大象传媒

This is a brief record of the places I visited during my service in the RAF between 23 October 1940 and 17 July 1946. As I am writing, I am 78 years old, so it is perhaps understandable that some of the details are a little fuzzy around the edges. Still, most of the events are reasonably clear to me. An old man remembers more about what happened 60 years ago than what happened last week!

Outbreak of war

I was born on 29 June 1920 and, like many others of my generation, I left school aged 14 with no qualifications and headed for several dead-end jobs. When you are 19 you are indestructible so, to a large extent, World War Two provided youngsters like me with more in the way of opportunities than fears.

When war was declared, I was employed as an Assistant Groundsman at a sports complex run by a company called Silcocks, which made animal and poultry feeds at a factory in Liverpool. My Father had died some years earlier so I was the bread-winner and I lived with my Mother and seven brothers and sisters in a semi-detached, three-bedroom council house in what Liverpuddlians then knew as the 'garden suburb of the borough of Bootle', and, indeed, the house had gardens, front and rear, and was a far cry from the Victorian terraces in the city.

At the start of the war, even those who were called up were given a choice of which service they wanted to join. I chose the Royal Air Force. This wasn鈥檛 a matter of glamour or romance. Planning ahead, I saw it as an opportunity to learn a trade, which wasn鈥檛 something that existed a great deal on the pre-war council estates in Liverpool, unless your family could afford the cost of buying an apprenticeship. Mine certainly couldn鈥檛.

When we were called up, my younger brother Kevin joined the Royal Navy and my little sister Betty joined the ATS - the Auxiliary Territorial Service. At the time, the rest of my brothers and sisters were too young for active service.

First posting

After passing my medical in August, 1940, I was called up the following October. I reported to RAE Station Padgate, Warrington, for basic training. This lasted about six weeks, during which the trainees were all confined to camp - not something we were used to at all. During this time the Battle of Britain was raging in the south-east, so Warrington was not a bad place to be.

My first posting was to RAF Locking in Somerset, not far from Weston-Super-Mare and near the towns of Street and Langport, where I took a course as a Flight Mechanic (Engines) or 'FM1E', which taught me the rudimentary skills involved in the maintenance of aeroplane engines. I took my exams and passed out as Aircraftman (2nd class) FME.

As a reward for passing the course I was granted leave and travelled up to my hometown, Bootle, which at that time, along with Liverpool and other towns and cities in the north-west, was a common target for German bombers. My memories include many night-time hours spent in Anderson shelters. These were so called after the then Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson. They were formed out of corrugated iron sheeting, two flat sheets for the front and back and four curved sheets for the roof. People had to dig a hole in the garden to accommodate them and most folk covered the curved roof with turf for extra protection and insulation.

It was nothing unusual in the height of the Blitz, in 1941, for people to spend a full night in the shelter, so many people put platforms in them which could be used as beds. Looking back, it seems a little surreal that there were families all over the country who abandoned their houses at the sound of the air raid siren and decamped to spend the night in a corrugated steel 'tent' for safety!

When my leave was over I was posted to RAF Weston Zoyland on the historic battlefield of Sedgemoor, just outside Bridgewater, Somerset. One of the few flight numbers and functions I can remember is No 1492 Flight (Target Towing) for air-to-air gunnery practice, training fighter aircraft in the Bristol Channel. During this time, even before the May 1941 blitzes on the big cities in the UK, Bristol was under attack from enemy aircraft.

Bootle blitz and evacuation

In 1941, Bootle took a heavy hammering from enemy bombing. Many houses were obliterated and many others were severely damaged. This left a large part of the population, about 20,000, homeless. The place was a complete shambles, with whole blocks of streets demolished by bombs. Rows of houses had to be left to burn out because there was no water to fight the fires. It seems amazing now but the great Leeds to Liverpool canal was pumped dry and there was still not enough water to stop the fires.

Water pumps were left lying about in the streets, just as useless as the hundreds of Auxiliary Fire Servicemen and women who had been called into Liverpool from across the length and breadth of the country. It was so bad, that every available form of transport was pressed into service to take people out of the city every night into surrounding countryside where it was safe.

At this time my mother was persuaded to evacuate. My brother Kevin knew someone over in Halifax, Yorkshire, and morale was so low that Bootle Town Council was only too anxious to help people get out. My mother was given travel warrants and I was fortunate to be allowed compassionate leave so, once again, I travelled home, this time to help my family to pack what we could and to leave Bootle.

We must have arrived in Yorkshire late in the evening because I remember that as we arrived the local pubs and clubs were closing. We probably looked a sorry little band. However, we were welcomed by the people with whom we stayed and they helped us to settle as best they could. I had to return to my station after a few days but, after a little while, my mother managed to find a house of sorts. It was quite primitive, having no electricity or water supply nor any WCs. But the family was safe and well away from the war.

