大象传媒

My father was head of the East African Meteorological Service at the outbreak of WW2. In that role he had a key part to play in supporting allied air operations throughout the North Africa campaign. As a 4 year old I remember that my father was often up in the night on our home phone apparently jabbering incomprehensible figures down the phone - clearly met messages to the other end. Then he told us all (my mother, brother and me) that he had to go away to open a new met station out in the desert at a place called El Fasha as part of the enhanced war effort - he never returned! My mother told me (much later)that after inspecting the new station my father was to leave in an RAF Wellington bomber aircraft. The plane took off but one of it's two engines failed at that time. In those days bombers could not fly on only one engine and so the pilot turned to return to the airstrip that he had just left for an emergency landing. He succeeded in putting the plane down damaging the undercarriage. The brakes failed and the aircraft skidded into the new Met Station at the end of the runway and burst into flames. All the crew jumped out of the cockpit escape hatch except for the pilot who knew that he had a passenger on board. He went back into the fuselage to find my father had been knocked unconscious by the crash and had both legs broken. He then carried my father to the rear escape hatch but found this jammed due to the accident. He attempted to return to the forward escape hatch but was overcome by the flames before he could reach it and both he and my father died in the fire. It transpired that the fire equipment failed to operate and no effort could be made to extinguish the fire. Most of this detail was derived from the reconstruction of the accident on investigation. My father was identified by the remains of his engraved silver wrist watch - itself badly burned and the enamel face destroyed. The pilot received the George Cross for his action and I still have the newspaper cutting recording this fact - given to my mother by friends in England. My father's watch was repaired to working condition by a watch maker who admired him enormously - as a mark of respect. It was not restored but is still working and is a treasured memento of a father I hardly knew before he was taken from our family. My mother eventually managed to get on a ship in a convoy back to Britain where she struggled to bring up her family single handed at a time when such a task was a very real struggle and where the war was far more apparent to a youngster than it had ever been in the Sudan. I can still remember the enormous numbers of aircraft gathering over south Devon of an evening before setting off to bomb Germany. All very much in contrast to our work on the ground helping my uncle to gather in the harvest in late August.

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