大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Stella Graham from Coventry on behalf of Reg Tombs and has been added to the site with his permission. Reg Tombs fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

In 1939 I was nineteen years of age and decided I鈥檇 volunteer and join the RAF.
They sent us to Locking in Weston Super Mare and we did our aircraft training there before they sent us to a squadron. The squadron was in Ducksford and was a Canadian Squadron, 242 Squadron. The CO was Squadron Leader Bader - the legless pilot, he was very famous.
We had everybody flying our aeroplanes. There were Czechs, Australians, Canadians. We had Polish pilots. We couldn鈥檛 get the Polish pilots out of the air, they just wanted to kill Germans. This went on until the end of the Battle of Britain, around September 1940.
It was then decided that they needed to send some RAF pilots to the Middle East, so they sent us on a cruise liner from Gourock all the way down to Suez (most of the troop liners left there). It took us six weeks to go round the Cape because the Mediterranean was closed of course because that was occupied by Germany. We landed in Suez and were posted to a squadron called 108 Squadron which had 鈥淲impys鈥� which were Wellington鈥檚, and we bombed the German troops. (Rommel鈥檚 troops who were in the desert). We were in support of the 8th Army. If the 8th army wanted something done, they鈥檇 call the RAF. We would go in and use rockets, guns etc. on the German tanks. Then I was posted to a special squadron 鈥� 148 Squadron and we were equipped with American Liberators. This was a special present from Wendell Wilkie in America who was plastered on the tailfins of these Liberators.
We adapted these American Liberators to drop supplies and we were dropping supplies to Yugoslavia mainly. Anything from titos, guerrillas, partisans to munitions, insurgents, spies, etc. We were sworn to secrecy, so I can鈥檛 divulge too much, but that was our main object; to supply the underground movements which were happening in France, Yugoslavia and as far as Holland.

For three years in the desert we would always sit and listen to Vera Lynn. We used to dream about her. She was the force鈥檚 favourite. A fortnight ago we were asked if we would like to go to Buckingham Palace with the veterans, so we went there and met all the celebrities and finally I met Vera Lynn. That was just sixty years later!

We鈥檒l meet again one sunny day!

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