大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Lin Freeman of Radio Derby CSV on behalf of Mr Bernard Longstaff and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I joined the RAF as a volunteer in 1932 and did 32 years continuous service leaving in 1964. I signed on for twelve years and had to do five years abroad so before the war I was in Egypt.

By about 1943 I was an engineer on the Sky Masters - DC10 Air Transport basically based in Ceylon at that time. Our job was to receive aircraft in loaded with ex prisoners of war and quite a lot were injured. The planes carried medical personnel as well to look after them and our job was to assist in removing them from the aircraft into another of the same type for onward transmission.

On one occassion I had to board the aircraft with spare engines to fly down to Perth in Australia to repair one of our aircrafts which had caught fire there.
On the way down there we went from Ceylon to a place called Cocus Islands where we refuelled, but were then grounded for a period of three to four days because of Japanese aircraft carriers in the vicinity. We finally flew on to Perth.

During these journies of about eight hours we had to assist in supplying any form of help to our passengers. We eventually reached Perth and had to stop there for about three weeks, I think, because of monsoon conditions. We then went back to Ceylon after the aircraft was repaired and stayed there until after the end of the war. We had to stop because of mutinys in the Far East of military personnel because they wanted to get home.

Our job then was servicing aircrafts which flew off to possibly England via many routes. we carried on doing that and I can't remember when I came back to the UK, but it was months after the war finished. I remember my CO name was Squadron Leader Sach.

When I came back home I served on many units during peacetime until I was discharged.

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