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It was now a matter of waiting. This was February and we were told that it might be 3 or 4 months before we could be sent for training. So, back to the grind in the office. A lot of our work now consisted of inspecting the bomb damaged properties to recommend whether or not they should be demolished because they were dangerous or whether they should be repaired.
One morning ''Scotty'' Williams said 'Have you seen this in the Sheffield Telegraph''? It was an invitation for any waiting recruits for aircrew who had been for attestation to apply to join the Sheffield University Air Squadron as there were five vacancies. Training would be in the evening at the University after office work. I applied and, together with four other fellows, was accepted.
We worked hard, at all the subjects dealt with at the usual Initial Training Wing for normal recruits. Our tutor was an ex Battle of Britain pilot, Flight Lieutenant Morton. His face had been patched up at the East Grinstead Hospital by Surgeon Archie McKindoe and this officer was one of the ''Guinea Pigs'.' Theory of flight, airmanship, navigation, meteorology, morse, astronomy, advanced trigonometry and others subjects were on the nightly menu. It was a hard slog and inevitably we found that we were running out of time. We were asked if there was any possibility of our employers being prepared to give us three weeks full time release from our office work. All our employers agreed and we went to the University full time and completed our training just before we were called up to the Personnel reception centre at Regents Park, London.
One day Fl Lt Morton said that he had arranged for us to go for our first flight. It was to be in a Tiger Moth shared with the Manchester University Air Squadron from a little airfield at Manchester called Ringway. We went, four of us, plus Morton, in his Austin 10 over the Snake to Manchester and enjoyed our very first flight. He pointed out Altrincham and the Manchester Ship Canal. Ringway is, of course, now, the Manchester International Airport.
We all passed our Initial Training Wing course and were told to report, as I understood it, for a ''paper raid''. I really could not understand what this was all about until we were lined up and thanked for our efforts and given our ''pay'' for these evenings and days of study. It was, you will have guessed, a ''PAY PARADE''! As we had been continuing working and in employment, and even our 3 weeks off had been paid as holiday, this payment from the Air Force was truly an unexpected bonus! I remember that I bought our first ever electric clock which was in a nice wooden case and it stood on the lounge mantel piece at 29 Moffatt Road in Sheffield for many years. I think Gwen probably took it with her when she married and moved from Moffatt Road. During all this time we had been living at Norah's. One lunchtime, as I cycled home to lunch, my cycle wheels got caught in the tram lines on London Road just outside Trinity Methodist church at Highfields. I clobbered my head on the cobble stones around the track and passed out briefly. Someone collected me up and took me into the ARP post in the Church Hall, to the great joy of the St John's Ambulance Brigade nurse and other assistants who were there. They had a customer! I got the works; they cleaned me up but were a bit miffed when I decided that I was going to carry on home for lunch! This had been their first call for active duty since the blitz in the previous December some four months ago!
It was now late June and eagerly we awaited the call into the Royal Air Force proper. So far our only contact with uniformed personnel had been Fl Lt Morton and a Radio Operator sergeant who had been sent over to give morse tuition.
During these several months we had been soldiering on in Norah's small house hoping that an opportunity to move into some other accomodation might arise. It was a happy day therefore when my father was told by Mr Thomas Wilkinson, who had been the landlord of the house we had lost in December in the blitz, that they had been able to repair some other of their houses which had been damaged and we could move into one of them. This really was a stroke of good fortune because it had been built in 1938 and was a small semi-detached three bedroom house with a bathroom and a pleasant little garden. The house had been slightly damaged during the blitz but had now been repaired. Mum and Dad were over the moon even although the new rent was substantially more than previously. Dad, Mum, Gwen and I moved in on August 1st and two weeks later, on August 16th, I moved out, en route to the Royal Air Force. The road was still unmade and it was very rough going up the steep hill of Moffatt Road, but, with the help of Dad's horse and van, we moved our furniture from Norahs to the new abode.
At long last the O H M S envelope arrived advising me to report to the RAF Personnel Reception Centre at Abbey Lodge, Regent's Park, London. The railway travel pass was enclosed and I thought, ''This is it, I shall not be back in Sheffield for quite some time.''
