大象传媒

Many of us were put in requisitioned houses. I was put into a house Wat-On in Firbeck Avenue off the Drummond Road. I shared an upstairs room with an airframe fitter named Charlie Cork who came from Northampton. There were only two camp beds in the room.
We were to be at Skegness for a month on what was called a Backers Up course. Butlins Holiday Camp had been taken over by the Government, and it was there we had our meals and on one or two occasions assembled in the camp theatre for a talk by an officer. At Skegness I met airmen I had known at Brize Norton and many that had been on the fitters course at Blackpool.
The Backers Up course consisted mostly of football, arms drill, firing on the rifle range, route marches and PT which most of us had done before. For arms drill we used rifles, but for other exercises that was playing at soldiers we used wooden rifles.
Many of the beaches at Skegness were mined and surrounded with barbed wire and there were danger notices. As far as I can recollect we were free on Easter Sunday and Monday. There were few civilians or holiday makers about, and on the Sunday or Monday afternoon I went walking with another airman, probably Charlie Cork. As we walked along a deserted road we heard in the distance an explosion and saw smoke and what appeared to be debris go into the air. Shortly after that we heard another explosion. We heard later that two Wrens had somehow entered the mined beach and had been blown up, and an airman who was walking with his wife, and who had come to Skegness for Easter, went to the aid of the Wrens and he was blown up. The Army was then called in. I am not sure as to whether the Wrens were killed or died but we heard later that the airman had lost a leg.
As most people know the air at Skegness is very bracing and at the end of the four weeks I felt pretty fit. Although it was war time there were plenty of fish and chips, beer and cigarettes although I was a non-smoker. I do not recall going to the cinema, but we went to a show at a theatre and saw and heard Rudi Starita and his girl band.
Sometime in April after the end of the Backers Up course, with about eight others I was posted to No 25 Maintenance Unit, RAF Hartlebury, Worcestershire. We left Skegness in the morning and travelled all day, and, having to wait in Birmingham, had a look around the Bull Ring. We arrived at the small Hartlebury railway station in the early evening. The camp was not far away on a minor road and, with our kit, we walked to the entrance.

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