大象传媒

I joined up on my18th Birthday at Cambridge, took the aircrew entrance exam, and was accepted for training. The training courses were full up so I had 9 months deferred service. Eventually I was called up, and had to go to Lords cricket ground 鈥� I suppose it was just a large area they could use. About 3 weeks later I went to Torquay for initial training.
During the course I was told that I couldn鈥檛 go for pilot training until I passed another test. So I went to a small grass airfield near Swindon, and did some flying training. Unfortunately I made a complete mess of the test at end. We did the test in biplanes which veered to the left, and had very poor intercom systems. One of the things we had to do before take-off was tighten the throttle nut. So, in my test, I went through all the take-off procedure, and pointed out where I was going to take off; I opened the throttle, keeping the aircraft straight, and the examiner shouted something to me. I misheard what he said, and thought he was telling me to tighten the throttle nut, so I took my hand off the throttle, and of course the aircraft veered off to the left. The examiner screamed at me; I thought I hadn鈥檛 tightened the nut enough, and took my hand off again; by now we were heading off at a 45 degree angle to the direction I had said I would be going. We got off the ground ok in the end, but when we landed and the examiner said I had failed, I was too young and shy and inexperienced to explain what had happened. That ruined my chances of being a pilot, and I was told I would be trained as a navigator, and sent to Manchester 鈥� but there was such a delay in starting the course there that they started another course at St Leonard鈥檚. We had to do Morse code training, and this was held in a room on the 5th floor of the Hotel Victoria on the seafront, with the pier just across the road. It was hot weather, and the windows were open, and I was gazing out, and I saw an aircraft nip up over the end of the pier and release a bomb. I shouted, 鈥淭here鈥檚 a bomb!鈥�, but nobody took any notice, and I just sat and watched the bomb coming towards me. I couldn鈥檛 do anything! Fortunately it just missed the roof of the hotel we were in and exploded in an empty hotel. So, all in all, my RAF career didn鈥檛 get off to a good start.
I was due to be sent to South Africa for further training. It was odd - there were 3 of us with the name of Cox. I was diagnosed with German measles and sent to sick quarters, but I was keen to go to South Africa with the others. They said I could go if my temperature came down, so I drank lot of cold water to get my temperature down and they let me go. In fact, I should have been taken off the draft to go, but they had taken the wrong Cox off the list, so off I went.
We left from Avonmouth, in an old New Zealand meat boat, the Mataroa, which had been converted to a troop ship. We went on board 2 weeks before Christmas, in a slow 8-knot convoy, and it was cold and the weather was awful. Every time we hit a large wave the ship鈥檚 nose would dive in, and the rudder and screw would come out of the water. One morning
the sea was very rough, and at about 5 am we hit a massive wave, which crashed over the ship. We were in the well deck, and we thought we had been hit by a torpedo 鈥� the wave had washed away all the washing and toilet facilities on deck. Within 30 seconds, a crowd of naked bodies rushed up onto deck! The men below didn鈥檛 want to get caught there if we had been hit, and of course it was hot below and they worked with nothing on, and they didn鈥檛 stop to get dressed.
It took 6 weeks to get from Bristol to Durban, and we spent Christmas day on the troop ship. During the first ten days, the weather had been very poor, and very few men could eat their meals. Our eating facilities were 20 people at each of a number of long tables, and 1 or 2 men went to cookhouse on the deck above to collect the rations, which were pretty atrocious. I wasn鈥檛 seasick, so I had plenty 鈥� I could eat as much as I wanted, because a lot of the men at the table just couldn鈥檛 eat at all. After a while the others got better. We could buy extra bits of food from the canteen, but it soon sold out of goods, because at about half-past four in the morning people would go to get coffee and a small packet of biscuits. On Christmas day, we thought we might get a decent meal, but in fact it was small piece of beef no bigger than the palm of my hand, 2 roast potatoes, 3 sprouts, and a spoonful of gravy. Sweet was a spoonful of rice pudding. I had lost one and a half stone by the time we reached Durban. In Freetown they asked for volunteers to help carry some bananas on board; I hated bananas, but volunteered so that I could pinch a few - I was starving!

When I got in the war properly everything settled down and was quite normal. All my interesting experiences came right at the start.

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