So, on August 16th 1941, a Thursday, all of us from the Sheffield University Air Squadron set off from Sheffield Midland Station. Don Rollin, Ted Wheelwright, three others (names forgotten,) and myself. We duly arrived at St Pancras station and transport took us to Abbey Lodge at Regents Park. There were possibly about 300 in this intake and we were scattered around various places to sleep. We were put in some uncompleted apartments at Bentinck Close, Prince Albert Road, overlooking the Park. These are now very superior London apartments but, at that time, work on them had been halted. We were marched around to several places for meals, although mostly it was to the restaurant at the London Zoo, opposite to the monkey house.! The intake included others from the Oxford, Cambridge, Aberystwyth, and London Universities Air Squadrons. On the Friday most of us, who were more or less of normal size, were kitted out and on the Saturday we appeared, for the first time, in our R.A.F. uniform, complete with a white flash in our fore and aft forage caps, a sign that we were aircrew recruits.
On the Sunday morning we were all paraded. The C of E's were taken away to go to their church service and the R.C.s and Jews were told to 'fall out''. The rest of us, by a process of elimination, were O.D's (other denominations) and we were duly marched off, probably 250 to 300 of us, to the Swiss Cottage Baptist church. Our group was up in the balcony. The padre came in and promptly asked if there was any airman who could play the organ, Before I had had time to think Don Rollin and Ted Wheelwright almost lifted me off my seat and called down 'This airman can''. There was nothing I could do but go down, in front of all this crowd and be led to the organ. The caretaker turned the blower on and said ''It might be better if you leave it on throughout the service''. Came the time for the sermon and the blower was making an awful noise so I turned it off. At the end of the sermon I was hesitant to turn the blower on; which way should that resistance lever go? I did turn it on but, Sod's law; I moved it the wrong way. There was quite a big bang as the fuse blew. The padre announced ''I think our organist is having a problem. We will sing the hymn unaccompanied''. I wished the ground would open up and swallow me!
This was the first intake of University Air Squadron recruits to Regents Park and confusion reigned supreme. Having all completed our Initial Training Wing course we arrived as Leading Aircraftmen and not as common or garden Airmen 2nd Class! So the problem was, what should they do with us. Presumably, whilst someone sorted this out they had the idea that it would be as well to send us all home on leave. So after only two weeks in the service we went on two weeks leave. Not bad, especially as they paid us, albeit only at 2nd Class Airman rates. Our delayed pay caught up with us in due course when we arrived in South Africa.. After leave it was back to Regents Park and then we were offered a choice of where to be trained. It was either to stay in England, or go to Canada or to South Africa under the Empire Air Training Scheme. There were also a few, for pilot training only, to the U.S.A. I don't know why, but I chose South Africa, possibly because I may have thought that it would be warmer. So, as we were to be posted overseas, yes, you've probably guessed it, we had to go on embarkation leave. This air force life was getting a bit tedious with all this travelling up and down from London to Sheffield and on leave too! The folk who were still in the Sheffield Valuation Office, in particular Bernard Senior and Jimmy Birkett, couldn't understand that this was all part of the training period although I must say that Jimmy said that as far as he was concerned we could have as much leave as might be possible because he appreciated what we were going to do and there was no way that he would fly!
Once again we all set off from the Midland Station, as we had done a few weeks previously, although I think this parting was a bit more traumatic than the earlier one!