My sisters Anne (18), Betty (16), Doreen (15) and Marjory (13) settled in and as they became old enough they found jobs in the local worsted spinning mill. My brothers Terry (11) and Peter (10) spent their school years there before the whole family moved back to Bootle at the end of the war.

Hawarden

Later in 1941 I volunteered for service with Training Command and was posted to 47 MU, Hawarden (Harden), just outside Chester. We worked 6陆 days a week, only having Saturday afternoons off, converting Spitfire and Hurricane fighter aircraft for desert service by spraying them with new camouflage, fitting extra wing petrol tanks and new desert standard cannon and gunnery parts. It must have been late 1941 into 1942, as the fighter aircraft were to support the big desert actions in North Africa under General Auchinleck.

It was here that I had my first experience of flying in an aircraft, a Tiger Moth biplane. Over the course of the war years I was to fly in several different types of aircraft: Whitley bombers, Dakotas, Wellingtons, Beaufighters, Ansons and Austers to name a few. Apart from the fact that we were part of the team, it was customary for fitters to be on the test flights of aircraft they had worked on whenever possible, for the painfully obvious reason!

The only aircraft I had the chance to actually fly was a Gypsy Moth. These aircraft were used extensively to train pilots. They were pretty basic but exceedingly reliable. Only daredevils like Douglas Bader could bend them by pushing them to their limits. As I only had a rudimentary idea about why these things could actually fly and I had absolutely no idea about the controls, I don鈥檛 think that I impressed either the pilot or my envious mates down on the ground. If I had been a star I suppose I might just have found myself having quite a different war altogether!

Brockhouse Engineering then Wales

At this stage, two years into the war, the aircraft industry was short of skilled fitters, and RAF volunteers were called for. So I threw my cap in the ring and was eventually selected to go to Brockhouse Engineering at Crossens Southport. This time the work was mainly assembling Boulton Paul gun turrets, which were then fitted to bomber aircraft.

At about this time, bad news came about an abortive raid on Dieppe, involving Commando, Canadian and Royal Naval Personnel. It was only years later that I found out that my brother Kevin, who had joined the Royal Navy, had taken part in this action. Kevin鈥檚 was quite a different war from mine. He saw service in the Far East in the cruiser HlMS 'Durban' and witnessed the sinking of the 'Prince Of Wales' and 'Repulse' immediately before the fall of Singapore. The boilers of the 'Durban' were sabotaged while the ship was undergoing repair in America after being damaged in action off Singapore.

After spending a year in the factory at Southport, I was unfortunately recalled to service in the RAF, travelling to Bridgend, Glamorgan in South Wales, to number 7 Bombing and Gunnery School, at the aptly named Stormy Down! History had it that the weather was so bad that the railway signal box at nearby Pyle had been blown down by the wind several times. It never actually happened when I was there. On the other hand, on at least one occasion an aircraft hangar door was blown off and, during winter, it was quite normal practice for us to 'picket' our aircraft with long spikes, very much like giant cork-screws, which were screwed into the ground and fastened with rope to the aircraft wingtips.

Any spare time we had was spent visiting Port Talbot and Porthcawl plus many other Welsh towns and villages that I can鈥檛 trust myself to try to spell.

The main 'runway' here was just a field; no tarmac or concrete. Because of its position, aircraft had to take off directly over Porthcawl, and the Fairey Battle aircraft, which were used for gunnery practice, had a great deal of difficulty becoming airborne. Several finished up in the Bristol Channel! I鈥檓 glad to say that my job here was to keep Whitley Bombers airworthy so I wasn鈥檛 involved with the Battles, which were very heavy twin passenger planes, so severely underpowered that they really had to labour like mad to get airborne. I can鈥檛 remember anyone having a good word for them.

Halton

I did not spend a lot of time in South Wales before I found myself posted to Halton in Buckinghamshire, near Aylesbury and Tring, for further education in engineering. This is the famous RAF Apprentices School, where the boys were then known as 'Trenchard's Brats' after Air Marshall Trenchard who founded the School. These were the lads who formed the backbone of the RAF and they were steeped in traditions. I well remember them being led from their barrack blocks to school and on return by a pipeband playing 'The Gay Gordons'. An impressive and uplifting expenence.

When my training ended I had improved my classification from FME to Fitter II Engines and had also earned an increase in my hourly wage from 4 shillings and sixpence to a figure which seemed a great deal more at the time but which I unfortunately cannot remember! I led a Spartan lifestyle really. I drank little and my main vice was smoking. So the little money I had was sufficient for my needs.

Cranfield

From Halton I was posted to Cranfield in Bedfordshire to another Bombing and Gunnery School. I could not seem to get away from the RAF Training Wing. I can鈥檛 remember how long I spent at Cranfield but, while I was there I was able to enjoy many weekends at home because of the good railway service from London to Liverpool via Bletchley.

