinema to seat a thousand with its piles of tangled film, marched back to Stalag IIIA over yesterday’s battlefield to the sound of desultory rifle shots from the woods. The American guard is due to arrive this morning. The Allies from the Stalag were defeated by the ever-increasing horde of refugee which poured into the Lager through the gate nearest the section allotted to the Stalag party. These refugees very naturally took up quarter in the nearest empty building. They were clean quarters, though somewhat short of furniture and fittings, which had been removed by the earlier refugees who were successfully evicted and sent to their own portion of the camp. The cleaning party them cleaned up, and the rooms were ready for the main party of British, Americans and Norwegians, only to be filled by another influx of refugees.
The sad story began when the advance guard arrived to find refugees in possession. At a conference between Allied officers and Captain Medvedev, area of the Lager were allotted to the various nations. Then came the problem of shepherding the refugees into the areas. Naturally, they were reluctant to leave, and there were some incidents; still, they left most of the buildings – but not so the beds or fitting. These they took with them, with the exception of the built-in wash-basin, which in many cases they wantonly smashed.
Much wanton damage was done all over the Lager, apart from the chaos caused by the rifling of desks and cupboards for the odd bottle or box of cigars. The attitude of those who caused most of the damaged was summed up by one youth ‘The Germans smashed my country up, so I smashed up theirs.’ Unfortunately that particular property which was smashed does not belong to the Germans, but to the Russians. For this reason, the Russians asked that a guard should be mounted over certain store houses in which valuable material was not only being looted, but wantonly smashed. Brand-new typewriters were to be seen, hanging drunkenly half out of their packing cases after being swiped with a crowbar; thousands of coloured pencils.
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Scattered from their boxes made the floor difficult to walk upon; movie projectors were torn from their cases and their lenses ripped away; delicate talkie apparatus was trodden underfoot. In response to the Russian request a guard of 600 Americans was mounted, with 200 men on duty at time. Keys and padlocks were found, and many of the buildings locked. The guard carried sticks after one and two incidents which occurred shortly after it was mounted. On Monday night the refugees began to turn ugly, and on several occasions was only averted by the prompt action of Marushka, a Russian girl attached to the Red Army interpreter. Marushka would turn out in the middle of the night, sling a tommy gun over her shoulder, run down to the stores and quell the trouble by sticking her gun into some infuriated refugee’s stomach and clearing him off in a language which body else understood.
In the end one of the refugees drew an automatic and after that is became clear that four out of five of them were armed. Batons are no good against guns and to the regret of the American guard, they had to be withdrawn.
In order to prevent the refugees looting in the area allotted to be American, British and Norwegians, it was found necessary to patrol it, and the refugees followed suit with a patrol around their area. An order was issued by the Russians that all firearms should be handed in, and a certain number were collected, but obviously not all.
On Tuesday, Captain Medvedev reduced the area allotted to the Stalag party by accommodation for 1,600 men, and also stated that the officer’s mess would be taken over as Russian headquarters. It was pointed out that this change left adequate room for our numbers, apart from the insufficiency of beds. The removal of the officers’ mess reduced the accommodation and also took the only available kitchens and dining rooms for the use of the officers. Captain Medvedev returned to the Stalag, and the Lager advance party continued their unequal struggle with the refugees.
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The situation for the British, Americans and Norwegians was further complicated by the failure of the authorities at Luckenwalde to turn the electricity on. A Russian officer assured the British officer i/c Detachment on Monday that the Burgomaster’s life depended on the power coming on the next day. Presumably the Burgomaster is dead for there was no power in the camp up to Wednesday evening. As far as the technicians were able to tell, the lighting, water, sewage and telephone systems had not been sabotaged, and all that was necessary for a final check was the throwing of the main switch in Luckenwalde. The Germans must have left Adolf Hitler Lager at a moment’s notice for there were half-eaten meals on the tables in the mess and unfinished cups of coffee in the anti-rooms. Tear-off calendars in the offices showed the date April 20.
“An auxiliary pumping plant was found and got to work, and it was possible to keep water on for a period of the day. The staff from the Stalag operating plant did a very good work to supply just under half a million gallons a day to those in the Lager.
“A number of auxiliary petrol plants for lighting were found in the stores, and one of these was installed to supply light to the temporary headquarters. The refugees rapidly caught on to the idea and now there are generators running all over the Lager with stolen petrol.
Two incidents which occurred on Wednesday brought the situation to the danger mark; one of the Stalag party was shot at by a refugee as he was cycling through the Lager behind a lorry, and a certain of the refugees were observed removing a stock of tear gas from the armoury to their part of the camp. So on Wednesday evening the advance party, with the exception of eight technicians to keep the essential services going and the American guard returned on foot to Stalag. The refugees, among their loot, glances up and stared at their departing Allies.”
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Today we notices large numbers of Russians racing back from the Berlin direction, who stated their destination was the Dresden and Czechoslovakian fronts. They appeared to have collected some very fine transport in Berlin and many Russian officers were speeding by in Mercedes Benz luxury cars. Among the troops seen in Luckenwalde today were some Russian women cavalry, who looked very smart and disciplined and who ride through the town two abreast. Their uniforms were covered with long dark blue cloaks and cavalry sabres hung by their sides. Their hair was cut short and they wore khaki Field Service caps. Members of our Police Patrol in Luckenwalde were invited to look over a 60 ton Stalin tank this morning, while it was undergoing running repairs at a tank repair park. This tank had a 125 m.m. gun fixed in a 360 degree turret and two heavy calibre machine guns. The armoured plate of the gun turret and two heavy calibre machine guns. The armoured plate of the gun turret was not less than 8” thick. They were not allowed inside the tank, but those who looked through the turret door said that is was very roomy indeed and had V type water cooled engine. The tank is built to a very fine proportions, low and flat topped and was painted grey green. It seemed to be about the same size as a German Tiger.
Great excitement was caused today by the arrival of two American correspondents – Bob Vermilion of the United Press and Lewis Azrael of the Baltimore News Post. They arrived here from the American bridgehead at Barby, passing through the link-up area at Wittenberg. One of their remarks is worth reproducing as late as this. They said “We came here in a jeep without any pass and had no trouble getting through the Russian lines – one of the most amazing things we have ever seen is the way the Germans greeted us here. English and Americans seem to be the most popular people in the world and one German threw his arms round my neck when he heard I was American. There have been any number of Germans drowned trying to swim the Elbe to the American lines and the mass surrender of the whole division is not at all uncommon. German civilians in the American
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occupied area are giving no trouble at all -there is no sniping or booby traps or any of the things that were threatened. The Germans seem to be so regimented and accustomed to taking orders that their attitude is:”Nazis have gone - here is someone else in a uniform giving orders ad they obey.” There was great excitement in the came as we were able to send letter back through the kindness of these two correspondents, knowing they if they got home, which was more than likely, they would be the first out people had had for six months. Captain Edward Beatty, a United Press Correspondent who had been a prisoner, returned which his colleagues and took back information about our numbers and situation to Supreme Allied Headquarter. A statement issued at 1630 hours that evening by the Senior Allied Officer ran as follows: -
“An arrangement, at present somewhat unofficial, has been made with Lieutenant Klietz of the American 83rd Division to start evacuating American, British and Norwegian personnel from this camp tomorrow. Russian agreement has not yet been obtained, but it is intended to proceed with the arrangement. Details will be issued to Unit Commander later.”
This raised all our hope and everybody went round congratulating everybody else and packing their kit. It all came to nothing, however, for on the next day, May 5th, the following statement was issued:-
“The Senior Allied Officer reports that the surgeon in charge of the convoy of 23 U.S. Army ambulances which arrived here at 1300 hours, Lieut. Col. D.W. Clotselter, of the 83rd Division, has given the following information.
“The ambulance convoy will today evacuate the bulk of the American, British and Norwegian sick, and will return tomorrow for the balance.
“The lorry convoy in on its way here, by the Lieut. Col. Cannot give its time of arrival or strength because his division has been busy evacuating an ex-prison camp at Altengrabow. Altengrabow is in the Russian occupation zone,
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but the prison camp there was liberates by the Americans. The bulk of the lorries for our evacuation have to come today from Hildesheim, just south of Hanover, 135kn miles from here. They are bringing 1,000 K-rations which will be issued to Americans, British and Norwegians immediately on arrival.
“The following are the details which Lieut. Col. Clotselter has given to the Senior Allied Officer regarding standard evacuation route which the 83rd division has been using for other Camps.
“Sick will be taken to Schonebeck, eight miles south south-east of Magdeburg, where they will be delivered to a Collecting Centre. From there, after treatment, the less serious cases will be flown to Hildesheim. Serious cases will probably be sent back to Base Hospitals
“The fit will be taken by lorry via the American bridgehead over the Elbe at Zerbst, opposite Barby, and direct to Hildesheim, and distance of 240 miles in all. Form Hildesheim, British personnel are flown direct to England, and American to the the [sic] Channel Coast to await early departure to the United States. It is presumed that Norwegian personnel will proceed to England.
“The Senior Allied Officer state, I hope it will be possible to arrange for all British, Americans and Norwegians here to be evacuate by this procedure. Naturally it cannot be regarded as finally settled and we must await the arrival of the trucks.’”
Later the same day hope sprang again when this state was issued:-
“Captain Sincavich, U.S. Army, a P.O.W. contact officer from S.H.Q.A.E.F. arrived in the Camp at 1630 today. He brought two lorry loads of bread and two of K-rations, which have already been handed over to Supply.
Captain Sincavich has given the following information to the Senior Allied Officer:
“The main convoy of truck will not arrive until tomorrow when, Captain Sincavich hopes,
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sufficient will come to complete the evacuation. They will bring more K-rations with them. As regards the route of our evacuation he says that the trucks will go to Schonebeck, eight miles south south-east of Magdeburg in the first instance, where it is possible that personnel will be transferred to a train for Hildesheim. Alternatively the trucks may go right through to Hildesheim. The routine at Hildesheim is the ex- P.O.W.’s are de-loused, reclothed if necessary, and generally dusted off. They are then formed into groups of 26 and flown of in C-47’s, the British straight to England, and the Americans to the Channel Coast. The average stay at Hildesheim has been 24 to 48 house and is to some extent dependent on flying weather.
“Captain Sincavich took away with him nominal rolls of British, Americans and Norwegians and requested documents and information regarding German war criminals which will be given to him tomorrow when he returned as he hoped to do.”
Nineteen American lorries, mostly driven by coloured troops, arrived on the evening of the 6th of May, and it was generally felt that at long last we were really on our way home. Slight doubts arose, however, when at 2000 hours that evening the Russians informed us that no prisoners could leave with the American lorries sine Russian authority had not yet been received from Koniev’s Headquarters. Despite this, we felt that we should nevertheless, go in defiance of Russian orders. Imagine our dismay next morning when the Russians fired over our heads of our people embarking in these lorries and forced them back into the camp. Each lorry was searched as it left to make sure that it carried no prisoners and vehicles would be interned if they removed a single prisoner. It was impossible to describe our feelings as these lorries drove through the came on their way back, to the American lines with nobody on board at all, and it cannot be denied that most of us for the first and probably last time,
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[IMAGE – As made by out “Tin- Bashers” from Red Cross packing cases, milk and Jam tine, etc, ]
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[IMAGE – Messing equipment supplied to each room of 16 officers.]
[IMAGE - Two-tier bed, wooden frame with straw-filled palliasse.]
[IMAGE – Reading the “LOG” on a summer morning.]
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felt that we were completely cut off from our own countries and Governments There seemed to be no good reason for this Russian order and we all thought there must be some political influence at work to prevent our departure. This was confirmed a night or two later with the Russian broadcast about alleged holding by the Allies of 800 Russian officers who had be captured fighting with the German in Normandy shortly after D-Day. The reception of this broadcast deepened our gloom and we began to wonder if we should ever get home at all.
Another result of this general pessimism was that more and more people set off on their own for the American lines, until finally between five and six thousand British and American prisoners had left the camp. Not all of these had easy passages, as the following account will show.
“Three officers left here the day before yester and marched in a south-westerly direction towards the American line – they had hone about 10 miles when they were stopped by a German patrol of one Feldwebel ad 9 men who asked them where they were going and were very hostile. One finding that British were heading for American lines they demanded safe conduct to the same destination saying that if this were denied they would shoot our men. Fortunately senior of these three officers thought quickly and pointed out that a party of thirteen was extremely unlikely to get through and the only result of the whole manoeuvre as proposed by the Feldwebel would be to the them all interned, He also told them how well the German prisoners were being treated by the Russians and suggested that they gave themselves up The Germans were all armed with Tommy Guns and had they forced the situation it might have been very unpleasant, However when out men produced some chocolate and cigarettes sufficient weight was apparently added to make the argument convincing and the Germans went off in another direction.”
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Many groups or individuals encounters such Germans , and unfortunately did not all have such an easy conclusions.
We were now getting daily visited from the Russian officers who all said they were repatriation officials and who all said that we should be leaving the day after their visit. Each one seemed to have a slightly better story than the last, and it was impossible not to continue hoping that one of them knew what he was talking about. This situation dragged on for another 123 days, during which time a party of about 40 officers and N.C.O.’s who had left here to go west, arrived back in camp having been picked up by the Russians and taken to Stalag Luft III Sagen our old camp in Silesia. They told us that the town of Sagan has ben totally devastated, and that German prisoners of war arrived there at a rate of 20,000 a day. It appeared that Stalag Luft III, which houses 12,000 British and American Ait Force officers in cramped conditions, now held 143,000 German prisoners.
This long delay gave the Intelligence staff of the R.A.F. organisation chance to make a very full investigation into Germans who were guilty of crimes against prisoners of war. A few of the cases are listed here.
The list of War Criminals was handed to the U.S. authorities wen whey were in the camp included the names of several German officers, we’ll known to members of the camp. Bemann, Sturzkopf, Simm and Rademacher are included among the most notorious. Two Germans responsible for the shooting of an American Air Corps officer in the centre camo at Sagan-Hauptmann Seifert and Feldwebel Althof - are also listed. A member of the Gestapo group responsible for the murders of the British officers at the same camp is named by Group Captain Kellet. Apart from the Germans known to us personally for their incorrect behaviour and ill treatment of Allied officers and men, there is a very comprehensive list of the principle Nazis of Luckenwalde; many of their names have been supplied by Sergeant Major Henderson, British Man
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[Page Break]
of Confidence in Stalag IIIA. Their offences range from pilfering of the Red Cross store to actual brutality and manhandling of Allied P.O.W’s.
Hauptmann Bemann is charged with the deliberate destruction and theft of clothing and food belonging to British Officers; he is further indicted with being “continually insulating to British officer in his remarks and bearing.”
Major Sturzkopf – “ Bulk Issues” – is charges with continually lying and misrepresentation to the calculated detriment of the interests of the British prisoners, moreover he encouraged his solders to be as vicious and ruthless as possible during searches and this caused wanton looting and destruction of their property. He sentenced many prisoners to the cells without a shred of evidence against them and was known to be generally deceitful and vicious.
Hauptmann Rademacher incited his soldiers to strike British officers with their rifle butts, he displayed a violent and uncontrollable temper and drew and fired off his revolver on numerous occasions with the idea of intimidating the prisoners or provoking and incident. He lost no opportunity of humiliating and ill-treating British officers and took a fiendish delight in the destruction of their clothing under the guide of searching them.
Last, but not least there is Hautpmann Simm, the hotel manager, who probably achieved the greater personal loathing among Allied prisoner than any other of his colleagues. Possessed of a mean and spiteful nature, he did everything possible to make us uncomfortable or to humiliate us. He incited the Camp Commandant to take spiteful action against the prisoners and lost no opportunity of insulting them himself.
A case outside our own experience is that of Lieut. Janke, charged with brutality to the Polish officers of this camp during the move here. This brave German is now the possessor of a set of Polish papers taken from a dead Pole and is for the moment spared the knowledge that he is being searched for under is alias as well as his
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proper name and that his ponderous subterfuges were transparent from the first.
Lastly there is Obergefreite Gisevius who is perhaps typical of the whole Nazi system. For this Corporal had more power in the Stalag IIIA than the Commandant himself. A rabid Nazi, he was “the power behind the throne” and dictated his wished and commands to this superiors whenever he chose to do so. He was responsible for keeping many prisoners in the cells for months at a stretch without a trial and doing his best to deprive them of their food. Many eccentricities of German conduct are explained by the presence of such men as this corporal in the ranks of the German army.”
Two more officers who returned told the following story:-
“We got as far as Juterbog and found that we could not get on the direct Dresden road as there was a German pocket in the way, so with the help of Russian transport we turned south-east and reached Muskau on the first day. All that was necessary to get rides on the Russian lorries was to ask one of the Russian girl traffic controllers to stop a lorry going our way. Out identity was never really seriously questioned. The statement that we were British was almost always immediately accepted and we were sometimes embraced enthusiastically and invited to celebration feasts. At Maskau we were billeted in a large hotel which was the Russian officers’ mess. Here we met out first Russian Air Force officers, a Major and two Captains. They were the most smartly dressed and polished Russian officers we had yet seen. They were both fighter pilots, the major claiming 73 air victories and the Captains about 50 apiece. We got on to the subject of tactics, types and performances right away. They said that their best and latest fighter was the “MYK” with a top speed of about 310 miles an hour. They thought that the Airocobra compared very favourably with the best fighters but obviously considered that our people were line-shooting when told of the speed of some of our own
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aircraft. The latest spitfire the Russians had flown was the Mark 5 and they firmly refused to believe the latest marks do any better. “You cannot change an aircraft such as that,” they said, “it is always the same aircraft no matter what you do to it.” All these officers had fought the Spanish campaign and were now flying Yaks.”
The Russian authorities at Sagen had visited Stalag Luft III cemetery there and places flowers and wreaths on the graved of the 50 North Camp officer murdered by the Gestapo in April ’44. Following this they took photographs of the graves and the memorial, sending the negatives straight back to Moscow.
At 21.30 hours on the 9th May, the Norwegians were told they would be leaving in lorries in 45 minutes time. Many of these officers had already gone to bed and some were strolling about inside the camp. However, loading started under flood-lighting at midnight, the arrangements being that 10 officers and their luggage would travel in each lorry. Owing to the short notice, it was impossible for them to have a meal before they left, but most of them had time to boil up a brew, since the greater part of their luggage was already packed. Of the 1,044 Norwegian there, 806 left in these lorries; 238, comprising the aged and sick, being left behind for later repatriation.
Nothing of importance happened until May 11th when we received another visit from General Famin. In a meeting lasting from 23.00 hours in the 11th until 0200 hours on the 12th he expressed the greatest dis-satisfaction over the unofficial evacuation from this camp, and demanded from the Senior British officer a written report there and then. He also obtained a written report from the senior American officer. He told us that the American General Hodges had confirmed that no orders had been given on the American side to evacuate this camp, and added that is any further British left the camp, the Senior British officer would be interned. It appeared that the General had expressed strong disapproval of the manner in which his staff here
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had looked after us, particularly in the matter of food, and he informed us that Captain Medvedev would be court-martialled. With regard to the date of our repatriation, the only information that he gave was that the Russian authorities now only awaited word from the British and Americans that they were ready to receive the camp. The General also issued orders that the French were to leave Stalag IIIA and move to the Adolf Hitler Lager, and by 5 o’clock that evening larger number of them were on the way. We were authorised to take over two camps previously occupied by the German staff of Stalag IIA – this gave us much more space and surroundings were much pleasanter- plenty of gardens, orchards, etc. having been planted around these quarters.
By about May 13th, the Russians were once again getting very tired of having people for our camp wandering about the town and district, and demanded that we should have frequent parades to make sure everyone was staying within camp bounds. They went to the lengths of apprehending and returning British ex-prisoners under armed escort, and demanding that they should be subjected to disciplinary actions. It became evident that house to house searched by the Russians were being made to prevent entry into these houses of allied ex-prisoners, who the Germans were begging to go and live with them as some form of protection against the Russian soldiery. It was now becoming usual for a couple of Americans to arrive in a jeep during the afternoon drive around the country, and since they were not aware of the strength of the Russian feeling about the earlier unofficial evacuation, they must have been somewhat taken aback by the Russians’ distinctly emphatic attitude about their immediate departure. They were not allowed to contact allied personnel and were always told to return toothier lines immediately. This did not, however, prevent messages getting through which we hoped would speed out repatriation.
Despite all Russian precautions, prisoners were leaving the camp daily and heading westwards.
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In view of the Russian feeling in this matter, the decrease in our numbers was becoming serious and he Russian orders were reiterated by the Senior Allied officers, together with a repetition of their own orders on the subject. But despite all this, it was difficult to achieve or maintain a philosophical attitude. The Russians plays, literature, films etc., had never materialised, and the majority of the prisoners who had nothing to do found time hanging heavy on their hands. We were reminded that once upon a time we were able to be cheerful with the certainty of many months and even years of captivity ahead, and told that the prospect of a few days or even a week or two should not dismay us. Such statements were small comfort, because it was this latter fact which really caused the dissatisfaction among us - the knowledge that we could, without any enemy interference, be home in a matter of hours, overcame any philosophy one could evolve.
[Image – “GONE AWAY.”]
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Any Enquiries should be made to :-
BRYCE COUSENS,
THE COTTAGE,
THIRLESTAINE HOUSE,
CHELTENHAM, GLOS.
Published by Bryce Cousens.
Printed by Burr’s Press, Rodney Road, Cheltenham.
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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The Log
Description
An account of the resource
Experiences of the prisoners of war in the Belaria camp of Stalag Luft 3 by Squadron Leader Bryce Cousens. It contains stories, poems and illustrations.
Creator
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Bryce Cousens
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
1947
Contributor
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Claire Monk
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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202 printed sheets
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Text. Poetry
Artwork
Identifier
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MElliottJD19200425-210211-01
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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France
Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1940
1943
1944-02-14
1944-02-21
1944-03
1944-04
1944-04-01
1944-04-19
1944-05-21
1944-05-22
1944-06-05
1944-06-07
1944-06-11
1944-06-12
1944-06-16
1944-06-17
1944-06-19
1944-06-25
1944-07-03
1944-07-08
1944-07-24
1944-08-13
1944-08-21
1944-09-04
1944-09-18
1944-09-28
1944-11-06
1944-11-20
1944-12-04
1944-12-20
1944-12-23
1945-01-30
arts and crafts
entertainment
escaping
Holocaust
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
prisoner of war
sport
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1001/16396/BRoomCARoomCAv1.2.pdf
0e3af1949a3e18695e58b0dd671f294d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Joseph, David
D Joseph
Description
An account of the resource
22 items. The collection concerns Flight Sergeant David Joseph (1576383, Royal Air Force) and contains his decorations, log book, memoirs, correspondence and a list of prisoners of war at Stalag Luft 4. He flew operations as a pilot with 76 Squadron from RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor until his aircraft was shot down on 18 March 1944 on an operation to Frankfurt and he became a prisoner of war. The collection also contains a letter to Mrs Ramsay about the loss of her son, Flying Officer Kenneth Ramsay and photographs of his final resting place. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Brian Joseph and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />Additional information on Kenneth Grant Ramsay is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/223173/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2018-05-22
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
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Joseph, D
Transcribed document
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[inserted] [signature] P/D. [/inserted]
[inserted] Dulag Luft, Stalag Luft III Sagan, Stalag Luft VI Heydekrug, Stalag Luft IV Gross Tyschow [sic], Stalag 357, Fallingbostel. [/inserted]
[underlined] HOW WE TOOK THE GOOD NEWS FROM GROSSE TYCHOW TO FALLINGBOSTEL [/underlined]
OR
[underlined] THE ARMY THAT DIDN’T MARCH ON ITS STOMACH [/underlined]
OR
[underlined] THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, HURRAH, HURRAH [/underlined]!
AN AUTHENTIC DIARY OF THE FORCED MARCH UNDERTAKEN BY ROYAL AIR FORCE P.O.W.S – COMPILED BY W/O C.A. ROOM.
1945 6th Feb.
[inserted] from Stalag Luft Gross Tyschow [sic]
Camp leader crashes into the barrack at 12:30 a.m. and wakes the whole lot of us, with the news that we’re being evacuated on foot at 12 noon today. What a bloody panic! Everyone tears around and has a woof of all outstanding grub (if any). Frank thinks of nothing else but a cup of char, and on goes the jug, and we bung ion all the tea and condensed milk we’ve got. You can stand a spoon upright in the old cup! Then we all climb back into bed again to dream of what lies ahead.
Up bright and early, no-one can sleep, and we make last-minute adjustments to the home-made packs (towel and braces), in which we are carrying our pathetic bundles. Room the Refugee! Roll the two blankets up and after a hasty meal of warm spuds in their jackets, plus straw, dirt and grass, we all pile out for Roll-Call. Move off at 11:30 a.m. into the Vorlager, and we pass a line of sentry-boxes standing empty and desolate. Never thought we’d ever see them empty like this! We are issued with a full Red Cross pa rcel[sic] of food and one-third of a loaf of bread, the first bread we’ve seen for a month. Pass by the sick-bay where a couple of hundred of the boys are being left behind without protection to await the arrival of the Russians. Then at 12:30 p.m. we set course. The roads are covered in ice, slush, snow and what have you. We pass over the Neifhside Road, scene of the famous “Run up the Road” on 19th July, 1944. First eleven kilos are covered in good time, we are all feeling fresh, then we strike out across muddy fields and cart tracks to Naffin, where we are bunged into barns for the night. Caked in mud and snow, and the old decrepit German cart plus sledge are bogged in the lane. We couldn’t care less! Arbeits Kommando 957, Stalag 111D is situated on the road and we meet French and Canadian P.O.W.s. No food issued by the horrible goons and I have to creep unobserved into the cowshed to get a cup of cold water! Wizard sleep, we’re all dead tired, and during the night a ruddy rat bites me on the cheek, gnawing his way through the straw, one blanket, pullover, scarf and cap. Some teeth!
[page break]
-2-
7th Feb. 11 Miles
Up quite early and we have a slice of bread and cheese before we set out at 9 a.m. Bach up mud-caked lane and across a ploughed field to reach the main road. My feet weigh at least 5 lbs. each with the good German soil adhering to them. Rain and sleet for 8 miles and everyone thoroughly miserable. We shall be sleeping in wet blankets to-night but on a cart. Everyone is stiff and aching from the first day’s march and after a gruelling 17 miles we reach Reselkow. Another Kommando from Stalag 11D here, and we meet Canadians from Dieppe. Bloody awful night, no room in barn, a nd[sic] again no food from Jerry. Jack and I have had two slices of bread to-day and a cup of coffee, (wet and warm). Wet and uncomfortable and boy, do my feet and legs ache! Every picture tells a story.
17 Miles
8th Feb. Off we go a t[sic] 9.a.m. Stolzenburg 10:15 a.m. and at noon we reach the main Stettin-Danzig road. Turn left towards Stettin (70 miles) and we have an opportunity to see how long the column is – 2,000 men, three abreast take up an awful lot of roads. Meet many evacuees from the East, with their pathetic heap of belongings piled on to a make-shift cart, drawn by a horse which looks as though it will drop dead at any moment. We’re just as tired too! While we are having a break for “lunch”, one slice of bread and cheese – a load of French P.O.W.s come along the road begging cigarettes from us. They fight among themselves to grab those we offer before the German guards hustle them along. I break the ice on a puddle to get a cup of moderately clean water, my thirst is so great. Hobenfier at 5:30 p.m. after 17 miles, where we expect to bed down for the night. Everyone on his knees, with aching legs, and sore and blistered feet, and tired, wet and miserable. Join the Air Force and Fly! Almost collapse when we learn we have to march another three miles over a road knee-deep in snow, to an outlying farm. Jack and I end up in a chaff-cutting shed, with Swedes, turnips and mangolds all around us. Wash our feet in hot water brought to us by a Russian slave worker and I take the old boots off for the first time since we set out. I regret it later on! German guard brings in a bucket of soup for the dogs guarding us. The dogs didn’t even see the soup, some hungry P.O.W.s woofed the whole lot.
20 Miles
9th Feb. Some stupid German calls us at 6 a.m., with the news that we are marching at 7 a.m. We are due for a day’s rest after three days of marching, and I almost weep, after the gruelling day we had yesterday. However, it is later altered
[page break]
-3-
9th Feb. to a day of rest and I’m back on the straw in no time. spuds issued both morning and afternoon. Bandage my feet and remain horizontal for the rest of the day.
NIL
10th Feb. Set off a t[sic] 7 a.m. and reach the main road at 8 a.m. Convoys of Army pontoon and soldiers going West, presumably retreating from Joe’s onward drive. One mile on main road to Stettin then turn due West towards Greifenburg, along a rough and muddy road. 1/4 loaf per man issued here and then we pass through a small village where buckets of cold water, fruit juice and hot ersatz coffee are left by the roadside. What has come over the Germans? Any other time they would have spat at us without hesitation accompanying their spitting efforts with remarks such as “Luftgangsters”, “Terrorfliegers”, etc. Reach Probbilow at 4:30 p.m. and the Frau supplies hot water to 100 of us. Have my first wash for five days. Feet very wet and blisters still troublesome.
13 Miles
11th Feb. Set off at 8:15 a.m., roads icy, but dry. Sun shining and the blokes are decidedly more cheerful. Griefenburg reached at 10 a.m., first big town we’ve passed through. I jump on to the pavement to dodge a lorry and get shoved into the gutter by a particularly nasty-looking civilian, Swear under my breath. We see some Frenchmen wearing the flash of the Free French Forces in Germany! Dozens of evacuees on the roads. Reach Kukahn at 2 p.m. and we split up into parties of 100 for each barn in the village. While Jack gets our bed ready, I hobble around the yard and find a French prisoner. Out comes my best French and he comes across with a huge sandwich full of sausage and onions. Just like giving me a three course dinner and Jack and I knock it back at once. Spuds and hot water brought out by the Hausfrau but it’s far too cold to strip off and wash. We sleep under a haycart and spend a comfortable night.
13 Miles
12th Feb. Jack’s birthday to-day, he’s 24. Gets an extra cup of water from me for a present, all I can afford! We hit the road at 8 a.m. and hike through a wood for three miles. Volzin at 9 a.m., Dorphagen at 10:15 a.m. One cup of hot macaroni soup issued from mobile field kitchen, very nice but I could drink ten cups and still want more. Lutzenhagen at 12:30 p.m. and reach Goerke at 4 p.m. where we have booked rooms for the night. Jack and I sleep in the chaff-cutting joint once more, next to the cowshed. Wizard bed and my French gets us some onions, bread and milk from a French P.O.W. Comfortable night and woken up at 6:30 a.m. by French
[page break]
-4-
12th Feb. and Polish prisoners from the farm who want to cut the chaff and turnips.
13 miles
13th Feb. A day of rest, thank heaven! Some generous French prisoners give Jack and Myself some porridge and milk, fried spuds and onions. Only decent meal we’ve had for nearly five weeks. We purchase a small sheep for 50 marks from the farmer and the boys slaughter it. Divided among 600 men, and my share is as big as a sugar knob. 100 German officers and men have 4 sheep between them. Higher mathematics as taught by the Fuehrer! Kicked out of our comfortable quarters by an irate farmer who has caught the boys milking his cows. They drained ‘em dry. Deadly night in an old barn, about three feet of straw between Jack and I, on a slope as well. We swear at each other during the night.
NIL
14th Feb. The “Gentlemen Tramps” move off a t[sic] the respectable hour of 10 a.m., and cover three miles through ankle-deep mud. Then three more miles through a rainstorm and blankets and clothes very, very wet. We’re not going very far to-day, finish at noon and the Germans issue 1/7 lb. of margarine, six dry biscuits (no bread available) and 1/5 lb. of corned beef. I smell a big rat! Billeted at Dobberphul where the barn leaks like a sieve and rats, and other livestock play a lively tattoo on my chest all night. First taste of bartering. Hobnob with an attractive fraulein who lives on the farm and for one square of chocolate she gives me an egg and 1/3 of a loaf of bread. Wizard!
6 Miles
15th Feb. My 25th B irthday[sic] to-day, my aching back, I feel as though I’m 55! Off we got at 7:45 a.m. and hit the main SWINEMUNDE road. On to Tessin at 10a.m. and here we pass three dead horses on the road. Not much left of them, and the dogs attached to the column have a nibble as they go by. I turn my nose up although I’m pretty hungry. If it was a dead bullock, I mught [sic] have a go, my mother wouldn’t know! Go through Hagen at 10:30 a.m., last town on the mainland, and then we cross the bridge to the island and crawl through Wollin. The Huns graciously allow us to rest outside the town, after a five mile stretch. We plod on and on and at 5 p.m. we reach Pritter, 2-1/2 miles from the port of Swinemunde. Record run to-day so my feet tell me, anyway. No accommodation in barns so we rough it out in the open, or cleared woodland. Make a tent from bracken but it falls down.
[page break]
-5-
15th Feb. Cup of soup from mobile kitchen then Jack and I curl up together and we kip down on the grass with my overcoat beneath us. Heavy frost at night and we wake up absolutely frozen. Obviously! Can hardly feel my feet. There are some 1,800 of our party here along with 800 Tommies and Russians whom we picked up in ghe [sic] afternoon. Much stealing goes on, blokes lose their food and belongings. It’s tragic when a person robs his pals through hunger. We’ll stick it on the Reparations Bill when it’s all over.
24 Miles
16th Feb. [inserted] What a birthday! 22 today. [/inserted] Up at 6:30 a.m. and hobbling down the main road by 7:30 a.m. After an hour’s march, we reach Swinemunde, the great Baltic Port. The ferry to the second island isn’t due for three hours, so we hang around and wait. We’ve had nothing to eat or drink to-day and the German soldiers and civilians try and sell us cold water for 5 cigarettes a cup. We prefer to go thirsty. We jump on the ferry at 11:30 and as soon as we get comfortable downstairs, it’s time to get off again! On the island, a German soldier sells me 1/6 of a loaf of bread for 20 cigarettes! Sheer robbery but Jack and I are feeling pretty hungry. March through Zirchow at noon and we pass huge Naval barracks where the boys of the Kriegsmarine line up and watch us go by with arrogance written all over them. At Crenzow we go into barns and Jack and myself secure a comfortable berth underneath the threshing machine. We corner a Russian and buy two cattle cakes from him for five cigarettes. With a splash of jam on them they are quite appetising. Amazing what we do eat these days. Hot water dished up.
12-1/2 Miles
17th Feb. Away by 8:30 a.m. and through Usedom at noon after a wea ry[sic] monotonous plod. Last town before the mainland and cross the Parge Bridge at 1 p.m. On cobblestones for five miles and my poor feet suffer! I might as well walk on a bed of nails, it couldn’t hurt any more. Plenty of F.W.190’s and Me. 109’s circling above us, and we pass by their aerodrome. Everyone tired and brassed off after the long trek of the previous two days. Boots drying out at las t[sic], but I’ve lost the heel of one of them and walk with a perpetual limp. At Murchin, we are herded into barns along with the Russians from Luft 4. Accommodation terrible, no room at all and during the night the Russians crawl over and do a spot of grub-lifting. We’re hungry enough but they’re a darn sight hungrier. The food stakes are grim at the moment. Hardly any cold water available, and no hot water at all. Five rotten spuds given to each man. Cold and miserable and morale low at the moment.
[page break]
-6-
18th Feb. Set course a t[sic] 9:15 a.m. and after five miles, we reach Anklam which has been pounded by the Yanks quite a few times. Plenty of evidence here and the civilians give us particularly sour looks. One old gaffer waves his walking stick threateningly, quite near me, and I put on a spurt. My poor old feet complain too! Weary hike for another 8 miles to Nerdin where we are rewarded with a good barn and a generous farmer for a pleasant change. Hot water in a tub and I have a shave, wash and even clean my teeth in a small pig sty and Jack finds six old spuds in a trough so we go to town. Wizard soup made in a milk tin from spuds, hot water, one onion and breadcrumbs. Funny how a wash, shave and some food send our morale up by leaps and bounds.
13 Miles
19th Feb. Cup of coffee and some soup before we leave a t[sic] 7:30 a.m. Learn tha t[sic] the German High Command have ordered all Burgomasters not to issue spuds to prisoners so we’re in a sorry spot. If we have to rely on our minute quantities of Red Cross food we’ll never see England again; I’m sure of it. Several blokes have disappeared from the column, we get smaller every day. Where the hell they are, we don’t know.
Bit risky, buzzing off at the moment with the food situation as it is, and the Germans are rather panicky with the trigger finger. Dead straight road for nine miles, terribly monotonous. Long “lunch” interval, the Germans must be getting tired as well. Not much use giving us all this time, we’ve nothing to eat, might as well go on walking nearer home. Turn off to main Berlin-Neubrandenburg road. Berlin is 100 miles to the S.W. Walk through woods later, pas t[sic] Italian P.W. camp and here we see a brutal German guard flogging a dog with a whip and a stick and hate written all over his ugly face. Reach a farm at Seltz, but no room for us there. Issued with a cup of hot green water (pea soup) from the mobile kitchen and then we plod on by moonlight with the boys singing some good old Army songs. After three miles we hit Hermannshobe and its deadly trying to fix up some sleeping space in the darkness. Jack and I end up in a cellar with cobwebs and rats all over the shop. Some bright spark decides that “our cellar” is the latrine during the night. I never swore so much in all my life.
18 Miles
20th Feb. Day of rest is proclaimed and about time too. We’ve been on the plod for six days and our plates of meat are crying out for a break. I pinch a cup of fresh milk from a willing cow in the cowshed and after seven spuds for breakfast I’m violently sick. We’ve had very little food lately and a big “woof” of spuds was too much for me. I sell Auntie’s blue pullover that I was wea ring[sic] when I was shot down, and a couple of Polish slave workers give me 1/2 loaf of bread and some cooked beans. Cold and miserable
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20th Feb. All day so decide on going to bed early. Lots of the boys are cooking the ears of wheat that they’ve stolen from the barn and are trying to make a cereal. Not very successfully however. Learn that we have five miles to cover tomorrow, then sixteen miles the next day to Neubrandenburg where we are due to stay in a Stalag. I’ll believe that when we get there. These Germans change their tactics too many times.
NIL
21st Feb. Off at 9:45 a.m. Miss the soup issue, not enough to go round. First four miles up a muddy cart-tract [sic] and I’m pretty puffed at the end of it. The German guards buy bread in the village. Poor propaganda! They can’t even feed their own troops, let alone us poor prisoners. Do a deal with a guard on the roadside, 1/6 loaf of bread and a hunk of lard for twelve dirty old cigarettes. As sick by the roadside later on. Do I feel grim! Getting pretty weak these days but have to plod on somehow. At Gutskow, we are housed in a decent barn and we get a liberal issue of spuds. At this farm there is a girl who was in Boston, U.S.A. in the middle of January, as an internee and has just been repatriated. What the hell she came back to this mess for, I just can’t imagine! The Yanks look at her goggle-eyed, they can’t believe that she was in the golden States so recently. But they all draw the line at speaking to her. Hot brew and spuds at 5 p.m. and we then hit the hay. For me, it’s the warmest and most comfortable night since we began the hike, but poor old Jack is in a deadly state. He’s been eating someof [sic] the cooked beans that we traded for my pullover and they’re playing havoc with his stomach. I didn’t touch them hungry though I was. He’s up half the night and has job to make the door over the mass of sprawling bodies. Guards refuse to let him out of the barn and it’s just too bad on the bloke sleeping by the door! The beans are given to Geoff next morning, in disgust and the name of Poland stinks a t[sic] the moment.
7 Miles
22nd Feb. A day of Rest! We remain in the pit till la te[sic] then queue for 1-1/2 hours for one cup of lukewarm water. Peel a few spuds in the farmyard and at 4 p.m. we are issued with a cup of soup, hot water and five spuds. I get fatter every day, I don’t think. Anyway, it’s hot, and warms us a little. Put the flag out! The Germans issue some rations – 2/5 loaf of bread, 1/11 lb. meat (stinking corned beef) and 1/4 lb. of margarine. The Army can again march on it’s stomach for a few miles anyway. Jack groggy all day, very weak at the moment – I don’t think I’ve seen him look so ill. Don’t feel so good myself either. Stomach weak and sick three times today.
NIL
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23rd Feb. Ja ck[sic] too ill to march, so gets on sick wagon. Can’t divide our grub in time and he needs someone with him, so I tag along. A very bumpy ride over cart tracks. S/C 8 a.m. and our stomachs turn over several times en route. Pass through village with funeral in progress at the early hour or 9 a.m. [underlined] He [/underlined] doesn’t care who wins the war anyway. Our two horses exhausted after pulling the wagon through deep mud! Change horses and take on four this time. Reminds us of the stage coach era. Kleef Bahnhof 12:30 p.m. Rosenow 1:15. Arrive a t[sic] Briggow, our billet for the night at 3 p.m. and get decent in the barn along with the sick party. Hot water and spuds in the evening and my hunger is appeased somewhat! Auspicious occasion, as I clean my teeth and have a wash in the pig-trough.12 Miles
24th Feb. Programme seems uncertain, so we stay here to-day. Have two cups of soup, two sandwiches and a hot brew. I ever shave and wash and then lay on the straw for the rest of the day, feeling that life is indeed good, compared with the last week or two. Two men taken out during the night with internal trouble and hear later that they passed on. The total number of deaths in now nine, that we know of.
NIL
25th Feb. Rest. Pea soup twice to-day and by evening time, I regret having it. I hate peas, but when there’s nothing else I have to eat them. No chance of a deal of any kind as the guards are watching the slave workers pretty closely. Monotonous day, just laze on the straw. Feeling weak inside but Jack much better than he was.
NIL
26th Feb. T he[sic] Doc works the miracle and up comes a cup of barley at noon, and again at 5 p.m. German Doctor visits the barn during the day and a rranges[sic] for the removal of the worst cases to the hospital. Believe me, you’ve got to be half dead to be among them. I’m not sure which is best – going into dock of carrying on with the hike. With super diplomacy, we carry off a big deal – 1/2 loaf of bread and some cold roast CHICKEN for half a can of coffee and three squares of chocolate. Pierce the German guard and a banquet is ordered. Jack and myself grin at each other with delight. You’d imagine we were at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet eating off his gold plate. Our table manners disappear completely as we greedily woof the legs of the chicken, held in our hands. No time to waste on forks!
NIL
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27th Feb. Still no sign of moving so for breakfast, we finished off the scraps of chicken along with a hunk of Polish bread and margarine that I pinched. Barley again for lunch and at 5p.m. also. Very sleepless night, and we’re very overcrowded, more blokes falling sick every day.
NIL
28th Feb. Hands too damn cold to write. Shivering all day in a very draughty barn into which we moved this morning. One man died to-day from an infection on the knee. Lack of medical supplies now serious. But a ray of sunshine appear s[sic] on this wet, dismal day. A truck of Red Cross parcels a rrive[sic], brought from Lubeck on a wagon supplied by the American Red Cross and driven with Swiss patrol. The Huns can’t give us anything it seems. Issue of one parcel each, they have to last till the end of the march, and heaven knows when tha t[sic] will be. Goody, goody, I have a stand-up bath in the farmer’s kitchen to-day. I had to, due to an accident! The water was lukewarm, about three inches deep, but I’ve a vivid imagination. Feel tons better after it.
NIL
1st Ma r[sic]. Rain and a very high wind to-day, and very cold too. B ut[sic] maybe it’s the fact that our resistance is almost nil. My feet are just frozen the whole time. Barley twice again and I pinch some spuds out of the farmer’s clamp and Des Grealy cooks them for us. We’re so damned hungry, we woof 1-1/2 cans of spuds each. Dirty great holes in the roof and the rain comes in and the wind blows like fury. I wonder what Jon Hall of The Hurricane would do if he were here.
NIL
2nd Mar. Another man dies in hospital. Hands and feet frozen, too cold to peel our few spuds, so we jus t[sic] woof them with the jackets on. Deadly business answering the call of Nature in the open-air. Half a ruddy gale blows around your rear! Not at all funny. Stay under the blanket and overcoat most of the day, warmest place by far.
NIL
3rd Mar. Up at 8 a.m. for a cup of German coffee and some cold cooked spuds. Frozen as usual. I’ve almost forgotten what it is to be warm. At 12:30 p.m. we leave the farm after our long rest. Five miles to Luplow along cart tracks and ploughed fields. At least we are a little warmer on the march. Good billet, eight of us in small barn, and Jack and I cook some s tolen[sic] spuds over a wood fire outside and along with a stolen onion those spuds taste delicious! Comfortable night, but feet cold as usual.
5 Miles
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4th Mar. Up at 7 a.m. and off at 8:30 a.m. in a perishing snowstorm with the slow party, mostly semi-sick wallahs. We go so slowly, I even think a snail would pass us. Our blankets are soon wet, as usual. Decide to rejoin the mob as soon as we can, this pace is killing us! Pass Don having the usual by the roadside in a snowstorm! Bit draughty. See three dead horses by the roadside, dropped dead, brassed off, I presume. Many evacuees from Stettin areas. Get 1/4 loaf from guard for tem battered and broken cigarettes. Slice of bread donated by the only good-hearted Hun in Germany. Vossfeld 1 p.m., Marhin 1?:45 p.m., Musselhagen 2 p.m., Rockow, then Muckelhei for the night. Hot brew as soon as we bed down, feeling tired out, miserable and as weak as a drowned rat. Early night.
14 Miles
5th Mar. Off at 8:30 a.m., with 1/6 loaf of bread and 1/5 parcel of Red Cross food issued on the roadside. I carry the whole parcel for five miles then Ferdie kindly divides it up! Brassed off. Air raid in progress, plenty of fighters and vapour trails at 20,000 feet! Wo ist der Luftwaffe? The USAAF are very much in evidence. Hear the bombs dropping. Lovely sound, but too near for my liking. Waren at 11:30 a.m. long trek through the town and we all feel very hungry at the sight of food in the shops, and civilians woofing in the local restaurant. An old codger gives me a kick in the pants as I go past, apparently he hates us. I can’t do a thing, just swear like fury under by [sic] breath. Pass a S talag[sic] on the other side of town – wish to hell we could go in there. Roads improving now, off the cobblestones that are so prevalent in German towns, but at the same time we’re very much on our knees. Guess we stiffened up when we rested too long. Klink at 3 o’clock then off into the woods and reach Warnhof at 4:30 p.m. Right on our benders. Good barn, we sleep under a wagon but still get trodden on during the night. Norman Stokes crawls 100 yards on hands and knees then has an accident in his pants. Too funny for words! Five spuds and hot water, along with two slices of bread and a biscuit. Some feed to-night.
17-1/2 Miles.
