大象传媒

Extract from Cliff Gascoigne's RAF memoirs, 'The Life of an Erk.'

I was now a member of 55 Squadron who had Blenheims. The armoury driver had been a long distance lorry driver in civvy street and gave me some lessons in driving as we moved about the camp because we did not have enough drivers. Without any formal training, three months after joining my unit I was driving a truck with a bomb trolley on the back, loaded with 4 x 250 pound bombs. I didn鈥檛 think I was very good, but another chap who said he could drive was tested with an imaginary bomb trolley on the back of the lorry and was hopeless, so it was decided I should have a go. I didn鈥檛 think I was much good but I was told I had to drive as the other chap was worse!

We did some bombing raids before the push started and once it got under way we did more raids. Unfortunately, communications were not too good and we found out later that the front line was moving forward so fast that the position for bombing had been occupied by our troops by the time our aircraft started bombing. So the RAF was bombing our own troops. Later we saw some of them that had been bombed and they were not too bothered once they realised it was not our fault.

The chap who ran the canteen used to fill up an old type of washday copper with eggs every morning and boil them all day so they were hard boiled by night time. Some of the chaps would eat a dozen during an evenings drinking. What I don鈥檛 understand is where did that many eggs come from? I never saw any chickens!

Once the push got in motion we had to pack up and follow. We were on the move quite a bit. One place we got to, I think it was somewhere near Barce, the Italians had left their bomb dump full. I don鈥檛 know how many tons there must have been. We started to get rid of it in about 20 ton lots. At one point we had one stack finished and another one nearby almost finished. The first stack was primed ready for exploding. We went up on top of a small hill about one hundred yards away to detonate it. When it was blown a bomb that had lost its base plate was burning on top of the second stack. Our Warrant Officer said, 鈥淒on鈥檛 worry it will burn for about 20 minutes before it explodes.鈥� No one thought about this stack being much nearer to us than the first one! The burning bomb on the other stack exploded and myself and another fellow went straight under an Italian jeep. The body of the jeep was probably no more than 10 inches high but neither of us touched anything until we landed under it. Apparently a few bomb casings flew over us, but no one was hurt, thank goodness.

A very strange and tragic thing happened at one of the 鈥榙romes we called at. Three aircraft were taking off at about 5.30 a.m. They were to take off one at a time and get into formation about 5 miles from the camp. The first aircraft was flying around waiting for the others to arrive when it lost some bombs. One of these came down on one of the aircraft below, blowing it to pieces. All that open space up there and that happens. I wonder what the odds are for that to happen.

On the advance we called at Tobruk, but this was before the siege had started. There was a fairly large building which we thought had been an Italian Mess Hall and at one end there were some very large barrels containing Chianti. I had one sip and that was all - I鈥檇 rather have beer!

Our troops were held up at the salt flats at El Agheila and there weren鈥檛 enough of them to risk the crossing. Rommel had plenty of troops to cope with the salt flats so we made our way back towards Egypt. Our warrant officer told us that a German column was travelling through the desert parallel to us, as we travelled along the coast road. We realised afterwards that everyone was heading for Tobruk and that our chaps had got there first. It was the start of the siege of Tobruk, but thankfully, we went straight past and almost back to Fuka. Everything seemed to be happening at Tobruk.

It was at this particular place, where our aircraft were lined up alongside the road, that I was working under the bomb bay of one of the aircraft, when one of the chaps very casually said, 鈥淢ove away from the kite blokes.鈥� I thought he was probably going to run one of the engines so didn鈥檛 bother. I suddenly realised there were no sounds around the aircraft and came out from the bomb bay, only to see the others going hell for leather over the other side of the road. Then I heard the reason why. There was a German aircraft about two miles up the road just starting to strafe the road. I was across the road faster than that. I reckon my speed would have broken the 100 yards world record! All that energy was wasted for nothing, he did not come anywhere near us. I think he must have been on his way back from a raid and decided to use up his 鈥榓mmo鈥� on the road.

We had some Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders attached to us to do guard duties for a short time then they suddenly disappeared. We met six of the them some time later in Cairo and had a few words with them. They said they had gone into Crete when everyone else was getting out and they were the only ones left of the crowd that were doing guard duties for us. The rest were either dead, wounded, or had been taken prisoner.

It was now decided that aircraft servicing should be carried out away from the operational side. As I was in charge of armament servicing, I went down to a 鈥榙rome near to Alexandria (about 30 miles).

Sometime in early June, 113 squadron arrived. They had come back from Greece, been on rest and then took over our squadron lock, stock and barrel. The flight sergeant in charge of 113 Squadron was my old school friend, Ken York. Unfortunately we never saw each other as he went to the forward landing ground whilst I was at the rear landing ground.

When it was our turn for a period of rest, we went off to Helwan, a short train ride from Cairo. While we were there we were walking along the main street when we came to a wines and spirit shop that was on fire. The firemen had it under control but were still spraying water into the shop, so I suppose they were keeping the bottles cool to stop them exploding. One of our party decided he would 鈥渞escue鈥� some bottles and approached the shop. The firemen stopped him and he got his trousers wet through. As he was feeling most uncomfortable he took his trousers off, folded them neatly into their creases and hung them over his arm. We had just set off down the main street when an army officer approached and asked him, 鈥淲hy aren鈥檛 you wearing your trousers?鈥�
鈥淏ecause they are wet through Sir鈥� came the reply.
The officer looked flabbergasted and muttered , 鈥淥h, I see鈥� and wandered off looking rather bemused.

One night I was sat on my bed writing a letter when someone said what that day鈥檚 date was. I had no idea of the date until then. It was my 21st birthday! Somebody asked me if I was going to the canteen for a few beers. I answered that I could just manage one bottle from the money in my pocket. So there I was with one bottle of beer and no money on my 21st birthday!

At this time there was a lot of weighing and measuring of equipment, apparently so that the squadron could be shipped off to Singapore, or at least that was the rumour going round.

There was a panic one night - a submarine off the coast somewhere. We had to get out in the middle of the night because three aircraft needed to be bombed up. Once we had done this we went back to our beds. At daylight we realised that one of our chaps was missing. Some of the others went to look for him in case he was hurt, but they soon found him: he was asleep in the middle of the bomb-dump with two bombs for a bed!

The jungle drums still kept telling us that we were going to Singapore, but fortunately for us we went back to Egypt and the desert. We were very lucky, had we gone to Singapore we would probably have ended up on the Burma railroad.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.