After buying a ticket from Bletchley to Liverpool, I used to leave the train at Crewe and buy a cheap return from there to Liverpool for only about 3/-. I used this little trick for many journeys, keeping the original unclipped ticket as insurance.

In time, volunteers were called for to go to 'Old Sarum', the original site of Salisbury, with the objective of waterproofing transport vehicles to be used by 2nd Tactical Air Force (2ndTAF) in the D-day landings. On D-day itself I was still at Old Sarum. I had to have a very minor operation at the Fairey Mansion, which had been requisitioned as a hospital. On 6 June 1944, I was discharged in time to witness in amazed silence the waves of hundreds of aircraft and gliders flying over to start the liberation of Europe.

I was recalled from Old Sarum to Cranfield soon after D-day. The Germans were fighting back using their 鈥淰ictory鈥� weapons and this time was the height of the V1 (Doodlebug) raids. I soon learned that I had been posted overseas via the RAF transit camp at West Kirby on the Wirral.

It was very close to my birthday so it was only natural for me to make an effort to see my relatives and friends who were still in Bootle. I soon 'found' a hole in the perimeter fence which I used every night to go AWOL - absent without official leave! Then came the fateful day when having travelled by train to Liverpool, we paraded down Water Street across the Pier Head onto Princes Dock landing stage for embarkation onto what had been the luxury cruise liner, 'The Monarch of Bermuda'.

Posted overseas

Our first port of call was to Greenock, on the River Clyde, where we lay at the 'Tail o鈥� the Bank' for a couple of days whilst a convoy was formed for the journey to the Middle East. My days then were spent with three other RAF men playing solo whist. I also waited on table in the stewards鈥� mess, which had various advantages, relieving me of scaling rust off the ship and other onerous duties as well as providing me with top class food!

Having left the Clyde, our next port of call was Port Said in Egypt where we disembarked and entrained for Ismalia on the Bitter Lakes in the Suez Canal. Several days were spent at this transit camp before posting to Shallufa just outside Suez. As usual, our job was to train aircrews in - Bombing and Gunnery! The aircraft used were Beauflghters and their exercise was to practice dive-bombing on targets placed on the other side of the Suez Canal.

Unfortunately, three aircraft for which I was responsible failed to pull out of their dives and buried themselves in the desert sand, with the loss of six crew, two per aircraft. After the third loss, a Court of Inquiry was held to determine the cause. None was found and no blame was attached to me but the memory is still there, over 50 years on.

Christmas 1944 was spent in Shallufa where a good time was had by all. Three days of jollifications, food and drink and no work. Myself and another Catholic lad from Belfast persuaded a Protestant lad also from Belfast to come with us to midnight mass in Suez. It was quite magical.

I felt my next move to be an unfair one - but that鈥檚 war. I was the only fitter from the Suez station who ended up being posted to a squadron which was on its way from the UK to the Far East.

Before I left Egypt I spent some leave with my sister Anne鈥檚 husband, George Garrett, who was stationed with the RASC at Port Said. The Royal Army Service Corps were the British Army鈥檚 dogsbodies and George was a Company Quartermaster Sergeant, responsible for keeping things on the move; guns, weaponry, ammunition, horses, mules etc. In fact, anything from a pin to a tank. This gave him ample opportunity for entrepreneurialism - enough to start a small business of his own right after demobilisation!

We spent several days in Cairo and visited the Sphinx and the pyramids at Giza, and also Alexandria. It was all very mysterious and very, very impressive.

A new squadron

The outgoing squadron that I joined at Cairo West was a Transport squadron of Dakotas, with double crews so we could fly for long hours at a stretch. I think it was 96 Squadron. The plan was to convert aircraft for dropping paratroopers on the Japanese in Burma. The squadron had been moved without prior warning and both the ground and flight crews were still wearing RAF-blue uniforms. I stuck out like a sore thumb as the only one in the RAF khaki drill.

We flew from Cairo West to Karachi, in what is now Pakistan and was then in India, via the United Arab Emirates, stopping over at Sharjah in the Arabian Gulf. It was really desolate, flying over these parts and we were glad that we didn鈥檛 have to force land.

Karachi is in the Sind Desert and we saw more camels here than in Egypt. Just another stop-over, then on to the Central Provinces in India. We didn鈥檛 know where and we couldn鈥檛 have cared less. It was just a field with primitive living accommodation called 'bashas'. I believe they were the forerunners of bungalows. This must have been the monsoon season. You could almost bet on the rain starting at 6.30pm on 15 June and it was best to stay indoors until it ended!