6th Mar. Up at 6:30 a.m. with the usual spuds before we set off at 8:30 a.m. very tired and s tiff[sic] after yesterday’s long trek. Cover 8 miles to Mecklow with only a short rest half way. Then half hour’s rest sitting on the dirt by the roadside. Klim can full of spuds goes down well. Then a long, long hike of nearly ten miles without a rest through Jungershof, Alt Schwerin and Karow, a railway junction. Look longingly at a line of goods trucks drawn up in the station. Sigh-post[sic] by roadside reads Berlin 177K., Neuebrandenburg 80K., Rostock 74K. 7 more dead horses by the road, with the flesh hacked off by hungry dogs, and probably hungry Germans as well. I hope they starve! Reach Walnshof at 4:15 p.m., and Jack and I sleep with the pigs in their sty.
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6th Mar. What a line! – but very warm. Scrounge a can of potato salad from a farm worker (Pole), also a can of milk, all for two cigarettes. I answer the call of Nature on a pig during the night and unconsciously apologize to him. Jack thinks it very amusing. Another air raid during the night.
18 Miles.
7th Mar. The old Day of Rest and are we grateful! A can of real milk for breakfast along with four spuds. A lay down on some straw all morning to rest our aching limbs. Three brews during the day and a can of barley soup that I scrounged from a Polish slave worker. We have a wash and a shave and a general clean up in the sty along with the pigs. The last war wallahs have nothing on us I’m afraid. They can no longer crow about the mud they used to plough through. As is usual when we rest, it’s perishing cold outside. Some of the boys help the old farmer to pull down a tree, presumably hoping for some extra grub. Tree goes down but no grub comes up. The dear, kind Germans issue 1/2 loaf per man and 1/2 oz. margarine per man to last six long days. Jack and I suck two squares of chocolate each in bed, and it lasts twenty minutes. The highlight of my life these days!
NIL
8th Mar. Staying here again to-day, the German High Command must be in a fla t[sic] spin. However, we’re grateful for the respite. Room is out bright and early and in the cowshed pinching a can of milk. I think I’ll join the Land Army for the next war. We lunch early to-day, at 11 a.m., and it’s a two-course effort, one spud and a spoonful of cooked swede! Sew s few buttons on my pants but if any more part company with me, I’ve had it – no wool or cotton left. A few more spuds appear in the evening, moderate ration, plus a can of soup that I buy from a German kiddie for one cigarette. He’ll smoke himself to death before nightfall. I pinch some more milk, but a German farmhand catches me and knocks the whole lot into my face and swears furiously. Didn’t even have the chance to swallow any. Jack finds it amusing but I certainly don’t. Last half bar of chocolate in bed. Never will I be without chocolate when I get home.
NIL
9th Mar. Up at 6 a.m., and a really hot brew this time Ferdy has done well in the old cookhouse, such as it is. Some cats (cooked) come up just before we leave, they help to fill the gap in the stomach. Off on the trot once more at 8:15 a.m., across frozen cart tracks for three miles to Penzlin which we hit at 9:45 a.m. it’s a miracle, there are no broken ankles flying around after that stroll. Gallin railway station at 10:30 a.m., and we look very jealously at a German officer who has jus t[sic] come home on leave to be greeted by his frau. We see a German clad in a warm RAF
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9th Ma r[sic]. Flying coat, exercising horses. For two miles we hit the best road surface yet, all concrete and we step on it. Then through mud, cart tracks and ploughed fields to Diestelow which we reach at 12 noon. Destined to stay here for the rest of the day. Only 11 miles to-day but the rough surface has taken all our energy away. A “woof” of biscuits and corned dickey on arrival, and a brew (good ‘un) comes up in half an hour. Bad dose of diarrhoea (how the hell do you spell it?) For the rest of the day and night it seems as though it’s my turn for dysentery, the complaint most prevalent these days. It’s the “G.I.’s” with a vengeance. Spuds and a can of thick soup during the evening but I can’t touch any. Rather sleepless night, up quite a few times.
11 Miles
10th Mar. Rest to-day, thank heaven! I don’t think I could stagger out of the farmyard to-day, I feel so darn weak and tired. Two spuds at 11 a.m., and a drop of barley. Jack working in the cookhouse to-day, a good thing because he does a deal with the German civvies and brings back 1/2 loaf of bread for 20 cigarettes and a square of chocolate. G.I.’s pretty grim at the moment, visiting the slit trench every hour of more and just make it several times. Air rai at night, very early too and I see the stuff going up when I’m visiting my “second home” outside. Darned insomnia again and I’m up half a dozen times during the night.
NIL
11th Mar. Rest of the column move off but I feel too weak to march so I go on the sick wagon. Divide what bit of grub we have in case I don’t see Jack at the other end. S/C at Pollock and half the column are now quartered, plus the chow wagon. Cup of hot wa ter[sic] there, then on to Lanken, a further three miles, where I rejoin the barrack who catch us up later. The sick wagon is an old wooden affair, a real boneshaker and my stomach suffers – not in silence either. Jump off wagon six times during the journey, making a total of 32 during the last 48 hours. Not fog! Crowded barn but Jack gets past a German guard by jumping the ditch at the back. Drops his cup and faithful walking stick in the sheissen[sic]! Farmer appears later, wa ving[sic] a naked scythe on discovering five litres of milk missing. The boys have been a t[sic] it again. Even worse later, when he reports that a number of chickens have disappea red[sic] miraculously. He threatens to shoot a few of the boys in the morning but Diplomat Clarke talks him round with the aid of the Hauptmann. Deadly night, insomnia and dysentery. I have a hell of a job to get to the trench, with bloke’s bodies and feet in the way. I want to go home! Another heavy air raid at night.
9 Miles
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12th Ma r[sic]. Up very early, not much use stopping bed, have to jump out as soon as I hit the straw! Hot drink at 9 a.m. and we are then moved back to Beckendorf, in the large barn at noon. Presumably this farmer will be glad to see the back of us – quite a few of his chickens have met a hasty death since we arrived. After all, a bloke must eat. No wagon available so I have to stagger along somehow. This dysentery is deadly – sometimes I think I’ll never see my native country again! Only two miles but I have to fall out half a dozen times. We pass the padre, Rev. Morgan, on the road. He’s one of the boys, looks as much like a tramp as any of us. He could have ridden the whole way, but not him. One of the very best, one of these lovable types. Reach the village faged out, and bless Jack for carrying half my kit. Good lad! Decent pit, near the door for military reasons! Spend the rest of the day on the straw, under my blankets, both of ‘em, with the wind howling through the decrepit barn. 1/2 loaf of bread and 1 oz. of margarine issued. Another accident, I am now minus a pair of trousers. Mighty wet outside during the night, pop out 7 times altogether, and am abused and sworn at, and whacked with a rifle butt by a guard. He refers to me as an English pig. I’d dearly love to see him in the same predicament.
2 Miles
13th Mar. Have to divide our pitiful stock of food once more as I’m going into “hospital”. This consists of twenty or so beds of straw in the farmer’s covered- in pigsties. Wish Jack could come with me, I feel so darned helpless. Doc brings me a can of mint tea, helps to brighten me up a little, but I don’t stay there very long, as I’ve got to go another four miles on the wagon as there’s no room here. The place is overcrowded now and with so many chaps suffering from frostbite, horrible blisters on their feet and so on. Still haven’t got my trousers, so I wrap myself in a blanket. Cold and miserable journey on the wagon, in a heavy rainstorm, blankets soaked as usual. Four miles, through Lanken again, to Stalzendorf. Horrible barn, freezing inside and the rain coming in. I’m past caring though. Hardly any sleep, two packs and two bales of straw fall on me from the loft above. The G.I.’s are less frequent now – they need to be after more than 70 in the last 3 days.
4 Miles
14th Mar. Move again at 7 a.m. on the wagon. Haven’t eaten a thing except a spoonful of tinned salmon during the last 48 hours. Terrible journey over ploughed fields, stomach badly shaken. Barn accommodation at Moderitz. Not bad at all, but food stakes pretty grim by now. Doesn’t affect me today, my poor old stomach is quite beyond any form of food.
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14th Mar. Get into a make-shift bed of straw at 12 noon, on arrival. Raining like hell outside and I feel so miserable and depressed that it’s the bes t[sic] place to be in. barracks 8, 9 and 10 arrive two hours later – they’re getting a grim deal all round. I break my fast (56 hours) with a slice of cold toast and pate. Hunger bloody acute by now, but daren’t eat anything more. Square of chocolate in bed, lasts 20 minutes. Out 4 times in the night but manage to sleep as well. Quite a pleasant change after the insomnia spell. Still no food issued by those dear friends of ours, the Germans.
9 Miles
15th Mar. Stay in bed all day, rest does wonders. Have a few small spuds at 1 o/c and a handful of old carrots. Very hungry but scared to eat any more in case the old complaint returns. Glorious sunshine all afternoon and air activity above us. Have a bath in a bucket and clean my teeth once more, even washing a few clothes also. I feel rather happy – a wash and brush up makes a load of difference. Another square of nutty in bed, make this one last for a long, long time as I’ve hardly eaten at all to-day. Much better night’s rest, although I’m up several times again. Main trouble is weakness now. The boys here are in a grim state. No Red Cross food, hardly any bread, and our only food for a day consists of a few spuds and a cup of watery soup. They can not continue to march much longer without a high rate of sickness. Can count the old ribs quite easily now and I don’t suppose I’m more tha n[sic] 6-1/2 stones. We are told we are to proceed to Ludwigslust, 20 miles away and then transport will be provided. Camp Leaders have been in touch with Red Cross Distribution Centres at Lubeck. Need for parcels is vital, the Germans can’t or won’t feed us. Up-to-date, we have been on the road 37 days, covered 288 miles and our food supplies have been 2 loaves, 4/5 lb. margarine, 2/11 lb. meat, (from the Germans) and 2-1/2 food parcels from the Red Cross. Speaks for itself, I think.
NIL
16th Mar. Sick party moves again at 7 a.m. on the old bone-shaker. Three miles to Parchim, through the town, and on for eight miles in the direction of Ludwigslust, which is now nine miles away. Old lady and gent of some 80 summers come up to the cart and start knocking the boys about with their walking sticks. Bit sticky, for a time, until the guards call them off. Cold ride but we’re there at 1 p.m. and wait for Barracks 1-4 to arrive with their chow-wagon. The joint is called Durehow, pretty miserable spot and no food at all for us. The farmer is a Heil Hitler man, not ‘arf’! The G.I.’s are clearing up now, but I’m starving
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16th Mar. like everyone else. Picked up a dirty old piece of bread this morning, weeks old, but I scraped it and chewed it. Better than nothing anyway. I’m not fussy. If my poor mother could see me now. Probably tell me I shouldn’t have joined! Barracks 1-4 arrive at 3 p.m. with chow-wagon and at 6 p.m. we have a cup of thin watery soup with one carrot in it. And I’ve been waiting since 9 a.m. with my tongue hanging out. Wo ist der fleisch and Kartoffeln? Have my one remaining square of nutty and go to bed, at least I can’t yearn for grub when I’m asleep. Bloke sleeping next to me who has been without food, apart from 5 spuds and a cup of soup, for three days. He eats two slices of bread and is violently sick. Poor devil, I’d like to help him, but have nowt myself. Some blokes have been like that for four days and marching 15 miles a day in all weathers.
12 miles
17th Mar. Brew of sweet mint tea form the wagon at 7 a.m. and the Yanks, Barracks 1-4 move off at 8 a.m. on the last lap (so we are told) to Ludwigslust. Sick party remaining here for a day, as no wagon is available and I’m bloody sure I wouldn’t last more than one mile with kit on my back. Several blokes attempt the struggle, counting on a parcel issue the other end. I hope their efforts are rewarded. No food available for the 30 of us, till the next big party arrives about 3 p.m. They eventually turn up at 4 p.m. and the dear, kind Germans issue a 1/4 loaf bread and 1/8 lb. of margarine to last for four days. 1-1/2 spuds come up at 5 o’clock plus the dirtiest, thinnest soup I’ve ever seen, 90% water and 10% Kohlrabi. Can read the name of the maker on the bottom of my tin! Go to bed feeling very, very hungry but manage to sleep OK. I dream a wonderful dream of never-ending plates of fish and chips. I’d pay 20 quid for some right now, if I only had 20 quid.
NIL
18th Mar. Cold brew at 8 a.m. with one slice of bread and a piece of spam. Barracks 8, 9 and 10 move out and advance guard of 5, 6 and 7 a rrive[sic] at 11 o’clock. Never was I more glad to see Jack than when he staggered in. We celebrate with a woof off some civvy bread he’s purloined from somewhere. Their Jerry rations must have been better than ours or he must have rationed himself severely, as he has more grub left than me. Gosh, it’s good to see him again, and we natter away as though we’ve been parted for five years instead of five days. Comradeship means more in a prison camp than anywhere on earth. Put the flag out, we’ve just bought a hunk of bread from Lofty Maddocks for some old Jerry margarine. We can’t eat that alone so we’re off on
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18th Mar. dry bread now. Spuds issued in evening (1-1/2 and dirty at that). Buy two extra ones for two cigarettes and a piece of liver paste. To smoke or starve, that is the question. Times are bloody hard, aren’t they Mum?
NIL
Here beginneth Jack’s diary for the last five days;
13th March. Rest at Beckendorf. Cec pretty groggy and taken with the sick joint. Split up for the first time since last August and we divide the grub, rather awkward. Heard from American medical bloke that Cec has left for some other joint. (Minus his trousers! C.A.R.) 15th March. Up at 6 a.m. for a cup of thin stew and a slice of bread and soon on the road for Lanken, Stalzendorf and Neuehoff, all along cart tracks then to Zielslurbe. Mint tea and a raw spud from the Huns after dark. 12 miles. 16th March. Good night’s rest, 1 slice of bread and half an EGG for breakfast, having bought two for 5 cigarettes. Hear we move on Sunday and two days should finish the march. Good show! Feel very tired and rest most of the day. Wondering how Cec is going on. (Ruddy grim boy C.A.R.) 17th March. Brew and egg sandwich for breakfast. Fair spud ration comes up and I buy a slice of bread for a tiny spot of Klim. 18th March. Up at 6 a.m. and after a measly breakfast off along the old cart-tracks once the old cart-tracks once mor[sic] to Damn, through Spornitz to Durehow. Meet Cec again here and are we both glad! Have a woof to cerebrate.
19th Mar. Rejoin Barrack 7 to-day, along with Jack. I don’t feel at all well but I’m leaving with Jack even if I collapse on the road. Leave Durehow at 8 a.m. to Brenz, where we pass groups of the Army boys who called in a t[sic] Luft 4 on their way down from Danzig. That must be about 500 miles back up the road! We yell at one another and I think of the good old Army cry “Are we downhearted”? It’s a most emphatic “NO”. Takes more than a bunch of Huns to get us down. You’d think we were meeting each other in Piccadilly on a night out! I think that’s what the Brass Hats mean when they talk about “esprit de corps”? Off down the road to Blievenstorf, then Muchow at 11 a.m. Stop for a roadside picnic off one solitary slice of bread and a tiny piece of spam. If a horse ran by I’d think I was at Newmarket in the good old piping days of peace. Roadside news bulletin! Another five miles to go and they’re giving us some bread to-night. Up goes the old morale. Zierzow at 1 p.m. where we pack in for the day. Find Barracks 8, 9 and 10 already here, and they’ve pinched all the best spots in the barn. Further outlook – bloody! On my old benders, but
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19th Mar. a slice of bread and a cup of ersatz coffee sets me up once more. Germans issue 3/8 loaf to each man. There’s a dirty great crust on our piece. The bread is hard enough, but that’s the last straw. Never mind Jack, pitch in! 5 spuds at 7 o’clock and we woof them with a piece of bread and old faithful, a piece of spam. Delicious! Couldn’t sleep at all, dreaming wild dreams of freedom. My God, what I won’t do when that day dawns.
13 Miles
20th Mar. Start at 9 o’clock, feeling very tired with pains in my leg. I guess it’s rheumatism or gout, never will I grin at unfortunate old men again when they mention their aches and pains. Going very hard. Werle at 10a.m. and we have a long rest of 50 minutes as the Jerries issue a further 3/8 loaf and blob of margarine. It’s not Adolf’s birthday yet, surely? Why the generosity? On to Kremmin, and reach Bechentin a t[sic] 1:30 p.m. Mathematician Reeves announces that we are tearing across the Third Reich at a rate of 14 miles a day on two slices of bread and four spuds per day. Grea t[sic] cheers go up. Seven spuds come round at 7 o’clock, the boys have been pinching again, bless ‘em. Very tired after today’s slog over some hard and rough roads and my legs are letting me know all the gen. Jack’s favourite blister has burst forth again. We but 15 ozs. Of sausage meat from a civvy fa rm[sic] worker for 15 cigarettes and sell 3 ozs. Of liver meat for 20 cigarettes. Tired business men.
12 Miles
21st Mar. Off at 9:40 a.m. – wait for remainder of the column and then the whole compound moves off, first time we’ve been together since Swinemunde. Head winds, dust, perspiration, and a slow pace, all brass us off completely. Through Wanslitz, then strike through the forest over bags of sand to Eldena, a small market town on the canal. Arrive Bresegard at 4:45 p.m. and split up into small barns, 100 men in each. Woof at 6 o’clock of bread and sausage meat. Get the serviettes out Jack, we’re dining in style! Only two spuds come up, but we have a hot wash in the yard. Hope we stay here tomorrow.
11 Miles
22nd Mar. Do we hell! Up at 5:30 a.m. but one consolation – we have two cups of wizard, thick soup before we leave at 7:30 a.m. The old stomach feels quite full, rather strange sensation these stormy days. Glorious sunshine, but with an Army overcoat, I hate it. Boy, do I sweat, and my feet are dea dly[sic]. Remind myself to take my boots off to-night. I’ll suffer for it next day, though. Through Karens, Conew, and Melliss to Heidorf. Here I fall out for the usual, and I’m rapped across the rear with a rifle butt by the brute of
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22nd Mar. a sergeant. I’ll do him one fine day. Have to tear down the road to catch the boys up, but the guard tears with me, I don’t mind so much. Half Red Cross parcel issued on the roadside and poor old Barracks 8, 9 and 10 have to carry the 50 lb. cartons for 1-1/2 miles. Brave and stalwart fellows. If I carried one, I’d collapse after a few yards. I just missed that ordeal through belting up the road to catch up. We cross the River Elbe just north of Domitz. River Rhine next stop boys, then dear old Father Thames. Air raid begins and we turn off the main highway and have a rest. Bags of flak, give ‘em socks boys. Think of it, most of you up there will be back necking in the back row of the flicks to-night. Ah! Woe is me. Three miles down the winding road by the river to Dammatz, where we stay the night. Woof and a hot brew then a shave and wash once more. Good egg! This is a cheap existence, one razor blade has lasted me eight weeks. A good night’s rest for a change and I dream of home, sweet home.
16 Miles
23rd Mar. Two cans of soup with a bit of meat in them from a Hun for breakfast. Resting here today, ideal spot too, on the banks of the Elbe. If we had a boat out, I’d imagine myself on the Thames back home. A goon tells us we’re getting a full parcel today. Right, we’ll see how [underlined] that [/underlined] one turns out. He’s given us a load of duff gen up till now. Glorious sunshine all day, sitting outside on the straw. Spring is here, snowdrops and swallows knocking around. Wizard, 1/5 loaf and 1/25 lb. of margarine issued. They’ll kill themselves with generosity any moment now. Decent spud ration for tea and we also have a piece of toast off the old farmer’s kitchen fire. Clean my boots for the first time, having sneaked a Jerry’s boot polish and brushes when he wasn’t around. Must have a touch of sunstroke, I feel very tired and have a splitting headache. We must have come through many degrees of longitude because seven weeks ago we were marching in deep snow and ice and now we’re being bitten by mosquitoes.
NIL
24th Mar. Off we go at 8:30 but hang around on the road for a hell of a time. Ha lf[sic] a parcel issued on the road and we set course for Dannenburg. Fairly large town and the boys pass their ha ndiwork[sic]! Usual air raid in progress but on we go to Tripkau and Melzingen. Sun really hot by now and I’m perspiring like mad, tired out incidentally. Finish day’s march at Brebenbook, 100 men to a barn. Pinch a small enamel bowl and I buy a small knife and a can of salt and a bottle for 10 cigarettes. Eight spuds for supper, but no breakfast. Deadly.
16 Miles
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25th Mar. Set out at 8 a.m. with nothing inside us. That’s nothing fresh however. Three chickens made a quick exit from this world overnight. Wally had a blanty! Pass through Gut Collase and Kienitz and then an air raid begins. Formations of U.S. bombers fly over us and bomb further on. What a super sound that is! Then a monotonous plod for eight miles, no sign of a village for ages, until we hit Nimbergen, where most of the column stay for the night. We strike unlucky and do an extra three miles to Almsdorf. Good barn, 80 of us with electric light as well. Generous ration of spuds and Jack and I dig into the parcel with a slice of bread and jam and prunes and powdered milk. That was very nice, Jack, come again. One Yank finds an upholstered seat from a car, and a table also. He fondly imagines himself in the Waldorf-Astoria, no doubt. The straw spoils the effect somewhat. Could I do with a wash. These perishing lice are becoming mechaniced [sic].
15 Miles
26th Mar. Off at 8:30 a.m. after waiting for the rest of the column. A good pace for a change and most of the blokes in step. Six miles go past in no time, through Romstedt, Bevensen, Nasson-Nettorf, and Emmendorf. Sun very hot and pace slows down. Roads becoming grim. These cobblestones play hell with my blisters and aching feet. Barracks 1 – 4 and 8, 9 and 10 go ahead but we stay behind. Never found out the name of the village. The German R.A.C. has fallen down on the job. One thing about this country, you always know where you are – signposts all over the shop. Small barn but uncomfortable and I shiver as soon as I lay down. Bilious during the night and sick three times. Out another four times for the usual. Off the old food and Jack has my spuds. Sleepless night. I sit in a buggy with a guard to get some fresh air after being sick in the night. Oh Lord, spare me from dysentery again!
13 Miles
27th Mar. Day of rest and I’m very grateful. In the old pile of straw most of the day, but have half a bath in a bucket of water. Don’t eat my spuds, so Jack tucks in once more. News flash! We’re [underlined] supposed [/underlined] to go three miles to Uelzen, get split up and go by cattle truck to some camp. Yah! 1 p.m. we pack up and move to Ebstorf – 5 miles away. Crikey, it may be true, so the boys tear along the road with trains before the eyes, and we’re there in just over 1-1/2 hours. That’s the fastest we’ve walked yet. Several budding Olympic walkers in this mob. Yes, the trainload of cattle trucks are there and we all pile into them at Ebstorf Bahnhof. But what a blow! These trucks usually hold 8 horses or 40 men and even then we’re crowded. On this occasion, the hard pressed Germans cram no less than
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27th Mar. 80 repeat 80 men into a truck. It is a physical impossibility to sit down – some are hunched up wog-fashion but the rest have to stand. Dear lord, how long will this last? Now we decide to get cracking on the grub we have left in our parcels. Remembering the sad occasion when we moved to Luft 4 and had our food stolen by the Jerries we are determined not to take any with us into this new camp. Off we go with a hunk of bread, spam, cheese and jam and the parcel slowly deflates. Then I begin to feel ill and can’t eat another thing. This is the most tragic moment of my life. Here am I, been longing for a super-woof for weeks, and now I’ve had it. My God, am I ill! Sick twice, and a G.I. in a Klim tin, a masterpiece of precision work. The doors have been closed a long time and the air is pretty foul. We’re on our way, however, and about 2 a.m. we stop for 20 minutes. Jack helps me out, and I see Doc Pollock who doses me with opium. Relieves me a hell of a lot. Locked in again and pass a horrible night. Everyone swears he prefers marching to this hell on earth.
5 Miles
[inserted] *.Split up & joined Other party to Stalag 357 [/inserted]
28th Mar. Finally arrive at Fallingbostel, near Hanover. 1-1/2 miles to walk from the station but we’re mighty thankful to stretch our legs. Arrive at [underlined] Stalag XIB [/underlined], a mixed Army camp of French, British, Serbs, Yugoslavs and Indians. Hang around and then searched in a huge marquee. None of the Germans pinch any food, for a couple of cigarettes skilfully planted in their hands gets us through the search without any bother. Camp is horribly overcrowded most of the British are Airborne fellows in their weird “jumping suits”. Nearly all captured at Arnhem and like all new prisoners they’re “airborne” all the time. What “Stories of the Air”! Grub stakes very poor, only 1/2 parcel has been issued here during the last 3-1/2 weeks, and the German rations consist of three spuds, “whispering grass”, and two cups of weak ersatz coffee. Soon after we arrive a mass funeral takes place. 15 of the boys are buried, in their plain wooden coffins, the majority have just wasted away. I’m not feeling any too happy at this dismal sight. Up half the night with the old G.I.’s and lose my trousers temporarily. We are all herded together in a huge marquee, and I have approximately a space one foot wide to sleep in. The Long Trek has now ended and so has the Diary, I’m afraid. No more paper available. Delete Toilet Paper, substitute grass and straw!
1-1/2 Miles
29th Mar. to 8th April I’ve scrounged some paper but must be very brief. Our stay at Stalag XIB is destined to be cut short, curse it. The offensive on the Western Front has opened up in full blast and now we are being evacuated from Montgomery’s Army. Presumably we shall meet the Russians half way back. The
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29th Mar. to 8th April Army boys are staying behind but the poor old RAF have got to march away. We have spent 11 days idle and hungry and we’re all in. Blokes have been dying every day, including poor old Harry Bliss. He was taken ill with appendicitis in the cattle trucks and was kept locked up in agony. He died soon after we got here. In many ways I am glad to get out of here. We stand a little more chance of picking up odd bits of food on the road. Another month of this and I’m pretty sure many of us would hit the long, long trail. I can’t forget that Russian who was taken into the Mortuary, covered with a sheet. The sheet was practically flat on the stretcher.
We move out at 12 noon on the 8th and I say goodbye to the pals we’ve made here, including Ginger and Sammy and some boys from the local Regiment. It was good to meet them. See you all at home very shortly! Fairly good rations given us before we leave, including flour and dehydrated cabbage. Accompanied by Army guards, we march 12 miles through Nordbostel to Blecknar. The route is over country similar to Salisbury Plain, and it has been used for the same purpose by German artillery. Decent barn and a liberal issue of spuds. Sleep pretty well, wondering how far away the British Army is right now.
12 Miles
9th April Rest today. Three decent meals today of spuds, pinched from a store below the barn, and the cabbage issue yesterday. Loaf of bread from a Russian Army Captain for a pound of German margarine that was issued. Pretty good deal that, no sentiment in business.
NIL
10th April Off at 9 a.m. through Bergen. Miss the main road and cover extra five miles detour. Jack and I fall out for the usual and hide in a ditch. The column moves on and we come out later. There’s a German soldier down the road nattering away to a bevy of German maidens outside a farm, so back we go again for a meeting to discuss tactics. Go a mile down the road, not a soul about and we make for an XXB Kommando, which is billeted outside a farm. Sit in the ditch to rest and wait a while, when luck deserts us and a truck with all the stragglers aboard comes along. A German sees us and we’ve had it. I spin ‘em a yarn we’ve come from another column, going another way but does he believe me, does he hell! Get in Jack. Ah, well it was nice being free. We catch the column up but they won’t allow us to get off and we ride all the way to Trauen, 6 miles on. Not enough barn accommodation and many sleep in the open air. Hardly any water available. Jack and I are in a barn but we have a deadly night. The lice and other small animals
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10th April swarming over me give me hell. They’ve been multiplying for some time now but we can’t get rid of them. They are in our clothing, hair etc., and it’s pretty grim not being able to wash.
16 Miles
11th April Rest today, no-one, Germans included, seems to know the score. Some of the boys from the column in front come back in the opposite direction and there’s mass confusion. Don’t tell me the Russians are that close! Go into the river nearby and have a bath. Very cold but I prefer to shiver than have these deadly lice. Shed some of my clothes and throw it away, it’s full of animals! If we go on much longer, I shall be the first bloke to cross the Third Reich in the nude. The afternoon is well spent in slinking into a garden and pinching some rhubarb. We make a tart with the flour and water, and eat in style. This is better than the old Stalag! Exciting tonight. Spitfires and Typhoons shoot up an aerodrome just across the road, and are in combat with FW190’s just above our heads. The boys all scamper into the barn, under bushes, blocks of wood and any cover available. We see a 190 go down in flames. What a bloody cheer went up. Another night of “hunting”. The bath didn’t do me any good.
NIL
12th April Plod on across the fields and cart tracks to Wellingbostel. During a rest in the woods, I find a propaganda newspaper dropped by the RAF. Gives us all the up-to-date gen and we devour it greedily. The Huns are reading it as well. Also find ration cards and lea flets[sic] dropped by the boys. Excellent barn, 17 of us in it and we’re locked in – the Huns don’t know were[sic] there. There’s even a lorry in here with us. Any petrol about? Just a slice of bread for supper, then go to sleep. The majority of the boys are in the open, in the wood.
15 Miles
13th April Make a fire as usual out in the open, all budding Boy Scouts now. Stealing wood from the civvies woodshed while Jack gets a few spuds cooked. No bread issued so we make a few biscuits from the last of the flour. Off we go at 1 o’clock along dusty roads for 5 miles to Betzendorf. Not a bad place and we go on the scrounge till bedtime. No Joy!
5 Miles
14th April Cook some spuds over a fire all morning but move at 1:30 and plod for three miles to Barnstedt. We are now only 10 miles from Ebstorf where we boarded the cattle trucks for XIB. The farmer had just killed a horse when we arrived. We didn’t care whether it died from T.B. or anything else. We just get stuck in with a knife or razor blade and run off triumphantly with a hunk of lung and his ruddy windpipe. Get the fire going Jack, we feast tonight. Gosh, it tasted wizard. Bit tough but it’s something to get the old teeth into.
3 Miles
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15th April Boil some spuds over a fire during the morning and also have some rhubarb left. Add some German saccharin and some cooked barley and it’s a sizeable meal for a change. Move at 1 p.m. and do 4 miles to Eitzen. Here Jack and I make a dash for it. It’s now or never. We go past a farmyard, and I keep an eagle eye on the guards. They turn the other way for a moment or two, and I prod Jack and whisper “Left turn”. Into the farmyard we dart, sweating like mad. Into a cattle shed and under some straw, and there we stay for a long while. No one appears and later some civvy kids come in and then race back to tell the old man. Two old ladies come in and we natter to them, stalling all the time. They are scared stiff of the pair of us and they keep telling us that the Allies will kill them when they arrive. We smooth them over with some propaganda and one old dear brings a postcard from her son who is a P.O.W. in Canada. I’ll bet he’s more comfortable than I am, anyway. Some Polish slave workers bring us food: cake, soft-boiled eggs, bread and margarine and coffee. Ma dam[sic], that tastes like a five course dinner in Piccadilly. The farmer eventually arrives and he’s scared too. If he’s found harbouring P.O.W.’s he’s for the wall and a firing squad. Fetches the Burgomaster who later brings in a soldier. This is it, Jack we’re off to join the column. This soldier has fallen out with bad feet, and we later lea ve[sic] the farm to hit the road once more. But luck is with us. A Polish slave worker comes tearing down the road and gives us some coffee and food to see us on our way. At this moment the Hun decides he’s had enough and back we go to the farm and spend the night there.
4 Miles
16th April Breakfast in the kitchen of the farm. Milk, soup, bacon sandwiches and coffee! Wash clothes in a copper during the morning and for dinner we have vegetable soup with onions and spuds. This is really wonderful. We’ve been talking to the guard all morning. He’s a disillusioned German, let down badly by the Feuhrer. He has lost his family in an air raid, and his brothers on the Eastern Front and is horribly brassed off with the war, most of all with the march. So are we. With some diplomacy we persuade to hide us up till the Allies come. He will be a prisoner in a week or so anyway so what has he to lose. Will he fall for it? We await events eagerly. At 5 p.m. we move on to Bienenbuttel, 4 miles away. He certainly is tired of marching. Things look very much in our favour. We will never catch the boys up by marching, only by truck can we make it. Air raid on the way and we stop by a cemetery! Then another halt in the middle of a wood and he leaves us with his rifle and kit while he nips smartly into the undergrowth. What the hell is he playing at? We arrive at the village a t[sic] 8 o’clock three hours later and stop by a house where
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16th April a German brings us some apples. What a life. Two weeks ago we were being kicked and snarled at. Now they give us apples. The mentality of a defeated which crawl to the conquerors! Call at the Burgomaster’s house but he can’t do a thing with us. We go to the town hotel where German troops are quartered and our hearts sink. But we’re kicked out. Whoopee! On we go to the outskirts of another farm and as soon as the hausfrau sees us she starts screaming “Terrorbombers”, “Luftgangsters” etc. etc. Let’s go Jack! But the old guard talks to her and she takes us to a barn in the yard. Our straw beds are only half a dozen yards from the main road and we hear the Army lorries and troops going by, retreating as usual. We go into the kitchen and later have a meal: fried eggs (first for two years), onions and lashings of milk. There’s more food on the table, but we’re scared to eat it. We can’t believe it’s there, the result of the last few month’s privations. This is beyond our wildest dreams. I daren’t hope for too much, we’ve been disappointed so many times before. But I don’t sleep very well, my brain is in a whirl.
4 Miles
17th April Up at 8:30 a.m. and we help the little Russian girl in the kitchen. She’s about 18 and the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. In decent clothes and with make up I’d take her anywhere and love being seen with her. Does she work hard! Jack and I feel very sorry for her. Still you’ll soon be free, Olga, and the boot on the other foot. Huge breakfast at 9 a.m. we’re called into the kitchen. Sheer luxury being called in to meals and everything laid ready. Three platefuls of milk soup, bread, whey, cheese, jam, syrup, bacon and apples. Back to the straw to sleep, I can hardly stand. My poor old stomach can hardly cope with a meal of that size. For dinner we had potato soup, pork, stewed apples in syrup, and coffee. Sit out in the sun and later the old guard brings us a bucketful of soup from the German Red Cross. I’ll guarantee they don’t know it’s for P.O.W.’s in hiding! Later, supper: (we couldn’t eat any tea) of soft-boiled eggs and sausages with hot milk. We’ve eaten more food today than we’ve had during the last month. The guard has worked it all out that our troops should be in the town by 4:30 a.m. tomorrow. Still a little pessimistic but the Germans are retreating like mad down the main road, just over the wall. They blew up the railway bridge this evening, and broke several windows in the house. I went flat on the ground, thinking the RAF were about. Another restless night.
NIL
18th April [underlined] LIBERATION DAY [/underlined]
Up quite early and out for a wash and shave. Looking quite smart these days and we must be presentable to the Britis h[sic] Army when they arrive, bless ‘em. Keep the Russian girl to carry buckets of water, and then breakfast is up. Milk soup again with bread and whey, cheese and jam. Sit out in the yard in the sunshine and then a lay-down on the old straw. And now the great moment arrives! The farmer’s uncle comes tearing into the yard from the town, yelling like mad, and “Heil Hitlering” every few yards. I
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18th April know enough German to know what he’s saying –“The English are Here”! Absolutely wizard. Jack and I tear out to the gate with tears in our eyes. A council of war is held and one of us must stay and look after the guard who is now OUR PRISONER, and the other must go down to the town and see what’s cooking. Out comes a pack of cards. Jack cuts the Jack of Hearts and poor me has the two of spades. So I retire to the kitchen and mount guard over Ex-Gefreiter Mars. He whips off his badges of rank and insignia and they’re my souvenirs. I also have the rifle and bayonet and ammunition. Do I feel good! I’m on tenderhooks [sic] waiting for him to come back. Never did an hour pass so slowly. Back he comes at 11:30 with a huge grin all over his face, carrying sweets, chocolate, a box of cigars and biscuits. We give the biscuits, sweets and chocolate to the young Russian girl and the Poles, and puff contentedly at the cigars. Quickly the farmer and his wife realize the position we are in, we’re the bosses now and we’re invited into the dining room for a feast. Soup, rabbit, spuds and sauce, ham, stewed rhubarb and cherries make up the menu and we lean back in the armchair feeling that life is indeed good. I can’t believe it’s true. Have a wash and smarten up to meet our liberators and off we go with our prisoner between us. Jus t[sic] outside the gate we hear a Cockney voice, and a smiling face appears. It’s a soldier, “mopping-up” with his pal and they’re carrying loads of eggs pinched in the process. We jus t[sic] about hug them with delight we’re the first liberated P.O.W.’s they’ve met. On down the road and we meet a Captain in a scout car who exclaims “What the ‘ell is this?” Our strange clothing caused the query. We soon tell him and out comes more grub. Into the hotel we go, the same one from which we were thrown out the other evening. The Tommies are there in force drinking the place dry. Cups of Army tea, real strong stuff are brought in and we’re the guests of honour. Then a mug of beer and down to the cellar where we find clothes in abundance. I shed my old, lice infested clothing and fix myself up with a new white shirt that has a collar miles too big for me. A smart grey suit and a red tie, plus a pair of soft black leather boots. “Flash Harry” with a vengeance. Also pinch two bottles of preser ved[sic] strawberries and some soap and a suitcase. The German civvies are crying and protest but remembering the events of the past I have no pity what-ever. We move up to the Transport Section and have our photographs taken by a Tommy. Some German prisoners are brought in and we have a go at them. I relieve a Flt. Sgt. of his jackboots and 1000 marks from his wallet. I’ve got a newspaper, the “News of the World” too! A soldier apologises because it’s three weeks old, I wouldn’t care if it was 12 months old. I devour every word, greedily. We’re going home at long last and at a stop on the roadside the Tommies cook us fried eggs and onions, and some bully beef. Then on we go and find we’re advancing with the 11th Armoured Division to Luneberg. The tanks open up at Messerschmitts and F.W.’s and we’re scared stiff God, wouldn’t it be awful to be captured again! Stay in a farm at night and have a wizard supper and actually listen to the 9 o’clock news from Englans[sic]. Bruce, old boy, your voice never sounded sweeter!
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18th April 120 German prisoners are brought in including our own guard. Can’t sleep a wink, far too excited. Get up and smoke cigarettes and woof biscuits. Out I go at 5 a.m. and help a soldier light the fires in the field kitchens, and have a hot wash and a brew. So ends a glorious day, the happiest of my life, and the one we waited so long for. Soon be home, Mum. I send her a postcard this afternoon, won’t she be delighted to receive it? Our minds are too confused to think properly, we want to rush home in a couple of hours, but we’ll try and be patient.
19th April Lovely breakfast of real porridge and sugar and milk, fried eggs, sausages, [underlined] white [/underlined] bread and butter. Then delouse myself and my precious blanket sent from home. I’ve carried it all this way and it’s going back home on my bed. Off we go at 10a.m. back to Bienenbuttel, lose the way two or three times. From Merdack we then go to Celle. Pass German aerodromes with dozens of burnt-out aircraft on the ground. Good show, boys. Also see hordes of Russians, French and Poles making their own way back on foot mostly. But six are in a huge car, driven by four horses! Arrive Celle at 6 o’clock and meet Norman Rees in the market place and a joyful re-union takes place. Billeted in Army barracks and given a light meal. They won’t allow us to overeat. Several of the boys are in pain – their stomachs just can’t take it. Sleep on the floor of the hut, no insomnia tonight however.
20th April Up at 8 o’clock and after breakfast we queue up to be registered. The boys are coming in by the dozen now, wonder where the old column is by now. I expect they have crossed the Elbe. Draw clean clothing, army battledress, from a store and after a bath, I become a soldier. After tea we go to the cinema. The film is very old and I fall asleep, but I’m very happy. Canteen issues cigarettes, chewing gum, matches and a cigar, all buskshee. Still no money! Geoff Reeves and Don Godard roll in tonight. They’ve been hiding in a wood box. The Tommies thought Don was with a girl-friend. Geoff’s hair is so long these days! Complete diary by candlelight. Almost finished it now, thank God!
21st April Up rather early and we are soon off on another stage of the journey home. After breakfast we pile into lorries and the convey moves off in a rainstorm. Arrive at Nienburg at about 2 o’clock, this place being N.W. of Hanover and only 20 miles from Fallingbostel. Billeted, and given a meal of stew and rice pudding. Meet a fellow from Oxford and have a drop of rum with him and a long talk about home. Promise to visit his people and take a message back for him. He gives me two souvenirs of Holland, a couple of silk scarves. Hang around the rest of the day – very impatient. Write to Mum and Doris and then bed.
22nd April The rich food that we’ve been having these last few days has upset me with a vengeance, and I’ll have to lie low. To-day for instance Jack and I woofed a 2 lb. fruit pudding each with cream on top and then went down to dinner and knocked back Irish stew and peaches and cream! It’s difficult to turn away from the good food, but I’d rather not have that deadly dysentery again.
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22nd April Many of the chaps have been very ill through over-eating. May leave for England tomorrow. Prowl around the German stores again looking for anything worth having, then into bad. Tomorrow night should see us in England once more.
23rd April Nothing happens all day, so Jack and I go to the cinema at 6:30 and see some news reels, and Mickey Mous e[sic]. Half-way through the picture some bloke comes in and yells, “P’s. O.W. outside.” You never saw such a rus h[sic]. Everybody dead scared the trucks will leave without them. We don’t move off for two hours so into the Q.M.’s office and we sample some red wine looted from France. Feel half tight but very, very happy. Leave at 10 p.m. in the trucks. Very uncomfortable, almost as bad as the cattle truck but we’re all very cheerful.
24th April We ride all night and one truck crashes into a tree, killing the driver and seriously injuring several of the P’s.O.W. Wake up with a s tiff[sic] neck, sore all over. We’re at Borghorst, and we raid a milk lorry outside the dairy. Billeted in the town for five hours and I have a good long sleep. Charge into a German house, and have a feed, wash and a shave. The Huns didn’t murmur. Leave at 2 o’clock for Rheine airport and drive right up to the aircraft. Separated from Jack for the second time. See you in Blighty, Jack. We’re soon airborne and on the last stage for home. Soon we leave Germany behind, over Belgium and France, the Channel and then the white cliffs of Dover. There are a few lumps in the boys’ throats a s[sic] they gaze at them. Pass along the coast to Dungeness and across to Guildford and we land at Dunsfeld [sic], at 6:30 p.m. I’m first out the kite and a W.A.A.F. rushes up to kiss me. That was worth all the two years. Even S.P.’s come up and greet us. One bloke, a P.O.W. for over five years, sits on the grass and weeps unashamedly. The welcome bowls us over. The good old Red Cross is there in force, the hangar is hung with flags and a huge “WELCOME HOME” sign fluttering from the roof. A wizard tea, 2 pounds advance pa y[sic], a rest and off we go to London. The money jingles merrily in our pockets. All the W.A.A.F.’s follow the truck on their bicycles, what a glamorous guard of honour! Leave Guildford and arrive London at 9:30 where we mob the first policeman we see. He doesn’t quite know what’s happening. Off to a hotel at Eufton, beds all made for us, new pyjamas, a bag of good things from the Red Cross and a final message from them. The message reads “We salute you and wish you the best of luck.” I rather think we should salute [underlined] them [/underlined], without their wonderful help we wouldn’t be here to enjoy the welcome. A bath, a real bath, and I laze in the luxury of it for nearly two hours. Jump out as weak as a rat but really clean this time. This is sheer heaven.
25th April Off at 10 a.m. for Paddington and we’re in Cosford by 12:30 p.m. the reception centre. Another terrific welcome, re-kitted with new uniforms, interrogated by Intelligence wallahs and more gifts from the R.A.F. and the Red Cross. Organization superb and we remain here till 9 a.m. next day.
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26th April Now we’re really on the way. Arrive Oxford at 1 p.m. and on the local bus at 2:15 p.m. I queued up for one hour, no need to do so, but I’m not missing this one. Sent a wire to Mum. Arrive home at 3 p.m. and there is Mum waiting for me. The great moment has arrived, even more wonderful then I expected. No words can describe my feelings. I think I’ll leave the Diary just there.
I’m happy, what more can I ask?
Dublin Core
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Title
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How we took the good news from Grosse Tychow to Fallingbostel
The army that didn't march on its stomach
The Russians are coming, Hurrah, Hurrah!
Description
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A diary of the forced march undertaken by prisoners of war 6 February 1945 to 26 April 1945
Creator
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C A Room
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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28 typewritten sheets
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Diary
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BRoomCARoomCAv1
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Poland
Poland--Tychowo
Germany--Bad Fallingbostel
Temporal Coverage
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1945-03
1945-04
Contributor
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Steve Baldwin
animal
fear
prisoner of war
Stalag Luft 4
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/356/5771/AFirthJB160706.2.mp3
5b178253d70f57f1c2b6516ac6eff4bd
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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Firth, John
John Firth
J B Firth
Description
An account of the resource
11 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer John Bernard Firth (1924-2016, 1850441 Royal Air Force), his logbook, a home-made prisoner of war Christmas card, and seven photographs. John Firth was a flight engineer with 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe June to August 1944. He was shot down in August 1944 on his 20th operation and became a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft 7.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by John Firth and catalogued by and Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-07-06
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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Firth, JB
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB. My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 6th of July 2016 I am in Slough with John Firth who was a Flight Engineer on 50 Squadron and he is going to talk about his life and particularly his RAF Experiences. John what are the first things that you remember?
JB. Well, well after leaving School?
CB. No the first things you remember in life with your Parents where were you born and what did you do?
JB. Oh, I was born, I was born in Yorkshire in a little village called Thurnscoe and, and we moved down when I was five years old to, to Slough. Em, and we moved down because my Father got a bit of a chest problem with the dust and that and so we moved down here. He did quite well then afterwards em, in the building trade. I personally left school at, at fourteen and eh I got a little job for the Co-op as an errand boy and I, I had that for about eighteen months. After which I went into a factory em it’s called Sweeties and eh I, I stayed in there until I was called up at eighteen. And so when I went into the RAF I went to Padgate where, where we got introduced to all the rights and wrongs and legal side of things and I done about three months there. Then I went to, “where was it?”
CB. You went to Locking.
JB. Locking it was Locking, I em which was a Flight Mechanics course, that took about three months and then “what did I do then” I have lost my bit of paper.
CB. What were you learning at Locking?
JB. Engineer, Engines mostly other, other, other fellows were aircraft, that’s the aircraft em [pause].
CB. That was all types of aero engine was it?
JB. Any type whatever was fitted to the aeroplanes. So we took that, that didn’t last very long and I, I was, I went to “where was it?”
CB. To Colerne.
JB. To Colerne.
CB. To the MU at Bath at Colerne, yeah.
JB. And from Colerne I went to. I went to, I was posted to.
CB. To St Athan.
JB. To St Athans, St Athans.
CB. What did you do there?
JB. I took on the Flight Engineers course.
CB. What did that involve, what was involved in the Flight Engineers course?
JB. That involved more Engineering knowledge, more then for Airframes as well but that, that, that’s took about three months.
CB. And how broad was that, what other things Airframes, Engines what else?
JB. Airframes and Engines.
CB. What else, hydraulics?
