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I flew operations from RAF Tangmere in Typhoons during 1943-44, and subsequently moved to an advanced landing ground in Normandy after D-Day. From there, I was sent on rest for five days to recover from the stress of a full operational tour. I didn’t want to go, but the doctor insisted. My home for five days was a country mansion in East Grinstead on the Sussex Downs. It had sumptuous furnishings and architecture of a bygone age, and provided extraordinary accommodation, food, wine and excellent service. Twenty other pilots, a mixed bunch of nationalities, arrived the same day as me. Celebrities turned up daily, and an evening dinner party was the norm.

One evening, to our surprise, film star (Major) Clark Gable came to dinner. He had just completed operational trips as an air gunner with the American Strategic Air Force, in Flying Fortresses. He was surprisingly modest and quietly spoken. It was a pleasure to meet him. After dinner we spent some time talking shop, lavishly embellishing line shoots, and drinking.

As high-spirited and relaxed young men, full of vitality and with an excess of energy ,we made the best of the five days away from the war zone. I recall sliding down the mansion’s handsome curved banisters and shooting off the end, on to a pile of bodies already entangled on the floor. In the frolic, one New Zealander, carrying the fun upstairs, ‘went for a Burton’ through the second floor window. A partially pollarded elm tree and a towering oak broke his fall. He landed drunkenly on his feet, only to run back inside and rejoin the fray.

The five-day rest proved therapeutic in every sense. I then returned to the Normandy Beachhead and back to the battle, and my final phase of the war.

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