´óÏó´«Ã½

This contribution was submitted by Haydn Evans to Edgar Lloyd and is added to the site with their permission.
Haydn

It was April 1943 I visited the recruitment office in Penarth, and had to wait until I was 18 on the 18th April before I could volunteer and I was accepted and went into the RAF on the 10th of May 1943. I was working in the mines at that time as a measuring boy and the aim was to join the RAF because I had been in the ATC previously. The RAF came to the school in 1940 and set up the ATC. I became Flight Sergeant there before I went into the service itself.Things were very elementary saluting, marching, using the hall of the school for drills.. that was the lead up to it. There was also the opportunity of spending a week down in St. Athan, which was an RAF camp at the time, where we spent time with the service itself and we were given a flight in an aircraft.

I’d like to set the scene and go back ten years. In a bed in the front bedroom in Lake Street in Ferndale, Rhondda, slept three brothers. Being the youngest, aged three or four…I occupied the middle of the bed…David Arthur, aged ten was near the adjoining wall and William George, aged 15, because of his seniority slept in the privileged space on the outside of the bed. I mention this because the war had a tremendous influence on all our lives. David Arthur served six years in the RAF as an aircraft engine mechanic, married a Canadian girl and went serving over there and emigrated to Canada after the war. William George enlisted in the Royal Engineers in 1939 and served through the Dunkirk evacuation, the North African campaign and was finally killed in action during the battle of Corianna Ridge, Italy on September 13th 1944. Three brothers, all serving and just imagine the impact and the change of direction…and the impact on our mother and father. And so to my war…I was active in the squadron of the ATC and one of the things that happened was that a Flight Lieutenant, David Locke, from Ferndale, who later reached the rank of Group Captain, came along to give us a talk and so I went on to enlist in the RAF volunteer reserve and received my orders and travel warrant to proceed to the main ACRC (air crew reception centre) at St. John’s Wood in London. I was kitted out at Lords Cricket Ground which had been taken over by the RAF — the kit was stored in the areas under the stands which had been cleverly adapted for its new use. I shared a billet/room at a luxury block of flats called Viceroy Court which had been taken over by the RAF and was launched into a ten week course of basic training marching in step, rifle drill, basic procedures on a daily basis, plenty of PT and other disciplines. London in 1943 was attacked on a daily basis by German rockets — German rocket bombs which were launched from the nearest point on the French coast where they had the range to reach London. The bombing was indiscriminate, taking place several times a day - the buzzing noise of the approaching misile was quite penetrating. While it was heard you were OK, but they were built to run out of fuel over the city and when that happened there was an ominous silence for a minute or so and then came the thump of the explosion. The training lasted about ten weeks at the end of this I became a fully fledged air crew cadet PNP standing for pilot/navigator/bomb aimer …the final grading would come later. As a cadet I would now come complete with a white flash and a white belt.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.