大象传媒

While I was stationed at RAF Bentley Priory there used to be dances held in the camp on Saturday nights. I was only ten miles from home, so on my day off I used to head home on my bicycle. Of course you weren鈥檛 allowed to have lights on your bicycle, just little slits for the light but you really couldn鈥檛 see properly. This was during the era of the Battle of Britain and there were frequent night raids and many a time I had to shoot off into a ditch because a bomb was exploding near to hand. Other than these sorts of events it was a normal life and amazingly you did get used to these type of happenings. I remember the first bombing I was caught in, I was really scared, but after that you got blas茅 about the bombing and took no notice of it. After about two years, I was a Sergeant my rate of pay had improved considerably; it was about three shillings a day. I was offered a commission and went to the RAF Training College at Loughborough where the officers received their training during a three week course. I was then posted to RAF Rudloe Manor which is ten miles from Bath where 10 Group Fighter Command was based. My rank was Assistant Section Officer and I arrived there about July 1941. The work was mostly the same as before when I was stationed at Bentley Priory, except that I was the one who had to decide whether the planes were friendly or otherwise. We worked in twos each night, controlling the shift. We took into account information from the Observer Corp, the IFF indication from our planes (Identification Friend or Foe). It was difficult because some of our own aircraft had been so shot up that their identification equipment didn鈥檛 work, and I鈥檓 sure some of our own aircraft were shot down because of the equipment malfunction. Mistakes were made and it鈥檚 terrible when you realise you are responsible for it. I was a movements officer and liaised with all the RAF Stations in the area and knew when they were sending out a certain number of bombers to a certain area and had an estimate of the time when they were due to return, and consequently you could say that the identified aircraft were returning from Germany or where ever. Occasionally we would get the odd spy plane which used to go down the Channel and it was our job to send the Fighters up to intercept it. Fighter Command consisted of Group 9 which was at Preston, Lancashire; Group 10 which was at RAF Rudloe Manor; Group 11 which was at Uxbridge and Group 12 was at Nottingham; Group 13 was based in Scotland. We only had dealings with those in the West Country area.

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