大象传媒

Submitted by Stafford Library on behalf of Lamack McConnell. My war lasted from 1939 to 1948. Not yet 14 when it started I left school on my 14th birthday in 1940. We helped at the church hall in Derby as the troop trains arrived back from Dunkirk with British, Belgian and French soldiers who were in need of temporary billets. I had managed to get an apprenticeship at Rolls Royce and waqs soon involved directly in the production of aero engines. We worked all day for five and a half, often six, days a week and spent three (sometimes four) long evenings a week at the Technical College studying for an engineering qualification. One other evening was spent with the St. John's Ambulance Brigade learning First Aid and I applied the skills in a First Aid party with the Civil Defence during air raids. The other two evenings and Sunday afternoons were spent with teh ADCC, later the ATC, as preparation for air crew training in the RAF. Not much time left for courting!

Late in 1943, aged 17陆, I volunteered from my reserved occupation at Rolls Royce and was accepted for PNB (Pilot/Navigator/Bomb-Aimer) aircrew training but could not put on RAF uniform until I was 18 and a quarter.

After D Day the RAF decided that budding pilots and navigators could not complete their training in time for the war ending "before Christmas 1944". More than two thousand of us were "invited" to switch courses and become air gunners. "On ops, within six weeks", they said. As punishment for our reluctance we were branded LMF and banished into the Army as privants in infantry reinformcement drafts.

The lure of 2/6d (12陆p) a day extra pay took many of us into Parachute units. When the European war ended in May 1954, we had a crash course in jungle warfare under Chindit instructors and prepared for Zipper, the invasion and liberation of Singapore. Fortunately the atom bomb saved our lives and we survived VJ day.

The 3rd Parachute Brigade then diverted to Palestine and a different sort of very active service continued.

Because were were still considered to be "volunteers" from our original enlistment in the RAF our age and service demob group was ignored and my extended war did not finish until 1948. On a cold January day I eventually came home, still a private.

The consequences of volunteering was a lesson to be learned the hard way!

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