JB. Hydraulics and whatever is going to be in the near future for me. Em from there I got, I went to Scampton waiting for me Crew and was there a few weeks when I got posted again to Wigsley where I picked me Crew up and then, which they had been flying on Blenheims for a number of weeks and months and eh, and so with a four engined bomber they had to have an Engineer.
CB. They’d been on Wellingtons.
JB. Sorry.
CB. They had been on Wellingtons.
JB. They had been on Wellingtons, yes. Where were we?
CB. So from Wigsley, what were you flying at Wigsley?
JB. Flying Stirling’s at Wigsley and had a very short course there to contradict what we had already learned on the Lancaster, every thing was electric on Stirling’s, electric undercarriage, flaps and that sort of thing.
CB. And this was and HCU?
JB. Yeah at Wigsley.
CB. Then what?
JB. And once we done that we, we, we moved Crew then, we were all satisfied with the Crew, they seemed to be satisfied with me.
CB. How did you Crew up in the first place?
JB. Well we met, well I met the NC, the NCOs in the Sergeants Mess and they introduced me to the two Officers who were the Pilot and the Bomb Aimer so from there we went to Syerston didn’t we?
CB. From Wigsley you went to Syerston.
JB. To Syerston, where we did a short course on sort of Affiliation sort of thing.
CB. That was the Lancaster again, that was the Lancaster Finishing School.
JB. Yes that’s right and then.
CB. So when you were at the Finishing School what did you do then at the Finishing School in the Lancaster?
JB. Well we got, we immediately went to 50 Squadron and early June was our first Op.
CB. Which year are we now, which year 1944 and the first op?
JB. It was Stuttgart, woof, we didn’t get there, it got cancelled so we turned so we missed a little bit of something. Em and from there on we, as a Crew we gelled very well together and eh.
CB. So you went to Stuttgart on your first Op why was that abortred.
JB. That I never found out but it just got aborted by radio.
CB. How far were you on the trip?
JB. It was well over the North Sea so we turned back, we turned back and from then on like I said the Crew gelled very well and then [background microphone noise]
CB. Keep going.
JB. Until the last OP.
CB. So what other trips did you do?
JB. Stuttgart, Keil, Gelsenkirchen and a lot, a lot of them were in France helping the, the Soldiers that were on the ground because we just invaded we just went into France that was what we were doing.
CB. They were daylight raids,
JB. Pardon.
CB. They were daylight raids was they over France.
JB. No some was night time, most of them was in night time in Germany and there was a, one trip we went to was the [hesitant] Les Desaurant[?] I think it was a Marshalling Yard south of, south of Paris we went for two days running there because we didn’t do the first job and the second job, the second time we were on went. We got shot up there, there was a big hole underneath the [unclear] turret, the Skipper couldn’t hold the kite, hold the aircraft steady because it was too, he had no help. The trimmer, one of the trimmers had gone. So my job, I had to go and repair it, which I did.
CB. So this is on the tail plane, the trimmer on the tail plane?
JB. That’s right.
CB. So how did you repair that?
JB. Well with the eh dinghy, there is a certain amount of eh space when I pulled the wires together which had been cut. So I doubled them back and, and tied them up with the tail plane and every time I moved, like this, it moved the trimmer. And the Skipper kept moaning at me [laugh] but it worked, it worked anyway. So when we landed, we crashed because one of the, one of the tyres were flat and dug in and shot over and we. I think it was a right off but we all got out.
CB. Can you just us through that, so you come in, did you know the tyre was punctured when you were on approach.
JB. No I didn’t ‘cause it only looked exactly the same as a good wheel, well it, it had a slice in it.
CB. The Pilot had no idea he was going to experience this inbalance?
JB. No he didn’t.
CB. Ok, so what happened, as soon as he touched down?
JB. As soon as he touched down it, it swung, dug in like.
CB. On the runway, on the concrete runway.
JB. It shot us off the runway and but em.
CB. Which way?
JB. Port side, Port side and that was it, well the Ground Crew told me the following morning we was very, very lucky because after the trimmers and all that, they had these rods that worked the elevators and the, and the rudders one of those was split almost in half. So it was very lucky that didn’t bend otherwise we would have been in trouble.
CB. So the under, the tyre, the wheel dug into the runway did the undercarriage collapse, what happened?
JB. No not really it just dug in, the damage the shells hit it with damaged all the tailplane so we was very lucky on that one.
CB. So on these circumstances what did they do, take the tail of and change it?
JB. I don’t know, I don’t really know, we didn’t fly in it again [unclear] it was a right off.
CB. So you had to have a new aeroplane?
JB. Well I suppose, yes.
CB. Was it new or did they just give you another one?
JB. I don’t know, don’t know.
CB. So which flight, how many raids was this. How many trips had you done at that stage?
JB. At that stage?
CB. Just roughly.
JB. Let me look in me book. [pages turning]
CB. We are just looking at the list,I’ll hang on.
JB. Something after that was an NFT.
CB. Right.
CB. So this seems to have been the sixth Op that you went on, and eh so what happened after that?
JB. Eh, everything went well we did a few [unclear] and another Stuttgart and so forth. I say we gelled very well until August the 8th, 7th and 8th.
CB. What happened then?
JB. We got shot down.
CB. Ok can you take us through that. So was it a Fighter or flak?
JB. It was a Fighter.
CB. What was your target that day?
JB. It was a raid on Sepperaville [?] and when we got there [unclear] we had a wireless confirmation to stop bombing, or they stopped bombing. So we carried the bombs and we were going to sort of drop in the South of England, not on England [laugh] and we got the Navigator to give us a route between Le Havre and Lauren it would take us where we wanted to be and it was about midnight and we was, we was, the Gunners decided, warned us we had, had a visitor which was a Fighter and they. It was round about eight or nine hundred yards, or feet I don’t know. Then he started getting closer, and closer until the Rear Gunner said do a Corks, Corkscrew Skip put down to port ‘cause he is on the port side and down we went quickly, I had, I was standing then and eh [laugh] I had nothing to hold onto and so gravity through me to the ceiling of the canopy and when he pulled out I dropped down onto me knees. I got up and this Fighter had opened fire and strafed us right across the wing tip, or wings from wing tip to wing tip. One shell went through in between the Skipper and I and broke the front, front glass and that and a fire started, fire. The Skipper said we will try and put this fire out, I pressed all the buttons that were required. Then he said “abandon aircraft.”
CB. Where was the fire?
JB. The fire, right along the wings, wings. I was coming out of petrol which was spread out obviously and wings well on fire he said “is that it” I say, [unclear] he said “abandon aircraft.” I stayed there with him, because it was my duty to look after him as well as me. I found his parachute, gave it to him, but he took it off, he hardly put it on. He put it alongside himself because he was trying to hold, hold the aircraft in a steady position for people.
CB. So people could get out?
JB. Yeah, so some got out the back, I, and then he said to me, “go on get out John.” And I went down into the Bomb Aimers place where the trap door was and I couldn’t believe, this is true, but the hole you get out of was halved because the cover had been drawn back by the slip stream and jammed in this hole. I kicked it, I pushed it [laugh] I couldn’t move it. So I started to be a bit concerned. I didn’t quite know what to do at that time but well I thought half of that is not too little for me because I can get through that. So I had my ‘chute on of course, had me back to this thing that stuck up inside and em, I slid down, well I couldn’t get out because me ‘chute had trapped because I didn’t allow that in sorts. But there I was, the plane was going along and I am out, with me legs outside and you want to know what I feel like. I felt I was going to loose me legs, frightened me to death, this is true. And I, and I pushed and I kicked me legs and me boots went and, and I panicked but suddenly me brain stopped, started working and the straps on the parachute harness is only held on by a thin cord so that it gives you the height, the height when the ‘chute opens. So I gave it a good clout and I went out and I held this parachute with one hand and pulled the cord with the other, pulled the ring with the other and it opened but it took me a little while no sooner had it opened and I suppose about a hundred feet and I touched down. It took me a little while, that’s why I, I was out I was landed pretty near the aircraft. I say that it was within a mile or two, it got in very fast. I got down stuffed my ‘chute around as best I could, got out round to this road or lane, like a country lane and then I was caught because three Germans were in, came along with their guns and all that and picked me up. They took me back, took me back to the Headquarters in this em, in this bike and sidecar. They gave me a seat in the car and one was on the front of the, the car and the other one was on the pillion and the other was the driver. The one on the pillion had a gun at me head all the way back just in case I suppose he thought I might, and that was it for that night.
CB. So were you the last out of the aircraft or?
JB. I think I must have been.
CB. What happened to the Pilot?
JB. He got killed.
CB. He didn’t get out?
JB. He didn’t get out, the Navigator didn’t get out and the Wireless Operator I don’t know what happened to him because after the war I met my Mid Upper Gunner and he filled me with a bit of things that I missed, He said he spoke to Don Mellish at the back door and he walked back, he went back in.
CB. Mellish went back in?
JB. Yeah
CB. To do what?
JB. He probably didn’t want to.
CB. To get out?
JB. It’s a I don’t know.
CB. So Don Mellish was the Wireless Operator.
JB. Yes that’s right and as I say the Mid Upper Gunner spoke to him and he said “I don’t know what he went back for” he went back and of course he went out himself.
CB. How did Arthur Meredith the Rear Gunner get out?
JB. That I don’t know, I was too busy up the front.
CB. I wondered if you found out afterwards.
JB. No, no they just went.
CB. But the only person killed, there were three killed were there?
JB. There were three killned.
CB. What about the Navigator what stopped him getting out?
JB. I don’t know, because, I don’t know.
CB. Wither he tried the back or not I don’t know, I don’t know because routine was Bomb Aimer, Me, Navigator or other way round, he didn’t pass me so I don’t know what happened to him. Is this, all this going down.
CB. We are all right. These are the realities of those things aren’t they.
JB. It’s, it’s.
CB. It is an emotional experience.
JB. Yes it is I am the luckiest man in the round, I should have been there with my mate.
CB. I know what you mean.
JB. Now they have gone.
CB. You done a brilliant job getting out just holding, you held the parachute. It wasn’t attached to you, you just held it?
JB. No it was attached.
CB. It still was attached.
JB. Yeah, attached, it’s like a board it’s, the whole ‘chute is planted on this board.
CB. Because it is a front parachute.
JB. Yeah.
CB. Chest parachute.
JB. That’s right.
CB. And what, what type of parachute does the Pilot have does he have a chest parachute or he normally?
JB. Yes he has a chest parachute he preferred instead of the sitting on one ‘cause he is a tall man.
CB. Ok
JB. So that is probably the reason, that’s why I had to find his ‘chute for him or look after him.
CB. So on the Lancaster there are three escape hatches are there? One at the front where the Bomb Aimers position is, the other through the lid where the Pilot is, is that right?
JB. He think he got out the top, yes but.
CB. And the other is the door at the back.
JB. There is a door at the back.
CB. Is there any other.
JB. No [unclear]
CB. And the Rear Turret pivots so the idea is the.
JB. Sometimes they could.
CB. Roll out backwards.
JB. Yeah, go out backwards. Wither that is true or not I don’t know.
CB. So when the aircraft was hit, what happened to the controls, the Pilot was struggling by the sound of it to keep control, why was that.
JB. He was struggling, yes, because we was well on fire, when I got out. I looked up the flames was the, the width of the aircraft or the wingspan and it was amazing, amazing.
CB. The Lancaster had self sealing fuel tanks but with the level of damage presumably that wasn’t going to work.
JB. Yeah, they had all that but they must have had a leak somewhere.
CB. Did the Rear Gunner get a shot at this Fighter or not?
JB. Apparently from what I was told by the Mid Upper Gunner, they, they had it confirmed that they shot it down.
CB. Oh did they.
JB. Yeah but that I wouldn’t know.
CB. But the Squadron record perhaps confirms that?
JB. Yeah.
CB. So now you have landed, the German Soldiers have taken you in the side car to the Head Quarters, then what?
JB. Yeah, the Head Quarters Em, oh there, em.
CB. That’s the picture of.
JB. That’s me and my wife when we went back to France.
CB. Right, that’s a sort of Chateau.
JB. That’s it, that’s where they held me but not in there, there is a little shed next to it. They said put me there and they put a Guard sort of thing. And in the morning, they kept, all these soldiers kept coming in and having a look and all that and I “what they looking for” you know and eh when I got out and had a look ‘cause they let me, I had to have a bit of fresh air. What that was, was a urinal was there just by this window [laugh] and they was having a gaze at me while I was having one, it wasn’t funny but.
CB. No, so what did they do, they gave you food and water?
JB. Yeah they gave me, they gave me some gruel or something for lunch, for breakfast.
CB. What is gruel?
JB.Something like porridge, something like that. Em, they gave me a pair of clogs suffice, they did suffice ‘cause I couldn’t get on with them and I took em off and eh.
CB. Because your flying boots came off before you jumped.
JB. Yeah they came off because I was kicking them away, trying to sort of get out eh it frightened me to death.
CB. What sort of height do you think you were at before you actually got out.
JB. I don’t, I should think when I went out which would be about fifteen hundred or two thousand feet. Not very high enough to have a good swing, you know? We was flying at ten thousand feet anyway.
CB. Oh were you, that’s quite low.
JB. Then we had this dive and a cork screw, down one way, down the other and so forth.
CB. And then pull up again.
JB. Yeah, yeah.
CB. So after they have given you the gruel and something and water and then what.
JB. Oh they took me to Luanne em I was interviewed by a eh an Officer of some description he told me off for not saluting him. I said we don’t salute people with no head dress. I can remember that actually he got onto me about the Bombing doing Bombing and hospitals and all about that sort of thing. Told me off and then he took me back through em Luanne into this it looked like a, I don’t know I was on the [unclear] covered in wire netting it was a building but several shelters, sheds a brick building, this wire netting at front. I could look across and there was dormitories and that’s where these soldiers was in this dormitory. It looked as though it was in something like a Church business that church eh eh College or something like that, I don’t know quite what it was. I was there for a few days and they put me on a train to sort of don’t know this place where I got interviewed again by the, by the people there.
CB. Were they Air Force people or were they?
JB. This one that they took me to at first, there were a lot of soldiers there and eh I walked through this, this marquee where these soldiers were lying on that, you know, looking for bed space and somebody shouts “Johnnie Firth” and it was one of my class mates at school. He had been in the, what do you call it Troopers.
CB. Paratroopers.
JB. Paratroopers, yeah but they had been caught and they took me then from there on the train, it took a little while to eh Stalag Luft 7.
CB. Where is that?
JB. Where I ended up.
CB. Yes where is Stalag Luft 7?
JB. Its in [unclear].
CB. Czechoslovakia.
JB. I’ve got the name of the eh here the village there, but I don’t know where it is now.
CB. Ok just going back a bit what was the questioning that the Captors did so you, at the first em interrogation, what did they ask you?
JB. All sorts of thing you know but all I could answer was number, rank, name they didn’t threaten me with anything much. I was taught, or some bloke said they threatened to shoot them if they didn’t tell us. I didn’t go through any of that.
CB. And the second interview, interrogation further along, what was that?
JB. That was that sort of thing, sort of where he started mouthing on about being a you know criminals or something like that, but that didn’t last either [unclear] I got to sort of Silesia or Stalag Luft 7 A friend, a friend of mine was there, that I had done an Engineers course, but he had failed the course and I got on a bit further you know than he and he was shot down on his first trip, another Yorkshire man you know [laugh].
CB. Had he been recoursed to something other than Flight Engineer or did they put him through the course again?
JB. No he did the course eventually he passed yes.
CB. OK. So what did you find out what happened to the rest of your Crew.
JB. No, I the Mid Upper Gunner who eh told me, filled me in about what was happening.
CB. Bill Johnstone.
JB. He died the year Christmas the year I saw him, I didn’t know he was going to die. Because somebody organised this, this eh trip back to France for me and my wife and we went back to see the eh the graves, it’s one grave with three people in it.
CB. Oh they did have the Pilot, Bomb Aimer and Navigator they had.
JB. Yes they did.
CB. Sorry Wireless Operator not the Navigator who got out, it was the Bomb Aimer was it?
JB. The Bomb Aimer yes Eddie Earnest.
CB. So the Pilot, Navigator
JB. Eddie Earnest made up our Crew that night, the Bombing Leader actually. He ended up, oh he ended up in India in charge of the eh Squadron out there. I met him afterwards of course at a reunion only once. I went to Lafrenaise twice you know to pay my respects. The people, the French people were very nice, very good.
CB. What, did the aircraft disintegrate or did it land in tact and burn out on the ground.
JB. No it blew up.
CB. So the Pilot was never found, was he, was he in the plane.
JB. No the three, they had three bodies that what it.
CB. And they did, right.
JB. [Unclear] so the Navigator didn’t get out either.
CB. No.
JB. We had a time bomb on that went off at seven o’clock in the morning and I was that close. Well I heard it eh you know. The thing, it landed in some sort of a wood.
CB. You are talking about the main bomb. The Cookie went of.
JB. Yeah it might have been the cookie, I don’t know about that, don’t know. I thought it was timed, I thought it was timed.
CB. So that would be a free fall.
JB. I don’t think we had a Cookie on at that time, about a thousand pounder because we were so close to our Troops we were.
CB. Of course, you wouldn’t want the bombs to spread out.
JB.The German Troops were so close, [hesitates] there is a map of it as well, now just recently, I don’t if it was on line is it Peter?
Peter. Yeah there was a local paper did a story about it didn’t they when you came back.
JB. On.on line there is what I have just been through again.
CB. If we could call that up that could be really useful.
Peter. Pretty sure it was to do.
JB. After that on line there is a map which shows you Shepeville [?] and, and the Forces that were there.
CB. It would be useful to sort of pick that up, so can we just go now to Silesia to Stalag Luft 7 so how big was that, how many people?
JB. About eight thousand I think something of a rough guess.
CB. And what Nationalities were there?
JB. Mostly British, mostly British.
CB. ‘cause with the title Stalag Luft in theory they were all Aircrew but were they.
JB. Yeah well yes.
CB. Were they all Aircrew?
JB. Yes in my experience and we knew about the audacity thing where they shot all those Aircrew.
CB. Stalag Luft 3.
JB. We got a bit of news about that.
CB. You did? And what was the mix of Prisoners there, was it the whole range of ranks?
JB. Em NCOs
CB. Only NCOs was it.
JB. More or less, yes. There were one or two that were eh, the Camp Commander for instance.
CB. What was he?
JB. He was eh, eh Second Lieutenant something like that.
CB. He was an Army man was he?
JB. Yeah we did have one Army bloke there, I think anyway, can’t remember now.
CB. How were you housed in what sort of buildings.
JB. In the first instance, there’s pictures somewhere, never mind, eh little huts, there was all these little huts with about ten blokes in each hut something like that but then they was building the, built this one outside, outside, outside the Camp.
CB. The wire.
JB. Along side of it and they were like dormitories, they had rooms in there and there was about thirteen to a room that sort of thing; just thinking back now. Got a picture of the em the, the sort of bedding is on bunks it is, it is twelve bunks in one block. They got three on the floor, three in the middle and three on the top and then you have the same thing alongside of it, they had sort of twelve to a block. You could get farted on from up there and farted on from down [laugh]. It wasn’t very pleasant.
CB. And what were you lying on was it planks, bare wood or what?
JB. Bedding.
CB. Oh there was bedding, what was the bedding made of?
JB. Hard stuff just like packed straw, something like that and blankets that’s all we had.
CB. What about heating?
JB. Heating, for heating we had, what heating or eating?
CB. Yes the heating as well as the eating but for heating in the rooms was there any heating?
JB. Either really we in the, in the rooms there was these little stoves but it was getting the fuel for them you know, that was difficult but the big, where the big eh other was no heating because it was getting, when I was there anyway, that, of the picture I have, I think was taken at eh Stalag 3a because that is where we ended up after the long march at Stalag 3a. It was an Army Camp and the weather was picking up then, it was getting warmer, it em.
CB. Where em, what about the food was there a big Mess Hall or how did you get the food dispensed?
JB. I have got a picture of that as well actually, it em eh, they used to fetch it round and it was soup in big bowels you know and that one bowl would have to feed two hundred men and you would have bread sometimes. They gave you bread or something like that. The meat was, was in these soups what, what meat there was. We used to look at these in a strand, it was stranded, “I’ve got a bit” [laugh].
CB. What did you eat in, because you didn’t have mess tins of your own, so what did they give you to eat from.
JB. Oh they gave us something, I can’t remem. You would pick up a tin or something you know? And things like that, but, but I made a cup out of mine, created a thing you know, sort of little handle made a thing of and you tightened a piece of string. Made it out of a little eh.
CB. Ingenuity.
JB. Yeah ingenuity. [laugh].
CB. Now what about Red Cross parcels?
JB. They were, they few and far between one another yeah eh but when we did get one sometimes in the beginning it was shared by sort of that half a dozen blokes what is shared with what is in there. Which was tinned, tinned stuff what em, cigarettes, I suppose meat and that sort of thing. A bit of cheese a tin with a bit of cheese in or something like that. But you would have to cut it up into bits to share it out.
CB. Did you get tinned milk?
JB. Tinned milk, can’t remember actually to tell the truth I can’t remember much about it.
CB. What was the date on which you were shot down.
JB. Eh seventh or eighth of August Midnight.
CB. Nineteen forty four.
JB. Nineteen forty four.
CB. So you were in Stalag Luft 7 for more that six months.
JB. Oh yeah, yeah.
CB. And as the end of the War came, what happened to you then?
JB. Em well we was at, we was at Stalag 3a.
CB. How did you come to move from Seven?
JB. First of all the, the em, the American Army released us or wanted to release us and we all run out, a lot of us got on their lorries and all that, they come to fetch us and they, then the Germans managed to a Machine Gunner and said “better get down otherwise you will get that.” So we all went in and they wouldn’t let us come. They didn’t agree with what the Americans was doing.
CB. The Russians wouldn’t let them do it would they?
JB. Yeah.
CB. Who was it/
JB. The Russians was there.
CB. So who was it who came?
JB. They just crossed the rivers there eh, they just crossed this river.
CB. The Oder was it?
JB. Sorry.
CB. The Oder.
JB. The Oder yeah, the Americans had got down as far as the Oder and they hadn’t crossed it, or they had crossed it ‘cause they came with their lorries to take us, but they went of without us. Because they was going to shoot us anyway.
CB. So who was going to shoot you, why didn’t they, if it was Germans, why didn’t they deal with the Germans?
JB. Well I don’t know, I think maybe it’s.
CB. Or was it the Russians who wouldn’t let you go?
JB. They still held us as Prisoners and told us all to get back in and we all went back to where we inhabited. The Russians did “Thank you Bert I am glad you came.” But the Americans came first, then the Russians took over, they came and with them coming all the Guards disappeared. They didn’t want to get hurt did they? Yes the Russians released us and they took us down to this river and we crossed by foot into the sort of the American Section if you like. The River Oder was that [unclear] but the Americans were that side of it and the Russians were this side of it. And that’s I suppose, but the Germans were still in there with us, you know, holding us at one time.
CB. So how did you come to leave then?
JB. The Russians took us to the river and we got of there, crossed the river and got on with the Yanks who took us from there up to, I don’t know what it was then just another sort of camp which was taken over now by the Allies.
CB. So you don’t, I was just trying to establish the sequence because you were in Stalag Luft 7, you then got to Stalag 3.
JB. Yeah.
CB. 3a so how did you get between those two?
JB. Walked.
CB. How far and how long?
JB. Three weeks walk.
CB. And what effect did that have on most of the Prisoners?
JB. Starvation, worst, snow and it was terrible, yeah, dead horses on the side of the road and what have you yeah [pause] I had forgotten all this.
CB. Was it one long column of prisoners or was it several columns doing different routes?
JB. It was one long column of us from Stalag Luft 7, there are, there were other columns like Stalag Luft 3 they were the closest to what we were apparently. They crossed, they were going one way we were going another way but eh this was and we were still with the Germans, the Germans was making us do this, they had dogs as well.
CB. They were forcing you to go towards the west. So how did you get food and water?
JB. How did we get food?
CB. How did you get food and water?
JB. How did you get food.
CB. How did you get food and water?
JB. Oh well they gave you at night, they would probably find you in a stable or something like that and they, they thery would have a field kitchen with like I said food or soup or that sort of thing. If you wanted to go to the toilet there was always one place where you could go sort of thing. That is in the yard and it was piles of this all over the place.[laugh] It was not very hygienic.
CB. So when you got to Stalag Luft, sorry Stalag 3 then what?
JB. Well we got put up, the soldiers put us up we was in, we was on the floor, sleeping on the floor to start with and eh, they moved us into another building that had these, these bunks and that, and eh one of the, one of the buildings was made out as temple by the Russians because we had some Russians in that Stalag, there were some Russians as well yeah. They got, what we heard was when they got released or we got released, they were straight back to the front where they were going to soldier on again. So many days, so many things, I can’t remember.
CB. So in the, in the March from Stalag Luft 7 to Stalag 3 what happened to peoples health and strength?
JB. Eh er there were three of us Jack Sidebottom and Bill Steiner and me self knitted together oh [unclear] Jack got a touch of the runs and he went right down the, right down the drain sort of, they had a sort of Hospital eh building but that was on the floor. I remember I sort of I washed off Bill eh Jacks’ trousers for him, he couldn’t do it.
CB. This was dysentery was it?
JB. Yes it was there was a lot of that.
CB. And what prompts dysentery, what makes it happen?
JB. Well there was little food and eh and if you eat anything that was rotten it was there. They had toilets there where you could have a chat with the next bloke ‘cause it was only a building. There was all these eh trenches covered with seats, toilet seats and you could have a fair old chat with people, I think that’s. I am ranting on, on.
CB. You are not, no it is the reality isn’t it?
JB. Yeah I suppose it could be.
CB. So you reached Stalag 3 and the Americans are looking after you there. What did they do about food because you do not want to eat too much as soon as you get in.
JB. When the Americans, they, they transported us to Brussels and we got flown home from there, from Brussels.
CB. Mm by whom, who flew you.
JB. RAF
CB. And you flew from there, Melsbroek was it and then into where?
JB.Eh; around Crewe around that area and then all we had on was burnt and the dressed us in that hospital blue, do you remember that? Just a blue flannel trouser and a blue flannel cover at the top[laugh] Then it blue, typical sickness thing.
CB. So for the people who had dysentery and other things how did they treat those?
JB. Well it,it just had to put up with it until it went away it was yeah.
CB. You come, when you land back here, what, what plane did you fly back in?
JB. Lancaster.
CB.Right, how many people in a Lancaster.
JB. Oh there was quite a lot, I would say , I don’t know, down the fuselage from, from the main spar down to the back, I would say about sixty peole, fifty or sixty people and then we would [unclear].
CB. And so you got back, what did they do as soon as you landed.
JB. Well they fed us and we was inspected for diseases and that sort of thing in a hanger, obviously if you got a lot of food, a bit difficult to eat, drink, stomachs went like that so you couldn’t eat much anyway.
CB. It is not good to have too much food when you haven’t been having it. So they kitted you out and then what?
JB. Once we got kitted out we went on leave, about six weeks I should think.
CB. And then after the leave where did they sent you because you were still technically in the Squadron.
JB. [Unclear] Eh I, I got posted to 71MU, “thank you, that’s all right” 71MU Slough,[unclear] and or the RAF had taken over the premier garage on the Bath road as a Camp, during the war and they, and they and I got posted there. I was obviously in the Sergeants Mess so I didn’t do a lot of work.[laugh] But eventually they decided to move. They moved from Slough up to the other side of Aylesbury.
CB. To Westcott.
JB. Westcott, yeah probably yeah that was one thing to the other side of, yeah.
CB. Or Bicester.
JB. Yeah.
CB. It was an MU was it?
JB. It was an MU.
CB. It went to Bicester 71.
JB. 71 and I went there as a, I was in charge of a gang [unclear] we went for dismantling aircraft and I wasn’t doing a lot of work, I was just making sure the lads got the eh themselves with a bed and that sort of thing. And then and that was at; Brize Norton they did a lot of work there.
CB. Was that an MU or was that an OTU?
JB. No that was, there was a Squadron there wasn’t there but as the MU people taking all these jobs.
CB. Yeah.
JB. They take the wings off and that sort of thing and then load it onto a Queen Mary and said good bye to it you know.
CB.The Queen Mary being the very big lorry.
JB. Yes that’s right [unclear]
CB. So now we are in 1946 aren’t we.
JB. Yes I haven’t come over then [?]
CB. When did you get demobbed?
JB. Eh; I’ve got it here, demobbed 1946.
CB. What time of year?
JB. What month, I don’t know.
CB. Summer, Winter, Ok then what did you do?
JB. Well what everybody does, have a good time. [laugh] I went back to Lincoln.
CB. What did you do there?
JB. I got a job with an aircraft factory just outside, Ah Woodford was it, Woodford.
CB. No at Lincoln it was Bracebridge Heath.
JB. Bracebridge Heath, that’s it. I got a job there working on aircraft that were still flying, not the big heavy bomber stuff but the[stops] Then I decided to come home again so I left and I come home and got a job at Hawker Aircraft at Langley and eh.
CB. You had been there before the war.
JB. No,no.
CB. You hadn’t?
JB. No before the war wa, I was at a factory called [unclear] engineering factory. The firm had another outlet at “what was that”
CB. White Waltham.
JB. White Waltham yeah but I wasn’t working there but that firm had another factory there.
CB. So how long did you work Hawker?
JB. At Hawkers, a couple of years and they moved over to London way from Combrook, it was Combrook they moved over from Combrook.
CB. They went to Kingston.
JB. And then I went to a firm, I forgot the name of it, sorry, I was there nineteen years. I went to British Airways, I was there seven years.
CB. At British Airways, at British Airways?
JB. British Airways, yeah and then I retired, I think. This is hard work.[laugh].
CB. Well we are resting now, thank you very much.
JB. Is that it?
CB. How did you come to meet Catherine, your wife, your future wife?
JB. The pub.
CB. Where was that?
JB. Good Companions, Slough.
CB. Slough ok and when were you married?
JB. 1961, 1961 I don’t know.
Unknown. When you got married must be 1951 was it?
JB and Unknown. [discussion as to when married]
CB. How old are your children?
JB. I have got no children.
CB. So that saved you a lot of money didn’t it?
JB. [laugh] a lot of heartache.
CB. Right ok so that is really good, thank you very much indeed.
CB. So we are just restarting to recover after the Bomber crash, then you had some links with the area, so what did you discover.
JB. Well there was a; this Gentleman that I met there, this Frenchman he, he had a little brother a brother younger than himself and that em when, in the explosion on the morning at seven o’clock his brother was sorting out something on the aircraft or something on what was left of the aircraft and the bomb went of and this man, “what’s his name” I was looking at it, [pause] he carried his lad or his brother from em from La Frenaise where we were to the nearest town which was Le Havre which had the Hospitals, but he died and carried him that far.
CB. So what had happened, the Bomb went of and what had happened to the boy?
JB. He died.
CB. Yes but what happened to him, did it blow him a long way away or what did it do. Do you know, what caused him to die in other words?
JB. No like I say he, he, within, with the explosion and then his brother which was this Gentleman that said or suggested at this time that I am taking the place of his brother friendly wise, but somebody else had told me he had carried his Brother to Le Havre.
CB. Le Havre, Hospital.
JB. Yeah, I’ve got a picture of him and he is sitting amongst the, a bit of, a bit of the engine, it’s all, none left of it, bits all over.
CB. They are all very distressing things these, because the aftermath of a crash, the unexpected.
JB. Yeah, but he is quite, and we; up to this year, last year, last Christmas we, we both swapped cards at Christmas from this fellow, Gentleman, fellow, I can’t think of his name.
CB. How did you come to meet him in the first place?
JB. Well I went to a, I went to a, not a reunion, I went when I went to Le Frenaise to pay my respects to the grave.
CB. At the cemetery?
JB. I met him there ‘cause they had made this ‘cause going there the had this little party sort of thing, plenty of people there, just as well. They were very nice to us.
CB. John how many times did you bale out?
JB. Well we baled out twice.
CB. Did you?
JB. Yes.
CB. What was the first reason?
JB. The first reason was everything stopped on the, on the Stirling and what was put to me before one of these things was because the, the oil filter on the Stirling was on the outside and just below the engines outside and they could easily freeze up and with all the engines stopping at the same time that is what happened and the Skipper said bale out but eventually he got it back going again. So I baled out, the two Gunners baled out and the Navigator didn’t go because I was, in the Stirling my position was in the middle of the aircraft not next to the Skipper and so I went out the back and we landed on the, then I heard this whistling and it was the Wireless Operator that was whistled me. He said “what do we do now” I said “go and see if we can get a telephone to get help.”
CB. Where were you?
JB. Sorry?
CB. Where was this?
JB. Lincolnshire, em and so we did walk to someone’s house and we got on the phone [unclear] through to the Police and I had no boots, so this Gentleman loaned me his slippers and having got to go back to Camp, they were nice slippers and I never sent them back. But I was brought up in front of the CO and he gave me a right nasty bollocking and he said.
CB. For having the slippers on, or for getting out of the aeroplane?
JB. No, for not sending the slippers back and “now” he said “you will go and pack them and you will write a letter of apology and you will fetch it to me and I will read it.” So I had to do it and took it back and he said “be careful in future you.” He said.
CB. So you did send back the slippers?
JB. I did send them back yeah, but that under threat wasn’t it.
CB. Right, so the aircraft returned?
JB. Yeah, so the aircraft returned and when he returned he returned with,with a Senior Pilot and I heard no more after that. I suggested that and the Skipper took it disgusted with his seniors.
CB. You are talking about the fault being the seizing up of the oil cooler?
JB. Yeah Unlicky wasn’t we, I was lucky, we was all lucky that one but I, I say I am the luckiest man in the World that was it twice.
CB. While we were on the Stirling just talk us through what your role was as Flight Engineer, first on the Stirling then on the Lancaster.
JB. Oh the Engineers job was to assist the Pilot every way you can, is to, you have to write a log, or keep a log of petrol, oil pressure, oil temperature, it all had to go down on the log. Do it every half hour or so or every hour and whatever else. You might get a fellow who can go back and eh join two bits of wire together[laugh] and cause lots of trouble for the Skipper then it is just not quite right, oh well.
CB. So here you are, your position in the Stirling was further back but on take off where would you be?
JB. In the Stirling on take off, I would be in the middle of the aircraft I’d be putting back the priming ‘cause when you start the engines the prime, the Engineer used to prime the engines from inside the aircraft where as in the Lanc they do it from the outside, don’t they? That’s what I would be doing, tidying up again.
CB. And how were the engines started with a trolley acc or cartridges?
JB. No trolley acc, the same as eh, the same as the Lanc.
CB. And then on take off the Pilot is controlling the throttles not the Engineer.
JB. He is not?
CB. In the Stirling on take of who is controlling the throttles, the Pilot or the Engineer?
JB. Em on the Stirling I don’t know but on.
CB. You weren’t anyway.
JB. I wasn’t but on a Lancaster I was. The Skipper would get it so far, he had four levers and, and until he got it running straight and then he would ask for full power and I did the business then because when you are on full power he can’t twiddle;
CB. And you are sitting on a, next to the Pilot on a Lancaster?
JB. Yeah it is a moveable seat and a lot of the time I would be standing, but the seat felt as a strap, it wasn’t a very comfortable seat.
CB. So you stood a lot?
JB. Yeah.
CB. The reason you got caught out on the corkscrew was because you was standing at the time, was it?
JB. Yes that right yeah.
CB.Talking about engines again, so to clarify on both aircraft all the throttle levers, all four of them were next to each other. When you run up the aircraft engines before take off how do you synchronise the engines and who does it?
JB. Well the Pilot does it.
CB. Ok so how does he do that?
JB. He does it for steering, steering purposes and so if he wants to sort of go this way he will give it a little bit of power on this engine and so forth and then when he comes up to the point where he’s got it ready for take off, two thirds of the way down the runway then it is up to the Pilot or the Engineer to sort of put it onto full power.
CB. You put your hand on it, left hand on the throttle and push them through the gate?
JB. No he used to have his hand on that and I had it underneath, likewise.
CB. Right,your left hand pushing it?
JB. Yeah I put ‘em up and tightened the what’s its name down, you loosen it off for him when he wants to come back and get the flying side, getting his flying in, so it is synchronise.
CB. So he is synchronising the engines in the air not on the ground is he.
JB. Not on the ground, no that’s for steering.
CB. Right and what about the pitch how did you deal with that?
JB. The pitch of the aircraft.
CB. No the pitch of the propellors?
JB. Eh I think you could only do, I don’t think.
CB. You would take of in fine pitch wouldn’t you?
JB. Fine pitch, going back now [pause] You take of in flying pitch, you leave it in flying pitch if you could possible get it there. Well you could do once you got on flying. On course stuff, they don’t go so well on course, do they?
CB. So in the cruise you are not going to be in fine pitch are you. You have got fine pitch for take off, so when do you change for cruise and what pitch do you put it in.
JB. [pause] I don’t know, I wouldn’t know that, I’ve forgotten what that sort.
CB. Ok it just comes out of the use of the throttles.
CB. Thanks
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with John Firth
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-07-06
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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01:30:01 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AFirthJB160706
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending OH summary
Description
An account of the resource
John Firth was a flight engineer with 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe June to August 1944. He was shot down in August 1944 on his 20th operation and became a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft 7.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Poland--Tychowo
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
Contributor
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Hugh Donnelly
50 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
fear
final resting place
flight engineer
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
prisoner of war
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF St Athan
RAF Syerston
RAF Wigsley
sanitation
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
Stirling
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/229/9018/PClarkeC1501.2.jpg
189d5ce3a7812235bcae6ebba1a974d7
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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Clarke, Charles Henry
Charles Henry Clarke
Charles H Clarke
Charles Clarke
Charles Henry Clarke
Charles H Clarke
C H Clarke
C Clarke
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. Three oral history interviews with Air Commodore Charles Henry Clarke OBE (1923 - 2019) and one photograph. Charles Clarke volunteered for the RAF when he was seventeen and flew operations as a bomb aimer with 619 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa. His aircraft was shot down on his 18th operation and he became a prisoner of war. He was held at Stalag Luft 3 and took part in the long march. After the war, he was posted to the Air Ministry for Aircraft Production, and then to the Middle East. He left the RAF as an Air Commodore in 1978. He later became the chairman of the Bomber Command Association.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-06
2016-06-02
2017-03-04
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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Clarke, CH
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 Charles Henry Clarke. Two
Description
An account of the resource
Charles Clarke joined the RAF aged 17 and began training as a pilot but he became ill with mumps and later trained as a bomb aimer. His aircraft was shot down on an operation to Schweinfurt and he became a prisoner of war. He took part in the Long March from Stalag Luft 3, constructing a sledge to carry his belongings. After returning to London he was posted to the Air Ministry for Aircraft Production, and posted to the Middle East. Charles had a long and varied career in the RAF and left as an Air Commodore in 1978.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the University of Lincoln.
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-02
Contributor
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Linda Saunders
Julie Williams
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AClarkeCH160602
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
England--Rutland
Germany--Oberursel
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1945
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:26:04 audio recording
619 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
Botha
Dulag Luft
Lancaster
prisoner of war
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Swinderby
RAF Woodhall Spa
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/897/11137/AInstoneTS160407.2.mp3
7c8b1df35b6fe1825732490236a0b301
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
Instone, Thomas
Thomas Stanley Instone
T S Instone
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Stan Instone (b. 1925, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 419 Squadron and became a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-07
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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Instone, TS
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
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CB: Right. My name is Chris Brockbank and we are currently in Slough talking with Stan Instone about his experiences with 419 Squadron RAF, RCAF in the war and also his POW experiences. But Stan could we start off please with your earliest recollections of life. The family. Where you went to school and that sort of thing.