Back to London and then, the next day, on to Euston Station, (that at least was a change), and on the train to Liverpool and then to an Air Force reception base at West Kirby on the Wirral. Daily we went on morning parade only to be stood down and told to report again in the late afternoon. After two weeks we were pleased one morning to be told that we were to sail the next day. We were told to collect everything together and go to the stores to collect our tropical kit. So it did look as though it was going to be South Africa after all. Early next morning we were mustered on parade. Our kit bags were loaded on to a lorry and off we went in an Air Force bus to the West Kirby station and from there by train to Liverpool. Then by lorry to the docks and this massive great liner which seemed to tower over everything. It was the Canadian Pacific liner, ''Duchess of Richmond'. This was to be our home for four weeks as we sailed to Durban. During the night we moved out into the river Mersey and silently glided down to the bar, where there were several other ships already waiting. No-one was told anything about our movements and there were the inevitable rumours that always arise in times of secrecy. Some said that, as we were a fast ship, we would sail unescorted whilst others knew perfectly well that we would go in convoy. They were right. We sailed out into the Irish Sea and headed north towards Scotland. We thought 'Perhaps it is Canada after all'' and when we joined several other ships, some tankers, some freighters, and some passenger ships and started to head west we thought ''Canada here we come, complete with tropical kit for the snow''! Then, of course, daylight dawned, we were heading out into mid-Atlantic to get away from the U Boats and on day three or four we turned south. During this time, being October, it was quite cold and we wore our usual blue uniform.
As we sailed south many of us had the occasional opportunity to sit around on the foredeck. One day I must have fallen asleep. I had my fore and aft cap on; you were improperly dressed without it; as I awoke my forehead felt quite tight. The sun had emerged from behind the clouds and, together with several others similarly caught, I had been sunburnt but not where the tilted cap had covered. We were all quite a sight with a lopsided sunburn on our foreheads! After two weeks, during which time we continued to sunbathe with care on the deck, we had lectures in the ship's theatre and practiced morse. Eventually we sighted land. It was Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. There was no prospect of getting off the boat but many of the locals came out to the ship in their dugout canoes and brought lots of fresh fruit, much of which most of us had never seen before. There were pawpaws, mangoes, avocadoes as well as limes and oranges and grapefruit. I think we generally stuck to what we knew and were not adventurous enough to try these new exotic fruits!
In our convoy were probably about 25 or more ships. Some were cargo ships, chugging along at their best speed whilst the troopships had to be held below their best speed. With us, amongst other ships the names of which I cannot remember, were the Rangitata, (to be sunk a little later) and the Leopoldville. We heard that the sister ship of ours, the ''Duchess of Bedford'' had been sunk off Capetown and we were thankful we had a fair degree of Royal Naval escort ships. These little vessels would go shooting off at high speed around and across the convoy, presumably as the prospect of a U-boat loomed.
I will never forget one Sunday evening whilst on board. Many of us were standing on the large area of deck at the stern of the ship whilst the padre led a sort of Songs of Praise''. As we were singing John Newman's great hymn ''Lead Kindly Light'' there was an almighty bang in the distance and, as we looked to starboard, we saw a great eruption of water, fire and smoke as one of the troopships was hit and sank, The convoy just sailed on and we never got to know which ship had been hit and how many souls were lost. Whenever that hymn is sung it still brings a lump in my throat.
There were probably about 800, at least, on board our ship of which about 80 were Aircrew Trainees. All the rest were army personnel. We were not particularly popular because our quarters were in triple bunks with dunlopillo mattresses in what was normally the first class passengers lounge on the promenade deck, whilst they were mostly berthed in the holds of the ship sleeping in hammocks! Not exactly conducive to friendly relations! However we all shared the similar type of ablution facilities except that ours were in the open air with a canvas canopy. They
were sited at the prow of the ship with just a long trough with a constant flow of running seawater for the toilet effluent. The washing area was at the port side with only seawater from the taps. In those days there were few electric razors, (I had a single blade Remington which was not much good without electricity), and those who shaved usually used Wardonia or Gillette safety razor blades. As there were no mirrors you needed to have a good memory of your face in order to get a good shave! We sailed on from Freetown for two more weeks and eventually arrived at Durban in late October. An early recollection is hearing someone singing. As we lay in our bunks we could feel the ship beginning to list heavily to port. There were six troopships all berthed and tied up alongside the docks. Down on the Dockside was ''the Lady in White''. She was a most beautiful lady, (mind you after having been stuck on a ship, for several weeks with no female company, any female would probably have looked beautiful!). She was dressed in a flowing white dress singing, through a megaphone, Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory and other patriotic songs to wild cheering from the troops. The next thing we heard was over the tannoy of several ships ''Will troops move to the starboard side of the ship, we are listing too heavily''!

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