大象传媒

As 1944 wore on the Army were starting to get held up by the ground conditions, and the pace of war slowed. At this time we were once again moved up temporarily closer to the front line. We were sent to the old Italian airport of Rimini which had only recently been captured. We were warned that the place had been booby trapped by the Germans and had to keep our eyes open. When I first landed there I got out of the aircraft and walked around it as usual, when to my horror I saw that one of my undercarriage wheels was propped against a small 鈥渟hoe鈥� mine, the weight o f the aircraft was just sufficient to tip it on edge without detonating it!

The war in Italy had now slowed down for the winter and we were on the move again, this time we left the East coast and were moved to the centre to Florence. The airfield was on the outskirts of the town and had a permanent runway which made quite a change from the PSP to which we had become accustomed. Also we were billeted in a block of flats in the town. As winter approached it became very cold and we used various devices to keep warm including a home made pressure heater running on aviation fuel! This fire was very warming and made a very satisfying roar, but was not the safest of ways to produce heat! We eventually abandoned it and resorted to one running on diesel fuel which was not so spectacular but more comfortable to live with.

What a difference to the climate I had left a couple of years ago where I had done my flying training, in Southern Rhodesia! There the weather had been so predictable and warm, that flying was hardly ever held up, just a few times in the winter when low cloud would sweep over the high plateau. The airfields we were on were about 5000 feet above sea level. The only worry normally was something called float which caused an aircraft to hang in the air when coming in to land, this could make you overshoot the airfield unless you were ready for it. This phenomenon is peculiar to high altitude airfields in the tropics. When we were learning to fly on Tiger moths there was another hazard when the weather got very hot, that was 鈥渄ust devils鈥�, these were small whirlwinds caused by rising air, and land they could cause the aircraft to rotate rapidly on the ground!

It was while we were at Florence that I was coming back from a sortie, when just before coming back across the front line my engine decided to stop. We were at about ten thousand feet and because I didn鈥檛 fancy becoming a prisoner of war, didn鈥檛 bail out but decided to glide the aircraft back to our side of things. Having crossed the front line the next thing was to find a decent field in which to land. I eventually found something which looked acceptable, and came in for a wheels up landing. It seemed to go alright but just after touchdown my starboard wing hit something, the aircraft swung around and finished in a bit of a heap.

After managing to extricate myself from the wreckage, I heard some shouting and looked up to see lots of Americans waving furiously but not deigning to come anywhere near me. I couldn鈥檛 make out what they were saying at first but managed to gather that they didn鈥檛 want me to move. After a few minutes I saw several soldiers coming towards me wielding mine detectors, it then came to me why I was standing there in isolation, I was in the middle of a minefield! Anyway they eventually escorted me out of my predicament and into the clutches of an Army Medic who checked me over and finally told me that I didn鈥檛 have any broken bones. He sprinkled about a pound of Sulphanilamide powder on a small cut that I had on my hand, and I was taken back to their Company Headquarters. This all happened in the morning and I began to realise how lucky I had been. I had landed with them on Thanksgiving Day.

I was later confronted by an irate American who told me of his experiences at my hand, apparently the reason that my aircraft had slowed on landing was that my starboard wing had hit a telegraph pole, this had jerked the wires and he was up a pole doing some repairs a bit along the wire and was flung off, he suffered some bruising but was otherwise OK. I also found out that the reason my engine had stopped was that I had received a German bullet in the engine which had severed an oil line, causing the engine to seize.

The British forces were at this time existing on dehydrated meat dehydrated potatoes and dehydrated carrots for meals and ships biscuits contained in tins marked 鈥渘ot to be consumed after 1933鈥�. The Americans were looked after slightly better, so the lunch I was offered consisted of roast turkey, fresh vegetables and fresh white bread, the like of which we hadn鈥檛 seen since the war started. Apparently the American people had sent over to Italy two liberty ships fully loaded with food for their Thanksgiving Day celebrations. After I had eaten my fill, I was whisked away to 5th Army Headquarters because their Intelligence corps wanted to talk to me. Having had a chat with them I was led to their Mess where I found out that they were having their special meal in the evening, so I finished up rather full and was put to bed to sleep it off.