TI: Oh yes. Well, I was born on the 1st of January 1925 in a small urban district outside of Nottingham, about three miles outside which was actually a mining community or part of a mining community. And my father was a miner at that time and so I saw very little of my father one way or another. But anyway I had a very happy childhood because we lived next door to my grandmother who I adored and it was a very close community. At the age of nine my father decided to leave the mine and go in to insurance and he got a job in Great Yarmouth actually. So as a nine year old I went to Great Yarmouth which I thought was fantastic. By the sea and all the rest of it. And we were there until more or less the outbreak of war where he got a promotion in his job in insurance and moved to Greenford which is not too far away from here. And oh, while I was at great Yarmouth I was at Great Yarmouth Grammar School. And no great academic. Nothing, nothing startling but, you know I enjoyed it etcetera. But moving down to Greenford it was rather more difficult. I went to Southall County School which was a sort of a grammar school which was a mixed school and I’d only ever been at an all boy’s school and the sight of girls was a bit too much [laughs] I think. But anyway I didn’t stay very long and the bombing started. And my, having a younger sister three years younger than myself and my parents decided that I and my sister should go to my grandparents in Carlton outside Nottingham because it would be in a safer area than the London area you see. Anyway, I was there for a while and then he got another promotion. But this time to Blackburn in Lancashire. So, up I went but by this time I was fifteen years old and I thought school was no longer appropriate as far as I was concerned. And so I got a job with a factory outside Blackburn and it was making Bristol aeroplane Hercules engines. You know the 14 cylinder sleeve valve engine, you see and so right from the start I had a sort of RAF associated background as it were. And we were going through, it wasn’t an apprentice but it was like a trainee going from section to section on lathe milling etcetera etcetera. So I got myself a fair engineering background and also being well aware of how the engine was put, you know the parts you made and how it was put together you see. And at seventeen and a half I volunteered for the RAF and went to, I was in, oh and see I’d joined the ATC in Blackburn. And it was very good because we were, went to various places. Kirkham for air gunnery. They had a turret there we were allowed to fire. At Squires Gate where we actually took off in Ansons and things like that. So, and then I also did a summer course at Silloth near Carlisle where we were flying Ansons you know. They were flying Hudsons but we were not allowed anywhere near the Hudsons. We were allowed to play with the Ansons you see and so that was that. So I had a fair background in the ATC and I had probably about twenty hours I suppose in the, in the air you know. Anyway, I applied for this — pilot of course. I wanted to be a pilot. Everybody wanted to be a pilot of course. And I was rejected almost immediately. And I did a, the next operation was a wireless op air gunner but I seemed to fail my Morse aptitude test. And the only thing on offer was a straight AG. And I thought no. I daren’t go home and tell me mum I was a straight AG because at that time the life expectancy of a rear gunner on ops was about twenty minutes. So that was it. So, anyway I thought well later. So I decided well if I couldn’t fly at least at eighteen I would join as ground crew. I thought I’d be a flight mech you see. So I joined up in Edinburgh and I got my 3021416 and I was posted to Arbroath. That was the square bashing place you see. I’d only been in two weeks, two or three weeks, and the call went through for remuster to flight, they were looking for flight engineers then. But on my first interview flight engineers weren’t mentioned although they were in being of course. But you probably know the original, the early flight engineers were recruited from the ground crew. Corporal fitters to, you know air frame and engines and given a short course and that was it. But then they decided on a direct entry flight engineer. So, anyway within two or three weeks I re-mustered. I volunteered for a flight engineer. And I was then sent to a selection board in Edinburgh and had a whale of time there. I answered all the right questions. I don’t know if you ever did the — they had an SME. They called it a SME 3. It was like a television screen with a rudder bar and control column. And there was a random dot on the screen itself and by, you know operating the control column you went to try and get your dot in line with that. Seemingly I did very well. Anyway, up to the, you know the preliminaries I saw these senior blokes sitting in there looking very important and being an AC2 at that time smart salutes etcetera. And, and they asked me various questions and they said, ‘Well, I think we could recommend you for pilot training.’ I was a bit surprised. He said, ‘But. There’s a but,’ he said, ‘Because there’s so many in, in the queue as it were it was nine to twelve months before you were likely to start the course.’ Because as you probably know any PNBs, that’s pilot, navigator, bomb aimers were being trained in the Empire Air Scheme in Canada. Some in America obviously and, as was then Rhodesia. So, well I’d sort of set my heart on the flight engineer. I said, well I would go for an engineer, a flight engineer. And he was a bit nonplussed. He said, because he like me didn’t know much about what a flight engineer did you see but I remember him saying, ‘You’ll be in charge of three, four very powerful engines,’ you see. So I said, ‘Well, fine sir. Thank you very much sir.’ You know. Anyway, I wrote, went back to my, finished off my basic training and almost immediately I was down to ACRC. That’s the Aircrew Reception at St Johns Wood you know. Lords. Three weeks there. As a serving airman of course. We were in a flight of serving airmen. I mean I’d got oh about three months at that stage mind, you know. Really serious. Anyway, I then was posted to Whitley Bay for ITW. Six weeks there and then St Athan on a six month, well about six or eight months at St Athan and I finished. I finished in June. Early June ’44 at St Athan. Just before, well just around about D-Day it was actually. I had a week’s leave and I found myself at 1664 Conversion Unit. No, there was no preliminaries in between. Finished at the course, the [unclear], and then on to the, and there as you may know the flight engineer’s course is all ground work. No flying whatsoever. In fact at the, the engineering school at St Athan there wasn’t a whole aeroplane. There were bits of one but no, all we had were circuit boards and engine stands and stuff like that, you know. So we had to learn about hydraulics, pneumatics, electrics, you know, instruments. You know. Anything to do with connecting with an aeroplane because although there were heavy bombers — the Stirling, the Halifax and the Lancaster they were all very similar. You know the systems did differ. There were differences as you know but there’s handling differences but basically they’ve all got the same sort of components you see. Anyway, I passed out well and was awarded my sergeant’s stripes and brevet in June ’44. Then as I say a week later I was at 1664 Conversion Unit. Now this was the point that I’d had virtually no flying. I think I’d done three hours in an Oxford over the Bristol Channel I think while I was at St Athan. And that was my total flying experience in the RAF. But I’d come with about twenty hours ATC. I was more experienced than most actually and having got to Dishforth and see these great big black Halifax 2s and 5s. God, have I got to sort of fly those? You know. And so it was a question of you flew as second engineer with whoever would take you. Now, all that meant was that the engineer who knew a bit more than I did would show you the various knobs or levers to pull etcetera. Whatever it was. Anyway, I think we flew like that for a couple of weeks or so. And then one day the tannoy went. Tannoy went and it said, ‘Will all engineers not yet crewed up report to the engineering section at 1400 hours.’ Which I duly went there and we were wondering, there was I don’t know how many engineers there. Probably a dozen or more and, probably fifteen or so, I don’t know. Anyway, there was, I had a friend who I’d been at St Athan with so we were very, very close. You know. Alright. And anyway with that eight Canadian pilots came into the room looking for engineers. And so there was two flying officers and six sergeants. So I thought to myself, ‘Well he’s a flying officer. He must know more than I do,’ so I went up to this guy and all I said, ‘I’ll be your engineer if you like.’ He said, ‘Ok by me.’ We shook hands and that was the selection you see. And my mate went to the other flying officer and did likewise. So, we were taken. We were crewed up then. So we, now my crew had just come up from OTU at Honeybourne. They were flying Whitleys. And we hadn’t, the bomb aimer had dropped out and so we were without a bomb aimer at that particular time. But we did our normal sort of circuits and bumps and local flying and day cross countries and so on and so forth. And then it came to night flying and so we did that. We were scheduled for night circuits and bumps. Well, we had a screened pilot at first you see. So we took off. These were Halifax 2s by the way and I had type trained on Halifax 3s. That was with the radial engines. Nothing to do with Lancasters at that stage. And we took off. Did a few circuits and bumps and the screened pilot said, ‘Ok. Do a couple more on your own and call it a night.’ Well, we took off alright. No problem. But coming on the circuit to land, in the engineers compartment in the Halifax was behind the pilot and it was Rolls Royce engines and of course they had cooling flaps. And I noticed one of the engines was running a bit on the hot side. And the controls for the radiator flaps were like four fingers and up for closed, down for open or whatever it was. Anyway, I thought well I’ll open, you know open the flaps up you see. And then I went to open the flaps. No resistance at all. No hydraulics. So I said to the skipper, I said, ‘There’s no hydraulics on there. We’d better try the undercarriage.’ We tried the undercarriage and expected the, you know the thump and the green lights. And nothing happened. So we were circling around and the skipper tried a bit. Climbing and diving and things like that. Shook it around a bit in the hope that it would happen. And anyway I mean I was starting to panic a bit at that stage you see and — because it appeared that one, one had partially come down and the other was still stuck up in the nacelle. So we, there was an emergency system whereby you opened a cock as it were to allow air into the system and theoretically gravity would take over and the weight of the undercarriage. But there was no spanner missing for the cock [laughs] Anyway, this wasn’t going to happen at all so anyway somebody suggested, well there’s the header tank in the rear of the fuselage. A cylindrical one about this high. And if it contained the fuel there’s a hand pump on the side and a bit of luck you could pump like mad and — but shining the torch in it [laughs] it was like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. It was bare. Nothing there. Oh God. Now, I don’t know who it was suggested it but somebody said, ‘Well, there’s the elsan there.’ So, we all had a good pee in the elsan [laughs] those that could and we tipped the contents of the elsan into the header tank and believe me the smell was [laughs] terrible. I can smell it today. Anyway, pumped like mad and suddenly clunk and green lights came on. And we landed. Just like that. So, that was my first experience of, of night flying. And that seemed to set the tone for the Blaney crew as we were then called. The Blaney crew. Because everywhere we seemed to went we seemed to run into a certain amount of bother. And that was it. So that was my first experience. And then of course we went on to night cross countries. And ultimately then we were posted to 419 Squadron in September 1944. OH, by the way in the meantime at Dishforth we did a couple of leaflet raids on France while the Normandy operation was, was in being as it were. In the old Halifaxes. And, but, so now seven of those crews that came through at that particular time were posted at the same time to Middleton. The 8th one was still, they hadn’t done quite so well on their, on the OTU so they were behind. But they were subsequently lost. They’d done a leaflet raid and didn’t make it back. So that was the first of the eight crews gone. And at the, at the end of the, well by the time I was shot down the other crew with the flying officer had actually gone to 44 Squadron on Pathfinders. They survived the war. And of the other six one rear gunner survived. So, that was the subverse of the, out of the original fifty seven five of our crew survived. The whole of that George Bates crew survived and one other. I met him in Germany by the way. And so the thirteen out of the original fifty six people you see. And that was the, that was fairly sort of average squadron loss I would have thought at that particular time. So anyway that was the training done and then in October they decided we were good enough to operations. And my first one was a night operation to Essen. We got buzzed by a fighter plane again. But we got, we got back but our squadron commander was killed on that particular one. McGuffin was killed on that raid. And then we did a, the next day we did a daylight on Essen. And this one again there was a great, a great big Lancaster flying above us with its bomb doors open and a four thousand pounder, I’m not joking, it dropped between our port, our port wing and our port tailplane. Just like that. If we’d had a big stick we could have touched it, you know. Really. Anyway, that was, that was that. Then we did a daylight on Essen. On Cologne. Saw the cathedral. But it was fairly quiet that one. And a night Cologne. Anyway, in the space of seven days we did nine trips err nine days we did seven trips. And then we come to Bochum. And that was a nasty one this was. And we’d previously gone from [pause] flying south from Middleton because Middleton was the most northerly of the bomber stations you see. So we’d fly south, congregating around about Reading, around this area. Head over Beachy Head into France. And then nearly all our targets were Ruhr targets anyway so heading north you see. But this particular one was on Bochum which again is a Ruhr target of course. We’d flown over the North Sea, over the Hague and we got flak all the way. All the way from the coast right up to the target. Then suddenly there was no flak. Oh God. You know what that means don’t you? Fighters. And there was. We had five fighter attacks. One after the other. And the rear gunner actually hit a 109, a 110 rather. Twin engine one. And he was, he was credited with that as a kill. The mid-upper had seen you know had hit a ME109 but hadn’t — you know. It was only a possible. Nothing else. But then there was some guy got on the back of us and he really — well that’s it. He knocked out the rear turret. Badly wounded the rear gunner. And we went in to, I don’t know whether it was deliberate or accidental but the pilot put us into a steep dive and we were, you know virtually like that. And we were doing over three hundred miles an hour in a Lancaster which is a bit on the fast side actually. But we managed to pull out about two thousand feet and set course for, for Woodbridge near Ipswich. And so my job then was to find out what had happened to the rear gunner. So I went back and he was still conscious actually but he was [pause] he’d lost an eye and he had wounds, a badly wounded arm and chest but he had more important I didn’t realise at the time because his helmet was blood soaked and he had I think at the end the count was thirty shell splinters in his head actually. Anyway, I got him back to the rest bay and sort of did what I could for him but by that time we were getting closer to Woodbridge so I had to go back and sort of make sure the, because the fuel situation. I mean, after all that’s what the engineer’s main job was fuel management you see. And anyway we got back as far as Woodbridge but the skipper you know on the approach we’d been, we radioed in we had injured on board etcetera and we couldn’t get the tail down. It was sort of, you know sort of down like that and we had to more or less stall it in to get it, you know, to get down. Anyway, the ambulance came and took the rear gunner away to [pause] Ely I think it was. Ely Hospital. And when we went to inspect we found that the starboard fin and rudder was virtually gone and the starboard elevator just, just curled under like that. So how my, how that pilot had managed to pull out of that dive you know with virtually no elevator control at all. Anyway, that was it. So that was a really bad night and that was the, our ninth trip. We had a weeks’ leave and back again. And then it became the winter time had started. We were only flying about two. Two a month then. We did, just went on and on like that, we did a trip to Dortmund, Duisburg. You know. You name it we’d been there. You know, from, on the Ruhr Valley. And the Ruhr Valley was a pretty horrible place. Was, you know because there were so many flak guns etcetera. And if the guns weren’t there the fighters were. And ,and then it sort of went on until the 20th of February 1945. The night we took off on to Dortmund. We’d been there before and [pause] but we didn’t make it. About twenty miles short of the target we were, now the book says we were hit by flak but we were not. We were hit by an upward firing fighter. He hit us in the starboard wing and the bomb bay. Mind you we still had the bomb load on board. We had a four thousand pounder and twelve cans of incendiaries. And there would be about two hundred gallons I suppose in the mid tank still. And I’d my and I’d drained the wing tank. I don’t know if you realise it there’s three tanks in each wing on a Lancaster. The main one’s in board of, in the fuselage in the inboard engines and mid tank between the two engines and then the wing tip tank. And we had, originally we’d had about sixteen hundred gallons which was a normal load for the Ruhr. And anyway the mid tank was on fire. Burning furiously behind me because I [pause] I’d hoped we could put the fire out. Had it been in the engine bay the extinguishers might have worked but the tank we had on fire with that amount of petrol it was hopeless. And then the small fire had started in the bomb bay. Anyway, the skipper gave the order to bale out. And, and the, at that stage the bomb aimer was already in the compartment. He’d opened the hatch but instead of throwing it on to the bomb sight which he was supposed to have done he’d dropped it through the hole. And what happened? It jammed solid in the opening. At that stage the navigator pushed past me because that was [pause] and he was jumping on the, on the thing to try and free it. And at that stage the rear gunner called up saying he couldn’t get out of his turret because the doors, the doors had iced up. Now on some of these some were hinged and some were sliding and the idea was he used to push it like that. But he couldn’t open it because you know even a car door in the icy weather you can’t open it sometimes. Well, that had happened. Now fortunately, anyway I went back, I said I’d see if I could do anything. I went back. By the time I got there the navigator, the wireless op and the mid-upper had gone and the entrance door were swinging open. Things like that. Anyway, I went back to the turret but he’d already turned it around and fortunately for him I think he’d turned it with the flames because I think, we think what happened was the flames from the, the the fire in the wing tip had actually thawed the ice on the doors and he was able to open it. So he managed to open his doors and he went out backwards. Now, on our squadron the rear gunners had pilot type ‘chutes. On some they had an observer type which they kept inside the fuselage. On ours he had the pilot type ‘chute. Well, he went out but he got his foot caught so he was being trailed behind the aircraft. You know, with the flames sort of — not badly burned but sort of. And anyway he rolled over. Had to leave his boot behind. Not his foot. His boot. And he came down. Well, at that stage I’d gone back to the pilot and said, well I just, I’d already got my parachute on and I just sat on the hatch and I expected the pilot to follow me. And I don’t remember any more at all. And I woke up on the way down and there was seemingly bits of aircraft flying with me. You know. Like that. You know I was very comfortable. You know. Lying on my back there falling and [pause] I thought I’d better do something. I pulled the rip cord and suddenly there was this terrible jerk and it sort of shots up and shots up and eased on the shoulders there. I looked down and there was the cloud base and I was just about to drop through it. And I remembered ah that the Met man, he said the cloud base over the target would be eight thousand feet. So I thought oh I’ve got eight thousand feet to go. But I hadn’t. As I dropped through this cloud I saw this dark mass below. What’s that? And suddenly I was in a pine, a pine forest. And I just just went through the tree. Just clump, clump, clump. Just like that. And I don’t think I hit the ground any, any harder than that. So I undid my, you know unbuckled the parachute and took the Mae West off and tried to hide them and started to walk. But I’d been hit in the arm and I was, and the face. Not. Not seriously but it was bad enough to sort of be a bit a bloody as it were. But I was picked up within, within hours. And I’d hoped to get to you know to get up to Holland but I’d lost my escape aids on the way down and so I was struck. So I was in the village lock up for about two days I think. And that was a horrible time. It was damp. Cold. And then I started, my chest then started to really pack up and I was getting so breathless I was [pause] Anyway, after two days the guards came. ‘Raus Raus.’ And there was a truck outside and then there was my bomb aimer and the two gunners and a load of [stiffs?] as well mind you know. And we were taken then to Dortmund. To a Luftwaffe station at Dortmund. A night fighter station it was. And we were then in a, in a cellar there for a couple of weeks. So, at this stage I will have to pause again because —
CB: Right.
TI: I’m sorry about that
[recording paused]
CB: Ok. Right. So we’re just continuing from the night fighter station and what you did at the night fighter station.
TI: Well, at the night fighter station we were put in a cellar. Put in a cellar there with bunks. With very little facilities. There was no, no blankets and very little sort of in the way of bedding at all. But we were, there was quite a number there. There was the four of us actually. The two gunners and the, and the bomb aimer and myself. No sign of the pilot, navigator or the, or the wireless op. And we were there for a few days but I was, and there was an American colonel, a P47 pilot. A Thunderbolt pilot. He’d got very badly burned around his neck and all he had was a paper crepe bandage around there with all pus and stuff. And there was an American bombardier with a large chunk of flak in his buttocks mind so he was sort of face downwards you see and I at that stage I was just, I was really having difficulty breathing actually altogether. Anyway, they decided that there was about four or five of us who were not very well as it were. We should, they would transfer us then to Dulag Luft which was in Frankfurt. And so we were taken by truck and from, from Dortmund, from the, from the [pause] to Dortmund Station. And that is where the article in the book there was. Anyway, there was two guards with us and there’s, there would probably be about a half a dozen more. But two Americans very much in evidence with their uniforms etcetera. And we were there and suddenly an old guy, he’d be about fifty I suppose but by that he was very old by our standard who saw the Americans and he really went wild because he was shouting and screaming and you know by which time the crowd had sort of got attracted to this you see. And some of the guard pushed us into a corner and they put their, held their rifles in front of us and told, told them to go away. And it had got very very nasty actually because I think undoubtedly had the, had the guards not been there we would have been done over. As to how badly is another story. But anyway fortunately a train came in and their trains were not very frequent in Germany at that time and so everybody rushed to get on the train and we were put on this train to Frankfurt. And I think it took us about three days I think to get from Dortmund to Frankfurt because every time there was an air raid the train was stopped and go into a tunnel if there was a convenient tunnel and it just, so it went on you see. And I got to Dulag Luft and, ‘My name is Instone, my rank — ' You know. ‘3021416’ and I was put in solitary confinement. And I had nine days solitary confinement actually. Anyway, on the ninth day the doors had opened. I was taken there and this is the scene I will never ever forget because it was a small room about this size I suppose and there was a German officer. Immaculately dressed. Monocle. Sabre scar, cigarette holder. ‘Ah Good morning sergeant,’ he said, ‘And how are you this morning?’ [laughs] But on his desk was two rather thick orange covered booklets. One said, “419 Squadron” and the other said, “428 Squadron.” And of course my eyes went vrrr to the 419 ‘Ah sergeant. You’re 419 I see.’ He said, ‘There you are.’ He said, ‘There’s all the, there’s all the records,’ he said, ‘Tell me were you a Darlington or a Stockton man?’ Well, of course it was Darlington. Middleton St George is halfway between Darlington and Stockton. So you either went one or the other you see because the train was there. So I was a Stockton man. He said, ‘How’s sergeant — how’s Squadron Leader Black? How’s he getting on?’ He was, he was the squadron leader you know. He knew more or less everything. Oh, he said, ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘Do you go to the Oak Tree?’ Which was just up the road. Well, you know. Anyway, he said, ‘Your crew,’ he said, ‘Your pilot, La Blaney,’ and he went on. And — La Blaney. I said, ‘No. Not La Blaney.’ And I was a bit reluctant to say very much but his initials were LA Blaney but being a Canadian squadron it could have been like a French name like La Blaney you see. But anyway, but all the crew was just there. As indeed was me and crews of others. You know previous things. Anyway, it was eventually, he questioned me about various things which I either didn’t know or was unable to tell him anyway. And we parted. He said, ‘You’ll have a shower now.’ That was a first time I’d had a shower since I’d been down there, you know. Or a wash even. So, and then, we were then sent to a transit camp run by the Americans. Somewhere outside of Frankfurt. And then we were eventually, eventually we were in to cattle trucks. Loaded in cattle trucks. You’ve seen these people going to Belsen and stuff like that. Well, it was very much like that. About, it was supposed to be forty [arms?] and ten horses or something like that in these thing but we were actually packed literally packed to the gills. You could either stand or sit. It was one of those like that. And I think four days there. Between there and Nuremberg. We were allowed out to have a pee, whatever you know but that was all. I don’t think there was any food at all at that stage and when we eventually got to Nuremberg which was Stalag XIII-D. And the first person I saw was my wireless operator. Andy Kindret. And he was waiting at the gates and he’d been waiting at the gate for all the intakes and so we were, so then there was five of us together in Stalag XIII-D. Well, conditions weren’t good there because I think we had a a communal mess I think. Anything that was at seven thirty in the morning. I think it was a slice of rye bread and a bowl of gruel or something like that. And at 6 o’clock or thereabouts in the evening was the same. Same thing. And that was that was then. We did actually manage to get a Red Cross parcel there which was fantastic, you know. And we were not there very long. We could hear the guns from the, from, from the east. Or the west actually because the Americans were coming up. It was the American sector at that stage. And they decided to move us out so by this stage the amount of inmates in that compound was two thousand. So we then, we went, so we marched. Marched is [laughs] shuffled I think more than anything else. We advanced. We had no idea where we were going. We were just going south. Further into Bavaria actually. And we eventually found, got to Moosburg seventeen days later actually. It was nearly a hundred and fifty miles. Nearly. You know. And we got there to Stalag VII-A at Moosburg. And then it was so crowded. It was just almost impossible to move, you know. And there was, the only food we were getting was, because it was nearer the Swiss border we were getting Red Cross parcels through. So there was Red Cross parcels or parts of Red Cross parcels available and that. So we managed actually but we were there. We weren’t there very long. And on the Saturday night, this would be about a week before VE Day I think because we didn’t know about VE Day at that stage there was a pitched battle. Because apparently in the town of Moosburg was an SS garrison and the Americans were on the other side and the camp was used as a firing range as it were. And we spent the nights under the hut actually. But there was no, no captives. All the SS garrison were wiped out apparently. And then General Patton himself rolled into the camp. Into the camp in the Sunday, on the Sunday afternoon. Pearl handled revolvers and all, you know. And what, what did amaze me actually the American Red Cross staffed by girls was there with a bread making machine and a doughnut making machine [laughs] and the queue for [laughs] two miles. Well, I don’t I know how long it was. For a slice of bread and a doughnut. And that was it. But then the Americans started to shift the Americans out because there was two airfields quite close by there. There was Straubing or Regensburg. And they were being shipped out but we were there for about four days after, after the, we were released by then. And we were eventually taken to [pause] I think it was Straubing. That was the camp by the aerodrome. There had been Junkers 52s there. You know, the three engine ones there. And we were there for another three days on the airfield waiting to be picked up. And we were eventually picked up by, again by the Americans in Dakotas and taken to Juvencourt and spent the night in a American transit camp at Reims. Again, the memory that will live with me forever is that there was an open air cinema with Judy Garland in, ‘Meet Me in St Louis,” I think. On a white wall. And so that was — and the American dishes with about fourteen compartments of this that and the other [laughs] you know. And the next day again we went to Tangmere. Well, back to Juvencourt and by Lancaster to Tangmere. And then thence to, from there to Cosford. And that was really the end of the — I was there for another three or four days because I had a [pause] my chest had improved somewhat but not good. But they weren’t very happy about it and I was there for a few days while a medic, and a new uniform and stuff like that. And eventually went home to Blackburn. And then eventually I had about eight weeks leave I think and then back to — I was, back to [pause] I did a course which I thought was demeaning. A flight mech’s course at Melksham. You know. Because I’d already done a leader’s course and I knew more than what the, what the instructors were saying actually. But they were there. And I went then to Hawarden near Chester. I finished up there. And so I was demobbed from, from there in June ’47.
CB: So what did you do at Hawarden?
TI: I was sergeant in charge of mods. We were rebuilding. We were, they were doing Halifax 3s and 7s. Taking the bomb bay out and putting panniers in and flogging them to the South African. The South African government. We were also re-skinning Anson 19s. They were the VIP Ansons, you know. They had plywood wings. Wing covering and that sort of skin like that. And I was in charge of mods and stuff like that, so. It was not a very, it was a job I didn’t like at all. I wanted to get back on to obviously flying or even in something more technical you know. But they decided because of my state of health I suppose that was it. But I tried. I kept saying, ‘Well, can I get back?’ ‘No.’ ‘No.’ ‘No.’ ‘No.’ Anyway, I finished up with a small pension, but it [pause] That was it.
CB: So when in 1946 did you come out?
TI: ’47.
CB: ’47 I meant.
TI: June.
CB: June. Then what did you do?
TI: Well, the place I’d worked at before was no longer. Well, it was British Celanese then. It went on producing. And I worked for a local government for a while. But my health was bad. Blackburn was not the best of places to be in actually because I don’t know, I don’t know if you know much about the north of England but Blackburn was a mill town. And I think at one stage it had a hundred and seven mill chimneys belching forth black smoke and there was always an industrial haze over the, over the town. And if it wasn’t raining it was going to rain, you know. So, it was one of those places. And I was, I had a particularly bad spell and I went to see my, my doctor. Well, he was on, on holiday and his locum was an ex-Merchant Navy doctor I think. A fellow called [unclear] I’ll always remember this guy. He had sticking out hair and wire rimmed glasses, ‘What’s wrong with you then lad?’ I said, ‘My chest. I can hardly breathe.’ So he examined me, you know. He said, he said, ‘Lad,’ he said, ‘For Christ’s sake get out of this bloody place or it’ll kill you.’ He said, ‘Emigrate. Do anything but get out of this place because if you stay here you won’t be around much longer.’ So I literally took him at his word because at that stage my parents had moved down to Weymouth from Blackburn. My father again had a promotion in his job but had left me behind. And so I went down there. That was a good move and a bad move because it improved my health. My health improved considerably because of the southern climes you know and that sort of thing. And I worked for the local police. I worked for the police headquarters in Dorchester. I was in charge of all stores and uniforms. Things like that. Quite an important job really but as a civilian that was. And of course I had the advantage everybody liked me [laughs] And there, but after a while I got to the stage where I was getting nowhere. I’d got as high as I could you know from a money point of view. And I came to London. I had a girlfriend then. She was a nurse in London before, this was before Jenny of course. And I said to her, ‘Let’s go to Windsor. I’ve never been to Windsor before and I want to see the Air Force Memorial at Runnymede. Anyway, as it was we went to Windsor. I was quite amazed. And Runnymede I thought was marvellous, you know. But right next door to the Runnymede was — it was called Shoreditch Training College. Teacher Training College. And I had been doing a night school course in Dorchester on model engineering and such like that and the instructor had said, ‘Have you ever thought about going into teaching?’ I said, ‘No. I’m much too old now,’ you know, because I was in my thirties by this stage you see. He said, ‘I think you’d be alright.’ So I said, ‘Where did you train?’ He said, ‘Oh, I trained at Shoreditch.’ But Shoreditch at that time was in Shoreditch, London you see. But after the war they’d moved out to Cooper’s Hill, you know which was next door to the Runnymede. So I applied and got there. I did three years. Very enjoyable. And qualified as a technology teacher which I continued to do until I was, I retired in 1990 when I was sixty five. In the meantime I met Jennifer of course and the rest is history there. And, but I retired from the school I was at in [pause] well they said, ‘But we’d like you to carry on for a bit,’ so I did another three years part time because you can’t do too much otherwise it affects your pension. And I finished there and the local grammar school said, ‘Can you help us out?’ So I did then another five years part time. So all in all by the time I got to seventy two they said, ‘Well, I’m sorry. But the, we don’t think the insurance company is going to cover you anymore.’ And a, and a friend of mine who I’d worked with before his technician had an accident with a circular saw you see. And he said, ‘I’m desperate. I’m desperate. Can you help me out?’ So I worked there until I was eighty two [laughs] but I didn’t — after that I said, ‘No more. That’s it.’
CB: Fantastic.
TI: That’s it.
CB: That’s very good. Thank you.
TI: I think we’ve got to show you something else now haven’t we?
CB: Just, can I just ask a couple of questions?
TI: Yeah.
CB: One of the interesting things that’s difficult to broach and talk about is how crew members came and went. Now, some people were wounded so they had to go elsewhere. But others because of their mental state. And you said that the bomb aimer didn’t come from the OTU. What had happened to him?
TI: I don’t know. I really don’t. I never. I didn’t find out at all. It was a closed shop as far as I was concerned. We picked up a second tour man actually at, at Dishforth and we remained. He’d, well I don’t know whether he’s still alive but we were in contact until quite recently weren’t we? Mark and I went over to Canada to stay with him for a while. And he’d been over to us. He and his wife. His wife died. His wife died some years ago. But I think the last we heard he couldn’t manage himself. He was in pain at the hospital. But we’ve, in spite of everything I’ve not heard nothing more so if he’s still alive I don’t know but he’s older than me. He’s about three or four years older than me anyway so he’d be well in to his nineties anyway. Other than that now the rear gunner — excuse me I must go to the [unclear] again. I’m not doing very well.
CB: You’re doing fine.
[recording paused]
TI: The rear gunner.
CB: Right. We’re restarting after a short break. Rear gunner.
TI: The rear gunner who had been badly wounded over Bochum on the 4th of November ’44 came to the squadron two days before our final trip. He’d, he’d been awarded the DFM. DFM. He had an eye patch but he was on his way back to Canada but he [pause] so we had a night out as you can imagine. In Stockton. But anyway he was a very — he went back to Canada. He survived the war but he died in a car, a motorbike, a motorcar accident in America in the 60’s I think. Was it, Mark? We found out because he had, he wanted me to go over to Canada because I was one who got him out the turret. He felt he owed me something. He wanted me to go to Canada and get me a job there but with the RAF and my health it was no go. By the time I thought about it he’d gone off the radar as it were. But he’d the last I heard from him he was going into hospital to have these sort of splinters done.
CB: What was his name?
TI: Lanctot. Donald Lanctot. And — but he, he went to the States as a surveyor or something wasn’t it, or a [pause] He’d got some qualification anyway.
CB: Ok.
TI: And he married an American I think. Was it in Malibu? In Malibu I think. Malibu.
CB: It can’t be bad.
TI: Can’t be bad. But he died in a auto accident in the ‘60s.
CB: Sad. What about the other? Because you got through gunners. Several.
TI: Well, we lost, I lost contact with the two gunners. I was in contact with Andy Kindret because Andy was, we were buddies. We shared a room at Middleton and he was with me constantly throughout the march and in fact I said if it wasn’t, if it hadn’t have been for Andy I don’t think I would have made it anyway, you know. But he looked after me and he was a great help. But of course he lived in, just outside Winnipeg and he took a, he got married and had children and he was a commercial, a commercial artist first of all. And, and he worked for Canadian Television on set design and stuff like that.
CB: Ok.
TI: And retired. He was about six months older than me actually. But he died just shortly after he retired. But he’d just, he was just finishing — the last letter I got from him to say, “I’ve just finished a painting of our Lancaster.”
CB: Right. Brilliant.
TI: “And when I’ve done that I’ll send you a copy.”
CB: Right.
TI: He never did actually because he died. I got a letter from his son, you know because his son had sent all his effects to Nanton Air Museum.
CB: Right.
TI: Again near Winnipeg. And again it was Mark that found the information.
CB: Let’s just quickly. Your son Mark. What were you going to say?
MI: I was just going to highlight he is particularly interested in the gunner who went absent without leave at Dishforth.
TI: Oh yeah. Yeah.
MI: And also Kenny Shields.
TI: Oh yes. That’s right. Yes. I’d forgotten about that.
CB: So the one who went absent without leave. What happened there?
TI: He was sent to Sheffield.
CB: Yeah. Prison.
TI: Which was an Aircrew Detention Centre. And he came back but the skipper wouldn’t have him. He said, ‘I can’t rely on you. I can’t rely on you because if you go away. Got to be absolute.’ I mean, and then Ray Altham came in. He was one of the guys around Dishforth you see. So, Lanctot was the rear gunner and Ray Altham was the mid-upper. But when Lanctot, Don Lanctot was, you know, lost the eye etcetera we had to have another. So, Ray Altham opted to go in the rear turret and we got another guy called Kenny Shields. He was actually a wireless operator rear gunner but he was a very, he wanted to fly with us anyway and did. He was killed in a road accident. He was a Canadian but he had relatives in, I think it was Wigan. If it wasn’t Wigan it was one of those mill towns anyway. And at Christmas, we were on leave that particular Christmas and he’d had too much to drink and not being aware of driving on the left, you know. He stepped in front of a bus and that was the end of that. And he was buried at [pause] he was buried at Harrogate. In the Stonegate Cemetery there. And then we got this guy called Nozzolillo. Lou Nozzolillo. And he was first, first Italian descent. First generation Canada. And a good guy. Very. But you know but apparently he did very well in government because he lived in Canberra — not Canberra. Ottawa. And something to do in government. Quite high up. But I’d no real connection with him at all. It was Phil. Phil Owen and Andy. Andy Kindret first of all. Phil Owen came over. And we were, we were buddies then actually. But —
CB: So the crew was all Canadian except you.
TI: Right. That’s right.
CB: And all sergeants except the pilot.
TI: No. No. No. The pilot was a flying officer. As was the bomb aimer.
CB: Right.
TI: He was a flying officer. He was a second tour man actually.
CB: Right. So how did the crew gel?
TI: We did. Absolutely. And that was, that was what, it was the — I couldn’t have wished for a better crew. I would have flown anywhere with them, you know. I had tremendous admiration for my pilot you know, and you know we had a very [pause] you know, and got on very well. And I’ve been asked before but being Canadians there was no bullshit if you understand what I mean. There was very much, it was Christian names all the way down the line as it were. And I mean obviously there was, if there was a ceremonial parade it would have been different but I mean in the air and on the ground it was first names and that sort of thing. And we looked after one another as, as a crew. As a bomber crew particularly you’ve got to look after one another. You know, you do your job in your, in your area and that’s it. And that’s it. But being an engineer I found it suited me great because Lancasters, I went from training on Lanc err Halifax 3s which was the radial engine one which incidentally I’ve never flown in on to Lancaster 10s. So I knew nothing about the Lancaster so I had to learn it very quickly from Dishforth or from the squadron itself at Middleton. And we found the, the Lancaster totally different from the Halifax 2s. It was so manoeuvrable and light. You know. It was. Whereas the Halifax was a bit — on the Merlins I think the 3s and 7s were very good. But the 2s and 5s were with the Merlin engines were not. Very heavy. Very. And on the stalling oh terrible when they stalled. You know, it was a real judder etcetera etcetera. But the Lancaster was a very kind aircraft. It was a pilot’s aircraft I think, you know. And being a flight engineer we sat up front. We had, only had a canvas seat actually. I mean had we been, had we, we sort of had to assist the pilot on take-off and landings obviously and things like that. Well, our main job was to monitor you know the temperatures, pressures of all the, all the instruments and stuff like that. And calculate the fuel because as I say we started off with about sixteen hundred gallons and I think we had six little [pause] you know, gauges. So you couldn’t tell within probably a hundred gallons how many you had in the tank. So you had to work out. We knew exactly. We had a chart anyway but certain revs and certain boosts etcetera we would be using around about fifty gallons per hour per engine, you know. That sort of thing. And depend on if there was a headwind or something like that. But whatever. So we calculated the fuel so we knew more or less what was in the, in each of the tanks. And of course we had to, manually we had to sort of operate. So on take-off we always took off on the main tanks. That was inboard and over the target always on main tanks because you couldn’t be, you know mucking about sort of changing cocks. But on the way out I would drain the mid, the tip tanks and then on the way back we’d sort of juggle it until such time when we were coming in to land we were on main tanks and there. Because as you probably know it was a court martial offence if you landed with less than thirty miles, thirty hours, thirty minutes flying time. Unless it was an emergency mind. So —
CB: So when you talked about your role when sitting next to the pilot how did you — what were you actually doing with the throttles and how was the pilot communicating with you on take-off and landing?
TI: Well, the pilot had the, he had the, you probably know the outer throttles had a — were curled at the top. So the pilot would take them in his right hand and I, as an engineer would push up the, the others behind him you see. So he would actually manoeuvre the aircraft partially by the, by the throttle settings, you see. And it was my job on take-off to be through the gate you know. That was it. Three thousand and up if you were lucky you know. And then after, after then it would be after three minutes he would fly on full power for three minutes. Then you’d throttle back and start your, start your climb etcetera.
CB: So what, what would be the revs that you climbed at?
TI: Well, it would be three thousand initially but then —
CB: Yeah. But then what?
TI: Then we would drop to about twenty six hundred.
CB: And then cruising when you were straight and level.
TI: Well, more or less two six.
CB: Ok.
TI: We were flying out about a hundred and eighty and you’d come back at two twenty. That was the, that was the sort of average speeds for the — dependant on the winds as you know but it would be on an average and we, and we would get approximately one mile per gallon out of a Lancaster.
CB: Right. So you’re going out at one eighty knots.
TI: Yeah.
CB: And there was a reason for that.
TI: Well, I think because you kept, you kept the engines, you kept the revs down to about two six you see and of course you had variable pitch so, so we had to do the prop settings as well you see. There was the —
CB: As an engineer.
TI: As an engineer. And so it was. You had to do your log every twenty minutes anyway to work out your fuel. You know. So it was, you were fairly well occupied, but you had, you could move about the aircraft if you wanted to because everyone else was stationery. You know. They were stuck. But I could go to the bombsight. The idea was bomb aimer used to sit with the navigator. He would look at the H2S and the navigator was the Gee. The Gee one. Well, there was one actually when there was a navigational error which I think was, it wasn’t very funny at the time but as I, and I can’t remember what time it was but I know it was a Ruhr target and I know we flew over Mönchengladbach which was a German artillery school mind [laughs] Anyway, we were due as a second wave on this particular target and when we were, when the first wave was going in the navigator said, ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘I’m on the wrong chain.’ And we were fifty miles south of track. So we pressed on [laughs] in the better position and of course by the time we got to the target every other bugger had gone home.
CB: When you said, ‘On the wrong chain,’ you’re talking about GH.
GH. Yeah.
CB: And he was on the wrong chain of GH.
TI: That’s right.
CB: The navigation aid.
TI: That’s right.
CB: Yeah.
TI: And I think every flak gun in and around the area opened up. I’ve never seen so much flak in my life. I really haven’t. You could, you could smell it even. When you could smell, when you could smell cordite it’s bad. Well, anyway we got apparently untouched. We got back thinking oh heroes. But no. We got three. Three cross countries to improve navigating [laughs] Anyway, anyway we had [cough] I’ve got a frog in my throat. To follow up on that the ground crew couldn’t get the starboard inner started on the following morning. It wasn’t going. Anyway, the inspection they saw a small hole on just the leading edge. Now as you probably know there’s all the pipes, all the plumbing’s on just behind the leading edge and a piece of flak had actually penetrated the outer skin and flattened the fuel line. But it, while we were in the air I suppose the booster pumps in the tank and the you know the suction of the, in the engine itself had managed to draw fuel. So we had suffered those sort of engine problems but it wouldn’t start. So they had to cut that bit out and put a new bit in actually. But that was, you know surprising, you know.
CB: Amazing. Going back to the fateful incident where you were shot down was the — you said it was a German fighter underneath. Who saw that?
TI: Nobody.
CB: Right.
TI: That was the whole point. You see, the rear gunner said it was two bumps. Two. Two flak. Two bursts of flak. I knew it wasn’t flak because all it was was bump bump. That’s all there was. Just two shells hit us actually and immediately the wing tank burst into flames. And yet its gone all the way through. In Chorley we were shot down by flak but we weren’t. If you read that article there the guy that found us that shot us actually he’d actually scored a hundred and — a hundred and twenty two kills in his career of which —
CB: A German you’re talking about.
TI: Yeah. Of which a hundred and twelve were four engine bombers. And we managed, a friend of ours in Canada had actually had researched it and he found the name of the pilot that actually shot us, shot us down because he shot two down that night. We were, there was one earlier on and then we were the second and he went to return to base. But he, like our rear gunner was killed in an auto accident in the 60s.
CB: Was he really?
TI: He was from a well to do family in wine apparently and admitted in one of the wine in France as a —
CB: At the time you were shot down were you aware of the German Schräge Musik system?
TI: No. We hadn’t. But it was, you see the one I’m talking about over Bochum was that the Wild Boar as they called it was a free for all but in the latter stages the, it was the Schräge Musik actually.
CB: Right. Ok. Now, another question’s to do with when you were a prisoner of war. So, at the end then there was the Long March. So could you tell us about that? How did that come about? And what happened?
TI: Well, it wasn’t. Ours was the short march. As against their —one incident which I failed to tell you about this. On the march. I think three days after Nuremberg we were straggling along the road in between pine trees. It was a narrow, well, a good road but narrow and a deep ditch either side with pine trees either side and there were three Focke Wulfs came over. Three Focke Wulf 190s came over. Followed by three P47s. The Thunderbolts. Oh we were all, all fired up about getting, you know getting the, giving that Focke Wulf what for. But the next thing we saw was the three, three P47s nose down strafing the column. So we were strafed by the Americans. But they broke off. They must have realised. They killed fourteen of the, in the, in there but it was a horrible situation that was. You could feel the bullets, you know. I know we were on the road one minute and the next minute we were in the ditch. I mean I think all the living records were broken [laughs]
CB: And not everybody was killed presumably.
TI: No. No. There was —
CB: Of the people who were hit.
TI: No. It was fourteen. Fourteen were killed.
CB: Killed. And then wounded as well or not?
TI: Yes.
CB: Others.
TI: They broke off and after that a lone Spitfire used to come over every day and waggle his wings to say we know you’re there actually. And then so it was not a pleasant march because the weather was pretty awful at the start. Cold and wet. And you were sleeping anywhere. Outside. Under the hedge. Anywhere that was sort of going. And food was virtually non-existent. And then it improved tremendously as we got further south. So the weather became again almost, almost pleasant you know because it was, I mean one of the nicest nights we had was in the cattle shed. Literally with the cows. And it was warm and dry. Well, nearly dry anyway [laughs] And so it was, it [pause] it was an experience anyway but —
CB: So how many days was the march running?
TI: Seventeen days I think. I think it was seventeen.
CB: And at the other end what happened?
TI: Well, we just in, just all in one compound. A huge compound with lots and lots of people. I think at the end of the war — we actually did visit the camp later. Years later. Was it fifty eight thousand in the, in there?
JI: Eighty. Eighty.
TI: Eighty. There was eighty thousand POWs in Moosburg.
CB: Mainly army were they?
TI: Anybody and, anybody and everybody. It had been. We went there and I must have been I’m sorry about that —
CB: It’s ok. We’ll just stop.
[recording paused]
CB: Restart. Ok. Good. Fire away. What have you got there? “The Final Touchdown.” So what’s that story?
TI: That’s the —
CB: This is a newspaper story.
TI: The one. It was in 2014. That was before Vera. We were due to take a piece of Lancaster. Now, I think Mark ought to come into this because he’s the one that did all the work.
CB: Ok. Let’s just pause a mo. We’re now talking about when the Australian — the new, the Canadian Lancaster Vera came over to Middleton St George and you were there.
TI: This was before.
CB: Yes.
TI: This was before.
JI: Yeah. I think, I think you’re at cross purposes. But there is a story. He’ll tell you.
CB: Ok.
JI: Get it in context.
CB: Right. Go on then Stan. Then Mark.
JI: Quite an interesting one really.
CB: Go on Stan.
TI: Well, it was Mark actually that discovered a German Archaeological Society were looking for some wreckage of — I believe a Halifax wasn’t it? In the Dortmund area. Not having any luck at all. Quite how he got on to them I don’t know but he did and he contacted, he said, ‘Well, I know my dad’s Lancaster blew up around that area in February ’45.’ And so they did [pause] it was a village called Sprockhövel. About twenty miles from Dortmund roughly. I don’t know. And anyway they, they tried excavation and things like that without very much success and they contacted the local farmer who at that time was a six year old. At the time of the shooting down was six years old and his uncle owned the farm and he’d since then inherited it. And apparently he said, ‘Well, I’ve no idea he said but I’ve got an idea that there was. My uncle used a lot of aluminium pieces to repair chicken coops and stuff like that. I’m not all together sure but I think there’s a couple of bits down in the cellar.’ So they went down in the cellar and sure enough there was two pieces of aluminium and on one piece apparently there was a serial number and they could actually, I think again through Mark’s expertise of whatever that they were able to trace it back to Victory aircraft in Canada with the serial number of KB804. And so I was — so they invited us over. And I must say I was very reluctant to go to Germany because having dropped bombs on them I wasn’t too sure what the reception was. But I was totally amazed because they — Sprockhövel is as I say twenty miles south of Dortmund and the nearest railway station is Bochum. And Bochum was the one where we had that nasty incident. But we were met by Karl and his, met by Karl on Bochum station, taken to Sprockhövel and we were given a reception. Mark and his wife went and Jenny and I went and we had a remarkable reception. You know. We were feted and, you know. And then in the town centre at their museum they’d got the, and they had a picture of, of that one. The small one, you know. Which you can get through there anyway. And all the crew and things like that. And they’d this piece of metal. KB804 you see. Quite a thing. Anyway, they arranged newspaper things. The Burgermeister of the town came and a television crew from Dortmund came. So we were feted weren’t we actually? And that was it. And we, you know came away. And a few days later the family came over with a chunk of Lancaster. Would you like to see it?
CB: Absolutely. Yes.
TI: I’ll get it.
CB: Right.
JI: Where is it?
TI: In the garage.
CB: We’ll stop for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Stan’s been to the garage so we’re now looking at the piece of metal from his Lancaster that was brought back to the UK by the German family.
TI: Sixty nine years after the —
CB: Sixty nine years after this.
TI: Event.
CB: And you were supposed to take this up to Middleton for the reunion.
TI: Well, Mark took it up.
CB: Mark took it up.
TI: I was in hospital.
CB: Oh right.
TI: I had pneumonia.
CB: Yeah.
TI: Mark took it up but to me it means a lot actually.
Other: Yeah. Absolutely.
CB: Extraordinary.
TI: And so —
CB: So this is a good six feet long and a foot wide.
TI: Yeah. But I was and the point is that I was very proud to be a member of Bomber Command but, but having with my experience of Dortmund, particularly Dortmund station. Having travelled through the streets of Dortmund and seeing the terrible devastation and the chap who’d lost his family to the American bombing etcetera I did feel some remorse as it were you know so — and since then on our subsequent visits to Moosburg, Nuremberg and to Sprockhövel in Germany I found the German people so much nicer than I ever thought they were. You know. And you know I I you know I’ve got a certain amount of regret for dropping bombs on them because at eighteen, twenty thousand feet dropping bombs it’s so impersonal. On the ground you see the devastation. It sort of hits you a bit. And so you know I’ve got a certain amount of remorse as far as of that. I was, I did my job. And I’m glad I did my job but it's the but again isn’t it? How I feel about it.
CB: So, as a crew what was your attitude in terms of going on raids?
TI: Well, we wanted to. It was, well we wanted to do thirty trips and finish. Finish a tour. That was, that was the point. You started off. You volunteered for it and that was your job. It was a job. Nothing more than that. And yes you were worried. You hoped you were going to make it but you always hoped it was going to be somebody else, you know. And that was the point. And I think the navigator in the latter stages had started to feel the effect actually. And I think that was when the muck up of the, you know the navigational south of track etcetera. And he became, he got very, of course the navigator was probably in the worst position of all because he was curtained off behind the pilot you see so he never saw the outside unless he wanted to poke his head behind the curtain. And so he was not aware of the flashes and the bangs and stuff like that you see and I know that if there was any sort of near, ‘What’s that?’ you know. That sort of thing. I think we were finding that he was getting a little a bit, a bit flakey as it were, you know. But we, he was a good navigator as far as I was concerned and I would never have anything said against him or that. But there it is.
CB: Did you ever try to get a reunion of all the crew after the war?
TI: No. Well, I would have liked to have done but we were never, we never were in a position to sort of afford the trip.
CB: It would have been a bit expensive wouldn’t it? Yeah.
TI: And of course they were well spread, you see. There was two in Winnipeg. The two, the wireless op and the rear gunner were Winnipeg. Or near Winnipeg. The pilot, well he was dead of course but New Brunswick on the eastern side. The two, the tail gunner Lanctot and the navigator were Montreal and Lou Nozzolillo was originally Toronto you see. But so they were so spread that it was very difficult.
CB: So they didn’t get together either.
TI: No.
CB: No. Ok.
TI: And, you know I think probably Andy and, and Ray they may have.
CB: Because they were close.
TI: They were relatively close but that was all.
CB: Now, we’ve covered a lot of things and in, in that conversation that’s prompted Vic to think of something. He wants to ask you a question.
Other: When we first started you told us about what it was like to come back. And I don’t think on the record that we actually talked about that. But I mean thinking about different times, different situations these days if somebody that went through something like you went through on a daily basis apparently or near daily basis would be, would be given all sorts of support. But I gather that when you came back —
TI: No. There was nothing.
Other: Would you like to talk about that? And can I put this down on the floor?
TI: You just, you just resumed. You know. My mates were getting demobbed at that time. All the ex-ATC people were getting demobbed at the same time so we formed that. That was our support. But there was no support as far as no counselling. No nothing.
Other: No.
TI: You just got back into the bosom of your family and that was it, you know.
Other: Yeah.
TI: But I found it awful. I did find it awful. I wanted to go back into the air force. I really did because I found Civvy Street dreadful after the air force, you know.
Other: What sort of period are we talking about here in terms of finishing? Well, of course you were still in the RAF weren’t you after —
TI: Yeah. That’s right.
Other: But what about when you were just coming back. What? That’s what I had interpreted.
TI: Well —
Other: When you first —
TI: That was the difficult part because as I say we had eight weeks leave actually from returning from Germany to going back. I was then posted to Melksham which was a camp that had been closed down but they’d reopened it because they didn’t know what to do with redundant aircrew. That was the top and bottom of it. I mean some were lucky enough to sort of still be clearing bomb dumps and stuff like that. And a few were just sort of dropped back on to Training Command or something like that. But the majority of us we were nobody. And especially being, you know with the Canadian Air Force we’d no, we’d nowhere in the RAF at all you see. We had, I mean all I ever did on training. Training establishments as far as the RAF was concerned so I’d nobody. And it was very very difficult feeling. I mean alright I got on, on the course at Melksham. I made friends and stuff like that. And eventually posted to Hawarden. I made friends there and I was quite, quite happy in as much as I would have been far happier had I have been able to fly. Fly again you see. But I was just sort of seeing out my time really because you know my having —my health was gradually improving and you know it was [pause] that was it. But as a [pause] there was nothing if you understand me. You just sort of carried on and did what you could, you see.
Other: Yeah.
TI: And jobs were not easy to get actually because you know especially with the factory I had worked at had closed. Had closed down as far as I was concerned and so I got the job in sort of local government and not that I liked that very much but it was you know it was a job you know.
Other: On a similar theme do you want to say anything about your — I think Kindret was your buddy was he?
TI: Kindret. Yeah.
Other: Yeah. Do you want to tell us about anything, you know? What the support was between the two of you because I think you said something like you didn’t think you’d have got through it if it hadn’t been for him.
TI: Well, at Middleton St George when we — when we went to Middleton St George first of all we were in Nissen huts just outside. Quite close to the Oak Tree in fact. I don’t know. Chris knows. Probably knows where the Oak Tree is but —
CB: Yeah.
