大象传媒

4 Squadron at York. The threat of invasion and an incident with poison gas.

Is this where you were first introduced to the gas that you were being trained to drop?
Hugh: Yes that鈥檚 right, poison gas. Churchill was determined they weren't going to land, by any means at all. H meant what he said, that bloke you know. Totally different from the previous Prime Minister, Chamberlain; that bloke was a defeatist, he would have packed in straight away. They had another bloke called Lord Halifax in the cabinet, he was a leading light and he wanted to pack in; he was negotiating with the Germans but Churchill fought his way through.
When you were handling this gas remember you talked about an accident?
Hugh: Oh yes well the reason why were a gas squadron is that the Lysander had little stub wings and under there you could put a container so we could drop supplies or anything. They decided the fittings could be changed to take gas containers; and it was mustard gas. When these aircraft came from the factories or wherever they had been, they hadn't been wired up properly. They were put out in a rush, so all sorts of things were wrong with them. In this particular case, the wiring was wrong and as the pilot was told to select the left, port, side it came off the right hand side and burst. We had this pool of mustard gad and we didn't know what to do with it. So we tried to get some information and they said ohhhh...Anyway we decide to dig a big hole and put it in there and poured earth in and poured petrol on top of that and set fire to it.
Rose: I thought water killed it off.
Hugh: No, mustard gas was still on the ground in France years after the First World War, it was still there. There were gas shells all over the place.
You were sent abroad weren't you?
Hugh: We had a couple of years in England or 18 months I think. We were building the squadron up.
Rose: Oh they changed to Mustangs anyway.
Hugh: Mustangs and another American type.
Was that anything to do the Battle of Britain?
Hugh: Nothing to do with that at all, they were split up into groups, fighter command was down south mainly with a few north of London
Rose: Summer 1940
Hugh: One or two scattered on the west coast away towards the south coast that was all because we didn't have aircraft on the north coast or anything. We had one squadron at Liverpool
Was it Hooton
Hugh: Yes, Hooton and that was to guard the river.
Rose: That was a maintenance unit though wasn't it?
Hugh: No, no it was a fighter squadron.
Did you see anything of the war at that stage or was it something going on down south?
Hugh: no it was training You see we got home and had lost all our equipment and they didn't know what to do. They were trying to train soldiers at the same time everything was training, training, training.
By the end October/November of 1940 did you realise yourself that the threat of invasion was diminishing?
Hugh: No it was right at the last minute the Germans started after the bombing of London. They thought the fighting on land was finished but found it wasn't and at that stage they turned round and invaded Russia. We knew then that we were not going to be invaded. You couldn鈥檛 run this lot at the same time.
So you were pleased when the invasion of Russia took place
Rose: Jo for king!
Hugh: He (Stalin) wasn't, he wanted us to send our troops into Russia.
When did you go over seas
Hugh: In the May of 1942 I think.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.