Rest camp

At this time a spot of leave at a rest camp was offered to me. Ever a volunteer and happy to add to my geographical knowledge, I accepted and flew off to the lower slopes of the Himalayas, flying over the Taj Mahal on the way, and landing at New Delhi. I then travelled by road on a journey that seemed never ending, winding ever upwards on narrow tracks to a camp called Kasauli near Srinagar, the popular place to be, away from the hot Indian summers. This was ostensibly a hospital camp with plenty of medics about, plenty of good food and rest.

After a short time I went back to the squadron. This time to Comilla in Assam, with excessive humidity and where clothing was always damp. The bazaars were good, with plenty of bolts of Chinese silk. I recall buying a dress length for my youngest sister. It was relatively easy to bring certain things like this back from the East. Customs, such as they were, just didn鈥檛 have the time or staff to check things what with all the coming and going.

I also spent a short time in Calcutta. Our mission was aborted not long after arriving in India. The weather was far too hot to work in aircraft for much of the day so we broke it into two spells: 6 am to 11 am; then 6 pm to 8 pm, when weather permitted. To cap it all, we couldn鈥檛 sleep at night due to the extreme heat and humidity.

Celebrations

VE-day in May 1945 gave us an opportunity to relax and a good excuse to drink our liquor store dry. Shortly after, VJ-day saw the end of hostilities in August - but not the end of the work for my unit. Along with other Dakota squadrons we flew to an airfield called Mingaladon, just outside Rangoon in Burma, with the purpose of evacuating allied troops from the infamous Burma-Siam railway. The ex-prisoners of war were brought down to Bangkok, capital of Siam as it then was. Our aircraft lifted them from Bangkok Don Muang airport and flew them to various places for treatment and repatriation.

Australians and some Britons were taken to Singapore before going home. Some Britons who were considered fit enough were flown direct to the UK. The whole operation took several weeks.

Despite the end of hostilities, Allied troops were still kept in SE Asia. During this time, I recall that one of our aircraft went missing, whilst on a return flight from Bangkok to Rangoon with a full load of ex-prisoners of war. During the monsoon, the weather was not very conducive to aircraft movement. For some reason we were not told what happened to this aircraft, but many years later whilst living in Ayrshire, I read an account in the Glasgow Evening News, that it had force-landed on its return flight with no casualties whatsoever; which illustrates how safe the old Dakotas were.

Waning morale

We were then selected to join the occupation forces in Japan only to have this cancelled in days. Then it was on again and off, and this happened so many times that we all lost interest. This malaise pervaded all the troops I met at that time and some people got so disgruntled that talk of mutiny made the rounds between squadrons. Commanding Officers were literally compelled to read the Riot Act to troops.

I remember that two or three blokes stationed in Singapore were actually charged with mutiny. Trials were held but they were eventually dropped, which was probably just as well, given the state of morale.

Still on the subject of trials, I attended some of the Japanese war crime trials in Rangoon, the Bunnese capital. These concerned some of the atrocities committed by Japanese troops on Burmese civilians. It wasn鈥檛 the sort of thing you stayed long to hear about if you didn鈥檛 have to.

I remember one case concerning a Japanese officer who had ordered the mass execution of all the people in a small village for some minor administrative offence. The bodies were thrown down the local well. I recall that he was found guilty and was no doubt summarily executed.

684 Squadron

After Rangoon, I was posted to 684 Squadron, a photographic reconnaissance unit which was photographing large areas of Asia using Mosquito aircraft stationed in Bangkok. During my service with the 684 Squadron I learned that a Beaufighter, used as a courier to collect duty free, like whisky and exotic fruits, for squadron members, had blown an engine. As I was the only fitter on the squadron with Beaufighter experience, I was detailed to go to Singapore to perform an engine change. I politely informed my superiors that, as I was due for demob, there was no way that I was going to 'Singers'. (In one of those odd situations that show how small the world is, I found out what happened several years later. In 2002, due to failing eyesight, I had to sell my car, which I advertised in the local newspaper. Eventually a Chester man came round to see the car and, as he was about my age, we started to reminisce about the war. We found out that we had both served our final years in the same squadron and that he had been sent to service a Beaufighter in Singapore when another fitter had refused to go!)

In due course I was sent back to a transit camp at Rangoon where I was told I was due for demobilisation.

Eventually, I sailed from Rangoon in an American Liberty boat called 'The Lake Charles Victory'. It was two metal boxes welded together but it kept afloat and arrived, eventually at Southampton. I entrained for Kirkham near Blackpool for eventual demobilisation in July 1946.

Surreal return

By then my family had returned to Bootle, where life was surreal. People felt that they should be victorious but, in reality, jobs were extremely hard to come by as the country came to grips with a flood of ex-servicemen returning to peacetime Britain. So I went back to Halifax in West Yorkshire and stayed with one of my sisters, who had married a local lad. I soon found a job in a textile factory in a small village called Shelf, about half way between Halifax and Bradford.

But that, as the saying goes, is quite another story.

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