TI: But then as crew were shot down or finished their tour or whatever then we moved in. Of course the officers then moved into the officer’s mess and the sergeants into the sergeant’s mess and that was just inside the main gate. And 428 was one side and 419 was the other. Well, Andy and I were fortunate to share a room on the top floor of this, of the mess. And, and we had a great relationship. I mean, you know we had similar interests and things like that. He was, his parents were Ukraine actually and they moved to Canada. He’d been born in Canada so he was first generation there. But he used to write home in Russian. That sort of thing. So, but he was a great, a great artist because I always regret he did a crayon sketch of a Lancaster while we were on the squadron and he gave it to me. And of course in the ensuing moves between families and things like that it’s got lost, you know. So it was something that I do regret. But — and we used to go to Stockton together. He had a girlfriend and I had a girlfriend and that sort of thing, you know. And he had intended getting married to a girl in Stockton actually but when we got shot down that was, well it wasn’t the end of that as far as he was concerned but when we got back to England and he got kitted out again he went up to Stockton to see the girl with the intention of actually getting married but there was a sailor. They, they were of the opinion that we’d been killed you see and so she’d moved on. Moved on to the Navy [laughs] rather than the air force. And so he came to visit me in in Blackburn. I was still with my parent’s house at Blackburn then. And we had one hell of a time before he went back to Canada. And that was really the last time I saw him actually. Although we wrote. We wrote regularly, you know but as we got older you know it got to be a post, you know a letter and then a postcard and that sort of thing. But we were in contact right up to the end as it were. But he did support me. Particularly on, on the march with the, you know because my chest was bad and you know and things like that. And I really quite honestly I wanted to give up. I got to that stage I couldn’t really take much more. He was the one that prompted me, ‘Come on.’ You know. That sort of thing. And it was — so I owe a lot to him. I owe a lot to the crew. To the pilot. To him particularly and, and to Phil the bomb aimer. We’ve been friendly for years and that sort of thing and it’s a great loss to me when the crew, the breaking up of the crew itself.
CB: It was the family.
TI: A family. Absolutely. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. At the end of a raid you returned with the aircraft normally undamaged you said. So what did the crew then?
TI: Well, there’d be a debriefing of course.
CB: Ok.
TI: And then —
CB: And how did that go?
TI: You would, you know, they would do then you would have your meal and go to bed. And that was the end of that. And the following day you would, you’d find out whether you were on. If the battle order had been put up. If not you would push off in to the town or somewhere like that because Middleton was a good station but there was no facilities whatsoever. No cinema. No bar or anything. Oh there was a bar in the officer’s mess. And there was nothing in the sergeant’s mess. All there was was a billiard table. That was all. So, if you wanted entertainment you went elsewhere you see. And it was, as I say it was on the the railway station. The train went one way. Stockton one way. Darlington the other. So it was either or, you see. I got to Stockton. That was my first time there and you know I got established. Got a girlfriend there. Not, not serious, you know. It was more interesting [unclear] there. But it was alright. Then to the local dance hall. La Maison de Dance it was. What a name [laughs] La Maison de Dance. At the end of Yarm Lane. But it was, you know it was entertainment as it were because you you never knew, you know when, where, were you, whether you were going to make it or not you know. That was, it was always at the back of your mind. And I remember that night at the, on Bochum the rear gunner was he was very lively. He was a great one for the girls mind but he was very lively. That particular night he was very very quiet. Very, you know shut in on himself as it were. Totally out of character. Whether, whether some symptons had told him that he was going to get it that night I don’t know. But equally the, on our last last trip, our last trip as it were I had misgivings as well you know. There was something. I didn’t think I would. I never thought I would make it quite frankly.
JI: No.
TI: And I always thought with the amount of sort of, of crews being written off and that sort of thing I didn’t think I would make it actually. I think while I was there, there was only one crew finished the tour.
Other: When you say you had misgivings. Did you have misgivings every time you went?
TI: No.
Other: No.
TI: No.
Other: So —
TI: I mean you —
Other: So it was something quite unusual.
TI: You were, you were worried. That’s not to say you weren’t worried. You really were worried you know.
Other: Yeah.
TI: But it was you got to the stage well if it’s going to happen to us. If it happens to us it happens to us you know and there’s nothing you can do about it. You know. It was —
Other: So you learned to live with a lot of anxiety really.
TI: That’s right. Yeah.
Other: Yeah. When you say you came back and you went to bed. I mean what was sleep like?
TI: You were usually so tired out you know.
Other: So you were exhausted really.
TI: Exhausted. Yeah. Because you were, you were in the air for between six to eight hours and then you went you’d had your, the briefing beforehand. Then you had your debriefing afterwards it would be most of a day you see.
Other: Yeah.
TI: Or a day and a night actually. And I suppose most of our, most of our — I only did two daylights. All the others were night trips you see. So you were getting back 5 to 6 o’clock in the morning sometimes you see. And then of course you were just crashing out. And then all you did was wake up around about lunchtime. Go in to the section to see if there was a battle order up and If you were not on that you sort of, ‘Right.’ So, we said, ‘Skipper?’ ‘Ok.’ That’s it. There was virtually no discipline in the sense that you had to be there. You — if it was ok with the skipper that was ok. And that was, that was it. As much as that. And we had leave every six weeks which was a great thing actually. And on two occasions two of the crew, you know the crew came — the navigator came with me and and the wireless operator, you know. So they came with me for a weeks’ leave in Blackburn of all places [laughs] So, but it was [pause] it was something I wouldn’t have missed if you understand what I mean. It was —
CB: Absolutely.
TI: To me it was every, when I’d got a crew I was really somebody. You know. I felt I was somebody. You know. And we did our job to the best of our abilities but what, as I say what really turned me off was at the end of the war from being a somebody you became a nobody. And that was what really really hurt. It really hurt actually because we were just ignored. That’s absolutely. And I said that the public generally went a bit anti aircrew you see. Especially Dresden. After Dresden of course you know. And, you know, and so that’s why I didn’t bother sending for medals. I didn’t want anything to do with it at all. But it was Mark that actually said, ‘You ought to send for your medals.’ And he did. And of course since then he’s made sure that you know I’ve got as much information as I have done. Other than that, left to myself I wouldn’t have bothered at all.
Other: Were you on the Dresden raid?
TI: No.
Other: No.
TI: I was shot down a week after.
Other: Right.
TI: I would have been. We were on leave. We were on leave. That’s right. On the Dresden raid. We were on leave. Then straight back and shot down.
CB: So, just on this context of when you left the RAF you were very unhappy with the arrangements. You came back from being a prisoner of war. You didn’t have any link with the crew because they’d already gone to other places anyway.
TI: That’s right.
CB: So you didn’t want to take up your documents. That would be your logbook and other things. Did you have anything that you recovered?
TI: Well, in the sense that they sent some things home, you know. To my parent’s home. Yes. But nothing. Nothing really. Just general things you know.
CB: Right.
TI: And no I didn’t and I was sorry that I didn’t get the log. I’m sorry I didn’t get the logbook. But you know. One of those things, you know. And that they said they destroyed it as well. Mark did actually write to Gloucester.
CB: Yeah.
TI: And they said no. They were destroyed and that sort of thing.
CB: So what prompted Mark, your son, to look into your experiences?
TI: He became very interested in medals. Even as quite a young child actually. And he got to [unclear] he knew that I’d been in the RAF you see and he sort of started to of course at that time you could pick up the ’39 ’45 in any junk shop for pennies as it were you see. And I think he started collected. But he was more interested in not the medal themselves but the sort of the story behind the medal you see. And he’s got a fair collection actually on that. And it was through that that he sort of I suppose gee’d me up and said you’d better to do something about it, you know. I’m glad he did because you know otherwise I — and more recently I was, I’d been given the Legion d’honneur of course.
CB: You have. Good.
TI: By the, by the French.
CB: Yeah.
TI: Government. Just for, you know for my small part in the liberation of France etcetera you see. So I feel, another thing I feel very strongly about of course is that they stopped issuing the Aircrew Europe medal after D-Day. So anybody that flew after D-Day was not entitled to the Aircrew Europe. You were just entitled to the France and Germany Star. Whilst I think the guys that were on the D-Day landings more than deserved the France and Germany Star believe me but to bracket us all. Alright, Mark. I’m off [laughs] To bracket us all with the France and Germany star was you know. There’s been some atonement by the fact we have now a clasp for Bomber Command on the ’39 ’45 Star but that’s all. You know.
CB: When did you receive your clasp?
TI: A couple of years ago wasn’t it? About. Sort of like that.
MI: One of the first.
CB: And for your Legion of Honour. Where did you go for that?
TI: Didn’t. Came with the postman.
CB: Oh right.
TI: Came in a box. I didn’t want, I didn’t want the fuss and bother.
CB: Ok.
TI: Being kissed on the cheek.
CB: Any more?
Other: One more.
CB: Yeah. From Vic now. Vic asking another question.
Other: Going back to the Dresden business and the impact that has had. I think you were suggesting from the public on the aircrews. Can you tell me something about how that evolved for you? I mean I’m thinking that there was a Dresden raid. I don’t know anything about how information came around. Like on the BBC and things like that.
TI: What did, what did surprise me I knew nothing about it in — I was on leave I think when the Dresden raid was on. I saw nothing in the newspapers or anything like that at that time. I think there must have been on the radio there was a raid on Dresden. It didn’t make any impact on me. I was shot down a week later in Germany but there was never any mention in Germany of Dresden. And I thought there might have been. There might have been some repercussions etcetera towards aircrew but there wasn’t which was rather surprising in itself. But it was the general public that sort of had gone on and of course —
CB: In Britain you mean.
TI: In Britain. That sort of took and Churchill had turned his back on aircrew you know. He just ignored us then. And he was, he’d been forced you know with Stalin etcetera. He agreed. I don’t think Harris wanted to bomb Dresden. I don’t think so. But it was Churchill’s, you know that sort of the role was supporting the Americans and you know for the Russians because Dresden was, it was the largest garrison town anywhere in Germany and it also was a rail, a rail network as well to the east and things like that. It was a very important town was Dresden. But it was unfortunate that they, they bombed it to, you know, almost to destruction.
CB: Well it was actually in the context of the overall bombing.
TI: That’s right.
CB: It wasn’t unusual in terms of other cities having been bombed to destruction. It was just a more.
TI: I know but I mean I think —
CB: A sensitive topic at the end of the war.
TI: Yeah. It was. Very. It was a bit over the top really. It was a thousand bombers and the Americans as well. But also what annoyed me was the British have been, have been given stick for the Dresden raid yet there’s no mention of any American involvement.
CB: No. It’s really interesting isn’t it?
TI: And you know this is a —
CB: There’s a story associated with that.
TI: I knew very little about the Dresden raid actually. It was only since then of course all the you know the newspaper articles and things like that about Dresden and stuff like that. And it was, there was no question about it that the aircrews were not held in great esteem after the end of the war.
Other: Yeah. So actually the last thing you said it’s the newspaper articles and so on much later is it?
TI: Yeah.
Other: You think. Yeah.
TI: Yeah.
Other: Yeah.
TI: Yes. And it was you just didn’t there was no point I talking about it. You talked with your mates.
Other: Yeah.
TI: And things like that.
Other: Yeah.
TI: But there was no point. Nobody was interested.
Other: Yeah.
TI: That was it. You’d done the job. Just like an ordinary soldier, you know. Whether you’d been in D-Day or were a cook in the cookhouse or anything like that. You were just a soldier or a person. That was it. Full stop.
CB: Now, your wife Jenny’s quite a bit younger so she’s got a comment to make.
JI: Yeah. Well, I was at school. Just getting towards leaving school. CND had just started. I think the first march was 1958. And it was around about that time that a lot of the activists who were marching for CND were building up a pressure group on Dresden. And people were volunteering to go after that to go and rebuild Dresden. I’d never heard of Dresden before that. So I mean I would fix it in 1958 that that’s where it came from.
CB: Yes. Well, there was a very interesting East German component in that but we’ll ignore that for the moment.
JI: I think that went above the head of a sort of seventeen year old schoolgirl. Not necessary.
CB: Any more from you?
Other: No.
CB: I think we’ll stop there. Thank you all very much indeed.
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 Stan Instone
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
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
2016-04-07
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AInstoneTS160407
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:33:18 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Thomas (Stan) Instone was working at a factory making Bristol Hercules engines but volunteered to be aircrew as soon as he was of age. Initially his application was unsuccessful but he persevered and trained as ground crew. He later remustered as a flight engineer. After training he crewed up with a Canadian crew and was posted to RAF Middleton. His aircraft was attacked by a night fighter and the rear gunner was seriously injured and ultimately lost an eye. Stan was able to get him out of his turret. Stan and his crew were eventually shot down and the surviving members all became prisoners of war. He was initially at Stalag 13D before the long march to Stalag 7A. His poor health made the journey particularly arduous and he credits his fellow crew member with the strength to carry on.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Dortmund
Poland--Łambinowice
Poland--Tychowo
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-09
1945-02-20
1664 HCU
419 Squadron
Absent Without Leave
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
Dulag Luft
final resting place
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
military ethos
military service conditions
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Middleton St George
RAF St Athan
Red Cross
sanitation
shot down
strafing
the long march
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/937/11294/ALyonJK180202.1.mp3
741ac5d555a5640deb1186b8e219f3a1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Lyon, Jack Kenneth
J K Lyon
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Pilot Officer Jack Lyon (1917 - 2019. 903044, 62667 Royal Air Force). He flew three operations with 58 Squadron before being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-02-02
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Lyon, JK
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB; My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 2nd of February 2018, and I am here in Bexhill with Jack Lyon, to talk about his life and times, now he’s aged a hundred. So Jack what is your, what were your first recollections of life?
JB: Well I think a baby in a pram, and I remember going past a hoarding in Sydenham and I must have dropped something, yeah that’s my first, I was only about five years old I suppose then, apart from that I-
CB: What did your parents do?
JL: Sorry?
CB: What did your parents do?
JL: My father worked in the Smithfield Market, connected with the wholesale bacon trade, that sort of thing. He was a clerk in, George Bowles Nichols was the name of the firm. It had a, you know, a stake in Smithfield Market but they didn’t deal much in meat, mainly in products like ham and that sort of thing. George Bowles Nichols it was, he was a clerk in there. And he was a, oh right from a young child he had a, he was, had a bad health, in fact he had three brothers and they all did except one: they had a hereditary disease which gave them this hump back sort of thing. He nevertheless managed to work, to travel up to London every day, until in 1932 he had a, well he had a, and he died in 1932, anyway, of this, it was while we were on holiday my memory, in this town of Cleve. He didn’t die there, but he was in a very bad way and we only got home, a few days later he died. Well that was, what did I do then.
CB: And you lived in Sydenham then.
JB: I, we was living in Sydenham, and I attended Brockley County School. I’d passed what was the equivalent of the eleven plus from a, I began my school at five years old, in a, they call a church school I think it cost me, cost my mother about a shilling a week to get to, for this, a good education though, very good. I was going to say I passed this, the equivalent of the 11-plus and I went to this Brockley County until, well, I left school at sixteen and I went to work with a London gas company, the South Suburban Gas Company, which had an area extending from Lewisham right down to Tonbridge. I worked in their admin department. At the same time I was studying night school and, let me see that takes us up to, oh yes the, I left, I passed that what’s called the 11-plus and I was at the school and then the South Suburban Gas Company, I joined that in February 1934, and at the same time I tell you I was night school at a place in Knights Hill and I remember on the 30th, sorry on the 30th November 1936, somebody rushed in and said the Crystal Palace is on fire and of course that was the end: we watched that happen. Great pity because it, well it had, anyway I continued to work. In 1939 when I was still working for the South Suburban, I was studying night school as well - accountancy and that sort of thing - I passed stage one of the Royal Society of Arts bookkeeping, and the tutor was, worked for Shell and he poached me. He said, ‘you’re, you have quite good knowledge of accountancy and that sort of thing, would you be interested in transferring from the gas, from the gas company to Shell?’ Well I thought about it, and financially it didn’t, in fact it was slightly worse off I had to pay my train fare to London, but I thought well, it’s a good thing to be a small fish in a very large puddle and you couldn’t get much larger than Shell, could you? It was world wide then, Royal Dutch Shell, and I agreed. In fact I joined Shall about the 1st August 1939. I remember Shell opened an account for me with Lloyds Bank, 39 Threadneedle Street, where they banked themselves; they opened this account for me. But as I say, at that time we were working in St Helen’s Court and there was another famous RAF person also working there, Douglas Bader. He, when he lost his legs in a flying accident, he was invalided out of the service and he joined Shell as a management trainee, I remember that. Well, as I say on the 1st of September, Shell began, operated their wartime programme and that involved closing the London office. So they said well Mr Lyon we shan’t require your services during this present emergency, but in the meantime we will bring your salary up to parity with, what until it’s parity with what you’re earning now, and [emphasis] at the end of the emergency you will be free to rejoin the company if you so desire. Well that’s what, on 5th, war was declared on the 3rd of September, wasn’t it?
CB: Yes.
JL: That was a Sunday, wasn’t it.
CB: It was.
JL: On the 4th of September, I and a friend of mine, we made an effort to join the army because we had a connection with the Royal West Kents. They used to invite us to their annual, the Aldershot Tattoo, and we used to be entertained in their sergeants mess so we decided to join the army, but when we got to Parish Lane, Penge where their office had been, it was closed! [laugh] I suppose part of the war, we said well that’s a funny way to run a war but still, that’s it, there’s nothing we could do about that. And the next day, the 5th of September, somebody said oh they’re opening an RAF recruiting office at, in the Yorkshire Grey pub so we took a 75 bus from Sydenham High Street to there. We were examined and my friend was rejected because he had flat feet. I said he would have been more apt if he’d been joining the army, but still, that’s the way they work. I was accepted and I was told to go home, get overnight things and come back and I would be taken to RAF Uxbridge. I did that and, as I say, I was examined and accepted for, in the air force. They asked me then what trade I would like to be in and I said well what can you offer me and they said well cook and butcher well that didn’t ring any bells with me so I said hmm what else, and they said you could join the secretarial branch. Well I’d been pushing a pen for the last five years and in those days I think I want a change. They said well what about aircrew? I said well what about it? They said well if you complete your training satisfactorily you’ll be automatically promoted to the rank of sergeant, receive twelve and sixpence a day I think it was, plus so much flying pay, so there was really no contest was there. And that’s how, I passed the medical for flying and I was given a uniform which I must, was told to wear at all times because I was still actually in the air force. I was given two books to study. One was called mathematics for engineers and the other one was practical mechanics. Neither of them had much bearing on flying training, but there it was. Now this was the phoney war. I went back to my house, we were living in, oh, we had a little flat, my mother and I had a little flat in, just near the Sydenham Road, well as I say the phoney war dragged on until the 30th of December 1939. I had a telegram, “proceed to number one initial training wing, Downing College, Cambridge,” and that is where I went. Now the course was supposed to last for six weeks. In fact it dragged on to nearly four months. The reason was there were still no training facilities available. It had its up side. We were billeted in the, well what used to be the students home in, when they were there because when they were students there in Downing College, some of the colleges did have students as well, but we didn’t have that, we were permitted to use the clubs, that the College’s silver, yes, and we took turns at serving and washing up. So as I say, that relieved the monotony a bit. But this dragged on until as it were, what they say the nemesis, on the 10th of June, 10th of May 1940 the Germans invaded the Low Countries, Holland and Belgium, yes. I was, I was on fire picquet that night and the admin had been headed by a, well I must go back a bit. Before the second world war, Brigadier Critchley, his name was, was chairman of the Greyhound Racing Commission. Now when the war started he was given the rank of Air Commodore and he recruited quite of his old associates for various posts. Our adjutant was a name of Shaffey and I believe in peacetime was a tennis coach, he came and he was in a terrible state, he said LAC – we’d been promoted to LAC by the way after a number of weeks, which meant our pay was a bit better, Leading Aircraftman - what do I do with this LAC Lyon? I said well you must call, as soon as it’s light you must have a general, a roll call of all the students, all the would-be airmen, check for deficiencies in kit and that sort of thing, and the instructions were: ten recruits and each, name, not by name but by number, to various RAF stations, not necessarily air training stations and I and nine others were posted to RAF Kinloss which was not, at that time it was called 45 MU I believe, there was no flying directly from there, because as I say it was mainly material. Well we made the journey up, I had to stay, we stayed overnight I remember in the YMCA in Edinburgh, we managed to get a billet there. We travelled on the next day and we arrived at RAF Kinloss to be viewed with a certain suspicion because at that time it was stories of nuns in parachutes, coming down by parachute and all the rest of it, we were not exactly given a heroes welcome. However, they found us a billet where we could lie our heads for the night and after a day or so they received some sort of confirmation of our status and we were trained in air station defence. I think we, they, the weapon we had was interesting: it was a 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon which had to be what they called “cocked” before it could be fired, the great thing is not so much the strength, dexterity because the story was if you lingered a bit you could lose a few fingertips, however we were trained in the use of it. And we were going to have a read out, two read outs, five of us in each, in each one, but the cannon was, overnight was requisitioned for service in the south of England where it was thought would be far more useful in the event of an invasion. It was replaced with a, I recall it was a 1912 Lewis, Lewis gun with a pan for ammunition.
CB: A drum.
JL: And even then it was a bit of a situation. We were told we must not open fire under any circumstances without consulting the Station Defence Officer. Well first of all we didn’t know who the Station Defence Officer was and even if we did we had no means of contacting him. So therefore, as I say it was perhaps a good thing that our skills were not called into account. This went on for a few weeks and the only outstanding thing I can remember is that one night, or one morning, we woke up to find on a stretch of uncultivated area in the camp were prone figures. They were guarded by normally armoured personnel and we were instructed not to attempt to approach these people in any [emphasis] circumstances. Well, they were in fact refugees from the evacuation of Dunkirk: they were up there because they were spread all around the country, they didn’t want too many in the same place, bad for morale. They stayed there, one night they disappeared and that was that. Not long after this, I was, we, yes, I and one or two others were posted to RAF Elementary Flying Training School at a place just outside, where the beer, Burton. Burton, that’s right, you know, there’s a sign he’s gone for a Burton, well that’s there. Burton on Trent. I was trained as a, in those days all aircrew were first of all trained to be pilots. I failed the pilot’s course – so the failure rate was quite high, something like thirty per cent - and then I was asked what I wanted to do, they said well the only question is becoming a navigator bomb aimer. The senior, the officer in charge of training there, tested my knowledge of mathematics, it was not a big test, it was comparatively simple, just sort of fourth fifth form geometry and that sort of thing. I satisfied him I was intellectually capable of becoming a useful navigator and bomb aimer and then I was then posted to RAF Manby, Number 1 Air Armament School, at a place near Louth in Lincolnshire, where we went through, wait a minute, no, no, one of them, sorry I’m jumping the gun, I was posted to RAF Prestwick, in Scotland for a navigation course. That went on until, that’s right, we completed the course in I think it was September 1940, and I was then posted to, wait a minute, that’s right, I was posted from Prestwick to this one, this Number 1 Air Armament School in Louth in Lincolnshire, that’s right. I satisfactorily completed that course and I was called to the Station Commander, or Training Commander in charge of aircrew training. He said, ‘LAC Lyon, in view of your passing out at the top of the class and your past service record you have been awarded a commission,’ pending what they used to call well, you know, gazetting, whichever, whatever the wartime equivalent of that was, where I would be promoted to sergeant, and I was posted then to, oddly enough, RAF Kinloss! But by that time it had become Number 19 Operational Training Unit, well, it gives you, it tells you, the name tells you what it did. That’s right, this, this was in, this would be about November 1940. I completed the course in early January and let’s see, I went to, oh yes, that’s right. Nothing particularly, well, you cut all the bits and pieces short. The course was completed in, oh yes, in about, I think it was, March of 1941 I was called to the admin office in Kinloss and said that your commission has been confirmed. I was given a week’s leave to get myself a uniform and that sort of thing and then I would return for operational training. I bought my uniform, I managed to stay with a family I knew, their name was Truss, I think it was, and he was an engineer and he was working actually I didn’t know turned out it was the largest, there was an article about it the BBC Channel 4 some time, it was the largest armaments factory in the whole of the country. I didn’t know the extent of it then, but he was employed there. I got my uniform and whatnot and returned to RAF Kinloss and after, in a few days, I was posted to RAF Linton on Ouse which at that time was, it had, it was unusual, a brick building very good accommodation. It was built in the intermediate war years. It also had the other squadron was, they had Halifax, they were being converted to Halifaxes but they were not operational. So that’s right, I stayed with them and returned. Right, well I completed at RAF, at RAF Linton on Ouse I remember I was taken a very bad cough and cold and I remember the medical officer said, ‘Oh, Pilot Officer you have a nasty sounding bit of congestion there.’ And within half an hour or so I was ensconced in this local nursing home to be treated for this congestion. After about ten days there I think, I was released and my training continued. Right. Now, here we come to our, first of all I was to join with a man named, was it Flight Lieutenant Walker, who I think he had the nickname Johnnie, well he would wouldn’t they, that name, but then that order was countermanded for some reason unknown to me, the rumour had it that he was getting a little too fond of his namesake, sort of rumours that are rife in war time. I was then teamed up with a crew the first pilot was Sergeant Roberts. I was the only commissioned member of a crew. Now I don’t know what you know about, can you see any particular reason that that would cause difficulty, you probably don’t now, but it did then. As I was commissioned and they were not I could only converse with them socially or otherwise, in two places: either in a crew room or of course in the aircraft itself, otherwise it was actually forbidden to associate with me as commissioned officer to associate with non-commissioned personnel on the camp area, so it did make things a little awkward, didn’t it. Very unusual situation, that. Anyway, on the, was it on the let me see there, the 1st, of, was that, would be May 1941 we were allocated a new aircraft and told that the, in the crew room, we were told that the target was marshalling yards and adjoining railway station in Dusseldorf, Germany. Right, and we were going to do a pre-flight air test, as you were operations rules insisted. We were in the aircraft waiting to start and well, Roberts, the captain, started the engines but calamity intervened: there were no chocks in the wheels, under the wheels and the aircraft rolled forward and collided with what I think was called a Huck starter.
CB: Oh dear.
JL: No one weas injured but the propeller blades of one engine the Whitley, they were, it was a Whitley 5 was the actual classification of the aeroplane. Well, there is, chaos reigned and it just about did because, I didn’t mention, but shortly after my arrival early at RAF Linton on Ouse, one night there was an air raid. Now I looked around and there were no instructions of what to do in the event of an air raid, I thought well, what do I do? I thought it was a question of Jack you’ll have to play it by ear and wait and see what happens. Suddenly there was an almighty bang! My bed lifted off its, it seemed about lifted about a foot in the air and came down well what do I do? If I rush out to find a shelter I may be going the wrong way. I thought no, I’d better stay put, so I did. The next morning I got up and I went into the Officers Mess and there was no hot water, well that was not unusual, what I didn’t know, overnight a shelter had received a direct hit and quite a large, I think about twenty airmen were killed, including the Station Commander, so that was not a very auspicious beginning to my stay at Linton, was it? Anyway, I did, I, well nothing I could do there then, just hold on. We, I, the station was in a really, a terrible, the pilot was confined to quarters, told he would face a charge of gross negligence and we were told that we would not be flying that night, so we returned to, the rest of the crew, returned to our quarters. Not two hours later there was a change once more. Group, you see it was Headquarters at 4 Group, Group wanted a full number of aircraft involved, no exceptions. They said you, we have allocated you another aeroplane. You must be ready within two hours for take off and your pilot will be Sergeant Roberts. Now there’s a volte face isn’t it, one day he’s considered not fit to fly and next moment it’s all over and he’s fully qualified to fly as captain again. Well, that aeroplane that they gave us should never, in my opinion, should never have been used. We’d only, we took off with the rest of the squadron, but after about only an hour and a half flying, the port engine began to overheat and the, Roberts could do nothing about that, we had to reduce speed, it meant we cut our speed by about ten knots. That in itself was not particularly of great concern, but what was far more important was that we couldn’t get above ten thousand feet. Now the previous briefing the recommended height had been fourteen thousand so theoretically we could have been knocked out with one of our own bombs, but I don’t think that that’s very likely. There was no, well there wouldn’t be any fighter aircraft, they were also using anti aircraft fire, in any case, I think all the fighter squadrons in that part of Germany had been withdrawn and were sent to the, what would be the east front in Poland and regroup and practice for the, what the plan, what was it called - Operation Barbarossa – which was due to and took place on the 21st of June, yes 21st of June 1941 so there were no. Well we, I, we flew on this and almost immediately [emphasis] we were caught in that blue light which locks on to you and it is so dazzling you cannot see your own instruments, it’s so, it’s, you’re virtually as good as blind. We, I released the bombs at what I considered, though I had no idea really where it was, but I knew we’d got to get rid of them, they went down, and we immediately turned and I gave, I gave Roberts a course for home, although we never had any time to check the variation from magnetic to compass course, but let’s hope it was alright. But not long after we turned on for home, the port engine caught fire! The extinguisher didn’t work so therefore we flew on. Now, then the pilot said to me, ‘look Jack I can’t contact the rear gunner. Do you think you could crawl along the fuselage and see whether he’s all right?’ I said, ‘yes I’ll try.’ I opened the door behind the wireless operator and I was immediately assailed by a cloud of fume and flame. I really thought my, my time was up. I didn’t feel particularly frightened, I don’t know why, but then of course the adrenalin snaps in, doesn’t it. I seized an oxygen mask, took a few gulps of it, and Rob looked around, and he said, ‘oh my gawd, abandon aircraft.’ Now, it so happens that the exit is, in that particular aeroplane, was right beneath where I was sitting, so I had to be the first one out otherwise I’d block the exit for the remainder of the crew. I opened the hatch, I jumped, I don’t actually remember pulling the cord, the release, parachute release cord, I obviously did otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here, would I? I came to and I could see by that time the aeroplane below me and it was like an enormous [emphasis] torch in the sky, the entire plane was burning. Now how this happened, I don’t really know, but that was a fact. I saw it hit the ground with one tremendous kind of smoke and flame. I landed, and it was a windless night, so much so that the canopy covered me. I looked, I got it off and I looked around. Now I’d either landed in what was a probably a recreation ground, or what might have been a sports field, but I think it was a recreation ground. I know in the escape books they scurry around and bury their, bury their parachute. Well, you needed a power, power digger to make any impression on that soil: it was hard as a rock! But within less than a minute a German soldier turned up and well he didn’t, although he didn’t say it, had he done so I’d have been inclined to agree with him. “For you the war is over.” Well I wouldn’t have got far in the old fashioned fleece lined flying boot with no proper heel to it and in British battle dress, so there was little I could do but accept it. Now, this one, I could have walked in front of him and he could have walked holding on one hand on his rifle and the other hand his bicycle, so we accepted that the only other alternative: I sat on the cross bar and he did, we proceeded on a bicycle. Now either way, he stopped. Now it was, I wasn’t quite sure at the time, but depending on whether Germany had double summer British, double summer time, but it was well past midnight, he knocked on the door of this house, at that time I could understand a fair amount of German because I’d been studying German at night school, but that’s another, that’s another. He said I have a wounded British officer here, I’d like you to give him a little help. The lady produced some warm water. Head wounds always bleed a lot although they’re really only superficial and this was only a superficial cut, she bathed all the dried blood away, and believe it or not, she also made a cup of tea. Tea not coffee. I thought that was very impressive and I knew enough German to say vielen danke, kneidiger frau: thank you dear lady for your kindness. We then proceeded on for the rest of the journey to a town called Goch, G-o-c- h, not far from the Dutch border. Now for some reason that I never discovered, I did not end up, oh, first of all the policeman, he said give me your pistol, I said ich habe keine pistol, I have no pistol, which I didn’t, the sort of thing I didn’t want to be lumbered with that. He thought maybe a bit odd but he accepted it and that was it. I didn’t spend that night in the cells, he put me in the telephone exchange of all places. And all night, it was a manual exchange in those days, you hear the thing going up and down to finding its correct slot to go in to, anyway I can’t say I slept much but still, that was, I was dry and I’d saved my life so I couldn’t really grumble. The next day the, a Luftwaffe officer turned up and he said would you please come with me, and together with, at some stage or other, we picked up the rest of the crew so I must have had, I think, a slight case of concussion, but anyway, we ended up, he took us to the Luftwaffe base at Duisburg, and he said, ‘oh by the way, your comrade, the rear gunner is quite safe, but when he landed he broke his ankle and he is receiving treatment in a clinic near here, but he is otherwise he’s safe and well.’ And now believe it or not, these, they were extremely polite these Luftwaffe officers, very high standard of education I’d say, in fact some of them could speak English; some of them had spent time in England. We were entertained in the officers mess. There was no attempt made to extract information from us. We talked about cricket or the weather or something like that, and then they said, well we now have to hand you over to a representative of the German Air Force POW body and we went, we, they duly took us in hand and we went by I think it must have been a sort of a mini bus I think, yes it must have been. It wasn’t a, wasn’t a truck, it had seats in it, I know. Well, where do you think they took us? Believe it or not they took us to Dusseldorf and we got out of the thing there, and we stood on the platform. There was absolutely no sign of any damage whatsoever. [Emphasis] We were not the object of any kind of well, abusive attention from the Germans. They looked us up and down and took no, virtually no notice, in fact we had, it was a corporal with us, and he came back with some sticky buns for us. Well, so that was the, from we entrained at Dusseldorf and we travelled to Frankfurt, that is Frankfurt on the Main, the river Main, which at that time was the prison, the Luftwaffe prisoner of war body as what they called the Dulag dursrstadtlager’s transit camp. Now we, when we reached this transit camp, this is where we, they put me in the, I suppose they did with the other, rest of the crew as well, in the interrogation cell, which was really not much different from a second or third rate boarding house the only thing is there were bars over the window. Now before we’d had no instructions to what to do in event of being taken prisoner, of course they do it now, but they didn’t in those days, in 1941. But anyway, a Luftwaffe major came in and he gave me a form to sign and he said if you complete this, your details will be sent immediately to the Red Cross in Geneva and your relatives or whoever you’ve asked to be notified, will know within forty eight hours that you are safe and well. Now, we had [emphasis] oddly enough, been briefed about this. It wasn’t anything to do with the Red Cross in Geneva, it was actually prepared by the German Intelligence Service. I read it and I said, ‘I regret, Herr Major, I am not allowed to divulge some of the information that you require.’ And he accepted this without argument: that was that. And the next day I was released into the compound there. Well of course they had got far more on their hands to worry about than a rather insignificant crew. The last Sunday I think it was, in May, which used to be called Whit Sunday, there was a break out, there was a tunnel, the permanent staff at the gulag had been building this tunnel which they broke on I say, on the Whit Sunday. All were subsequently recaptured except for Roger Bushell, and that’s another story. So you might well say that I wasn’t the only failed bomb aimer, was I? We know that now. Anyway we travelled by normal train from Frankfurt, after Frankfurt. There were some guards there, but they were, they didn’t make themselves too obtrusive. We arrived at a place called Barth, which was the site of Stalag Luft I. Stanlager all that means is it’s a permanent camp, Stan means permanent, as opposed to Durst means transit. So that’s all. That was Stalag Luft I we found ourselves in. Now at the entrance to that I went one way because I was a commissioned officer and the rest of the crew went the other because they were not, because at Stalag Luft I there was an NCOs compound as well as an officers compound and that was in fact the last I ever saw of any of them. Any of them. Peculiar isn’t it, never mind. We were only there, well I stayed there until about April of 1942 and that was when Stalag Luft III was opened. The journey there was uneventful. We got to Stalag Luft III and I was allotted a, well a billet obviously, a room, [sigh] how much more of this do you want from me?
CB: Just keep going. We’ll stop for a break. I think you deserve it. So, you said you were shot down on the 3rd of June 1941.
JL: Correct. Yes.
CB: You had been in the squadron since, for a couple of months, by then.
JL: Oh, no.
CB: Three months was it?
JL: I think it was.
CB: April.
JL: So much happened, air raid and whatnot. I think it was about the mid April when I got to Linton on Ouse, yes.
CB: And you talked about the crew, but in the air, what was the cohesion like?
JL: Well, we could fraternise.
CB: Were you all on christian name terms in the aircraft on operations? When you were flying?
JL: Well, the only one I knew quite well was Robbie, that’s all, the pilot. I don’t remember. If they told me I, it didn’t sink in.
CB: No. Then you already mentioned, that in, outside the flying period, if you were, time, if you were going out and socialising, that was different.
JL: Some of the better class, you know the real, the nice hotels in Linton on Ouse, didn’t like too many non-commissioned ranks in there, they were fussy.
CB: They only wanted the officers in.
JL: They only wanted officers, yes.
CB: Yes. I suspect times changed quite radically later.
JL: Oh, they must have done.
CB: When the heavies came. Yes.
J: They must. But in the early days it was a, it was strict, I was given, no doubt about, I was given strict instructions I was not to fraternise.
CB: Yeah, that was the early part of the war.
JL: They were very particular about it in those days, the air force.
CB: Right. And because you were shot down so soon into your tour, you didn’t have a lot of time to get to know your crew well, did you.
JL: I had very little time, Robbie was about the only one I knew.
CB: Yeah. Fast forward again into Sagan, Stalag Luft III. How was that organised? You had the officers and NCOs. But in the officers’ side.
JL: There was an officers’ compound, and an NCOs compound.
CB: And in the officers compound, how did that work?
JL: Actually I went in to a the, they were quite small huts, and there were only two more in the room that I was in. I was billeted with a man with, a chap named Jules Silverstone, who was in fact Jewish and also this chap Pop Green, who in fact had served in the first world war. He was a, interesting history, at the beginning of the first world war he held a commission in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry.
CB: Right. We were in that. We were in that.
JL: Really. Yes well, he had a commission in that but he later transferred to the Machine Gun Corps because the Germans hopelessly outclassed us in that, in those, in weaponry. He survived the war, but he was told that he was only allowed to fly on training missions, but being that sort of man he probably got himself on an operation and he was flying in a Hampden and they were shot down, and he survived, without, he wasn’t injured, and as I say I was billeted with him. He said that Passchendaele was the worst he had ever [emphasis] encountered. People died there not in action, but in a mass of filth and slime. He said it was, it was appalling. What happened was, he said the Germans withdrew to higher ground and left us in these swamped trenches. He said, as I say, he hated it. And of course, well he, [laugh] he was the only man who was rather sorry when the war ended. The reason was he’d have to go home and rejoin his wife whom he hated the sight of, [laughter] and last I heard of him he was running a taxi service in Bray.
CB: Any reason why he hated his wife?
JL: I don’t know, but he did. He didn’t go into that. [Chuckling]
CB: Yes. What, you said there were three others. So you had Jules Silverstone, Pop Green, who was the other?
JL: Jules Silverstone. His father was a solicitor in Birmingham, but he didn’t follow in this father’s footsteps, he moved heaven and earth to join the RAF. Now I think he was, at age, I think he was thirty four. He was too old to join as pilot or navigator, he had to be classed as a gunner. So, that was it, he was a -
CB: Was an air gunner.
JL: Pilot Officer Silverstone, gunner. Interesting him, because he knew all about this stuff they used to call window, the one that, when they released it, it had black, black on one side and a sort of reflective surface on the other. It played hell with the tech -
CB: With the radar.
JL: With the radar, yeah. And it wasn’t, he said they won’t use it, he knew this, he said but they won’t use it till they’ve found a reason to overcome it. And it was in fact, it wasn’t used until that raid on Hamburg, that firestorm they created.
CB: On Hamburg.
JL: Hamburg. In 1943. Yeah.
CB: Who was the third person with you?
JL: Sorry?
CB: Who, you mentioned two people, who’s the third one?
JL: There was only Pop Green and Silverstone. Three in the room.
CB: And you. Oh, just three in the room, sorry. Yeah, okay.
JL: They were quite small huts. There were only, I think there were only four, only four huts in the officer’s compound, certainly not many. I tell you what we, did happen one day, do you remember that story of the one who got away?
CB: The German.
JL: The German, yeah. Well he turned up, he was in, dressed in ordinary German uniform, he was a major, major, and I remember seeing he was on the doorstep to one of the huts chatting to a man named talking to Squadron Leader Mac Dunnell [?]. Of course he was, actually, the German, he was shot down during the Battle of Britain wasn’t he.
CB: Yes. Yes.
JL: That’s right. And of course Mac Donald [?] was part, flew a Spitfire I think. They were chatting quite friendly, and he was not accompanied by any other German personnel. he just wandered around chatting to people.
CB: Amazing.
JL: He had a sad ending, he was killed in a flying accident. He was testing new fighter apparatus I think, but he had engine trouble or something, he was lost at sea, never found, they never recovered his body, in November 19, oh, 1940 41. That was the one that got away.
CB: Off the Dutch coast.
JL: Yeah. He was there.
CB: Well. he escaped in Canada.
JL: There was obviously, you know, a bond in the, between the two air forces at that time, later on they didn’t, but there was in the early days.
CB: A Chivalry.
JL: Yeah. Chivalry. That’s it, chivalry of the air.
CB: Extraordinary really.
JL: So well that’s my story. Long before, Douglas Bader, who was, he was taken prisoner wasn’t he.
CB: Yes.
JL: When, something, either his plane collided with another one, anyway but he was taken prisoner.
CB: He was shot down.
JL: Whether he was shot down or not.
CB: By one of his own people, he was shot down by one of his own people it turned out.
JL: Ah well that’s. By one of his own people?
CB: Yeah. They met in prison and the chap had to own up.
JL: Oh, I met him personally.
CB: But he didn’t admit.
JL: Because he was also Shell.
CB: Yes, he was.
JL: Well anyway, That was a. When he was in the camp he used to play golf, he would try to. And because of his, he lost his legs you see, I mean his prosthetic legs,
CB: Yes.
JL: I think they replaced them, they threw them out or something like that. He would sometimes fall over but god help you if you went to assist him, you know he would swear at you, he was determined to get on his feet unaided. Anyway, he had a bit of a falling out with the powers that be there. Because he didn’t like the way they were treating the guards and whatnot as if they were friends not enemies. it was decided he would be better off in another camp and the last I saw of him, well not the last, the last in the prisoner of war camp I saw him, he was being escorted out, he turned it into his own advantage inspecting as if these as a company.
CB: Oh you saw hm doing the inspection did you? Of the guard.
JL: He was inspecting the, yeah. That’s typical Bader, isn’t it. Now! I retired, I left the air force in something like well, October 1945 but I remained on as a, I was paid by the air force till I think it was January ’46 and very soon after going to, where did we work to? Very shortly we, I was asked if I wanted to go to Venezuela because Venezuela still had most of its wells, oil wells and I agreed, and I was, I went out to, we didn’t go out on a ship I went out on a tanker SS Luscia, Luscia I think she was. She was imbalast so she rocked about a bit I’ve never been seasick or any other sick in an aeroplane. We finally docked at Aruba, in, which belonged to, was a Dutch possession then, Aruba, in the West Indies and I was only there for a night and then we got a, I was flown to Maiquetia, which was the airport for Caracas. Caracas itself is about five hundred feet above sea level, the capital of Venezuela. I was, from Maiquetia I travelled by a bus on a road which they say was built by convicts in the Gomez, when Gomez was a dictator of Venezuela, you could sometimes look down and see where you’d been ten fifteen minutes before. I reached Caracas, or I might say that they charged me, I had to have what was called a certificate of identity, and I had to pay for it in the local currency. They took a, all I had, was a, I had an English, I had a five pound note I think, they gave a stamp and it was probably worth about one tenth of that in the local currency, the so-and-sos. That’s how it happened. When I got to Caracas, I found a billet in the Hotel Majestic and I knew enough Spanish, I’d, interesting while I was in the prisoner of war camp I had lessons from of all people Tom Kirby Green, why he should be a good Spanish speaker, mind he served with the Republicans, didn’t he, in the war in Spain.
CB: In the Spanish Civil War.
JL: Lord Haw Haw announced it, didn’t he, yeah. So that was that, yes. I had enough Spanish to say I’m in the employ of Shell, they were called the Caribbean Petroleum Company then, they didn’t, Shell, enter into the name although they used the, what it is, the, oh it’s a scallop isn’t it, that’s the Shell sign isn’t it, the scallop, and oh I think it was the afternoon of Christmas Day, a chap named Swinson turned up, he said, ‘Oh Lyon, I’m glad to find you,’ he said, ‘I know you, we were advised you were on your way but then we sort of lost track of you.’ But then of course I served in the, on what they called internal audit, that is not, not, as opposed to the exterior audit, was actually Price Waterhouse in those days. They did the proper auditing of Shell’s possessions there, I went round to these depots making sure their equipment and whatnot was properly registered and that sort of thing. It was quite interesting work. Well, while I was there, who should, that was having travelled down to the fields the main producer in the Maracaibo, while I was there on this what they call internal audit, who should turn up but Douglas Bader. Now he was on a, well they say he was just, reviewing his position, he was visiting, but what he was really was doing he was trying to push the company to try to use British aero, aircraft rather than all American, and I was introduced to him as: ‘oh this is Mr Lyon from our head office in Caracas.’ And he said, ‘oh, hello there.’ I said, ‘but sir, we’ve met before haven’t we. He looked, I said, ‘last time I saw you, you were acting as a kind of inspector of a -.’ ‘Oh my gawd yes!’ And we kept in touch quite a lot afterwards, I’ve known him for quite.
CB: Did you?
JL: Yes. Bader, so.
CB: How did you find him, outside Stalag Luft III?
JL: I got on with him very well. He certainly wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but he had a, he was shrewd. One of the airfields in the concession area, was at a place called Mushi de Suleman [?]. It’s at five thousand feet and in the hot season the pilots were having great difficulty in taking off because of the rarefied air. Now in those, this was the days before computers, I didn’t get a, I got a file across my desk one day, and this was, Bader had seen this problem that they had and he had written in the margin, “let them take off with half tanks”, and he knew that in emergency they would still have enough to reach wherever necessary to safety and yet still travel with only half a tank. He did very well as a, in Shell. He finished as the President of Shell Aviation with a private jet to fly. So he did very well there. But he certainly, he had this, being able to see the, you know little bit further through a brick wall than most people. I had great admiration for him. But I agree he wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I always got on with him quite well. Yeah.
CB: Where did you go from there?
JL: Sorry?
CB: Where did you go from there?
JL: After I returned home by 1950, April 19. By the way, I flew the Atlantic in, at a time when there weren’t many transatlantic flights. I was staying in Montreal at the time, I had some relatives there and I was booked on this, it was little more than a souped up DC4, the aircraft we flew in. We were due to call only at one place: Halifax, but I remember the pilot made a special landing somewhere, he wanted to pick up, I think they were Catholic priests I believe, the look of ‘em, there was snow on the ground, I think we were lucky to take off again, but anyway we did. But flying at that, of course in those days you only flew at probably about twelve thousand feet, something like that, looking on down this unbroken mass of well pine trees I suppose, you wouldn’t have stood a dog’s chance of anything if you’d had to make a forced landing in a plane in there. Anyway we did we, I got home and 1950, in April 1950 and I, [pause] I met my future wife. Now, now I had known her as a schoolgirl because I was friendly with [chuckle] her half uncle, it sounds like carbuncle, doesn’t it [laugh] but he was a half uncle because they’d been, the father grandfather [unclear] had married twice, but that’s all I, we met again and well we decided to get married, Hazel and I. Our, our union, we didn’t do too bad: sixty three years exactly because she died on our wedding anniversary.