I was driven back to the Squadron the next day and having related my experiences to the rest of the pilots they were all resolved to force land with the Americans the next day.

After we had been at Florence about six weeks the war started to recover from its winter lethargy, and we were moved westwards to work with the American 5th Army, and sent to an airfield just outside Pisa. On the airfield were two squadrons of American fighter bombers flying Thunderbolts and doing a similar job to our Spitfires except that they carried about four times as much bomb weight as us.

We were given some buildings at the end of the runway for our accommodation and we spent some time making it a bit more habitable. The Spitfire has a huge nose in front of it so it was good practise to weave the nose backwards and forwards in order to maintain a forward view. This meant that we made a turn soon after take-off so that we could see what was ahead. The Thunderbolt pilots were rather taken with this manoeuvre and started to copy us. The Thunderbolts were always rather reluctant to leave the ground with their large bomb load and much fuel and the sight of these aircraft staggering over our heads barely above the stall in a tight turn while we were sitting down to our meals, was quite horrifying. I think that they also found the experience pretty grim because they stopped the practise after a couple of weeks.

The acquisition of British drinks was always exercising our minds and to this end we did a deal with our American cousins and eventually acquired an American Marauder bomber in order to make the trip to Malta where booze was in plentiful supply and quite cheap. The next problem arose because we knew of none who knew how to fly the thing.

Eventually we found a Thunderbolt pilot who had flown them and he gave a couple of our chaps a quick run down on the drill, so eventually they took off for Malta and came back well loaded with hooch which was greatly appreciated. Unfortunately, like the Hurricane before it someone on high decided that we couldn鈥檛 keep it.

It was about now that we first encountered German Radar, we were escorting some Dakotas who were dropping supplies to the Italian Partisans, when we heard an odd sounding whine over our radios. It didn鈥檛 occur to us what this might be, but 88mm shells started to burst around us and we started to weave as usual it wasn鈥檛 until we looked back and saw our track faithfully reproduced by the shell bursts that we realised what we were up against. We studiously avoided the area after that.

During this time looking back in my log book reminds me that we carried out some very odd sorties these included bombing supply dumps a coke factory and mule stables, this latter one only after much insistence from our Rover control.

We were now well into 1945, and German resistance was lessening because the second front in France caused them to pull troops out of Italy.

We were being called in to help the British Eighth Army again and back with our Rover control except that by this time there were a great many more aircraft around and the air was filled with Spitfires, to be called in to attack.

In consequence the front line started to move quickly and we were ourselves being moved again and again. We arrived at Bologna amidst a torrential thunderstorm and had a job to find somewhere to pitch out tents. We did a couple of sorties from here and then were told to move again. This time we were in trouble, because of all the rain our vehicles were bogged down. Our MT sergeant was however up to the occasion, we saw him disappear in the Jeep and about an hour later arrived back with a German half track vehicle. This had no problems in pulling all of our trucks out of the mire and on to hard roads.

We then moved to an airfield near Verona. We got there just two days after the town had been captured by the Allies, naturally we went to explore and found out to our delight that the Allied administration hadn鈥檛 yet arrived. We were pleased because they devalued the Lira by a factor of Four, so our money could buy four times as much as before, we obviously took full advantage of this!

We were with a South African wing at this time and on the second of May the Germans surrendered, this was of course a cause of great celebration and the South Africans had a number of coloured people as guards, who took great delight in shooting off their rifles rather wildly, so we all took cover! Down the road someone decided to set fire to a German ammunition depot which lit up the night sky as well as sending shells etc., whizzing around our ears. Our celebrations went on for some time and I remember finding one of our pilots fast asleep at the top of an olive tree. By VE Day we were rather past caring.

