大象传媒

This story was submitted to the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by ^{About links} on behalf of William Hemming and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was an accountant in Evesham, Worcestershire when I joined the Royal Air Force in June, 1938. I wanted to be a pilot, but I couldn鈥檛 because I鈥檓 colour blind.
鈥淲e鈥檙e desperate for accountants,鈥� I was told. So I signed on for nine years and became an accountant in the RAF.

Up to September 1938 I was based at Felixstowe. In October I was sent to Scotland and spent six months in Glasgow, then a brief posting to Shropshire and in January 1939 my unit was sent to Canada. In Canada I was based at Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, a pilot training base for the Canadian and the Royal Air Forces. I stayed in Moosejaw for about a year and a half. I remember they had an indoor swimming pool at the base and I was a keen swimmer.

In May 1942 I was posted to Alabama USA and attached to the US Air Force for a year.

When I was posted back to Canada at the end of the year I had a fair bit of accumulated leave, and took a roundabout route by train via New Orleans and Chicago, spending about four days in each place. In Chicago I came across some Canadians who said they were always pleased to see chaps from the UK and showed me their hospitality by taking me on a tour of the Chicago strip joints.

I was posted back to the UK in May 1943, to a fighter pilot station in Dorset, and for the first time I saw the effects of the war on the ground. We were being attacked by German bombers and spent a lot of time in bomb shelters. At one point I was sent to London for a few days and found myself in the street at night during a heavy bombing raid. I had no idea where to go and found a shelter by sheer luck. I was put up in a top floor room in a house and again by sheer luck the bombs missed it, hitting the houses on either side.

I had a brief posting to Cairo in Egypt in September 1943. That was probably the most enjoyable posting, but it was brief. Later I was posted to Europe and eventually to one of the big northern cities in Germany. Conditions were bad. I arrived by train and emerged from the station to see total carnage. I saw what had once been a beautiful streets in ruins. The place had been bombed to destruction. Everyone had fled. You couldn鈥檛 live there. It was when I was based there I started to think about the war. All this destruction caused by American and British planes. Why? It seemed useless.

I stayed on in the RAF after the war, leaving with the rank of Flight Sergeant, the top rank available to non-commissioned officers at the time. In 1954 I was based in Germany again, and while I was there the Sergeant鈥檚 held a ball, and invited some of the German girls. I saw a girl across the room, and I thought she was the most marvellous woman I鈥檇 ever seen. The most perfect thing. She was upper class. I was incredibly lucky to have met her. I married her, and brought her back to England.

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