CB: Did she really.
JL: In 19, sorry, 2013. So we’re not bad was it.
CB: Fantastic!
JL: So , and then I, well I continued with working. I had the opportunity to leave about the end of. You see they formed what they called Iranian Oil Participants which was agreement hammered out with the Shah as he was then and when they kicked out Masadic [?], he agreed that concessions could be opened by this consortium of oil companies, and there was the BP had a forty per cent interest in it, the major oil, American companies had another forty, Shell had fourteen percent and the Company Francaise de Petroleum the remaining six per cent. That was how Iranian Oil Participants, and I was senior financial, financial assistant in, seconded to Iranian Oil Participants and I held that post for seventeen years. At the end of it I was getting a bit tired of it. I had a man that I’d no respect for: a man named Hoppen. Let’s say he shafted me once, he fed me to the, he tried to feed me to the lions that’s it; fortunately I was set, I had no respect for him after that. He said, ‘I’m not going to make you redundant, Lyon.’ I said, ‘thanks very much, I don’t want to be called redundant, I think I’ve done a pretty good job for seventeen years. Thank you.’ All I asked was that they brought forward the, at Shell you retired at sixty, that was before, and then there was also a reduction made for overseas service which I had, so it would only mean bringing forward my pension date by three or four years, not too much to ask, but that served me well because you see it’s an index linked pension.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Now, my monthly salary is worth, worth much more that I was actually paid when I retired.
CB: Yeah.
JL: So I made the right decision there.
CB: You did, yes.
JL: Staying with, staying with Shell. So I have some things to worry about but money is certainly not one of them.
CB: What made, what brought you down to Bexhill?
JL: Ah! Shortly before I retired, I’d lived in St Leonards. We had a, I had, we had a small bungalow in what they called the Links. It was actually originally it was a golf course, because I, it wasn’t being used as a golf course then but nothing else. I used to walk across this links to West St Leonards where I picked up the train for, used to take me to Cannon Street. But so, that brings it well, I’ve been with them ever since.
CB: But you decided to leave St Leonards and come to Bexhill.
JL: Oh yes, well, I made the right decision there.
CB: What made you do that then?
JL: There wasn’t much there for me in the air force: a failed navigator. I mean. They don’t even have them now anyway do they?
CB: Well, It’s different.
JL: No, no I made the right decision there. I knew I would. No, I couldn’t go wrong.
CB: You mentioned air force again. Going back to your flying times in the Whitley.
JL: Yeah.
CB: What navigation aids did you have in those days? We are talking about 1941.
JL: Well you had a thing called a CFC, whicb you set your, you set your, the course you would want to follow, and then you fed in what the, the wind direction, and you fiddle around with it and that gave you your course to fly. They did have, you could have, some of the Whitleys, not the one I was shot down, didn’t have one, they had an astrodome.
CB: Oh yes.
JL: So if you’d been trained in the use of the [unclear] mill, polar, star charts you could theoretically fix your position by air, star sight, but certainly the one we flew in, the old one they trundled out, that didn’t have one, didn’t have a - there was only one exit there, and that was downwards.
CB: Oh right.
JL: So that was the only navigation instrument we used to rely on, and dead reckoning as they called it.
CB: So in the daylight you could more easily see where you were, but flying at night, what did you do there?
JL: Oh yes it was. I did in fact, have use of, while I was waiting for this, at Cambridge, Downing Cambridge, Downing College Cambridge, I used to read Air Publication 1 2 3 4 and this was the navigational training of a pilot,
CB: Right.
JL: Because we were all supposed to be trained as pilots to start with in those days, they didn’t have different courses then. I was able to use it one day because I know we took off and the mist came down, I was pretty certain we were drifting off course, well it did tell you what to do. You flew halfway to your, half the distance that you’d previously calculated and then [emphasis] you gave the pilot orders to fly twice the distance that you were, you think you’d been going off course, twice that distance and that should give you a course to your original. It really, all you’re doing is flying the two sides of an isosceles triangle, and I tried it and we did, and out of the water, out of the thing, saw this, it was just an island.
CB: You’d got it right.
JL: So it certainly, it worked, I know.
CB: This is doing the maximum drift calculator isn’t it.
JL: Sorry?
CB: This is the maximum drift calculation.
JL: Yes, it’s for, they call it pilot navigation.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Yeah, oh yes. Because he couldn’t take bearings and all that sort of thing could he. As I say, it’s a simple, simple, it’s just geometry really, that’s all you’re doing, flying the two sides of an isosceles triangle. Yeah.
CB: So how many ops did you do before you were shot down?
JL: Only a couple, that’s all.
C: Right.
JL: We had to, they call them nurseries, they were using them to bomb an occupied port like Calais or somewhere like that. How they arranged it so that the, you weren’t dropping bombs on German and French civilians I suppose they had some means of contact in, I didn’t know what it was but that was all, a couple of those and this was just our third trip, that’s all.
CB: How many aircraft were there in the squadron?
JL: That I don’t really know. It was not public information anyway.
CB: And when you went out on a raid, on an operation, did you go with other aircraft or did you go as individuals, as singletons?
JL: Each one took off, you got the, from the Control Tower you get the take off clear, that’s it, one by one.
CB: But you weren’t in any kind of formation or cohesive?
JL: Oh no, it was only Americans that did that, formation flying. Oh no, quite impossible at night.
CB: Yeah. And before you went on the op how did the briefing go?
JL: Well as I say, it was quite clear. The marshalling yards, and the adjoining station: Dusseldorf. That was in the briefing, that was the target.
CB: But they got you all together in a room where everybody was briefed together did they?
JL: That was, yes, well not the second time, we were only given about a couple of hours’ notice to, there was no second briefing, we were just told to fly the original course. Yeah.
CB: Were, when you went off on the ops were all the crew together or were the briefing only for the pilot and navigator?
JL: Well, the pilot and navigator, myself, or bomb aimer I was acting as, we were there and the second pilot, and of course, but the rear gunner was at, well where he should be, the rear gunner. What he, you see he was getting, he was getting fried, there’s no doubt, because the whole aeroplane was on fire and we didn’t know it.
CB: Ah!
JL: So he, what he did, he just rotates his, rotates his, turret, pulls the ripcord, and the airstream takes him out, clear of the, the Whitley was built so that you were clear of the tail, the rear gunner was clear of the tail, twin tail, it just pulls him off and that’s it, that’s what he did, yeah, but as I say he broke his ankle, that’s all.
CB: So all the crew survived.
JL: All the crew survived, yes.
CB: And all of them were captured.
JL: All of them were taken prisoner, yes.
CB: Taken prisoner. What about after the war, first of all how did you get back? Were you flown back or did you come on a ship? Or what happened?
JL: Well at the end of the war, I was here wasn’t I.
CB: No, but you were flown back were you? Or did you come back by ship?
JL: Oh I see what you mean! Well, we by the I think it was the 1st of May 1945, we heard a bombardment and we guessed that was to cover the crossing of the Elbe by the British forces. The next day, the 2nd into the, we were billeted in a farmyard, well we were told that it belonged to a German, well he was in the tobacco business we heard, I don’t know how true that it was, but anyway, the accommodation was fine, we managed to get, it was good weather then, quite warm, no problem there. Into this compound the, came a, there was a British light armoured vehicle. There was a Captain I think, and a corporal. He didn’t say it to me but apparently he said to somebody, I believe there are quite a number of POWs here, and they said yeah, about six hundred if you look around. And that was the end of the war. What we didn’t know was, that as of the 30th of April all German forces in North West Germany surrendered to the British. Well they obviously, they’d rather surrender to the British than the bloody Russians wouldn’t they, that’s what they did. So actually the war ended in that part of the world a week before the main alliance. So, I remember the guards, they neatly piled their arms as you should do and that and they went off to what was called the cage, which was, that was the name the British gave to it, where they, and then they’d be taken ordinary prisoners of war. We’d only been there a short while and a convoy of American Mac trucks turned up and we were loaded on to these and this convoy set off. We got to a place called Rheiner, where we exchanged the American transport for British, well they were only yes, British RSC vehicles and we finally, we crossed the Elbe, I know. They had, well they had one of these revolving things and all the searchlights on, the idea because the war was still on theoretically, as protection as we crossed the Elbe. We, that’s right, we stopped at Luneburg, which was the place a week later the official German surrender took place, and they flew us on, then they drove us on next day to this Rheiner, this airfield at Rheiner. And we waited and we, I was flown home, most of them were, in the, it was a Douglas DC3.
[Other]: Dakota.
JL: They called it a Dakota. And we landed at Dunsfold in Surrey I think it was, where they gave us tea and biscuits you know, the Women’s VS, and we were really then rushed high, as quick as possible up to RAF Cosford which was the gathering centre for POWs, and there we were stripped bare, I don’t think, I never had any, they were thinking of lice. Actually, interesting thing I never saw a louse all the time I was in Germany, let alone getting infected with them, lice so that was. We used to get showers occasionally, but that was, that was certainly not getting rid of lice, it was merely to get a bit of, clean ourselves. We had a quick turn around. I was given fresh clothing, battle dress only with an officer’s stripe on it and I was home on the 9th of May 1945. We were living, my mother was living in Wallington. She had a flat which was a house owned by a relative. Wallington it was, yes.
CB: In Surrey.
[Other]: Surrey.
JL: Yeah, in Surrey, yeah. That was it, that’s my war story.
CB: So how did you actually get to the Elbe? Were you in the Long March?
JL: Oh, I, you look at my book, I never called it a march, it was a, I called it the long walk home.
CB: Yeah.
JL: Yeah well, in those days the incurable optimists thought that when the Russians turn up: oh they’ll be brothers in arms and we’ll celebrate their victory with liberal tots of vodka. [Laugh] We didn’t think that! We refused to countenance the story that Hitler, and he did actually give this order, all, all commissioned personnel, ex-prisoners of war to be shot. But fortunately in those days his writ didn’t extend much beyond his bunker. So we refused to accept that. The one that we thought would happen and in fact it did that we would be put on the road and have to leg it to wherever we were supposed to be going. That is why I used to do at least five circuits a day on foot.
CB: In the camp.
JL: In the camp, yeah, in preparation for this, and of course it paid off. It wasn’t, the Germans never pushed the pace. The only thing is, our first night I couldn’t find any covered accommodation. Everywhere I went I was politely told to shove off [laughter]. No room at the inn. So I crawled into a great pile of hay, or straw I suppose it was really, covered myself entirely and I went to sleep and next morning I got up and I was all right. From then it was really dead easy, because a thaw had set in. These people who had built themselves sleighs – they were useless. Similarly those people that had got trollies, they were useless because they didn’t have any hard wood for a bearing, it went through and that was their trollies and their sleighs were useless. I went, I just plodded on. I had a little suitcase I remember, made of fibre. The first, the second night, after the, when I settled down to the straw or hay, or whatever it was, we were billeted in the stable. I believe it was actually, the stable was owned by General von Arnim. The man who replaced Rommel when he was repatriated on grounds of ill health, wasn’t he. I don’t know, that’s the story, it belonged to General von Arnim. Anyway, I was bad enough to get a dry place to sleep. I admit I was a bit close to the horses, but I don’t think they’re any particular menace. I was awakened by a terrific bang! I thought oh my goodness that’s a shot first of all, isn’t it. I thought no, not a shot. I looked, I was using my little fibre suitcase as a pillow, and there was a bloody great hole in it, it was the hoof of a, it must have been within inches of my head! [Laughter] But from then on it was dead easy because the, we stopped at a place called Spremburg. Now there was a glass factory operating and it was still working. We managed to get a, I did manage to get a bit of a wash down and the girls were decent enough to look the other way. I managed to get myself a bit of a clean up. From there we went on to a place called Spremburg, which was a rail head. Now here our column was split in two, why, I don’t know. One, we were loaded on to, on to, they weren’t cattle trucks, they were the old fashioned you know, these Eschable carourdon [?] variety from the first world war, we were loaded in to one of these. The others they went to a place called Luckenwalde, I think was, actually that was liberated by the, by the Russians, and from all accounts they weren’t too well treated to start with by the Russians until they found, were sure who they were. But we were lucky, we were loaded into this. Well, it was crowded, yes I grant you, but the real reason was that we were in pitch dark, everybody wanted, for some unearthly reason to sit as near the door they could. I don’t know if they think it was suddenly going to open and they were going to be wafted away to safety, but they wouldn’t move. When daylight came we were able to sort ourselves out. Now I grant you the toilet facilities were not all that good, but no worse than a ordinary soldier in the field in action has to cope with, a sort of open latrine, and above all, I’ve virtually I’ve experienced worse crowding in London’s underground. So it wasn’t all that bad. We trundled along, we, I remember we did a very slow stop-start circuit of Berlin, course there was a raid going on at the time. We arrived then at a place called, what was it, oh it was a little village, small settlement, not far from Bremen. We, it was, I remember we stopped outside this camp, and look up at it and miserable rain was coming down, there was this thing over the door, well it didn’t, we used to always used to say it was a “Work Makes You Free”, and we used to say “work yourself to death”, but it looked a pretty dreary and unuttering place and we went in to this. It was called Marlag and Milag Nord and it was designed, by the name you could tell, for Royal Marine and Merchant Navy officers: Marlag and Milag. And there were, we were a little concerned because we thought this camp is empty. Where have all these Marine, Naval and Marine officers gone? And we got a horrible thought they might be in some mass grave or other. However, it wasn’t true, they had been moved, when, where and why I’m not actually sure. But when we got inside, well if we had any clothing, warm clothing we were lucky, or dry clothing we put it on. It was a nothing, not a camp I’d recommend but it was, at least it was dry and there was, we had adequate food. There was a certain thing, belief that we were short of food, well I can assure you we never were, we had more than we could do with because the Red Cross parcels were being delivered by since the rail system was on the blink they were coming in by truck and they were, they were dumping parcels by the side of the road by us. Well I couldn’t carry, well most of us did, took out things like chocolate and tea and coffee and things like that, the rest of it. We offered them to the guards but they wouldn’t, neither would the civilians, I suppose they still might be pounced upon by die-hard SS, SS army, the army SS not the civilian SS. In fact one, one night we were billeted with these SS Waffen, Waffen SS, they, weaponed I mean, armed SS and we did, well always had a low profile but these chaps were very willing to chat to us. They got somehow idea that it wouldn’t be long before we joined forces with them and then finally put the bloody Russians -
CB: Out of Germany.
JL: Where they should be. Well it was, well, actually the second, as I say, if the first leg of the, our all expenses tour of north Germany was bearable, the second was a doddle. It was fine weather. Warm enough to sleep outside, in fact sometimes we walked through orchards white with blossom, not with snow with blossoms and we, there was no attempt to force the pace, but what did happen on the way, we stopped, in all the, four, nearly four years I was a prisoner of war I never suffered not even verbal abuse, let alone physical, never, but this particular, we did have a bit of trouble there, it was more directed at personal about us, in general. In fact the civilian population we got, they tried to you know, reach our ranks, the Germans just turned bayonet and rifle, pointed and don’t you dare come any closer. Well we moved on and then we thought we heard an explosion and we saw smoke arising from this. We thought it was the town that had been attacked, and we, you know as they say well it couldn’t have happened to nicer people. I’m afraid it wasn’t that, it was our column [emphasis] that had been attacked! By a, I think it was a Canadian Squadron Leader flying a Typhoon. He, he must have been blind, because this, it couldn’t possibly been a, it wasn’t a, looked like a German unit of any description but anyway I’m afraid he did and there were quite a few people killed on there. And that to my mind I think was the only, some, I’ve read in terms of hundreds something, hundreds killed on this so called long march, it’s just not true. The only other fatal casualty was a chap named Large I think it was, he had a ruptured appendix but there’s no reason to say he wouldn’t have had it anyway, it wasn’t caused by the conditions and that was that. We reached, we reached the place called Stade, was the southern side of the Elbe, and oh one thing I did see while we were at Marlag and Milag Nord, I saw a V2 fired, not many people have seen that. There was a bit of a rising ground and I happened to be on it and then suddenly I saw this, this thing, this great rocket, with this great burst of flame as it rised slowly and slowly and slowly, and it appeared, of course that was as much an optical illusion, it held itself out and it turned to get its bearing and by that time it couldn’t reach Britain, so probably the target was Antwerp, but that’s I saw a V2 fired and not many people have seen that. Anyway, we got to this Stade place and the Elbe ferry if you please, was still not operating normally, it was, and there was a, there was a boot repairer there, some people’s boots needed a bit of attention, mine were all right, but anyway he did what he could. We crossed the Elbe and we arrived at a place called, oh, just outside Hamburg. You come up a cobbled street, which we had, quite steep and we were then met by what, I, was the most horrible thing I’ve ever come across, a migration of slugs! Can you believe this, they were marching up on a broad front. There was absolutely no way of avoiding them. Blankenese, was the name of this little town, that’s the name of it: Blankenese. We tried to pick our way, very, very carefully and thank god I managed to keep on my feet, otherwise if I’d fallen can you imagine the state I’d been in. Well from then on it was, it was easy going and as I say, we got to this, this open, this tobacco man’s, well he was, farm and from then on it was the journey home. But I’ll never forget, oddly enough we saw a reverse, I mean a thing so beautiful. I’d never seen it before. It was a, I didn’t tell you, hadn’t told you that in September of 1942, I and a number of others were for some reason which the Germans had and they didn’t bother to give us the details, we were transferred to a place called Offlag 21B. Now Offlag meant it was an officer’s camp, that’s all. 21B. And we stayed there through a rather dreary time, the winter, until we moved in April, but I came back and I didn’t go in to the north compound I went back to the east compound for some reason or other. Why I don’t know, and actually I didn’t move into the north compound where the tunnel was being dug until September of 1943. How are we doing?
CB: You’re doing well. One final question. What happened to the guards after you’d walked all this way? Did they just surrender or did they leg it or what did they do?
JL: Oh yes. Well they were only part of this. They’d realised, they heard they were all German forces had surrendered and they were only too pleased, they just neatly piled their arms and that was that. They knew all right. And they went off to go, to be taken in what we called the cages to a British prisoner of war camp. Some of them actually, when I lived in Salcombe in South Devon many years later, there was a chap there used to run a driving tuition, he’d been one of these there and he’d stayed in England.
CB: Funny.
JL: So he didn’t have too bad a time.
CB: Well Jack Lyon, thank you for a very interesting conversation.
JL: My pleasure.
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Interview with Jack Kenneth Lyon
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2018-02-02
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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02:03:03 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Jack Lyon was a navigator/ bomb aimer and a prisoner of war for almost four years. Born in 1918, he was employed with the London Gas Company as a bookkeeper until August 1939 when he transferred to Shell. At the outbreak of the war, Shell closed their London office and Jack enlisted in the RAF on the 5th September. He was attracted to the extra privileges that aircrew received. Initial training commenced in late 1939 and elementary flying training in June 1940. Being unsuccessful with pilot training, Jack completed navigator training at RAF Prestwick, followed by armament training at RAF Manby, and operational training at RAF Kinloss. On completion of training, Jack was awarded his commission and posted to RAF Linton-on-Ouse. Being the only commissioned member of the crew, Jack found the opportunities to socialise restricted. Having only completed a few operations, Jack and his crew had to abandon their stricken aircraft. Separated from his crew, Jack was arrested by a German soldier cycling past who, faced with a long walk, decided the easiest way was for Jack to ride on the crossbar. Stopping at the first house they came to, the soldier arranged for Jack’s wounds to be attended to, and he was given tea and cake. Initially billeted in Stalag Luft 1, before being transferred to Stalag Luft 3 in April 1942, where he remained until early 1945. Douglas Bader was also billeted there, and Jack witnessed the famous incident when Bader inspected the German guards before being transferred. Early in 1945 with the advancing Russian army getting near, Jack participated in what became known as “The Long March”. Following the German surrender, Jack returned home, and following demob, returned to continue his career with Shell.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Ian Whapplington
Anne-Marie Watson
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Barth
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Poland--Żagań
Scotland--Moray
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-05-01
1941-06-21
1941-06-03
1942-09
1943
1945-05-01
1945-05-09
aircrew
bomb aimer
navigator
prisoner of war
RAF Kinloss
RAF Linton on Ouse
RAF Manby
RAF Prestwick
Red Cross
shot down
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/940/11299/AMacklinJR180127.1.mp3
7f71b45dfc3126406d09ae8d23e302d4
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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Macklin, Joan Rosemary
J R Macklin
Joan Fellows
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. An oral history interview with Joan Macklin (b. 1918), two documents and 16 photographs. She worked in London during the war and was bombed out.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Joan Macklin and catalogued by Jessica M J Neilson.
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
2018-01-27
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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Macklin, JR
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Saturday the 27th of January 2018. We’re in Grendon Underwood and we’re with Joan Macklin to talk about her experiences during the war in London. Joan, you came from Hastings but what are your earliest recollections of life?
JM: I remember going to school. I was five when I went to school and I can remember all the teachers, and that was in an Infant’s School. Then I went on to a Junior School. And from there I went on in to a Senior School where I took the Eleven Plus and finished up at a Central School which don’t exist now at, and I stayed there until I was about sixteen and a half. I didn’t want to leave school because I loved school, but my headmistress got me a job as an apprentice as a, to a dress making to a rather posh shop in Hastings, and from there I carried on until the war broke out when everything seemed to close down. Nobody wanted any clothes or anything at the time. My husband, well he was my fiancé then, because we got engaged on my twenty first birthday. That’s the 3rd of October 1939, and he got his call up papers to go into the Royal Sussex on the 13th of October 1939. As I couldn’t get a job dressmaking I went to London to see if I could get a job in one of the big shops, and after writing round I wrote to Selfridges, Debenham and Freebody’s as it was then, Swan and Edgars, and I got an immediate answer from Debenhams to go for an interview. I went for an interview thinking I was going to do dressmaking and it finished up it was making army uniforms. And there I stayed until as I say I was bombed out, and that was that job finished. We when we were working at first they used to let us go down to the basement to shelter in the raids. But then raids got so frequent, often, they told us we’d got to work through the raids but we would get compensation if we [laughs] was injured or anything [laughs] which we didn’t think was very good. But anyway we, one weekend we gave up, and they asked for volunteers to go potato picking and that was to help the Poles, Poland. The money went to Poland that we would have earned. We used to go to the London Meal Service for our lunch. We used to get a good lunch for about two and six old money. We still carried on life as normal. We went dancing of a Saturday. We used to go to the Regent Polytec, Regent Street Polytec for dancing. I also used to go playing tennis. We went ice skating at the Queen’s. We just carried on. Well, you couldn’t do anything else, you know. I never knew what the raids were like in, in, at night because I used to go to bed in the cellar. Go to sleep and used to sleep through the raids, and in the morning I used to get a shock when I went to work, all the different places that had been bombed, and the buses weren’t on the same route and, and I used to travel mainly on the tube. I had one weekend with a friend at Bromley, and during the raids I was awake then. As the bombs came down the blast, you could hear the tiles on the roof rattle, and the next morning we had someone knocking at the door. They were looking, there was a, they said there was an unexploded bomb had landed in our garden and they were looking for it and I’d slept all through that [laughs] Another time, another time oh, weekends the girls I worked with, we used to go for a walk along the Thames from Putney to Kew. We used to take a little picnic with us and quite enjoyed that. We got out as much as we could. Oh, while I was staying at Bromley with a friend we were walking out down the fields there and a fighter, German fighter came over and we dodged into the hedge but he was machine gunning. We missed that. But as I say the Christmas 1945, was it the war ended? I went to Hastings for the weekend. My mother came with us because she was staying with my aunt and uncle, and we went down to keep my grandmother and grandfather company for Christmas, and we were getting ready to get the train Boxing morning, and a policeman came to the door and said we weren’t to go back. We’d got to stay where we were in Hastings. And my mother said, ‘Well, I expect it’s only windows broken. Let’s go back and see if we can salvage anything.’ And when we got back there was nothing there. There was just a hole in the, in the, it hit a crossroad, and it hit all around the crossroad. There was, the room that we would have been in when the bomb came down. We’d have gone down into the cellar where forty five people went and they were trapped. My uncle tried to get to them, but the wardens wouldn’t let him go down. He said he could get them out but they wouldn’t let him go down, and a fire broke out and they were burned to death. I stayed in, in Hastings then until [pause] well I was ordered to go back to London to work. Still on uniforms, but I got permission to stay and look after my grandmother who was eighty because I had nowhere to go, and there was no point in me going back to London. I’d only got the clothes I stood up in, and I stayed there. My husband in the meantime, he was taken prisoner in May. It would be 1940, wouldn’t it? The first year of the war. He was a stretcher bearer and they got a message for his Italian to go to a farmhouse where there was people injured, and he had to go because he was medical and while he was there it was a trap. The Germans took them, and he joined all the other prisoners. They had to march from France to Poland and when they got there, there was nothing there for them. They had to build their own huts to live in. And there he stayed for, until the end of the war. He came back about three weeks after, no. It must have been a week after the war finished and we got married on the 3rd of, err 2nd of June that year. We didn’t wait. We got married. We’d been engaged five and a half years and we thought [laughs] we might as well get married. We didn’t have anything, but we were, we were ok.
CB: Right. We’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: Now, just going back a bit Joan we talked about, you mentioned that with the beginning of the war the smart dressers didn’t want dresses, so you went to London but why did you go there and who did you stay with?
JM: Now, well, as I was out of work and there was nothing doing. Everything closed down in the town, so my aunt and uncle, they owned a pub in London and they said, ‘Come up and stay with us. You’ll find plenty of work when you get there.’ So my husband, as I said, he joined the Army on the 13th of October and the 14th I went up to London to stay. During, my aunt and uncle, my uncle had a cellar all shored up, and bunks put in so that the barman and his wife had one bunk. My mother had another bunk, and they had their own bed down in the cellar as well. So we all slept down in the cellar at night.
CB: And whereabouts was this in London?
JM: This was in, well I say Holloway but it comes under Islington. We lived at MacKenzie Road. The pub was called the Prince of Wales, and on the morning of the Boxing Day 1945. No. ’44 —
CB: ‘44. Yeah.
JM: That would be. At the lunchtime my uncle said he went through his tills to see how much he’d taken, and there was four hundred pounds in the till which was a lot of money then.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And when he eventually got out of the pub there on top of all the rubble was his tills and the drawers were empty. They’d taken it. And my aunt she was buried in the pub, but we had a dog. Sometime earlier someone had found a stray dog and my uncle took it in, and gave it a home and that dog dragged my aunt out of the rubble. We never found the dog. The dog ran away afterwards and my uncle put up a reward to find that dog, but we never did. So whether it ran away and died of shock I don’t know. Because we were bombed out, it was a V-2, I had to go too, and well I was in Hastings when it happened so I was fortunate. I didn’t experience the bombing of that.
CB: There was a lot of people killed, wasn’t there?
JM: Forty nine.
CB: Yes. And what was the, they demolished the pub but what did it look like, you said it landed in the crossroads.
JM: Yes. But the —
CB: Did it make a big hole or —
JM: Oh, I didn’t see the hole. We only got as, we came in the road and saw the space where the pub was, and someone told us that my aunt and uncle were at a Rest Centre. So we went and found them at the Rest Centre, and my aunt came up the stairs, I came down the stairs. I was going to look for something, or go and get something to eat I think and as I passed my aunt I didn’t recognise her. And I got by and I suddenly said, ‘Oh, is that you?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ She was still, got the rubble in her hair. She was in a terrible state. So I went and helped her wash her hair and tidy her up, you know. And then I said, ‘Well, I’ll have to go back to Hastings anyway,’ because I had a cousin. He was only three. Their son was only three and I’d left him with my grandmother, so I said, ‘I’ll go back and look after him while you get everything sorted out,’ you know for the war, for the damage and that you know. They eventually came down to Hastings to live themselves.
CB: Because they ended up with no job. No pub. No job.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Did they get a job down in Hastings?
JM: He owned the pub so he looked at other pubs, but he didn’t fancy any of them and he finished up being a sleeping partner in a, in a groceries shop and he also worked for an estate agent.
CB: When a building like that, particularly a pub where there was a lot of activity going on and they were earning money what compensation did they get, or if any from the state?
JM: I don’t know. I know there was a compensation of a hundred and something pound each person that was bombed out that owned things.
CB: Yeah.
JM: But I got ten pounds. And my, my aunt I thought she was going to throttle the people that was, they gave me two grey blankets and ten pound. That was my compensation. She said, and this person had made a whole new lot of underwear and all ready for my trousseau. I’d got an electric machine there, my bicycle. There was a cupboard in the cellar. I’d got all my twenty first birthday presents in it. All cut glass and that sort of thing, and he said, he went, as I say he went down the cellar but they wouldn’t let him go any further to rescue the people and that cupboard was on the floor. But when he went back as I say he saw the till and there was my cupboard smashed up on top of the rubble. So they’d had that as well.
CB: Were you conscious of the fact that there was a large criminal underworld operating in the areas of bomb damage?
JM: Sorry?
CB: Were you aware of the fact that there was a large group of people who were criminals?
JM: Well, you got it everywhere. People were looting, you know. You didn’t know who they were, but I mean between you and I there was a warden at Hastings. He had nothing at the beginning of the war, but after the war finished he’d got silver and goodness knows what, you know. So you knew what happened.
CB: Yeah.
JM: But you can’t prove these things.
CB: So, just going back to your work. From Holloway, Islington to the West End you travelled on the Underground.
JM: Yeah.
CB: How did you find that, because people were living in the Underground, were they?
JM: Yes. As a matter of fact my mother she used to work in a canteen in the tubes and take food around to the people that were sleeping in the Underground.
CB: Who supplied the food, did they have to buy it or was it supplied?
JM: I think the council.
CB: Right.
JM: They had to buy it but I think the council. It was the council’s job, you know.
CB: Because —
JM: Then after that she, she worked on munitions
CB: Oh, did she, whereabouts?
JM: I don’t know. She never used to talk about it.
CB: But there were munitions factories in London?
JM: Yes. I think like places like Enfield, or —
CB: Right.
JM: Somewhere, you know.
CB: Out of town. Yeah.
JM: Yeah.
CB: OK. So she would travel by train in the opposite direction.
JM: Yes. Yes.
CB: Right. Now, how long did it take you to travel to work normally?
JM: I’d say about half an hour, because I had, had to change from one line on to the next. I can’t remember what lines I went on. I know I went from Caledonian Road through, I think it was Piccadilly. And then from Piccadilly I went to Bond Street.
CB: Right, on the Northern Line.
JM: And Bond Street.
CB: Then the Bakerloo.
JM: Nearly opposite to where I worked.
CB: Was it, right. And was this five days a week or did you work more than five days in a week?
JM: Five and a —
CB: And Saturday mornings?
JM: I don’t think we did Saturday morning. No. I think it was five days a week.
CB: And what were the hours that you worked?
JM: That was, I think it was half past eight till six, or something. Half past eight to five. Yes. Because some days I had to walk from Oxford Street to home, because there was no buses. Well, the bus route didn’t come near me, and the tubes weren’t running at the time so I had to walk. And run a lot of the way.
CB: Did you?
JM: Because as soon as it got a bit dark then the air raids started.
CB: Right.
JM: We did an awful lot of walking.
CB: Yes. Obviously. Yes. And food was on ration, so how did you get on with that?
JM: Well, it didn’t affect me really. Being a pub I know it wasn’t really I suppose legal, but the men when they went for a drink instead of giving money perhaps they’d give some cheese or fruit because they worked in the Caledonian Market. We’d get a bit of fruit and everybody seemed to do bartering, you know, one for one like. You sort of helped one another and of course my aunt did the housekeeping, so I don’t really know how she managed but we never seemed short of anything.
CB: Right. So the Caledonian Market was the key issue there because you were near, very convenient.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And what did you get paid for doing your work, or was it piece work?
JM: No. I think it was about thirty five shillings.
CB: A week.
JM: Yeah.
CB: And overtime?
JM: No. We didn’t do any overtime.
CB: So what were you working on specifically in uniforms, did you make the whole uniform, parts of it?
JM: No. When I first went some were sewing on buttons on the uniforms. Some were doing something else. And then when they did for Norway they had these fur, like fur coats, and we had to use a needle which was triangular to pierce the material to sew buttons on that. And then some, the uniforms were made in pieces like one person would make sleeves, another would put pockets in and all that sort of thing. We all had different jobs, and I finished up making button holes working a button hole machine, and we were on American Red Cross and their uniforms and material was marvellous, you know, beautiful material. But their overcoats were very heavy and I had to get them into the machine to get the buttonholes in, you know. I button holed my thumb once.
CB: I was wondering what happened to your fingers doing all this hard intricate work.
JM: Yeah. Well, I put the material in and the machine started up and it clamped the material and it clamped my thumb in so it took the side of my thumb but it’s alright now. But I had a —
CB: It had a hole in it with a button on top.
JM: And that’s when I first, when they used, they called it A&B Powder but we realise now it was penicillin.
CB: Oh.
JM: To dry up the wounds. Yeah.
CB: So they had a first aid station.
JM: Yes.
CB: In the work.
JM: Yes.
CB: Station. Work point.
JM: Well, we was you see Debenham and Freebody’s, and Marshall and Snelgrove, two high class shops in those days they were really amalgamated so that’s how we had more facilities than perhaps other people, you know.
CB: So what sort of accommodation was there for making this, the uniforms? Was it the shop floor that had been —
JM: Well, it would be in the rooms where they used to do the dressmaking, you know.
CB: Were the shops open for business?
JM: Yes.
CB: And did they take some of the shop area —
JM: No.
CB: To work on, quite separate was it?
JM: No. No. No, work rooms were separate. We were down a lane off Oxford Street.
CB: And how many people would be working with you in a room?
JM: Oh at least fifty.
CB: So, was it all automated, or just some of it? Were machines used for everything or just for some tasks?
JM: There were divisions in I suppose where people used to work making the clothes where the machines were, and we were at the far end when we were sewing buttons on. We had one big long table sort of thing, and all worked around that. But the machines were in separate sort of cubicles doing the work.
CB: Did many people have an accident on their machines or was it quite rare?
JM: Not very many I don’t think. The person that operated a button hole machine before me she had the same accident, you know. It was one of those things that, you know you couldn’t avoid it.
CB: How did they train you to do the jobs?
JM: They didn’t. You watched other people doing it. I saw the girl doing the buttonhole machine and when she, as I say she came off when she hurt her finger. I asked if I could take over the job because it fascinated me and I got it. But no, you didn’t get any training. You just —
CB: Learned on the job.
JM: I suppose knowing you was dressmaking you knew how to use a machine, and that and that’s all there was, you know.
CB: So there wasn’t a lot of variety if you were just putting on buttons.
JM: No.
CB: How did you feel about that?
JM: I had a job where they made collars, and I had to iron them to shape them with the iron, but I had to come off that because I had nightmares. I used to think I was burning the sheets in my bed, you know and that sort of thing. So I had to come off that. I couldn’t stand that. I never like ironing anyway [laughs]
CB: So, did you see the whole garment completed?
JM: No. No. We had two supervisors, and they used to examine them and we never saw them go away. It was all, I suppose in the work. How they worked, you know.
CB: You talked about some being American ones but were they only, were they only Army uniforms or did you have Navy and Air Force as well?
JM: No. Only Army to begin with and then we went on the American uniforms.
CB: So why did the Americans ones come in, they could make them at home.
JM: I don’t know whether, because we were only a sort of a sub contract for a Jewish firm in the East End you know and we used to get these sub contracts, and I suppose they got more money for the Americans.
CB: Ok. We’ll pause there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: You were talking a bit earlier about the tasks you did, and they were various but they were a bit boring. So what about holidays?
JM: Yes. We used to get a fortnights holiday. I don’t remember going on a rota, but we must have done you know because we couldn’t all go at once, and I used to go down to Hastings. Being as I was born in Hastings I was allowed in. But I took a friend of mine, she was in the WAAFs. She used to work with me at Debenhams but then she volunteered to go in the Forces, and she was in the WAAFs and she was on leave and I was on holiday so I took her down to Hastings for a holiday and when we got to the station to where we were going the police were there. They let me through because I was born in Hastings, but they made her go back to London again. She wasn’t allowed through.
CB: Why was that?
JM: They didn’t allow anybody to go to the seaside. Well, to these areas because they were, I don’t know what you’d call them.
CB: Prohibited areas were they?
JM: Yeah.
CB: So what was special about Hastings?
JM: I don’t know. Only the bombing, that’s all I know.
CB: So, just talk —
JM: But the bombing wasn’t so bad then. There was a lull in between, you know.
CB: We’ve been talking mainly about London bombing but what happened to Hastings. Was that bombed?
JM: That was very bad. Very bad.
CB: So, we’ve got a book, we’ve got a booklet here called, “Hastings & St Leonards in the Front Line.” And it’s significant the amount, the huge amount of damage in Hastings.
JM: Yes.
CB: So anybody got —
JM: There was one church in St Leonards that was laid back from the Promenade and a Doodlebug, or buzz bomb or whatever you like to call it went straight up the front of the church and landed at the door and blew the church to pieces. And when they rebuilt it they built it in the shape of a [pause] would you call it the hull? The bottom of a ship, you know. In that shape.
CB: How strange.
JM: But there was a great hole where this Doodlebug went up in, but yeah they got no end of the Doodlebugs because one thing the airmen used to, our airmen used to go up and they found a way if they got near the Doodlebug they could tip it so they altered its direction. Of course, it didn’t always work, you know. But yes they’d got an awful lot there. Ones that I suppose didn’t come far enough for London. They dropped their, they also got the bombs from, if the Germans didn’t drop all their bombs they used to empty them before they went across the Channel, and they got all that as well. It was indiscriminate bombing.
CB: Of course it’s on the sea. It’s on the seaside, Hastings.
JM: Yes.
CB: What other type of attack did it experience from the air? You talked about earlier about the German fighter strafing.
JM: I don’t know. I’ve never read that.
CB: Right.
JM: I’ve only looked at the pictures.
CB: Yes.
JM: But —
CB: This can’t be all V bombers. V raids I mean.
JM: No, there was bombers.
CB: V-1s and V-2s this is.
JM: Yeah. I think most of those are bombing.
CB: It talks about tip and run raids and —
JM: Yeah.
CB: The Germans used fighter bombers to come and make nuisance raids.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Is that what happened here a good deal in, yeah? It says here, “The use of fast fighter bombers which swept in from the sea at a very low level or sneaked in from behind the town under the cover of cloud left coastal towns with no doubt that they were still very much in the front line, although other parts of the country that were bombed — ”
JM: I remember before the war broke out when it was a lovely moonlight night we used to lay in bed my mother and I and we could hear the German out taking pictures and that sort of thing.
CB: Oh, could you?
JM: You could hear. There’s a different throb to the German plane to our planes.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And you could hear that throb. Also, we had the, what was it, The Graf Zeppelin.
CB: Oh yeah.
JM: That went along the Channel. That was taking pictures. We were waving to it. I mean the war hadn’t broke out. No thought of war, you know. Yeah. They were going right along the coast taking pictures. We realised in the end you know.
CB: Because that was quite big was it, the Zeppelin.
JM: Yes. You could even hear the engine from the, you know when you walked along the Prom you could hear the engine as it went along. Quite close to the shore they were.
CB: Just outside the three mile limit.
JM: Pardon?
CB: Just outside the three mile limit.
JM: Yeah. I expect so.
CB: So, what was the general mood in Hastings with all this destruction that was going on?
JM: Well, as far as I know they lived life quite, you know as I say a lot of them used to go to the caves and sleep. You know, there was little alcoves where you could make your own little room sort of thing. I went down one night. Spent one night down there but I don’t like caves [laughs] But, and that was a good, good place because it was well ventilated, although they were caves because apparently Queen Victoria used to keep her wine there because it was ideal for that sort of thing. That’s years ago, before [laughs] before the war.
CB: Of course. Yeah. We’ll take another break there.
[recording paused]
JM: It did come down in Chiswick.
CB: It did. The first V-2 did. In Chiswick.
JM: Because they used to tell us it was one of these gasometers.
CB: Oh yes.
JM: Had exploded.
CB: Had blown up. Yeah.
JM: And I know I was walking down the road home from work and it was light so it must have been summertime when one came down, and I felt the blast hit me in the back. And the man, he had a couple of shops not far from our pub, he came out and he said, ‘Oh, is it another one of those gasometers burst?’ You know. Yeah.
CB: Well, just off Sutton Court Road which is where that V-2 came down, there is a plaque and we went to see it.
JM: Yeah.
CB: And took a picture. Yeah. Of the effect. Yes. Interesting.
JM: I’ve never been back so I don’t know. Someone told me there’s a block of flats where our pub was.
CB: Oh, is there?
JM: It used to be if the pub was there and the license was there they should have built a pub there, another pub there. But someone said there’s flats there. I don’t know. I’ve never been back. Although I lived in London nineteen years after the war
CB: Did you?
JM: I never went over that area at all.
CB: Gosh.
JM: So that —
CB: So, why was that? Did you not have a curiosity?
JM: No. It never, it never even dawned on me to go, you know. Whether it sort of, you put it to the back of your mind and forget it all, because when I came back that weekend to work to tell them what had happened I had to go to the police station, and there was a police station opposite because I’d been reported missing believed killed. So I had to go and tell them that I was alive [laughs]
CB: Yes.
JM: Yeah.
CB: You talked about the result of the pub being demolished meant you had nowhere to stay in Holloway in London.
JM: Yeah.
CB: You went back to Hastings. What was the process there because the war was still running? You wanted to stay down —
JM: That’s when I —
CB: To look after your grandmother.
JM: I was interviewed by these three ladies
CB: Who were they?
JM: They made me so cross, because there were all dressed up, you know and they’d got a radiator and they were hugging the radiator and I was cold and they’re telling me I’d got to go back to London. I mean, I think the bombing was still on and I said, ‘No. I’m not going back.’ As I say I got a certificate to look after my grandmother. She didn’t want looking after, but you had to find some way of beating the law.
CB: And how long did you stay in Hastings again?
JM: I stayed there until I was married.
CB: Right. Which was just after the war.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Right.
CB: Yeah. My husband came back a week after the war finished and we got married a fortnight later.
CB: Now, when he was in the prison camp was he able to send any communications to you via the Red Cross?
JM: I got the occasional card from him, and I had two or three photographs of a group of the people in the Stalag.
CB: What Stalag was it? Do you know?
JM: Seven B.
CB: Right.
JM: At Posen, Poland.
CB: What sort of conditions did your husband-to-be experience there?
JM: Well, he had appendicitis while he was out there but if you’d seen the operation you couldn’t have had it done by anyone better, although It was a German doctor. You wouldn’t know, you couldn’t see where they’d done it. Yet I’ve seen people done in this country with real scars but he didn’t have a scar.
CB: Amazing.
JM: But he had a hole in his arm where he had an abscess through bad food and that. That never healed up. Well, it healed up but left a hole in his arm.
CB: And what was the origin of the abscess? Did he, was he wounded before he was captured?
JM: No. No.
CB: Did it come as a result of his work when he was in the prisoner of war camp? What did he do?
JM: He worked with horses.
CB: Right.
JM: He was in the salt mines.
CB: Doing what? What did he do in the salt mines?
JM: I suppose they were getting the salt out, you know.
CB: Digging it were they?
JM: He never talked about it. He never talked much about his life in the prison. All I know is that when he come home he couldn’t sleep in a bed. He slept on the floor. He couldn’t get used to getting in a bed and also if a plane went over he’d shake like a leaf, you know. He was thinking of the bombing, because they’d got the bombing all around them being in Poland, you know because they had the Russians as well. But when he got out, well they marched them from Poland in to Germany all through the winter. All through the ice and snow and that. And when he was free in Germany he met some [pause] Well, I think the Americans had something to do with them, and one of them said, ‘There’s a Mercedes along the road. We’ll fill it up with petrol. Go for a ride round for a week. No good going to line up for the planes to get home. You’d do better to wait a week and then you’ll get away quicker that way.’ So that’s what he did. Touring somebody’s Mercedes.
CB: So he was flown home was he?
JM: Yeah.
CB: Do you know where he went from and to?
JM: He landed at Wing.
CB: Oh, did he?
JM: Yeah.
CB: Just up the road here.
JM: Is that where it was, I don’t know. He said —
CB: Operational Conversion Unit. Yeah.
JM: It was Wing.
CB: Yeah.
JM: They wanted him to go to, straight to hospital but he wouldn’t go. He said no. He wanted to get home. We’d been, his mother and I had been to the Red Cross and asked them to make sure he didn’t go to London because we didn’t want him to see the damage there. For him to come straight down to Hastings. He didn’t. He went to London didn’t he and saw the damage and he went to the police and they told him, you know where we were and he came down.
CB: Do you think he had a lasting concern about his experiences in the war? Did he have nightmares, or did he just wake in the night?
JM: Not that I know of. No. No. Never seemed to. Only as I say if a plane went over he shook but he soon got, you know back to normal again. He was only eight stone when he came home.
CB: And what was his normal weight?
JM: Well, when he died he was eighteen stone.
CB: But in his younger days what would he have been?
JM: I would say about twelve because he was a big man. Well built.
CB: Yeah.
JM: Well, you see. There’s his photo there.
CB: Yes. What do you think was the reason why people who’d been, had experienced the war didn’t want to talk about it afterwards?
JM: Well, I think probably they’d had enough and like he’d got, managed to get back to normal. He didn’t want to remember the rest of it as I say. He never, never spoke about it much and I never, I never queried anything, you know. I think we was too busy getting on with our life. Existing after the war, you know. Because he had got no clothes and I’d got no clothes so [laughs] His mother had given away all his clothes when he was taken prisoner of war.
CB: Did she know what had happened to him?
JM: Well, she’d got the message to say he was a prisoner.
CB: Right.
JM: No. That he was missing. And my uncle asked her to send the telegram to him and when he saw it he said, ‘It says missing. It doesn’t say believed killed. So he must be a prisoner.’ As I say he was taken prisoner in May, and we didn’t hear till the August that he was a prisoner of war. The first we knew was I’d got a card from him and he was asking for all kinds of things, chocolate, condensed milk, oh all kinds that we couldn’t get anyway. We reckoned the Germans made him write this all out, you know. But at least we got a card, and we knew where he was.
CB: What about your grandchildren? Did they manage to enter any conversation with him about what he did?
JM: No. No. My granddaughters, my granddaughters were only four and two when he died.
CB: So they weren’t in a position to do much from that point of view.
JM: As I say well because he was in the prison service so —
CB: Oh, was he?
JM: Yeah.
CB: Right.
JM: That’s why we lived in London. We were at Wormwood Scrubs for nineteen years.
CB: Oh.
JM: And then he come up here on promotion. He was a principal officer here, and he put in for his chief and they invalided him out because he’d got heart trouble and so he never finished his service.
CB: What age did he retire then?