As the war was now over we looked around for some R&R, we were near Lake Garda and had seen it from the air so decided to explore it on the ground. It was very attractive and we found the locals very friendly. We soon found a villa which was deserted and which we found out had belonged to a local Fascist, so we promptly commandeered it. It was quite near to the lakeside and as it was so hot we found it very refreshing to swim in fresh water which did not have any chlorine or salt in it, we were swimming around one day when one of our pilots decided to swim out to a raft which was anchored just offshore, he got chatting with someone who was already there and who introduced himself as Mark Clark, who was the General commanding the American 5th Army, our pilot said oh yes and I鈥檓 Winston Churchill, dived back into the water and swam ashore.

It wasn鈥檛 until that evening when we were sitting at a cafe in the village square that we saw this chap go by in a jeep with four stars on it. Our pilot didn鈥檛 go near to the raft again.

Now that the war was over the Yugoslavs started to make noises about Trieste, which had been annexed by the Italians after the First World War. The Allies had agreed that Italy could keep it after the latest war. In order to underline this we were moved up to the NE corner of Italy near to a town called Udine. From there we flew sorties of large formations over the area to show that we weren鈥檛 about to let the Yugoslavs march in and take it back.

We regretted having to leave our villa on the lake behind and we were not near any water suitable for swimming and it was still very hot. We decided to try a run to the coast to see if there was any good bathing. About twenty of us got into a three toner and took off for the coast, it was a long, hot and dusty journey. About half way to the coast we were passing a town when we spotted an area which had two pools in it and decided to stop and have a swim to refresh ourselves. We noticed that there were a lot of people in one pool and none in the other so a couple of the chaps who got stripped off more quickly than the rest decided to dive into the vacant pool. We were amazed at how quickly they came out, they barely hit the water before they were out again, which we thought a bit odd. They suggested that we try the water and we found that it was practically freezing. No wonder there was none in it when we arrived. We found out from the locals that that particular pool was fed from an underground river and the water came straight from an Alpine glacier. We decided after that to swim in the other pool. We went on to have our swim in the sea which was very welcome.

Being so far north in Italy we were very near to the Alps, and made several expeditions to explore them. On one trip we came on a very attractive beer garden and found to our pleasure that there was also a brewery there. We naturally loaded up the lorry with beer and returned to the Squadron very pleased with our find. This brewery was to keep us supplied with beer from then on.

Another expedition took us right into the mountains and we eventually arrived at Cortina d鈥橝mpezzo, which was a picture postcard village and one in which we decided that we ought to have as a weekend resting place. We had a good look around and with good luck chanced to find a small hotel which had been owned by a local Fascist. Like our villa on Lake Garda we immediately requisitioned it and it was to become our second home for the rest of our stay in Italy. The owners widow was still in residence and she immediately took to us and looked after us like a mother.

The summer was now nearly over and we spent practically every weekend at Cortina. The area was well covered with marked walks and remote cafes, and we spent many weekends roaming the mountains and eating and drinking at the cafes. There was also quite a good nightlife in Cortina which obviously had our patronage.

As we got into winter we still continued to visit Cortina and as the snow came so we all started to learn to ski. Our equipment was fairly basic, there were no proper ski boots around and we used our Army issue boots which we had always worn when flying during the war to enable us to walk out if we came down behind the enemy lines. We did manage to hire some skis and sticks and most of the ski lifts were running, so we got a fair amount of skiing in.

At the hotel we were well looked after, one of the problems was just getting to Cortina, the journey was about three hours and in the back of a three ton truck it got pretty damned cold, but when we arrived we were always greeted with large tots of brandy to warm us up and a good hot meal.

At this time we were only flying three days a week so we had plenty of time off. It was while we were at Udine that the Desert Air Force decided to have a Victory celebration which consisted of some individual flying demonstrations and a fly past of all the wings in DAF. This was something new to us and involved many hours of practice. Manoeuvring many large formations around the sky needed much planning and the rehearsals started off with just a few aircraft in formation. These formations grew rapidly until we had three full squadrons for each wing in the air, it was quite a sight which unfortunately we who were flying never got a chance to see. However there were official Air Ministry photographers there who took many pictures both from the ground and in the air.

This was to prove the last time that so many aircraft were to be seen together, as many of the squadrons were being disbanded. The problem of disposing of so many aircraft must have been a headache but they soon went. Volunteers were called for to ferry them to various parts of the world.

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