大象传媒

Norman Eastmead. Edited transcript of a videotape interview

My name is Norman Eastmead, I鈥檓 ex RAF, and I served on the Air-sea rescue side of the Royal Air Force.
At the outbreak of the war, I had just left the naval training school, which I had joined at the age of eleven, failed my final medical because I was half-an-inch too short, so with the war started I went down the road and I joined the Royal Air Force, and for my sins I was moved into the marine section of the Royal Air Force, which was Air-Sea Rescue, where I spent the rest of the war, so I never got away from the sea.
As a fitter I went away for training on marine engines, and that was my job in the engine room, keeping the engines running, and get us back home each time.
I started actual operations straight away, as soon as I had finished my training, at the beginning of 1940. Every time a plane left the country, we had to put top sea, and if they were on a bombing raid we would go about half way out to where the minefield ran from the Straits of Dover down to Cherbourg right down the centre of the Channel. And we鈥檇 sit on the edge of that minefield, and wait for the last plane to come back. If they failed to return, or dropped short, then we had to go through the minefield to bring them back home again. At the beginning of the war there were a lot of dog fights going on over the channel, and we had to be at sea for anyone who fell out of the sky to bring them home again, so that was basically our job. Pilot rescue, and bomber crews. We never asked for a passport, it never worried us whether they were Army, Navy, Air Force, male, female, it made no difference to us, it was always some mother鈥檚 son or daughter. If it was a German we picked up, we brought him back to England, POW camp, at least he went home to Mum at the end of the war.
The Air-Sea Rescue covered the whole world, with the exception of the eastern sea boards of Canada and the United States, which we left to them to do, but Iceland, all round the UK, Mediterranean, Africa, Indian Ocean, Far East. No definite figures have been put out for the number of rescues, but it has been estimated that some twentyfive thousand lives were saved world wide. That鈥檚 a lot of mother鈥檚 sons.
There were fourteen crew in total, that was the skipper, the coxswain, the second class coxswain, deckhands, fitters, and it also included a medical orderly who was trained to a very high standard because they never knew what they were going to come up with, they had to be prepared almost up to doctor level, and they were good.. There were always injuries in a lot of the people we picked up, I mean, things like back trouble 鈥� landed the wrong way up, there were some with injuries 鈥� bad 鈥� and some 鈥� I hate to say it 鈥� but you scoop them up in a bucket., so it was the full range of it.

I don鈥檛 know, how long I was serving on a particular boat, I never kept a record of it . If one was out of service, I鈥檇 go on another boat. One of the boats I went on was 122, what we call a whaleback, because of the shape of the hull. 63foot long. Most of them had three 500-horsepower Napier engines, 1500 horsepower to push them along. They could cover quite a good speed, 48knots.
We did have problems with some of the boats, for instance the ones fitted with Thorneycroft engines were salt water cooled, and for some unknown reason they had held the heads on with mild steel studs. Well you know the effect of salt water on mild steel. And the next thing you see is a spurt of water coming up out of the engine.. We had a good cure for that, we never had time for drilling out and putting new studs in, we had a box of bullet-hole plugs in the engine room, you know the files they use on the beer kegs, that shaped, tapered, of different sizes, point 5, 303, 20mil, all different sizes, and when you got shot up you hammer these into the side of the boat to keep the water out, So you hammer these in where the studs had come out till you got back to harbour 鈥� there were no stores in the channel, you really had to make do and mend on the run.
There were two of us in the engine room, because if you were stuck down there for a long time you needed a bit of comfort to go up on the deck and relieve yourself, I wouldn鈥檛 swap the job for the world, yes, it was dangerous, but it was very rewarding. Very disappointing when you come back with no body, they might come down straight behind you, they go straight down, nothing comes up, but when you did get a fish, you were happy. Often we鈥檇 sit on the edge of the minefield which stretched from Dover right down to the Cherbourg peninsula, and we鈥檇 sit on the edge of that, wait for the last men to come back, and if they fell short, then we鈥檇 no choice but to go through the minefield. That didn鈥檛 worry us, because if you went through at this speed they popped up behind us so we used them as target practice on the way back., but not before we鈥檇 put a dinghy over the stern with a couple of deckhands to pick up the fish we wanted for supper.
I don鈥檛 know the width of the minefield, because I was in the engine room, and didn鈥檛 see much of the life there, not unless we stopped to have a pot-shot at the targets on the way back, We had three boats at each base, and either we were on duty 鈥� we slept on board 鈥� on call twenty-four hours a day, stand-by, slept in a hut on the dockside, and if the duty boat went out they became duty boat, and the stand down, not off-duty, mind you, if you went out you had to log where you were going, to a dance, or a cinema, it was logged down, so if you went to the cinema, the cinema manager got a call, and up on the top right-hand corner of the screen there used to come the badge and A S Rescue return to base., we never got charged to go to the cinema, because we never saw the end of the film! The same if we went to the pub, we all went together as a family, skipper and all, so they knew where to find us, and if we happened to be in the pub and the call came through, they鈥檇 say 鈥淪orry lads, got to go鈥� and if we went back in later on 鈥淵ou didn鈥檛 finish your drinks last time, here鈥檚 more鈥� and at a dance they鈥檇 stop the band, the MC would say 鈥淎ir-sea rescue return to base鈥� and we鈥檇 go out to the cheers of all the soldiers, they鈥檇 got rid of the RAF!
I wouldn鈥檛 have swapped it for all that, you were never really off duty. I was like the others, single, my home was gone, that was it

I got my films 鈥� these were all taken on my camera - only a cheap little camera I had, - couldn鈥檛 afford much else on my pay! 鈥� and I had a friend who used to load all the film up for the aero cameras, what he鈥檇 do when he鈥檇 loaded all the cameras up, if he had a length of film over, he鈥檇 put it to one side in the darkroom, and I had a 120 roll film, he鈥檇 develop my film, and cut a strip off, stick it in the backing paper, roll it up again, and pass it on to me.. So that鈥檚 how I got my wartime photographs, including a cheeky one of the escorting Navy gunboats going across for D-day. So that鈥檚 how I could get these, because I had the film to do it.

We came to Guernsey as back up for the Liberation. We only came over really in case anyone hit mines on the way through. The force 135 boys came ashore, we were only here for safety reasons, and to pick up any strays that hit mines. I don鈥檛 know if you realise, but you should have been liberated in the September the year before, A RAF Rescue Launch came down to St Peter Port with a high-ranking German officer, prisoner-of-war, with an Army major in charge of him, made up to be a major for the day, and the object of the exercise would have been to get the commandant out to the boat, where he would have been ordered to surrender the island of Guernsey by a senior officer, but they couldn鈥檛 get the blighter out, so no choice but to go back to the UK empty handed, the message went back 鈥淪tarve them out鈥� The Vega鈥檚 got food for the natives, starve the Germans out.
By then the troops were moving down the Cherbourg peninsula, so supplies were getting cut off from France to here.

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