JM: You can retire at fifty five I think it is but he was fifty seven when he died.
CB: Right.
JM: Well, he went back to the prison. Not as a prison officer. He went on their switchboard for them.
CB: Right.
JM: They said he knew all the ins and outs of the prison so he was a good one to be on the switchboard, so they employed him part time on that.
CB: Yeah. In your own case we talked about your husband’s reaction to that and what he did but in your own case you said you didn’t return and never have to Holloway. What was your feeling at the end of the war after your experiences?
JM: Well, I’d got the pleasure of knowing my husband was coming back. Well, he wasn’t my husband then.
CB: No.
JM: But he was well and coming back to us and as I say within a fortnight we were getting married. We didn’t have time to think about anything but what we wanted, you know. I had a borrowed wedding dress. And my husband was a grocer before he was called up. He went back to see his boss and he gave him all the ingredients to make our wedding cake because they weren’t making wedding cakes then. And I think my grandmother made the wedding cake but we’d got a baker and he did the icing for us. So we had a proper wedding cake and people bought us different things to make sandwiches and that, you know. We had it at home. Just a few friends, and that was that and then we went to Bournemouth for a three weeks honeymoon because his aunt lived at Bournemouth and she said, ‘Come down to us.’ So we went down there. At the end of the three weeks we hadn’t got any money so we had to come home. She didn’t want us to come away but we came back to Hastings, and then we lived with my mother in law for about a fortnight, and then we managed to get a flat. Yes, it was a job to get anywhere to live then, you know.
CB: Yeah.
JM: Because everyone, all bombed out and that.
CB: Where was the flat?
JM: That was in Hastings.
CB: It was.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. It was two doors away from my mother in law [laughs] but I got on very well with her so —
CB: Ok. We’ll pause there a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So you met a lot of people in the war, what friendships developed?
JM: Well, one friend, she that I worked with, she wanted to go in the Navy, the Wrens because her brother was in the Navy and you could only get in the Wrens if you had someone in the Navy. But when she went for her medical they wouldn’t pass her but they passed her for the Air Force. So she went and she was posted to Cornwall. Perranporth in Cornwall. She was a batwoman and I went down and had a fortnight’s holiday down with her. And on the way back I called in to my mother in law was then living at Camel’s Head, Plymouth and my mother had gone down to stay with them so I met up with my mother at my mother in law’s, and we had a weekend there and we had a tremendous, really bad air raid while we were there because Plymouth suffered terribly during the war.
CB: Yeah, of course. Yes.
JM: My sister in law’s two young girls they used to walk about with saucepans on their heads if they went out at night because of the shrapnel.
CB: Oh yeah. From the anti-aircraft guns.
JM: Yes. And as I say I had a friend that lived at Bromley. I went and had a weekend with her. And then another friend was one that I used to go dancing with. There we met two Naval chaps, one short and one tall. My friend was tall and so she had the tall one as a partner, and I had the short one and he was the chief petty officer in the Navy, and I used to meet him on a Saturday for a drink and dance and I went out a couple of times with him. He knew I was engaged and I knew he was married. He’d got a wife and two sons you know and he said to me, ‘I’m glad I met you because — ’ he said, ‘You kept me on the straight and narrow,’ he said. We were just friends and that was it, you know.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And then one night when I was coming home from work well going to Bond Street to get the Tube he was stood outside. He said, ‘I’ve come to tell you that I’m going away.’ He’d been ordered to go to Scapa Flow.
CB: Oh right.
JM: And he said, ‘But before I go —’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you, I’ll send your husband, well your boyfriend some long johns and a thick woolly vest.’ You know they were Navy issue. He said, ‘I’ll send them out to him for you.’ And I never heard another word. I reckon he went down at Scapa Flow.
CB: Really.
JM: Because the Navy didn’t do very well there.
CB: Well, they got bombed a lot.
JM: Yeah.
CB: It was the main —
JM: Yeah.
CB: Base for the Navy in the north.
JM: Yeah. And I never, my husband never mentioned that he ever received anything like that and he wouldn’t have known anyway, you know. And that friend that I used to go dancing with, not him, I can’t think of her name now, but anyway she married the other chap.
CB: Oh.
JM: She did get married.
CB: Right.
JM: And they lived in Lancashire somewhere. And she used to say to me, ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I wish they weren’t so clean.’ She said, ‘We have to take the stair carpet up every week and scrub the stairs and put the carpet back down,’ she said. And she had some lovely underwear she said, and her mother makes her boil it all. She said, ‘She’s ruined all my underwear.’ But I never heard any more from her. But my friend that went in the WAAFs when I got married she was my bridesmaid. She had a bride, a dress that she’d had for another wedding so we changed the, it had bows on it and we changed the colour of the bows and that so we had a proper wedding.
CB: Amazing. Yeah. What could you do about the reception after your wedding?
JM: We had it at —
CB: I mean there was still rationing.
JM: Yeah. We had it at home as I say. People brought us different things for sandwiches, and we got the cake made, and we had to have it at home because well, there wasn’t time. We didn’t give them time to arrange anything. We weren’t worried about a reception.
CB: How many people came?
JM: I should say about twenty five. My grandmother had a big sitting room, you know. There was just family and one or two of my friends there so —
CB: And after the reception how did you leave that to go on your honeymoon?
JM: We had to go up to London by train, and a couple of my friends that came from London travelled up with us but the guard came and locked the door to our carriage so nobody could get in with us [laughs] So we had the carriage all the way to London on our own. And then from there we stayed at my sister in law and brother in law. They had a flat in London so we stayed the night in their flat. They were back still in Hastings. But I didn’t sleep all night because the bed when we saw it, it was like that. The ends were like that and I thought they’d rigged the bed, you know so it would fall.
CB: [laughs] Yes.
JM: So, I didn’t sleep. Then the next morning we got up and we went down by train to Bournemouth.
CB: Right.
JM: That was the only way you could get to Bournemouth.
CB: Yeah.
JM: By going to London first.
CB: We’ll stop there for a bit.
[recording paused]
CB: They didn’t evacuate the mothers but only the children.
JM: No, only the children.
CB: Right.
JM: I’m just thinking how. Oh, my cousin would be about ten. Nine or ten.
Other: Right.
JM: And you had to give permission for your children to go.
Other: Right.
JM: They didn’t force them to go.
Other: Right.
JM: And he was evacuated to Bicester.
Other: Oh.
JM: I always remember my aunt going to the station and asking for a rail ticket to Bi-cester, but he didn’t stay there for very long. It wasn’t a very nice place, and she told all kinds of things about him. Said he was this and he was that.
Other: Oh dear. Yeah.
JM: And we knew different, you know.
Other: Yeah. Yeah.
JM: So my aunt went and fetched him back. A lot of the children didn’t stay very long. The parents went and got them. They weren’t happy, you know. But no. As a voluntary thing but all the children went. There were I think some grown-ups went but, you see it was getting billets for them anyway.
Other: Yes.
JM: You know.
Other: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: So these people took like foster parents, you know.
Other: Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, I went to this farm in High Wycombe through friends of my mother’s. They said they knew somebody that would take me.
JM: Yeah.
Other: And I mean, you know it was lovely. It was on a farm and I can remember when I could walk having a calf of my own with a rope around its neck —
JM: Oh. Yeah.
Other: Called Primrose. And I can remember sitting on the farmer’s lap on the tractor.
JM: Oh yes.
Other: And that sort of thing.
JM: Yeah.
Other: But yeah but it’s always puzzled me why, you know as a baby she could let me go.
JM: Yeah. But that’s why.
Other: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. There were two parts of evacuation really weren’t there? One was early part of the war.
JM: Yes.
CB: And then the phoney war made people think nothing was going to happen.
JM: Yes. They did.
CB: So they went back again.
JM: Another lot. Yes.
CB: So then when it got serious they started again. What was the impetus really for the second one?
JM: Well, also they also shipped a lot of children to Canada.
CB: Yes.
Other: Really?
CB: And America.
JM: Yeah.
CB: What affect do you think it had on the children when they were evacuated and afterwards?
JM: Well, I think a lot if they got a good billet they were quite happy, you know. Like, as you say if they were on a farm they enjoyed the life on the farm. But as I say my cousin didn’t, didn’t get on at all well and so my aunt got him back again. She said she wouldn’t let him go. But then in the end he went to Rotherhithe. A Naval school. And he was in the Merchant Navy. He used to go to Australia. He’d be gone nine months, and then he came back for three months. And while he was in Australia he had cancer and they operated, and he was very ill coming back on the boat but the chaps used to hide him in a, in the cabin because if the authorities knew he was on board ill they’d have put him off at the next port, you know. But he wanted to get home so he got home. He managed to get to his door and he collapsed on the doorstep and he was riddled with cancer and he was only thirty four. And while he was in hospital the, one of the shipping line that he was on told him they’d just bought a new ship and he was going to be the master of it and he was going to be the captain.
CB: Gosh.
JM: The youngest captain in the [pause] but he never lived to see it.
Other: That’s sad.
JM: But he was, he was in the Mediterranean at sixteen.
CB: Was he?
JM: With the Merchant Navy during the war. Yeah.
CB: What would you say was your most memorable experience in the war, Joan?
JM: I don’t know really [pause] I know I was in the tube once and it was a buzz bomb come over and the driver went into a sidings behind a very thick wall, and the buzz bomb dropped the other side of the wall. We were safe, but [pause]. I can’t, and as I say I was nearly machine gunned. And on the Tube at at Piccadilly there’s a bend on the tube where the trains used to be packed. Getting out in the crowd they pushed you off and I went between the train and the platform. I had my library under my arm and my handbag in the other hand, and I went down like that and arms came out and lifted me out and I hadn’t hurt myself. Hadn’t even laddered my nylons which would have been —
CB: A cardinal sin.
JM: Terrible in those days because we used to get word that Selfridges had got some nylons and we used to all go trooping up there to try and get our nylons. We had lots of fun during the war. I mean, once a month we used to go to the theatre. I think I’ve been to all the different shows. We used to get someone to put a chair out in the, and we used to queue to be up in the Gods for about one and three and we used to see all the shows. We used to take a flask of, a drink of some sort with us, and get a buttered bun at lunch time and take that with us to eat when we were there. We used to go straight from work and queue up to go to the shows.
CB: Fascinating, thank you.
[recording paused]
CB: So what did you do in the evenings during the war?
JM: For the evening I used to sit up either in the office behind the bar and listen to the radio. Listen to Vera Lynn. Or I’d be upstairs because my cousin was born in 1940 so I was more or less babysitting then and I’d be doing sewing and that sort of thing upstairs. And about 9 o’clock I used to go to bed as I say because of the air raids, you know.
CB: Yeah.
JM: So, I’d be asleep before it got too bad.
CB: Down in the basement. Yeah.
JM: But no, there was nothing you could do apart from that. I think I went to the pictures a couple of times but, because there was a picture house just at the top of the road, but no I wasn’t interested in doing that, you know. As I say, I looked after my cousin more than anything and took him when we went on holiday. Took him with us, you know. He was in the Air Force. But that was after the war.
CB: Now, all military people had identity cards. What did you have as a civilian to identify yourself?
JM: I had an identity card. I’ve found one but it’s since then.
CB: Yes.
JM: Since the war.
CB: Is it? Post war, right.
JM: Yeah.
CB: So why did you have one after the war?
JM: I don’t know. I thought we all had them.
CB: And this one is called National Registration Identity Card.
JM: EIAF.
CB: Yeah. And it’s stamped 12th of March 1948. I’m just curious. But you did have one of these during the war.
JM: But that was the same identity number as I had during the war.
CB: It sounds as though you lost yours. Yes.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Right.
JM: I think my granddaughter may have it amongst all the things I gave her.
CB: Yes. What was your maiden name?
JM: Fellowes.
CB: So clearly you’d have had a different card for that. And this has got the address Du Cane Avenue, W12. That’s because your husband was working.
JM: That was the quarters. Prison quarters.
CB: Oh, it was a prison quarter was it?
JM: Yeah. They were bocks of flats in front of the prison.
CB: Right. So, what was it like living in a prison environment?
JM: Never took much notice of it really. Used to see the visitors come through. All nations, you know. And people used to say, ‘Well, aren’t you frightened that if a prisoner got out?’ You know. I said, ‘Well, if a prisoner got out he’s not going to stay around is he? He’s going to get off as quick as he can.’ You know. So I never worried about it.
CB: No.
JM: I went in the prison several times.
CB: Did you?
JM: Went in, because they had big shows in there. A lot of the show people were crooks really [laughs] I mean they all had double lives, you know but they used to bring the big shows to the prison.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And I know I went in once and I was the only woman in there amongst all the prisoners and they got an armchair for me to sit in. And when I sat in it, it collapsed didn’t it? Yeah.
CB: Gave them their brief moment of joy.
JM: Yeah [laughs] Yeah. I saw several shows in there and I used to go along if my husband was on night watch. I used to go along to the gate as they called it and he’d let me in to his office with him. I used to take his supper along to him.
CB: And then to get promotion your husband came out to Grendon Underwood in Buckinghamshire.
JM: Yeah.
CB: What prompted that?
JM: Pardon?
CB: What prompted him to do that?
JM: Well, he put in for his promotion, and got it but then you don’t get any choice of where you were going. We were told we were coming to Aylesbury and we thought oh nice. A nice little country town, you know. It would be nice. We landed up at Grendon. I didn’t like it one bit.
CB: Didn’t you?
JM: I didn’t. The first Saturday we were here we went into Bicester shopping, half past four in the afternoon and everything was closing. It was dead. I said, ‘What have we come to?’ I still used to go up to London to work.
CB: Did you?
JM: Every day. Yeah. Because I worked for the telephone side of the [pause] I don’t know what. I can’t think.
CB: Of the Prison Service.
JM: Not of the Prison Service. Civil Service it was.
CB: Oh yes. Right.
JM: I saw an application, you know. They were asking for people to join the Civil Service and I went and took the exam, and I landed at Bromyard Avenue, which was only around the corner from where we lived. It was supplying the telephone lines and the telephones and in those days there wasn’t the number of lines so people had to have what they called a party line.
CB: Oh yes.
JM: I expect you remember those.
CB: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JM: Yeah. And then we had a rep go out and see if the place was suitable for phones and that sort of thing. I was on the sales side. Selling the phones.
CB: Oh. How did you feel about that?
JM: I quite enjoyed that. I was there two and a half years. But after six months, the last six months travelling backwards and forwards I put in to go to Bicester but they wouldn’t transfer me although it was still Civil Service. They wouldn’t transfer me to the Army. I had to stop my service and go. Start again. But when I got there they accepted it, so it counted with my years in the civil service so I was back in Ambrosden.
CB: Oh right.
JM: Yeah. I worked for the REME to begin with. And then I was on signals another time, and then after that I was on uniforms again. People that were small, you know wanted special sized uniforms.
CB: Yeah.
JM: Or big, big uniforms. I was on that before I retired.
CB: Right. Any more?
Other: No.
[recording paused]
JM: I lived in London.
CB: So when you were in London you had an opportunity to do lots of jobs. What other things did you do?
JM: The first thing I did I worked at Hammersmith Hospital. I used to take a shop around to all the patients on a trolley. I did that for five and a half years.
CB: What sort of things?
JM: Then I left there.
CB: What sort of things could they buy from the trolley?
JM: Papers, cigarettes, sweets, drinks. Or they’d ask me if I could get them something or other that they wanted, and I used to take it in to them. And then from there I went to a tobacconist in Regent Street. Lewis I think their name was but I worked on the cosmetic and medical counter [laughs] I was telling people what to take for their illnesses. I used to ring it all up and tell them. Men would come in. They wanted perfume for a girlfriend or something, you know and I used to have to do the ordering for it as well. Then I went to Marks and Spencer’s for an interview and got that job and she said, ‘You’d start right away.’ I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m going on holiday for a fortnight.’ So I lost that job. But I saw the Co-op were advertising so I put in for the Co-op. They’d opened a big store in Oxford Street. On the Oxford Circus, you know. There’s four corners and they had one of the big corners. Used to be Peter Jones’ years ago. But they took that over and I went in there. I was selling fancy goods they called it. All bits and pieces. Then I saw the wool counter and I said, ‘Oh, I’d like to change to wool.’ So I went over to selling wool but that, this job was commission and you didn’t get a lot of commission because people would come in, they’d buy a fourpenny pattern. You’d tell them what to do and all the rest, and advise then what wool to buy but they’d walk out. They didn’t buy the wool so I didn’t get much there. Then there was a vacancy came on the corsetry department so I put in for that and when the supervisor left from the corsetry department I took that over. I went for my exams. I went to St Martin’s School in Charing Cross Road and passed my exams to be a fitter of corsetry. And I was there [pause] oh three or four years I was there and then I decided I’d like to go in an office for a change. So I went to an office. Telephone and cable company, and I was doing the accounts there but I wasn’t very happy because the, the chap that I worked for used he used to go out selling components for different things and when he came back and I was doing up the books I perhaps put down he’d sold a hundred capacitors, and he made me put down that he’d sold two hundred.
CB: Oh.
JM: Because he was working on commission and I was cooking the books for him all the time. Then I saw the advert for the Civil Service so I was talking to a cousin of mine. I said, ‘I’m too old for that.’ I was, I think I was about forty then. She said, ‘No, you’re not.’ She said, ‘You have a go.’ So as I say I had a go and got in. So that was all my variety of jobs since the war.
CB: Yeah. Amazing. What age did you retire then?
JM: Sixty, sixty two I think it was. Sixty two or, sixty three I was when I retired. I had to sign on year by year because you should retire at sixty but if you wanted to stay on and you was doing your job all right, you know you could sign on year by year. I was getting a bit fed up then, you know.
CB: What about the travel? Did that get a bit much?
JM: They used to put a coach on for us to go to Ambrosden.
CB: Oh.
JM: Used to pick us up at 7 o’clock and bring us back at. We used to pick the coach up about half past four. Be back about five.
CB: Very good. Well, Joan that’s really interesting. Thank you very much. There was one other question though which is this. School leaving age when you were young was fourteen.
JM: No. It went up to fifteen.
CB: Right.
JM: When we went to the school we had, my parents had to sign that you would stay to fifteen. A lot of them broke it but I stayed on. I didn’t want to leave school.
CB: No. You said.
JM: Yeah.
CB: You enjoyed it. Yeah.
JM: Yeah. In the end, as I say my head mistress got me a job [laughs] and I had to leave.
CB: Good.
JM: I think that’s why my daughter was a school teacher because, you know, from me. I liked school.
CB: Yeah. Thank you.
[recording paused]
JM: A very placid woman, and —
CB: We’re talking about your mother’s reaction to the war and being in London.
JM: Yeah. Yeah. She just, just got on with her job and that was it, you know.
CB: Yeah. One other thing also was you talked about the Doodlebugs and the V bombs. The V-1s were the Doodlebugs.
JM: V-1s and V-2s.
CB: The V-2s were the rockets. What was the general feeling about the arrival of those?
JM: Well, as I say if you saw the Doodlebugs and you saw them you knew you were safe because they were going.
CB: [unclear]
JM: As soon as their engines stopped then everybody used to dive for shelter, you know. But I know I did have an attack of nerves with the V-2s because you had no, no idea because you couldn’t, you didn’t hear them.
CB: No.
JM: And I know my uncle he was on guns and he said they couldn’t track them.
CB: No.
JM: They were so fast they couldn’t track them so they didn’t know, you know.
CB: Well, you got the sound of the arrival of the V-2 after the explosion of the warhead.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Because they were supersonic.
JM: Yeah.
CB: So what did your uncle do on the guns?
JM: I don’t know really much about —
CB: He was in the Army running the guns was he?
JM: He was in the Army. Yeah.
CB: Right.
JM: Because he finished up guarding the prisoners of war, the German prisoners or the Italian prisoners of war.
CB: Yes.
JM: So we seemed to have been mixed up with prison for a few years.
CB: Yes. Well, of course at Bicester you talked about earlier with people being evacuated.
JM: He was at Quorn. A place called Quorn.
CB: Oh.
JM: I don’t know where it was.
CB: No. We’ll look it up.
JM: And then he was, one time he was at Brecon Beacons.
CB: Oh yes. Middle of nowhere.
JM: Hmmn?
CB: Middle of nowhere that is.
JM: Yes.
[recording paused]
CB: Yes. What was the, what was the situation like when you were getting married of getting flowers?
JM: That was it. We went to the nursery.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And they did them for you.
CB: And you wanted —
JM: I wanted red roses.
CB: Yes.
JM: They said, ‘No. We don’t do red roses. Only red carnations.’
CB: Right. So that’s what you did.
[recording paused]
JM: Dunoon. We used to go to the dance band.
CB: Could you just say again how you first met him? You first met your husband.
JM: The first time I ever saw him.
CB: Yes.
JM: Was at a display of the Boys Brigade.
CB: Right. In Hastings.
JM: In Hastings, yes. And then I saw him again at these band parties because he was with a friend of a friend and then —
CB: On the pier.
JM: On the pier. Yeah. Not on the beer.
CB: That later.
JM: And then he went out with my friend but she didn’t cotton on. And then he asked me to go out and that’s, we went on from there, you know.
CB: Yes. When did you get engaged?
JM: On my twenty first birthday.
CB: Oh, you said earlier. Yes.
JM: Yeah.
CB: And you were resolved to wait until —
JM: Yeah.
CB: How long were you going to wait?
JM: Forever I suppose.
CB: Before you got married.
JM: Only a fortnight when he came back.
CB: Yes. So how did he seem? How did he seem to be when he came back? Was he different or the same?
JM: No. He was, still seemed the same. I did say to him that if he wanted to change his mind because I had waited you know. Oh no. He hadn’t changed his mind at all. So I gave him the chance, you know too. I hadn’t changed my mind.
CB: No. That was good. Yes.
[recording paused]
JM: The vicarage was bombed.
CB: Yeah.
JM: And next door to where my cousin, no my cousin, another cousin he lived in the house next to the bombing. There’s a picture of the shop, house where he lived.
CB: This is in Hastings.
JM: Yeah.
CB: Yes. And the house at the end of the road? What happened to that? You said, was there one at the end of the road that was demolished?
JM: There was. Yeah, there was a whole lot demolished. The end of the road I used to live in.
CB: Yes.
JM: Yeah. The school I went to that was bombed, that’s all in there.
CB: What was the casualty rate like?
JM: I don’t know. It probably tells you in there.
CB: Yes.
JM: I say you didn’t know a lot because people didn’t talk about —
Other: No.
JM: Well, you were told to keep mum weren’t you?
Other: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Good. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Joan Rosemary Macklin
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
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
2018-01-27
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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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AMacklinJR180127
Format
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01:35:55 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Civilian
British Army
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Sussex
England--Hastings
England--London
France
Germany
Poland
Poland--Tychowo
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1939-10
1944-12-25
1940-05
Description
An account of the resource
Joan’s maiden name was Fellows. She speaks of her school days up to leaving at 16 and a half when she took up an apprenticeship with a dressmaking shop in Hastings. When war was declared the dressmaking business suffered, so she went to Islington to stay with relatives and got a job at Debenham & Freebody helping to make army uniforms. In her leisure time she went dancing, ice skating and playing tennis. She remembered staying with a friend in Bromley and diving into a hedge when a German bomber went over.
Joan got engaged on her 21st birthday in October 1939. Her finance got his call up papers to join the Royal Sussex some days later.
Joan and her mother went to Hastings for Christmas 1944 to stay with her grandparents. They returned home on boxing day to find that their house had been destroyed. The shelter which they would have used was burnt out and the occupants were all killed. She stayed in Hastings to look after her grandmother until she married. Her husband was a stretcher bearer and was taken prisoner in May 1940. The prisoners had to march from France to Poland where he was in Stalag 7B. During that time, he had appendicitis and was operated on by a German doctor. While a prisoner he worked with horses and in the salt mines. The prisoners were marched from Poland to Germany towards the end of the war before being released. When he returned home, they got married and he worked as a prison officer at Wormwood Scrubs. He retired at 55 and died at 57.
Joan had a variety of jobs since the end of the war and retired at the age of 63.
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
bombing
home front
love and romance
prisoner of war
shelter
the long march
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1181/11753/PWagnerHW1701.2.jpg
6a7763552d25d2c08c9178b97a3f8dee
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1181/11753/AWagnerHW170719.1.mp3
7846d95153b605a6327ce0831d9d70b6
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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Wagner, Henry Wolfe
H W Wagner
Description
An account of the resource
15 items. Two oral history interviews with Sergeant Henry Wolfe Wagner (1923 - 2020, 1604744 Royal Air Force), his memoirs, documents and photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 51 Squadron from RAF Snaith and became a prisoner of war. He was demobbed in 1946 and returned to education where he remained until his retirement.
The collection was catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-05-04
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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Wagner, HW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 19th of July 2017. Through a misunderstanding I’ve come along to help with an int — to do another interview. But today the original interview from May last year has arrived. So what we’re going to do now is to just put in some extra items for Henry Wagner and let’s hope that that will be useful. We were talking about being in Stalag Luft 7 and the German reaction to glider pilots. So, what was that?
HW: Yeah. Anyway, the chap in charge of our hut was, his surname was Nettle. So, you can guess what his nickname was. Stinger he was called. Anyway, one morning we, towards the end we didn’t know what the Germans were going to do with prisoners. We were worried about how they were going to, would they be all exterminated? Knowing the German record in that sort we just didn’t know. Anyway, when Stinger came back from a meeting one morning he came into the hut and he said, he had a funny way of speaking by the way. He put in the letter H where it shouldn’t be and left it out where it should be. Anyway, he says, ‘Right,’ he says, ‘Silence.’ So, everybody was quiet, ‘Right,’ he says, ‘Everybody in this hut is to parade outside in ten minutes time to march down to the stores to draw picks and shovels to dig their own graves.’ Well, there was, ‘Oh,’ we thought, ‘Oh. It’s come to that has it?’ So, he let it go for about ten seconds and then a smile spread over his face. Oh, it’s only old Stinger and his jokes again [laughs] And they talk about the Long March from, from Bankau to Lukenwalde. It wasn’t a march at all. We were there. There was no military precision. We just dragged ourselves along through the snow. Bitterly cold. You could rake your fingernails down the side of your face and you wouldn’t feel a thing. So, you had your shoulders hunched and you just shuffled along through the snow like that with the German guards with Alsatians beside you of course. And there was no marching. I’ve got a video tape, that’s right, which I can’t play now but that’s beside the point, of a reconstruction of the, what they call the Long March. But it’s all, it’s all people that are young, healthy, clean. They’re not dragging themselves along through the snow. They’re walking at a fairly brisk pace. It’s all, it’s all [pause] it’s all Pantomime really. I’ve never bothered looking at the thing again, I never will because it was no portrayal of what they call the Long March. There was no marching about it. And in the barns at night. I mean these people had dormitories. They knew where they were going to stop. They knew how far they were going to walk. We never knew how far we were going to walk until we stopped for the night. They were mostly in barns. There might be food available. There probably would be a sort of a soup made on their field kitchens. And you just laid down on the floor. So, that was, the Long March was, well it’s all described in the, in there. If you read through you’ll —
CB: Sure.
HW: You’ll see what I thought of it.
CB: And what was the menu normally?
HW: Pardon?
CB: What was the menu? What did they serve you to eat?
HW: Oh. What? On the march?
CB: Yes.
HW: The so-called march. You got a bit of bread in the morning. In the evening a bit, a little bit of margarine quite often. And a brew of the stuff that they called tea. You got nothing through the day until the evening. It was usually, well a soup made with some sort of a herb. I think they were mostly swede tops and bits of swede and things like that. The lads called it after a popular tune at the time. The lads nicknamed it Whispering Grass. And that was it. Otherwise you drank water. So, there was a thin time.
CB: What happened to those prisoners who failed to keep up?
HW: I think the Germans gave continual warning, ‘Anybody falling out will be shot.’ But I don’t think that ever happened. They were just left lying in the snow and they would have died from over exposure and just given up.
CB: What about your, on your feet. What shoes or boots did you have?
HW: I had my flying boots which were bad to walk in because they were lambswool lined. They were loose fitting. I tied them. I tore a bit of wire off of a, off a fence as we were passing by and wound those around just to keep them on my feet.
CB: And what was your destination?
HW: Our destination. Oh, actual walking was a town called Goldberg. And we were promised that when we got there train transport would be provided to Luckenwalde, near Berlin. Which was duly how it turned out. They got that right.
CB: And what sort of transport was it?
HW: What sort of what?
CB: Was it trucks? Rail? Just cattle trucks was it?
HW: Oh yeah. Cattle trucks. Forty men to a truck. It said, they were, they’d been looted from the French railways and it said on the, painted on the side of each one, “Quarant homme. Huit chevaux.” Forty men. Eight horses. So they put us in. Probably more than forty men. You couldn’t all lie down at the same time. There was straw on the floor. A big bucket in one corner which if you needed a pee that’s where you went. Of course, lying down and trying to get a bit of sleep anywhere near that bucket it wasn’t, it wasn’t a favourite place [laughs] One German guard in the, in the truck with us with a rifle of course. But the German guards you see at this stage they were all the fighting men had been moved to the Russian Front and so on and the combat areas all around Europe. They were like our Home Guard really. They were oldish chaps. They didn’t want any hassle and we, we played along. They didn’t give us any hassle. We didn’t give them any hassle.
CB: So, how many days were you walking?
HW: Well, occasionally we stopped for a whole day in some farmyard. It’s all in, I can’t remember off hand. Somewhere about three weeks, I think.
CB: Oh. Right. And then on the train.
HW: That was only — maybe two. Maybe two days.
CB: Going back to your earlier comment. In the prison camp, the reason you were all concerned about being shot, the joke wasn’t very helpful, was because with Stalag Luft 3 and the Great Escape.
HW: Yes.
CB: Then the Germans shot fifty, didn’t they? So, but the other point was you mentioned about glider pilots. So, the reaction of the Germans to glider pilots. What was that? A confusion.
HW: Oh, they accepted them the same as they accepted them as airmen. They didn’t accept them as fighting men. Although of course when they landed their glider they didn’t just sit there and do nothing. They were fighting men from then on.
CB: Yeah. So, these pilots had been captured where? Where would they have been captured?
HW: What? The glider pilots? Arnhem. Arnhem, and around about there.
CB: Right. Ok.
HW: Crete, some of them had been captured at.
CB: Ok. I’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So you were shot down and there was a sequence that occurred.
HW: Yes. Yes.
CB: So, what was the first you knew about there being an attack?
HW: A warning from the, from the mid-upper gunner. Corkscrew port. Err corkscrew starboard go.’ Now, are you familiar with the corkscrew movement?
CB: Yes.
HW: When an aircraft is coming down on you like that and you’re — he’s coming, you’re both going the same direction he can sit tight and take good steady aim where he was. So, the thing to do when you came under attack from a fighter was not to turn away from him and go in the same direction but turn towards him so you were closing. The two aircraft were closing at some five hundred miles an hour. So he had no time whatever to take careful aim. In fact, if there was a corkscrew and you were moving upwards it was forcing him to go upwards as well. And he couldn’t get at the bomber flying down below. So it was this corkscrew manoeuvre that was the good one. If a Messerschmitt 110 pilot had time to take aim then he was nicely placed. But if he’d been detected and a corkscrew movement by the bar was immediately started he was on a loser. So, that was their favourite method of attack. The other method of attack if it was by a Junkers 88 which had a cannon sticking upwards in the roof was to come along underneath the bomber, point his cannon upwards at the fuselage or petrol tanks or wherever and just let rip. Because he was flying at the same speed as the bomber so he could take careful aim.
CB: That’s using schrage music.
HW: Yeah. We, we had, there was a downward looking radar that we had to detect this but unfortunately the Germans were homing on to that, transmissions of that radar. It was helping find a target, in fact. So, this downward looking radar called Fishpond was, was soon, was soon given up.
CB: So, on this, on this occasion how did the attack proceed?
HW: The first attack he was sitting in a nice — he should have known. He should have been able to take our plane. He came down, opened fire but missed. There were no hits. So, he carried on downwards. Came along underneath and up to his original position for a similar attack from a similar sort of position. This time our gunners knew what was going on and started the corkscrew manoeuvre as soon as he started to dive. But he was able to get in sufficient shots with his cannons and machine guns to perforate one of the petrol tanks in the, in the starboard wing. That was all, if they had time they preferred to attack from the starboard side because any pilot learning to fly always sits in the right hand err left hand seat. So pilots had the war, even in modern times they find it easier to look out to their left hand side rather than look right across the fuselage to the other side. So, the [pause] well that’s about it. As I said the petrol tanks were set on fire. One petrol tank anyway was set on fire and it was, oh the pilot, the engineer said, ‘Wilf, we’re on fire.’ And I looked up from down in the nose and I could see a roaring mass of flame where burning petrol was coming flooding in through the wing roots into the fuselage. And that was also where the oxygen bottles were stored. And if they’d got really, when they got really hot they would have gone off like bombs anyway. The pilot just took one look and gave the order to evacuate the aircraft. There was obviously nothing, there was no way that fire was going to be put out so he had no hesitation. On the first attack I’d kept my parachute pack on. On to the parachute harness. So I didn’t have to scrabble around to try and find that and then clip it on. It was on there and ready for when the second attack came. So, that’s it.
CB: So, the parachute you wore on the front or behind you?
HW: Oh, on the front. Two. Two clips on the front.
CB: Right.
HW: On the chest parachute.
CB: So, on the fighter’s second run he was successful and punctured tanks on which side?
HW: On the, on the starboard. Or right hand side if you want. In the wing root.
CB: And when the pilot realised what was going on what did he then do? He called —
HW: Oh, he just said, oh, he looked up, ‘Abandon aircraft.’ There was no hesitation. Not, ‘Well, I wonder if we can get that put out.’ No. There was, as I said there was no way that fire was going to be put out. So, that’s how it went.
CB: So, when you get the order to abandon aircraft what was the sequence that you went through?
HW: I, I was already standing up so my seat had folded over on springs. Folded itself against the wall. Kicked away the legs of the navigation table and that collapsed leaving an open space about, about four feet by three feet I should say. It’s a big trapdoor on the floor. I bent down, turned the handle of the trap door, raised the trap door and when I got above the vertical you could lift it off its hinges. Turn it diagonally, drop it through the hole and then follow it. Facing backwards of course out of the slipstream.
CB: Right. So, that’s straight through the floor and then the idea — what did the rest, what were the rest of the crew supposed to do?
HW: The bomb aimer should have been next. He was, it was all sort of — we’d been well trained at abandoning aircraft. There was no — they were all our drills. There was no pushing and shoving, ‘Get out of my way.’ ‘Let me go first.’ ‘Hurry up.’ ‘Get a move on.’ No. There was none of that sort of. It all fell in to place like that. So, the bomb aimer would have been next. The wireless operator would have been third. The, the mid-upper gunner he would have had to extract himself from his turret which he was very closely held in, hemmed in by machine guns, ammunition belts and heaven knows what. He would have had a job to. It would have taken him time to get out of there, locate his parachute, put it on to his, on the hooks on his chest. The same applied to the rear gunner. He couldn’t keep his parachute in the turret because there wasn’t room for it. He kept it in the fuselage just outside the turret. So, he had to open the turret doors, extricate himself from all the equipment inside the turret, reach for his parachute, put it on, make his way to the main exit door on the port side, open the door. You see, it all took time. Time was getting. They hadn’t the time to do it.
CB: Right. So, in the practicality, the actuality I should say of this you got out as soon as you were told to do so.
HW: Yes.
CB: What happened to the rest of the crew?
HW: Well, presumably trying to extricate themselves but I hadn’t been long out of there, only a few seconds before there was an explosion. And I think a petrol tank with just vapour inside exploded when the flames got to it. Or else the main spar had been so weakened by the fire that under the weight of the engines the wing just fell off and the aircraft would have gone in to a spiral like that. Trapping those inside. They’d never have made their way to an escape hatch then.
CB: So, you didn’t see any other parachutes?
HW: No. There weren’t any other. So, they must have, they must have gone down. Nobody was injured I don’t think. But they must have gone down in this knowing quite well they’d no chance of getting out and that they were going to be killed when it hit the ground.
CB: What height were you flying that day?
HW: When we were attacked we were flying at fifteen thousand.
CB: Did you normally fly within a band or what was the —
HW: Well, on the way to the target, oh and on the way home again you never flew at the same height like that. It was always slightly on the climb, a little bit level, down a bit, up a bit. Down. Down. Down. Down. Up. And like that so that the Germans couldn’t, if they knew we were going to be flying at fifteen thousand they’d have had all their anti-aircraft shells fused for fifteen thousand.
CB: Was there a popular height that you would fly?
HW: Pardon?
CB: Was there a certain height that was more popular that you would fly?
HW: No. No. They were graduated from, bombing height was normally eighteen thousand to twenty thousand. Lancasters could get a little bit higher. Lancasters could probably get up to twenty one. But Halifaxes, well they could struggle up to twenty one but usually not above twenty.
CB: So, at the time you had already dropped. What was your target? You’d already dropped your bombs.
HW: What was that?
CB: What was your target that day? Duisburg.
HW: The armament works at Duisburg.
CB: Right.
HW: I mean, and quite often if you didn’t hit the actual armament works, a lot of bombs did no doubt but if if they were falling in around about within say four or five hundred yards they were going to be destroying railway lines, power stations, the worker’s, the worker’s hospitals, the worker’s homes. They were going to spread chaos around about setting the whole thing on fire. Letting the fire carry on and do the explosives. Scatter them and the flammable material about and the incendiaries we carried set it on fire. So —
CB: So, what was the combination of ordnance that you carried?
HW: Oh, it varied. Once, once we had a two or probably more than once, you’ll see what our bomb load was on, on the report of the operations that our aircraft carried out. You’ll see the bomb load. A mixture of the two thousand pounder. Maybe two one thousand pounders and some incendiaries. Or maybe eight five hundred pounders and some incendiaries. Sometimes a thirty kilogram incendiary device. Phosphorous bomb. Sometimes it was the ordinary five pound incendiary. Just ones that burst in to flames when they hit the ground. It varied from time to time. But you could see by the —
CB: Yeah. Now, the Cookie was a four thousand pound drum. What was in it?
HW: A Cookie?
CB: Yeah. What was in a Cookie?
HW: Just, just explosive.
CB: One single blast bomb was it?
HW: Hmmn?
CB: One single explosive.
HW: Yes. Yeah.
CB: Not combination of things.
HW: No. No. No.
CB: Ok. Just stop there a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So, in, in how did the crew gel? In the air and socially.
HW: Oh, absolutely. There was no suspicion of anybody not being quite up to the mark. Everybody performed their job perfectly as far as I’m aware. On the ground sometimes we went [unclear] to go together, to hire a bicycle go off to a village pub and have quite a few beers there and sometimes I’d be with one. Sometimes two or three of us would go together. Sometimes the whole crew will go. We had got station bicycles and headed for the nearest pub.
CB: In some cases people got a bit nervous about what they were doing. How did you see the reaction of your crew before take-off?
HW: What? You mean about dropping bombs and killing civilians? Well, their attitude was, well they asked for it and they got it. I remember hearing Air Marshal Harris on the radio once when, when he’d got Bomber Command built up the way he wanted. The strength that he wanted. He had said originally, ‘Give me four thousand aircraft and I can finish the war.’ Well, that wasn’t on. They couldn’t. There were too many other demands for equipment. But he soldiered on until, there came a time when you remember the thousand bomber raids on Cologne for instance? When he’d got enough he’d got enough. And he said on the, on the radio, and he had a very Churchillian way of talking. He said, ‘People say that you can never win a war by bombing alone. Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried before. And we shall see. I have the men. I have the aircraft. I have the equipment for the navigators to get the aircraft to the right space. The Germans started this business of area bombing in London. Now, they are going to get a taste of their own medicine. Hot and strong. And they won’t like it.’ So it gave new heart to Bomber Command. Right. We finished dropping bombs on open countryside. Now, each bomb is going to do some damage. We’ve got the equipment. We’ve got the gear. We’ve got the organisation. From now on we’re all going forward. And as I say the Germans asked for — they started the business of area bombing so they hadn’t really got any grounds for complaints.
CB: It was a dangerous task going on operations.
HW: Yes.
CB: How did the crew react to that?
HW: Some, some hundred thousand men flew with Bomber Command. And I’ll give you it in very round figures there and fifty six thousand were killed. So, your chances of coming through were less than, less than fifty fifty. And moreover when you’d done your thirty, thirty trips was a tour, when you’d done your thirty you were as they said rested. But in fact you weren’t rested at all. You went to Operational Training Units and to assist with the training of other pilots who were just getting ready to go on operations. So quite a lot were killed in that sort of —
CB: Yeah.
HW: In that sort of activity as well. And then to go back for another. Another twenty. A second tour was twenty. When you’d done that lot, if you’d, very few done it — when you’d done it then they couldn’t make you do any more. You’d fulfilled your obligations.
CB: What knowledge, experience or hearsay did you have about people lacking moral fibre. LMF?
HW: I never came across any of it at all. I can understand that maybe for some people the mental stress was just too much and they couldn’t take any more. I don’t believe they chickened out of their own free will. They just felt that they could not do it anymore. And so I don’t look upon those as cowards. I look upon those who were prepared to give it their best shot but they couldn’t cope with it.
CB: Now, the RAF took a pretty stern line on that.
HW: Pardon?
CB: The RAF took a very stern line.
HW: Oh yes. They didn’t take the same point of view as I’ve just been explaining. They were sent to ordinary Air Force camps. Not necessarily operational. And they were put on the dirtiest jobs of cleaning latrines and wash houses. All that sort of thing. The Air Force regrettably looked upon them as cowards. I don’t think there were all that many of them.
CB: Right. What would you say was the most memorable experience you had in the war?
HW: Well, just getting shot down I think. They were all memorable. The getting shot down, the aircraft on fire, the parachute jump. All these sort of things. The Long March. They all added up to a pretty unpleasant time.
CB: As you said just now you were the sole survivor of the seven crew in the aircraft because the others just didn’t get out. How did you feel about that?
HW: That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
CB: And after that, in Prisoner of War camp to what extent did people discuss their experiences?
HW: Most people told you as much as I’ve been telling you. They seemed to, seemed to be the same sort of thing in most crews. They tell you what happened. Not complaining mostly but tell you what happened. And that was the way it was.
CB: In Stalag Luft 7, did the Germans come and interrogate you after you arrived ever?
HW: No. That was all done at Frankfurt. At Oberursel. They got all the information and that was it. You were just sent to a prison camp. You were just a prisoner.
CB: And what was the procedure they followed in interrogating?
HW: The procedure?
CB: When you were being interrogated what were, how did they do it? What was the procedure?
HW: Oh, when I arrived at Oberursel I was put in a solitary cell. All, all arrivals there were placed in solitary cells. A very narrow cell where the windows were barred. You couldn’t see out. They were frosted glass. There was a bed with a bit of a mattress on it. Not very well stuffed. A blanket. And that was, when you wanted to go to the toilet you had to pull a handle near the door and like a signal arm outside in the corridor fell down with a clang. And the German guards in the corridor came along. And you’d say, ‘Toilet.’ And he’d take you along to the toilet which was at the end of the corridor. Outside that toilet there was a box on the wall with sheets of paper which you had to have to take with you as you went in. I thought — I took two, they were a bit on the small side. I took two sheets of paper. And the German said, ‘Nein. Nein, he says, ‘Ein. Ein.’ So, I had to put one back. And you got escorted back to your cell. And you got your tea in the morning. And a bit of bread. The soup at mid-day and that was very much it.
CB: So, what was the first bit of interrogation they did?
HW: Oh, yeah. I got taken, after about, I’d say two days maybe it was absolutely solitary. It was to break you down a bit, I think. Got taken. A guard took me along to another part of the prison and where the interrogation took place. I was put in an office where there was a German. A major I think he probably was. Wearing a black uniform anyway. It smelt richly of cigar smoke in there. A very comfortable office. I was sat in a chair in front of his desk. And he could speak, of course perfect English. Obviously he had to do that, didn’t he? And he said, ‘There are some things I would like to know about you, Sergeant Wagner,’ he says. ‘Firstly,’ he says, ‘You have no identity tags.’ I said, ‘No. Before we came last evening I had to wear them around my neck on a piece of string but the string broke. So I left them behind me and I thought I’ll put new string on when I get back home.’ ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘Yes’ He says, ‘What squadron were you?’ ‘You know, sir, I can’t tell you things like that. The Geneva Conventions says that I must tell you my name, rank and service number.’ So, ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘It would be a big help to me,’ he said, ‘ If I could believe you, you see,’ he said. ‘We have a man here who has no identity tags and he will not say, he will not say what squadron he belongs to. He says he has been wandering about in Germany for six days. Six days without any food?’ He says, ‘I must think more about this.’ And I was sent back to the cell again. Left for another two days and got called up to his office. And he says, ‘Ah, sergeant. Sergeant Wagner,’ he says, ‘I have had some information. Some more information has reached me,’ he said. ‘I have had a crew in from 51 Squadron who say, I asked them, have any member — and they tell me their squadron,’ he said, ‘They tell me what squadron. You did not tell me what squadron,’ he said, ‘They tell me what. I say has any other crew been missing from your squadron lately? And they gave me the name. They say, ‘Yes. The crew of Warrant Officer Bates.’ ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘And a sergeant was, sergeant, the navigator was Sergeant Wagner.’ He says, ‘Things are beginning to fall into place now,’ he says. He said, ‘You were wandering about for six days without food? What did you drink?’ I said, ‘Well, water out of cattle troughs mostly.’ And he said, ‘What was your bomb load on the night you were —?’ I said, ‘Firstly, sir, you know I can’t tell you that. Secondly, I didn’t know what the bomb load because it was of no interest to me.’ And thirdly he says, ‘What height were you flying?’ I said, ‘We were never on the same level. Sometimes we were going up. Sometimes we were going down. Sometimes we’d be level a bit,’ I said, ‘I can’t remember all the different.’ So, that seemed to satisfy him. He realised that I couldn’t really be expected to remember all that. So, in the end he was still smoking a cigar by the way and it was, he realised I think, well, I’ve got all I can get out of this chap. He’s not being deliberately obstructive. I can’t expect him to remember these things. There’s no point making things more difficult for him. Because getting towards the end of the war they realised they wanted, they didn’t want to raise their heads above the parapet. They wanted to keep a low profile. If he’d been guilty of any, I should say illegal activities then he would have been made to pay the penalty afterwards. So, we parted on reasonable terms shall we say. I went back to my cell. Left there for another three or four days and then got moved by train to, to [pause] moved by this to Wetzlar, that’s right. It was a transit camp. Everybody went there and they were sorted in to batches according to which prison camp in Germany they went to. And when my batch came up after about after three or four days then off I went by train over to, over to Bankau.
CB: So the plane landed where?
HW: The plane?
CB: Where did your plane land?
