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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from ����ý London/CSV on behalf of Peter G Langdon with his permission. Peter Langdon fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I joined the Territorial Army in 1938. I was called up in 1939 at the age of 18. I was very frightened but we were told not to worry as the war was going to be over by Christmas. In 1941 I volunteered for the Commandos as a machine gunner on a merchant ship but was told I was too young for that mission. In 1941 I joined the Airforce. My first mission was when I was only 20.

I was a pilot of Lancaster planes. I made 38 trips from our Lincolnshire base over Europe in Lancaster bombers. The missions included three trips to Berlin, half a dozen to the Ruhr, Germany, and six to Milan and Genoa, in Italy. Among my the crew I had a US bomb aimer, an ex-apprentice flight engineer, an English navigator, a wireless operator from New Zealand and a rear gunner from Chicago, USA. We had several mid upper gunners. Sadly one of my navigators died last year.

On one occasion, I thought I had been blinded in my right eye. I could feel a ridge just below my goggles and I thought I had lost my eye. When I went through debriefing the officer was not at all interested in my wound. After an egg and bacon meal, which we usually ate after missions, I cleaned the wound and I realised it was only a pinprick but the blood, perspiration and grease had made it look worse.

I got badly shot up in 1943 and convalesced at Swanton Morley together with the injured upper gunner from my plane.

In 1943 I received the Distinguished Flying Medal (DFM), the citation read “For cheerful acceptance of danger”.

Between1943 and 1944, I trained recruits to fly Lancasters, (Lanchesters — a two engine version of the Lancaster) and Halifaxes.

I consider myself very lucky. There is a saying that there are ‘old’ pilots and ‘bold’ pilots but there are no ‘old bold’ pilots. I continued in the Air Force after the war until I left the service in 1977. Many people who left the service after the war came back to the Air Force: they had a hell of a job to adjust to peacetime discipline.

During the war, the atmosphere was different. In the mess room, for example, the crews of the planes would fall asleep in the chair. We used to tie their shoelaces together and then when they were called they would fall flat on their face. When one of the crew was lounging in a chair reading their large newspaper we would set the newspaper alight from below.
Another prank was to empty the gunpowder from a Veri-flare cartridge into an ashtray. When one of the crew put out their cigarette there would be a small explosion. We had to stop that one when one of the crew’s hands got badly burned. We would also drop the Veri cartridge down the chimney to blow out the fire.

After the war those kinds of pranks were seen to be terrible. It was a very different atmosphere during the war. A lot of people thought they would die and so behaved differently, with bravado because they thought they might be killed at any time during the fighting. We did this to boost our moral and develop our esprit de corps. Don’t forget there were hundreds of officers who had very little to do between missions. If you were able to get up the “officer ladder” a little, you could generally do what you liked. These small stories are true and give a feel of what it was like then. I am not really “shooting a line” which we used to say when people were telling tall stories: something like “…the flak was so thick in the Ruhr that you could put your wheels down and taxi on top of it!“

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