HW: It crashed in Holland. Just close, just the British had been occupying that area for just a few days. The Germans had just been kicked out. The, so the crew were all buried by, by the Dutch people and, but on my parachute I drifted back across the River Maas and landed behind German lines. In the back garden of a house in a village.
CB: Did you?
HW: It’s all in there.
CB: Yeah. Did you have any detail of where the plane actually crashed?
HW: No. No. It wasn’t until after the war that I went back there because I was in a Dutch twinning club. And I went over there one year and got in touch with the Dutch farmer whose land it had crashed on. And he gave me a big piece of — a big piece of the fuselage of our aircraft. A big piece of metal sheeting which I brought back to England and which is now in our aircraft museum over here at Wisbech.
CB: Did the Germans recover the aircraft or did they just leave them in the field?
HW: Well, the Germans weren’t there when it crashed.
CB: No. No. I just wondered if in general —
HW: Oh. In general.
CB: You knew whether they had left.
HW: No. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t be bothered. If it skated along on the surface.
CB: Yeah.
HW: Came down and was in reasonable condition of course they salvaged it and examined it and tested it and all that sort of thing. But it had gone in. It had gone in deep.
CB: Yes. If it was vertical.
HW: Some that we’ve dug up in this vicinity they, well one over near Downham Market it had crashed between, between two water courses. And we got in touch with the Water Board and they said, ‘You can go down to sixteen feet and no further or you’ll upset the water table.’ So, you have to get permission from the Ministry first that there’s no explosives on board.
CB: Yeah.
HW: So, then you have to get the landowners permission. And if he says no of course you can’t go on his land and dig it up if he says, ‘No. You can’t come on here.’
CB: No.
HW: So, quite often it’s been a matter of just waiting.
[recording paused]
CB: So, after the war did people have interest in you being a POW?
HW: No. No. No. Not really. No interest whatever. In fact, it’s the same with a lot of people. My daughter has three sons and none of them ever showed the slightest interest in war time or my flying career or war time or anything of that sort. They’ve never seen any of these documents I’ve got here. They just show, haven’t shown any interest. My son, on the other hand, he was always interested in flying. He was, he joined the Air Training Corps. Wanted to go into the Air Force as a pilot. He was accepted for officer training. But for aircrew training he failed the medical. They said, ‘No. You’ve got a weak right eye,’ So they said, ‘We can give you other careers.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘Pilot. I’m not interested in anything else.’ So, he resigned from the Air Force and took on, went into Air Traffic Control. And that’s where he worked all his life. Down at Air Traffic Control down at Southampton.
CB: Yeah.
HW: But he retired last about two months ago now and he’s, he’ll finish off his, the contract that he got, house that he’s got that he rents down at, down at Bishops Waltham. He’ll finish off that contract and then he’s going to buy a house up at Thetford. So —
CB: Right.
HW: And my daughter has just, she’s sold her house at Milton Keynes. They’ve moved up to Dersingham so they won’t be far away. So, but my son took up — he was interested. When I took up the hang gliding of course.
CB: At ninety.
HW: He perked his ears up.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
HW: And I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘If you’re interested,’ I said, ‘I’ll pay for your training. You can come over with me when I go over hang gliding. You can take your elementary certificate and then your club pilot certificate,’ he said. I said. So that’s what he did. So, he’s got as well as his he took his own private pilot’s licence just to, just to prove to himself he could do it. And then he’s, so he’s a qualified hang glider pilot. Same as I. But of course I don’t carry on. They won’t let me go hang gliding now.
CB: No. For your ninetieth birthday what did you do?
HW: I gathered my daughter and her children, sons and my son and his wife and we had an evening over at the Rising Sun pub. No. Not the Rising Sun. The Locomotive pub in Wisbech. And drinks were on me and we had a very happy evening all gathered together there. And we — I’ve forgot what I was going to say now.
CB: Didn’t you go on — did you do a parachute drop?
HW: Pardon?
CB: Did you do a parachute drop?
HW: No. I wanted to do. A friend of mine whose wife has MS, he said, ‘Would you do a standard parachute jump for MS funds?’ I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m not very keen, Dick because, well quite honestly I can’t stand this business of going around asking people for money and asking people to sponsor.’ He said, ‘I’ll take of all that,’ he said. ‘Leave all that to me.’ He said, ‘Would you do it?’ I said, ‘Oh, I’ll do it alright.’ So, I got in touch with the appropriate, appropriate Association and they said, ‘Well, yes, they said, you’re going to have to have a doctor’s certificate of fitness.’ I said, ‘I’ll get that alright.’ So, when I went to my doctor he said, ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said, ‘You know you have a slight heart murmur.’ I said, ‘Yes. I’ve had that for years and years.’ He said, he said, ‘I’m not sure about this,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll consult with a colleague of mine who is a heart surgeon and I will ask his advice. See what he thinks. So, and I will let you know.’ So, I went back a week later. ‘My colleague said he does not advise this.’ Mind they were just watching their own backs. I mean if they’d said yes and if there had been trouble, then they would have been in trouble. So, and I don’t blame them for watching their backs in these compensation days. So, I said to Dick, ‘Well, no. I can’t do it, Dick. They won’t let me. I’ll tell you what I will do though. I’ll do a bunjee jump.’ So, he said — ‘And you can, if you can get people to sponsor me for that, ok. You carry on.’ So, I got in touch with the bunjee people, ‘Do I need a medical?’ They said, ‘No. How old are you?’ I said, ‘Ninety.’ ‘Do you take any drugs?’ ‘No.’ ‘Have you had any heart trouble?’ ‘No. Not really. No.’ ‘That’ll be ok then.’ So, so I went. So, I did the bunjee jump and I’d do another one if I had a chance. I enjoyed that.’
CB: What was it, what was it, what did you feel when you did it?
HW: What? While I was going on? Oh, enjoying it. They don’t let you go down like that which would be a bit tame. They swing the jib from side to side. They swing you back and forth like that. So, it’s not a just a straight drop. Yeah. I enjoyed that. I’d like another one of those. But if another, if another, if they come back to Wisbech again and I see, I see, I get the chance I’ll give it another go.
CB: There’s a notion amongst flight —
HW: Hmmn?
CB: There’s a notion amongst flying people that they don’t want to jump out of an aeroplane if they can help it. Do you think having had to get out when the plane was going down that gave you a different perspective?
HW: No. No. It was a case of stay here and die or go. So the obvious answer was go.
CB: But doing it again you would have a choice?
HW: If I had. Yeah. I’d be quite happy knowing what the drill is. Know I’ve got to drop a certain distance before pulling the, before pulling the cord. And, yeah I’d be quite happy to do an ordinary solo jump but of course they won’t let me now.
CB: No. No. Henry Wagner thank you very much for the rematch.
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 Henry Wolfe Wagner. Two
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-07-19
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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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AWagenrHW170719, PWagnerHW1701
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:53:56 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
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Henry’s aircraft was shot down when the fuel tank exploded on the starboard wing and came down in Holland. Henry was the only member of the crew to bail out. Their target had been the armament works in Duisburg. Henry drifted across the River Maas behind German lines and was taken prisoner. He was interrogated at Oberursel, near Frankfurt, and moved to a transit camp at Wetzlar before being sent by train to Stalag Luft 7 at Bankau.
Henry describes The Long March from Bankau to Luckenwalde, the cold, the guards and lack of food. They walked for some three weeks to Goldberg and then spent two days in cattle trucks going to Luckenwalde. Anyone who fell was left at the roadside to die of exposure.
Henry refers to the large number of aircrew who lost their lives in Bomber Command and one of Air Marshal Harris’s speeches on the radio.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
Spatial Coverage
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Netherlands
Europe--Meuse River
Poland
Poland--Tychowo
Germany--Luckenwalde
Germany
Temporal Coverage
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1945
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Henry explains the high attrition rate of Bomber Command and the RAF’s concept of men with a ‘lack of moral fibre’ which he disagrees with. Henry describes the ‘corkscrew movement’, ‘schrage music’ and why the ‘Fishpond’ radar had to be discontinued. He talks of the range of different ordinance they may be required to carry.
Evacuation was never easy from the aircraft, particularly when there was damage to its infrastructure, and there were difficulties removing some of the crew safely. However, due to many drills to this procedure they left the plane in an orderly and pre-arranged fashion. There was also the added complication of any parachute malfunction, fire from other plane enemy/friendly, and anti-aircraft fire from the ground on top of any problems arising from the landing. Landing in an area already ablaze with the very bombs that you were there to drop was also a real concern.
When Henry had to bail out of his Halifax, they aircraft landed in Holland and was buried too deeply to be salvaged.
He describes his journey though Oberursel, Frankfurt to Stalag 7 Bankau, and the march they had to make because the Germans wanted to keep the POWs away from the oncoming Russians. He explains how the POWs survived their time in captivity, particularly after the ‘Great Escape’ from Stalag Luft 3 where fifty were killed. Towards the conclusion of the war, the POWs worried that they too were going to be killed like those of Stalag Luft 3.
The march from Bankau to Luckenwalde took place in the winter of 1944/45. The POWs never knew how far they would be marching each day, what they would be given to eat or where they would sleep. Henry calls modern reconstructions of the march ‘pantomimes’ as they bear little resemblance to the truth. The German guards would threaten to shoot anyone who failed to keep pace with the group, but Henry cannot recall this occurring. Rather those men who fell behind were left to die from exposure to the cold.
The interview concludes with Henry’s post-war life in teaching, his family and what he became involved with once he retired.
Claire Campbell
aircrew
bale out
bombing
Dulag Luft
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
lack of moral fibre
navigator
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
sanitation
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
-
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618f3494008f7e19b194a907f9ca6882
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1123/11614/ASimmondsJE171114.1.mp3
75368cc2130c56e3cb7dcd43cae774fc
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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Simmonds, Jack Edward
J E Simmonds
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Jack Simmonds (1920 - 2020, 67595 Royl Air Force). He flew operations as pilot with 77 Squadron until he was shot down and became a prisoner of war.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-14
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Simmonds, JE
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CJ: This is Chris Johnson and I’m interviewing Jack Simmonds today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Jack’s home and it is Tuesday the 14th of November 2017. Thank you, Jack for agreeing to talk to me today. Also present at the interview is Jack’s son, Paul. So, Jack, first of all perhaps could you tell us where and when you were born please and what your family background was?
JS: Yes. Yes. Firstly, I was born on the 8th of December 1920 and I was born in Gillingham in Kent and my father was a serving officer in the Royal Air Force. We, he had moved around a great deal and at that particular stage my mother had bought a house in Gillingham and that’s why I was born there. Otherwise we have no connection at all with that particular area. Fairly early on, when I was about five or six my father was posted to Egypt, and we moved out there and I stayed there for six years. I went to school in Victoria College in Alexandria and came back to the UK. As I said I was about six years, and we came back to Gillingham in Kent. I went for a short period to King’s, sorry to the Mathematical School at Rochester and when my father was posted again as also as people do we wondered around the UK following, following the parent. And my father was posted to Halton near Aylesbury and I spent about a year at Aylesbury Grammar School. Subsequently he was posted down to Worthy Down in Hampshire and we moved down to Winchester. I spent really the rest of my schooling at Peter Symonds School in Winchester, and I boarded there for a while when my father was posted away from Winchester to Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. I left school at the age of eighteen from, from Winchester and at that time was 1939 and the war was just about to start. After some discussion with my parents, I didn’t want to get conscripted into the Army or the Navy so I went to Oxford and volunteered to become a pilot. Now, it was difficult at that stage to select what category of aircrew you wanted to join but I was fortunate that, presumably because of my connection with the Air Force, they agreed that I should be nominated for pilot. Now, after that very little happened. I spent nearly six months at Selwyn College in Cambridge where they, I suppose tried to indoctrinate us in what the Air Force was about and doing some odd things like stripping down a machine gun and that sort of thing. And after that I was posted to — I can’t remember my number. I think it was 11 Elementary, Elementary Flying Training School at Coventry, and I obviously learned to fly and was taught flying on Tiger Moths. Now, at that stage of the war where the air force was extremely short of pilots, they were being shot down and killed all over the place, and for some reason or other I was not sent from Elementary Flying Training School to Flying Training School. They for some reason decided that they would try and see if they could avoid the elementary, the Flying Training School stage. So we were sent, about six of us from, from Coventry — or not. No. We weren’t all from Coventry. They were from, I think around the country, down to Abingdon. To the, I think it was number 11 Operational Training Unit. I’m not quite sure of the number. And we were taught, we were then presented with the fact that we were going to go straight on to the operational aircraft. the Whitley. From the Tiger Moth straight to Whitley. And we spent, in fact really we were quite an embarrassment because we were just airmen. We weren’t NCOs. We weren’t officers. We couldn’t use the sergeants’ mess, couldn’t use the officers’ mess. So, eventually they cleared a couple of married quarters and gave us those and allocated us a corner of the sergeant’s mess to eat and so on. I stayed there until I was qualified and in that same time I got my wings. And I stayed at Abingdon for probably about four months, I can’t remember exactly until I was qualified as a, as a Whitley pilot and then posted to 51 Squadron in Dishforth. I did my first couple of operations. My first operations were from Dishforth, and after about, I don’t know how many months — probably two or three months, I was commissioned. I was — by the way when I left Abingdon I was then made a sergeant. So I was a sergeant at Dishforth and then suddenly I was commissioned and moved, posted to Topcliffe, 77 Squadron. They also, of course had Whitleys. There was two squadrons there. 77 and 102 I think. The — I started my operational flying there obviously and on about my seventh or eighth one, I can’t remember, operation I was shot down over the Ruhr and we had a little bit of a problems maintaining our — by the way my navigator was wounded when we were caught by anti-aircraft fire. He got a lump of flak through his chest and so we obviously couldn’t bale out because he was flat out on the floor. And we went on for about half an hour or so on one, on one engine and eventually we, that failed and we crash landed in a sort of a swamp, about, I don’t know how many miles, about, about twenty miles short of Eindhoven I think. The, the swamp itself was not quite deep enough to sink but nearly, and I remember getting out and going around the back, getting the back door open and trying to smash the IFF thing that we were told to try and destroy if we had a chance. And during this period we got the navigator out and sat him on the top of the fuselage. He was still alive, and by that time there were Germans who apparently, we subsequently found had been following us by radar, Germans coming up the road which was about, probably about a couple of hundred metres from where we landed. And they took us to a radar station and then I went off to jail in Rotterdam. And I was there for — I don’t know really, probably three, two or three weeks. And the interesting thing about that was we were, I was interviewed by a so-called Red Cross person who offered me cigarettes and things and then tried to, to find out where I came from and me and my squadron who — you know. Trying to interrogate, and then after about three weeks in jail I was sent down to Frankfurt to the — I think it was a reception camp. And I remember being quite, I suppose shocked by the fact that some of the inmates there had settled into the, to the arrangements in the camp and were apparently cooperating I suppose with the locals. The only chance, the only time they tried then to, to interrogate me was at, for some reason they removed all my clothes and I was in this room and this, this Hauptman, a major [pause] He was a Luftwaffe major, immaculately dressed in white and boots and all that and tried to investigate where I came from and who I was and where, you know what the names of my crew were, and what my, my target for that night was and so on. Just generally tried to, to find out information. The next thing that happened about six or eight of us were shoved on a train and sent down to Salzburg. We were in — I can’t remember the name of the — I think it was Oflag something 6. I don’t know. So, it was army. It was army officers there and they were again a bit settled in their ways. They were a little bit resentful of, of half a dozen young and feisty aircrew coming in. We stayed there for, I can’t remember, say three months. I don’t know. And then we were sent to Leipzig. Now, Salzburg to Leipzig was a long way [laughs] and we went unfortunately by cattle truck, and I think we took seven days, and it wasn’t a very pleasant time as you imagine. When we got to, to the camp at Leipzig it had just been evacuated by Russian prisoners of war and was really derelict. There was nothing there. Virtually. And I know one thing that I had obtained when I was down at Salzburg was that I met a friend of mine who was an army officer who I had known some couple of years before. And he managed to obtain for me a nice blanket. A pale blue blanket which, I enjoyed mine. And I got to Leipzig. The first thing they did, one goon said, ‘That’s mine.’ and whipped it. The only thing that really strikes me about Lubeck was that it was bare. You know, it was very, very austere. We, we were very, very badly treated there. Very poor food. In fact we managed to catch the camp cat and cooked that. We went from there to Warburg to another army camp. That was about, Warburg was about the centre of Germany somewhere. I’m not quite sure. I know a lot of army, army people there. They were all, of course they were all officers and most had been, been there since, since 1939/40. That sort of time. We were there for, I don’t know probably six months at least when we upped again and were sent off to Poland. We went to a place called Posen (Poznan?) I think it was in Poland. Which was not very far from Danzig. About forty miles south of Danzig. The, the terrain there was very, very soft and sandy, and I know that particularly because digging tunnels was very, very difficult. You, you were going through the ground and you had behind you had [unclear] and that was very scary. We stayed there for perhaps [pause] perhaps a year. I don’t know. But we were posted or were posted, sent off to Stalag Luft, Stalag Luft 3. Now, people first, everybody says to me, ‘Did you go to Stalag Luft 3?’, and I said, ‘Yes’, and they said, ‘Were you in the big escape?’ And people didn’t understand that in Stalag Luft 3 there were two camps. The North Camp and the East Camp, and I was in the East Camp, and the big escape took place from the North Camp. The only escape of significant importance I think from our place was the two that got away in the horse. The — we used to take it out every day and pop it in the middle of a field and little did they realise that when we carried it out we had two people in them, and we put it down in the same place and they were digging a tunnel out and —
CJ: This was the wooden exercise horse if I remember.
JS: The wooden horse. Yes. And we were fairly, it was fairly easy to dispose of all the tunnels there because when we carried the, the wooden horse out to the playing field the, there were big paths through sort of sacks we’d made of our bed blankets and we could walk around the perimeter track and sort of let this go. So all the rubbish that they had dug from that tunnel was disposed around the camp. These two were successful. They got out and I think both of them made, made it to Sweden, I think. I think, and I think one was Swedish at any rate. We stayed there. I was in Stalag Luft 3 for about two years, and one night they, because by that time the movement of the war the Russians were, were approaching from the east. And incidentally in where I was in the, in Stalag Luft 3 we had what we called JH which stands for Jimmy Higgins. Anybody who’s been in Stalag Luft 3 East camp would know who that is because we’d arranged — we had a boffin who had got, bribed the guard to bring him bits of wireless equipment and we’d built alongside a table a radio. And so we knew exactly what was going on from UK, and every night, at whatever time it was we used to close down the place. Make certain there were no, no ferrets underneath there. People. Ferrets who wandered around looking for tunnels, and they used to give us an update of the UK news. So, although the Germans were, were propagating all the news over the biggest tunnels we actually knew what was really going on. We left there one, I think Friday night in, in February I think it was when the Russians were approaching, and the Germans decided to walk us out and we walked from there to [pause] I’m trying to remember the name of the place. A place called Luckenwalde which was about, I suppose about thirty kilometres south of Berlin. And we hadn’t been there very long and again I don’t know how long that was before a Russian small tank group probably consisting of six Soviet tanks arrived, and we fortunately had a Russian speaker. Somebody within, within our group. No matter what you wanted. Could speak Swahili or whatever. There was always somebody there because you know they gathered the aircrew from quite a wide range of, of population, and he was dealing with the, with the young I suppose. He was a lieutenant and I can remember being very amazed that all the tanks, these six or so tanks covered with people, Russians, and he said half of them were females and you couldn’t tell. And he said, one of the things he said was that he had great trouble in in communicating with his troop because they didn’t all speak the same language. Some came from Uzbekistan or somewhere. They spoke, didn’t speak Russian, and so he had great trouble. I know we had great difficulty with one of their, the Russians who decided he wanted to take watches, and he went around some of the officers and sort of said, ‘Your watch’, and we complained to this young lad, this young officer, and he said [unclear] and so he called this fellow. This fellow had a whole heap of watches at the time. And they took him out and shot him. Bang. One of the things that was extraordinary that happened that one of the tanks decided to go around the camp taking down all the barbed wire. Just tore the lights and the communications, everything with them. The lot. So, we really were, we were really a bit concerned whether the locals were going to be friendly or not, and I can remember one morning when we were sort of, we were free really. We could have gone anywhere. We went off to a building we could see about a half a mile away and it turned out to be one of these army stores and I could have picked up all sorts of gorgeous things there. Like, do you know the lovely, those lovely red flags they had in Germany with the big swastika on the bottom? But they were much too heavy to carry. But I did pick up a few, a few German — not medals but they were, they were campaign things, and I’ve still got those somewhere. We, we stayed there sort of really in limbo for a while. And I was down on the gate. We tried to maintain a semblance of, of a gate when some Americans arrived in a, in a, I think it’s a scout car, you know. One of the things that you drove. You drive one way or the other. And so two of us got on that one and they took us back to their base and then took us up to Brussels, and I flew from Brussels back to the UK. And that was sort of my war.
CJ: Very interesting. Thank you. So, what happened to you when you got home then and what did you do following on from that?
JS: Well, the end of the war I was sent up somewhere. I can’t remember where. Up in the Midlands. Really, I suppose to rehabilitate myself. And they put us all around the place like down a coal mine and up a and up a steel mill and those sorts of things. And eventually I decided that I would attempt to stay in the air force. And they sent me to, to Cairo. And I was at the headquarters in Cairo for about six months and that started to fold up and then I was sent to, to Lydda which is now Lod, in Palestine as the station adjutant. And I stayed there for about — oh I don’t know. Six months. Until they decided, the Air Force decided to give me a permanent commission in the Air Force. And I went from there to the army really. I was sent as the adjutant of an army cooperation squadron, air squadron which was flying Oxfords. And so I spent about three — oh more than that I think. Probably a year or more with the army. Flying officers all over Palestine and it was very fortunate really in a way because you had your own private aeroplane really. I used to fly off to Oman for the weekend and down to the Canal Zone for the weekend. You know, that’s as if I had a taxi of my own. Then I was very, very sports minded at the time and I was playing hockey for the squadron against another army unit and the Irish Fusiliers I think it was, and the goalkeeper smashed me across the face and knocked my front teeth out. And they decided to send me home to try and get that fixed up. And so that ended my, my time in the Middle East. And when I got back to the UK having been fixed up with some teeth, they sent me up to somewhere. Wyton or somewhere, to fly Wellington, Wellingtons, Wellingtons. Well, I converted on to Wellingtons then. Having done that they sent me to up, further up to Yorkshire to convert onto the replacement for the Lancaster which was the Lincoln, and of course the Lincoln was never introduced into the Air Force. Although I did about a hundred hours or a hundred and fifty hours on Lincoln. That’s really, they withdrew it for some reason or other. And I was sent down to, to Calshot to convert to flying boats and I flew Sunderlands. I converted on to Sunderlands there. Then after conversion was posted to Pembroke Dock. 201 Squadron. And I stayed there for a couple of years I suppose when we, we did a Cook’s Tour of, of America in the flying boat. We went to Newfoundland and Iceland and Newfoundland and Virginia and Jamaica and so on just going really on a jolly. Whilst I was at Pembroke Dock I was flight commander of the squadron because our squadron commander had had gone a bit — he, taking off one night he hit a, hit something with, with his throat and knocked that off and he went a bit queer so I was flight commander of the squadron and they one day they came in about, about Battle of Britain time asking for an aeroplane to go up to the Thames. So being flight commander I said, ‘That’s mine.’ So, I went up there and met the Port of London Authority and they drove me up and down the Thames awhile on one of their boats and I selected somewhere to land down near Greenwich. And I landed for Battle of Britain weekend at Greenwich and this [unclear] from the Port of London Authority met me and led me all the way up to Tower Bridge and they opened Tower Bridge for me [laughs] And they’d already put a buoy just outside Queen’s Gate and I moored up there and stayed in the Tower of London with the, the commander. I can’t remember what they were. The Scots Guards, I think. I can’t remember. Stayed there for six months. Sorry, six days, and then we, then all we did was return I think. We just about turned and drove back down to Greenwich and took off and straight over Buckingham Palace. Right down the Mall. And then I went back to, to Pembroke Dock. And after Pembroke Dock I was promoted there, and sent to St Mawgan as the chief ground instructor of the Maritime School there. And I stayed there for [pause] I don’t know, six months, a year, and then I was posted to the Navy in Portland. They had what they called an Access B tactical teacher. Which our job, our job was to work out the, the destroyers for the Navy. And we had a large building in which we laid on games and I had a — my colleagues were a submariner and task officer torpedo anti-submarine and myself as the airman. And we used to play games for them and had a great screen and projected all the activities while they were closed up back somewhere in the, in the back of beyond. And then having run games for them we would then give them what’s up, what they should have been doing and that was — I spent again a year, two years at, at Portland doing that job. Then I went to Saffron Walden which was part of the Royal Air Force Technical School. I spent a year there doing a signals course, and the object of the exercise was to, to produce a band of officer who could act as, as a liaison between the technician and the aircrew. And so we went for a year. We wandered all around the country and halfway around the world too looking at radars and communications systems and all that rubbish. And then, then I was posted to, to a job at Northwood in Middlesex, and I stayed there for probably about four months or more. Maybe six months. How long were you, were we at Northwood?
PS: We missed, we missed out Cyprus dad.
JS: Oh God. I went from — no went from —
PS: We went from Medmenham to Cyprus.
JS: Medmenham. We went — just a minute. We went from Portland to, no we went we went from Debden the school, Technical College, to Medmenham and then Medmenham we went to, to Northwood.
PS: Cyprus. Medmenham to Cyprus.
JS: Cyprus. Cyprus. We stayed there for what, two years?
PS: Two and a half years. Yeah.
JS: Yeah. And I came back from there, and —
PS: Did six months in West Malling.
JS: Yeah. Well, I wasn’t posted there.
PS: No. It was just a stopover.
JS: I was only there for accommodation because we got a married quarter there. And then from there I went to, to Northwood. Stayed in Northwood for a while.
PS: That was two years.
JS: Was it two years? Yeah. And then I was posted to the Air Ministry to, to be sort of a PA to the, he was an army general who was head of the Joint Services Communications.
PS: We went from Northwood to Lindholme.
JS: No. I didn’t. No. I didn’t. I went to this job in the, in the, in the Air Ministry which was, really it was a [unclear] I didn’t like at all and I got, I got on to the, to the Air Ministry, the people in the in P staff in the Air Ministry and said, ‘I want out’, and they said, ‘You can, if you wish to, retire.’ So, I said, ‘Right. I’m going.’ And I retired from my job in the Air Ministry and I came, we bought this house. I came down here. I got a job. Incidentally, before I decided to leave the Air Force I decided to find out a little bit about business and, you know trying to get a job. And so I went to, I think it was the South West College to do an HNC in Business Studies and just after that the, I think it was Wilson started the Open University and I joined that as well and got a Bachelor of Arts and that in Sociology and Economics. And later on when I was again working down in Maidstone I joined Kent University and got a Masters in Management. But I jump from leaving the Air Force to getting a job. I joined a management consultancy in London and spent probably nearly six months or more than that. More like three years wandering around the country doing jobs for them. All sorts of investigatory things like, for instance I went to, to a, an architect in London and they said to me we want to set up a new salary scheme. And so I spend my time, you know interviewing all the locals and deciding what I think [unclear] I did some work in local authorities. I worked in a number of, of — I worked down in Brecon. I worked in many of the London boroughs and after I’d been there for a while I was getting a bit fed up with moving around again like I’d done in the Air Force and I found a job in Maidstone as the personnel manager of the Borough Council down there. I stayed there for five years I think and I retired completely from there.
CJ: Very good.
JS: Then I played golf for a while.
PS: For a long time.
JS: For a few years. And then I became too old to play golf.
CJ: One question about aircraft. Coming back to your RAF times, given the experience you had on the later types, how did they compare with the Whitley that you were flying during the war?
JS: Oh. The Whitley was antediluvian. I mean it was so slow. It had no, no navigation device at all. No Gee. No H2S. Nothing like that. So, you were relying on DR really. Dropping a flare out and taking a drift and trying to calculate where you were on your course and speed calculator. You could carry a four thousand pound bomb. With that on board you could get to probably ten thousand feet. Twelve thousand feet perhaps if you were lucky. You could get about a hundred knots out of it [pause] downwind. No. It was, it was a terrible aeroplane. Awful. And it was so vulnerable you had a, you had a rear gunner, you had an upper gunner but night-time you couldn’t see a night fighter, you know. The, the defence. You were absolutely defenceless really and the attrition rate was very high.
CJ: And after the war were you able to keep in touch with people you knew from your squadron?
JS: No.
CJ: Or from the prisoner of war camps?
JS: No. No. I tried once to go to a Prisoner of War dinner in London. And it was really a failure because they’d all dispersed to other things and you had nothing in common anymore.
CJ: Was there a Squadron Association?
JS: I didn’t follow it up at all.
CJ: And how do you think Bomber Command were treated after the war for those — ?
JS: I never had a problem personally but I think that one of the things that one understood about Bomber Command was that they felt that they were sort of aggressive rather than, rather than defensive. But I mean Fighter Command are completely different or Bomber Command were. Well they’re not — I don’t think they appreciated what we were trying to do. Anybody. I never had any trouble personally.
CJ: Well, thank you very much for speaking to us today.
JS: That’s alright.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Jack Edward Simmonds
Creator
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Chris Johnson
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-11-14
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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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ASimmondsJE171114, PSimmondsJE1701
Format
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00:49:41 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Egypt
Germany
Great Britain
Netherlands
Poland
England--Yorkshire
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
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1941
Description
An account of the resource
Jack Simmonds was the son of an RAF serviceman. As a result his childhood was spent moving around a great deal including a few years in Egypt. He joined the RAF and began training as a pilot. He joined 51 Squadron as a Whitley pilot at RAF Dishforth before transferring to 77 Squadron at RAF Topcliffe. Coming under attack the navigator was injured and so was unable to bale out forcing Jack to crash land. The surviving crew became Prisoners of War. He was sent to Stalag Luft 3 where he took an active part in the Wooden Horse escape.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Chris Johnson
51 Squadron
77 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Dulag Luft
Lincoln
pilot
prisoner of war
RAF Abingdon
RAF Dishforth
RAF St Mawgan
RAF Topcliffe
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 3
Sunderland
the long march
training
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/275/3428/PHughesAM1507.1.2.jpg
dc0f50c199ecb3d1a768a5afff785dff
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/275/3428/AHughesAM151001.2.mp3
1e4c41fe15e110071c21f1366db28182
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
Hughes, Angas
Angas Hughes
Angas M Hughes
A M Hughes
A Hughes
Description
An account of the resource
29 items. An oral history interview with Flight Sergeant Angas Murray Hughes (b. 1923, 417845 Royal Australian Air Force), his logbook, prisoner of war identity cards and dog tags, two memoirs and 21 photographs. Angas Hughes flew 32 operations as a bomb aimer with 467 Squadron from RAF Waddington. One of the aircraft he flew in was Lancaster R5868, S-Sugar, now at RAF Hendon. He was shot down in September 1944 and became a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Angas Hughes and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-01
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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Hughes, AM
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: This is an interview being carried out at the Riseholme College for the International Bomber Command memorial. The interviewer is Clare Bennett and the interviewee is Mr Angas Hughes, who was with 467 Squadron, and it is the 1st of October 2015. Well Angas, um, an Australian who, um, joined the war at the age of eighteen. But what was your home life like in Australia? What did you do as a youngster?
AH: Oh, as a youngster, I naturally I went to school but in the beginning we were partly brought up in the first of the — or last of the big depression but fortunately I came from a family that, er, didn’t suffer that much during that time. I after, after leaving the primary school I went to a college and I passed my examinations there and, er, for a short time I worked at the Imperial Chemical Industries that led eventually, on my eighteenth birthday, I joined the Air Force Reserve.
CB: What year would that be?
AH: It was 1941 and I was then — eventually I was called up on I think it was 12th of June 1942 but in the meantime between ‘41 and ‘42 we were on the reserve. We went to, um, a high school under the RWAF and doing navigation. We did exercises on, on maps etcetera until we joined up in, er, until we were called up in 18— 1942.
CB: What were your feelings about joining up? You know, was it adventure? Was it because everyone else was doing it. What, what inspired you to join?
AH: Well I think times then were a little bit different to what they are now and it was all king and country in those days. And, er, my father was in the, er, First World War and, er, I thought it was my duty to, er, join up and I was a little bit, er, dubious [?] with Biggles at that time and the Air Force was the one for me.
CB: And your family were happy for you to join or did they discourage you in any way?
AH: Oh, they tried to discourage me but, er, at the age of eighteen we had the option to volunteer so I did. They weren’t too happy about it which I think all parents were the same.
CB: So you embarked at eighteen on a ship and — for England, is that right?
AH: Yeah, we trained in Australia. We flew in a — navigation school was down at Bowen [?], the original ATS was at Victor Harbour, and from there we went to the navigation school at Mount Gambier flying in Ansons. And then we went to the bombing and air gunnery school in Port Pirie flying Fairey Battles. And the last one was at the Aeradio [?] School in Nhill, Victoria, flying Ansons there. And by that time we, we had finished our training in Australia and eventually we were posted overseas. We were on our way to Canada but when we got to — we went across the, er, Pacific. It took about six weeks to get across there. We landed at San Francisco. We went by Pullman up to Camp Myles Standish at Taunton, Massachusetts. We stopped there for about six weeks and eventually we caught the, er, Queen Elizabeth from New York to Greenock in Scotland which took about six days to get across.
CB: Were you worried at that time on that crossing, U-boats etcetera or was it just youth and —
AH: I think it was just youth and also it was such a fast ship that that was fairly safe. We had no escort or anything. And from there we went to, er, Brighton, down on the south c— down on the coast. We were there for a few weeks and eventually we finished up at Whitby Bay doing a six weeks commando course with the RAF Regiment and from there we were posted to, er, West Freugh Scotland for bombing, and then to an OTU at Lichfield where we were crewed up. From there we went to — we were there for three months at, er, Lichfield. Then we went to Swinderby, Scampton for a month training on Lancs, eventually to, er, 467 Squadron at Waddington.
CB: And your other crew members, were they Australians?
AH: Six, there were six Australians and the flight engineer was an English— Englishman or Welshman, his name was Taffy [slight laugh], Taffy Barnes [?]. I don’t know what his Christian name was. [laugh]
CB: So you started on what amounted to thirty-two ops so what were the sort of raids that you did?
AH: The first one we was with S for Sugar. We went to a place called to Portiers down in the south of France and, er, from there on I did Germany, ops on Germany and also on various places in France, mainly flying-bomb sites in France, and marshalling yards.
CB: And you were a bomb aimer at this time?
AH: I was the bomb aimer all of the time, yes.
CB: And you were happy with that or did you —
AH: Oh yes. I was there. I had no choice then. [laugh]
CB: Didn’t you yearn to be a pilot or anything?
AH: No. No, I wanted to be a navigator right from the beginning so bomb aimer was, was fairly close to — well we were navigators as well as bomb aimers so, er, I used to always plot the course myself as far as — to know where we were anyway, plus the navigator, I was able to assist him along the line.
CB: Was this in, er, Lancasters?
AH: This was in Lancasters, yes.
CB: Did you fly in anything else on the bombing raids or —
AH: No, I only flew with Lancs on bombing raids. On training we flew on Wellingtons and St— and Stirlings for training plus the original Oxfords and, and Ansons.
CB: So you, you flew in, er, Stirlings?
AH: Yes.
CB: Because they were notorious. What did you feel about them?
AH: I never like them myself. The pilot didn’t like them. None of the crew liked them but fortunately we were only there for a month. [laugh]
CB: So it was a relief to get on to Lancasters.
AH: Oh yes. They were a beautiful plane. Plenty of — they were fairly easy to fly apparently or the pilot said that they were fairly easy to fly. He had done flying before the war. He was much older than what I was. He was the oldest of the crew.
CB: How was old was he? Do you remember ‘cause you was what about twenty at this time?
AH: I was nineteen, twenty, yes I was twenty ‘cause I had my twenty-first birthday after I was shot down. Dusty would have been twenty-nine to thirty.
CB: He was the pilot?
AH: He was the pilot yeah. And, er, on our thirty-second trip we got shot down on the way to Karlsruhe. We were at eighteen thousand feet. That was out last trip actually I believe. We had the gunnery — the gunnery leader of A Flight of 467 squadron on board. I think Clarkson [?] had done sixty-two missions.
CB: As the bomb aimer, um, it’s obviously your responsibility to drop the bomb where it should be dropped and you have to take over the plane, not flying obviously, but you have to give the pilot the orders to drop.
AH: I gave the pilot instructions where I [unclear]. Also the, er, bomb aimer right from the beginning he would assist the navigator by map reading where he could and giving points and also the direction of searchlights over, over various, er, targets and that, dodging the searchlights, which, er, stopped the flak getting too close to us.
CB: ‘Cause you would have to fly straight and level for the target point wouldn’t you? What, what did you feel when you saw the flak coming and, you know, the lights and —
AH: Well your, your mind was mainly on the target and bomb site. It was — I suppose the fear was there but, er, you didn’t actually feel it. You had a job to do and if you didn’t do it probably that, er, that might have been the end.
CB: You obviously had confidence in your — Dusty the pilot. You were a good crew together?
AH: Ah, yes. We had a terrific — the seven of us were, were all great friends. When we went out we all went out together and we were very — all just like a group together all the time.
CB: A band of brothers if I can pinch an Americanism?
AH: Mm?
CB: Band of brothers?
AH: Yeah that could be the term to use, yes.
CB: Do you remember before you were — the flak got you, do you remember near misses or the — you know, any —
AH: Ah yes. We had — I remember once at — we went to a — it was about our seventh op I think — it was an oil place at Gelsenkirchen in Germany. We nearly got the chop there that night and with the fighters but fortunately we were lucky to get out of it.
CB: Did the gunners have to fire or was it manoeuvres or —
AH: I think it was mainly manoeuvres we got out with the rear gunner. He could tell where — or he would have instructed the pilot as he, as he tried to knock him out of the air.
CB: So we come up to the, the operation, your thirty-second, how come you did an extra two? Do you know ‘cause the usual —
AH: I don’t know. It’s just that we — well, I always thought with the tour was thirty but they must have made it longer or — I’m not sure, but I knew that was gonna be our last, that to have the gunnery leader on board.
CB: Mm. So as you neared your thirtieth operation you didn’t think, ‘Oh this is it, this is our last one,’ and then you’re given two more?
AH: No they hadn’t told us.
CB: Right.
AH: They didn’t tell us that it was on the thirtieth trip it was our last. They may have even extended the length, the number of flights for the tour. I’m not sure.
CB: So what happened on this, on this fateful thirty-second operation?
AH: Well we were just flying at 1800 feet. Everything was very quiet.
CB: And Karlsruhe, I believe, was your target?
AH: Karlsruhe. That’s it. Just out of the blue one of the engines got hit and the wing was on fire. I had no idea that there was flak around or anything. We couldn’t even see the — I didn’t even see the flak from the front. So we just had to, er, get ready and bail out. It was at mid— about midnight I think from memory. And eventually I — I didn’t meet any of the other crew. I was on the loose for about approximately three nights I think from memory.
CB: So your, your parachute deployed with no problems?
AH: Oh no. The parachute opened alright and, er, I eventually got down to the Rhine and there I was caught walking along the Rhine by one of the, er, German’s equivalent of the home guard in England. And from there on I was caught in jails and I had my twenty-first birthday in a German jail.
CB: In a Stalagluft?
AH: Er, no. It was a kind of a jail.
CB: Oh right.
AH: And then eventually we went to the interrogation camp up at Frankfurt. I think everyone went there. And then I got posted to Stalagluft VIIB which was over near Poland. I think it was in — I’m not sure if it was in Poland or on the Polish border. And from there — we were there until January and then we moved on the long march to, er, south of Berlin to a place called Lucken— Luckenwalde.
CB: How long were you in the Stalag?
AH: We were there from — well I was shot down on the 27th September I think it was and then we moved out of Bankau in, er, January and we got liberated by the Russians in April then. I think it was April.
CB: What was life like in the Stalag? Were you with any of your crew mates?
AH: There were a couple, a couple in there but where I was just in with some Canadians and some English and even some of the boys from — pilots or the glider pilots from Arnhem were there.
CB: What was life like?
AH: Oh, it wasn’t rosy but, er, it was nothing like “Hogan’s Heroes”. [slight laugh]
CB: Did you know of any attempts to escape by — you know, tunnels, or was there talk of escape or —
AH: There was talk of tunnels and — but, er, where we were there was no point of escaping because the Russians were coming one way and —
CB: How did you know they were coming? Was it —
AH: There was a wireless on in the camp.
CB: So you knew that they were on their way and —
AH: Yeah, we were told that and eventually you could, you could hear them. Or you could see them in the distance, many miles, there were flashes and that but I [unclear] good night.
CB: So on this January day the Germans come and say, ‘Get your things, you’re going lads.’
AH: ‘Pack up. You’re on your way.’ And we just left.
CB: Were you expecting this march? Or what were you expecting?
AH: Yeah we were expecting it but we didn’t know when. We were told one day and we were told another day and then bang! It happened. Well it’s a lot — several of the boys got a — tried to escape on the way. There was no point escaping through the snow and the ice. You had nowhere to go. A lot of them were killed and a lot of them died.
CB: What did you do for food? Did you find any of the population giving food or anything?
AH: No, no, they had no — very little food. I’ve got a, I’ve got a map which shows the amount of food that we, that we had. Occasionally we’d have, have a — some bread and some, er, kind of a porridge mix. Very little really.
CB: And how long was it that you were walking, do you think?
AH: It was about three weeks roughly.
CB: Where did you sleep?
AH: Well we slept in barns and in with the cows and the pigs and they — anyway it was quite warm actually in there with the cattle but, er, we were mainly in the barns, as they call them, cow sheds or — I don’t know what they called them in Germany.
CB: The guards were obviously have to walk with you. What was their attitude to this and —
AH: The older guards were quite good. The younger ones were the, er, were the ones you had to watch. I think the younger ones were ruthless while the older ones were the — out of the German army. I don’t think they were touched with the Nazis as much as the younger ones.
CB: Did you know where you were walking?
AH: We didn’t have the faintest idea. We crossed the, er, Oder at a place called Breslau, or near Breslau. I think it’s called something else now. It might be called Wrocław I think now. I might be wrong there. And then we eventually finished up in this place called Luckenwalde. I don’t know if I pronounced that right but —
CB: I think Luckenwalde is about right, yes. So you walked all the way? There were no trains or —
AH: We walked. The last — I don’t know how long it would be but we were on a train in the, in the end. That was the — I don’t know how long that would have been, we were in it about a day, I suppose. We were, we were just in carriages, we were in carriages just like a cattle truck, all closed up each side.
CB: Food and water provided?
AH: Oh no, just, er, just space.
CB: So you got to Luckenwalde and then, um, it was another camp I presume?
AH: Oh, it was a big camp?
CB: And had the other marchers, marchers, or the men had they joined and everyone arrived at Luckenwalde. Was that it or did you join the other people?
AH: There was, I think there was every nationality in the world at this Luckenwalde. It was a huge camp. A lot of Russians were there. There were French. There were Americans and a lot of Australians and a lot of the other Air Force people too, English people.
CB: And how long were you there?
AH: We got there — oh heavens — it would have been about February, about the beginning of February, and we were there for — ‘till April when the Russians liberated the camp and just after that the Americans came to take us so they must have broken through there. But the Russians wouldn’t let us go and eventually the Americans took us in, took us away in, er, June. That would be ‘45, June ’45. So we were there approximately a month under the Russians.
CB: How did you feel at this point? Were you frustrated with the —
AH: It didn’t matter that much because we used to go out of the camp. I went through the records what the Germans had left there. I kept — I’ve got my records and a few of the other boys got theirs too.
CB: So from, from there the —
AH: We just woke up one morning and there was no, no Germans there. They’d all gone. [laugh]
CB: And the Americans just — what did the Americans do with you then? Was transport arranged?
AH: Well, the Russians wouldn’t let us go originally and then, er, when we were actually liberated by the Americans the second time we went to a place called Halle Leipzig by truck and then we caught planes to Belgium. We had a night in Belgium. They supplied us with some money. The only things we went to was the pubs and, er, the next day we flew back to England. Then we went to — under the auspices of the Australian Government, the RAF there, and we went to down to Brighton and I eventually got back to Aus— to Australia in December.
CB: A long time. A long time after being liberated.
AH: Well they looked after us quite well for a while there. Anything we wanted we could have virtually. [slight laugh]
CB: So you’re back home in Australia and what did you do after the war?
AH: Oh I went back and did — finished my accountancy and I, er, got registered by the Australian Government as a tax agent and I had my own practice in Adelaide and I finished up in — I retired in ‘83.
CB: What do you think of the war and the aftermath? Did it affect you?
AH: It was hard. I found it hard to settle down. Some could settle down quite easy and I found it hard to settle down and — but eventually I overcome that I think.
CB: What is your, what is your attitude to how Bomber Command was treated after the war?
AH: Oh, nobody knew much about Bomber Command, especially in Australia because we were Australians in England and it was mainly — and Australia was mainly Japan.
CB: Do you think people didn’t understand what you’d been through?
AH: I’m certain they didn’t. I don’t even think the Australian Government knew. I think they do now but at that time, er, I don’t think they realised what the, er, what it was like in England in those days.
CB: How did that make you feel?
AH: I just had to take it. I couldn’t do much about it in those days.
CB: And your Bomber Command medal. Would you have liked a medal?
AH: Well, looking back I think there should have been a Bomber Command medal but after, after seventy years we got a clasp. [slight laugh]
CB: Do you think that was, you know, better than nothing or was it just too late?
AH: Well, it was too late for a lot of them unfortunately because, er, I was one of the younger ones but a lot them would have been over thirty —
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AHughesAM151001
Title
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Interview with Angas Hughes
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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00:28:00 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Clare Bennett
Date
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2015-10-01
Description
An account of the resource
Angas Hughes was born in Australia and served as a bomb aimer with 467 Squadron based at RAF Waddington. He describes initial training in Australia as a reserve and after call-up in 1942. He was transported by ship to Scotland via the USA and Canada. He flew all the operations on Lancasters and was shot down over Germany on the thirty-second operation. After about three nights he was captured near the Rhine and spent his twenty-first birthday in a German jail before being transferred to an interrogation camp near Frankfurt and eventually to Stalag Luft VII. After about three months the camp was evacuated and the long march to Luckenwalde began. He gives a detailed description of what the long march entailed, arriving at Luckenwalde, after about three weeks. He describes hearing and seeing signs of the Russian advance before the camp was liberated. However, it was the Americans who took them away. On returning to Australia Angas took accountancy exams and set up his own practice in Adelaide.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Canada
Germany
Great Britain
Poland
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland--Tychowo
United States
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
467 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
Dulag Luft
Lancaster
prisoner of war
RAF Waddington
searchlight
shot down
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 7
the long march
training