大象传媒

PILOT TRAINING

When I was called up after volunteering it was August 1941 and I had already been through the Blitz in London. I had volunteered for flying duties in the RAF whilst still at school, and while waiting to be called up went into the ARP as a messenger.

We were running about on bicycles delivering messages when the telephones went down. Many a time I had to jump off my bike and into a ditch when I heard a bomb coming down. Being young it didn鈥檛 seem too horrendous to me then. Bit it seems pretty bad to me now looking back on it.

Anyway the blitz did down and I spent a lot of time playing billiards and snooker, to while away the hours. It was in August 1941 that the fateful letter arrived telling me to report to St. Johns Wood, London. Which was the Aircrew reception centre. The RAF had taken over most of the big blocks of luxury flats and we were billeted in those. Mind you there wasn鈥檛 much luxury about them when I was there, we had some things called biscuits to sleep on, three of them made a small bed which was on the floor, these with a couple of blankets were the sole contents of our rooms. We were four to a room.

The RAF had also taken over London Zoo and Lords cricket ground. We ate in the zoo and went to Lords for all our medicals and injections. We spent the first few days acquiring kit etc. We looked forward to this, as pilots under training we wore white flashed in our forage caps these were considered to be a great status symbol.

After about ten days we were sent to Stratford on Avon, which was called an ITW, which stood for Initial Training Wing. We were billeted in an old hotel about half a mile out of the town and had to march in for all meals, lectures etc. The marching was quite an experience because we were made to march at a hundred and forty paces per minute, which is very fast indeed and very exhausting.

The ITW seemed a million miles away from flying because it was essentially a ground station, and the only aircraft we saw were on training films and blackboards. The course was meant to last six weeks and we were looking forward to ending it and starting to fly. However after about a month we were told that we were off somewhere else. Nobody told us where, but we got an idea when we were issued with tropical kit. Some people thought that we could be off to Northern Canada!

We had a weeks embarkation leave and then had to report to West Kirby in Cheshire. This was a transit camp stuck out in the wilds and we were stuck there with time on our hands and nowhere to go. We were given an advance of pay which I put in a money belt for security, went to have a shower and promptly left the money belt in the shower room! I dashed back to see if it was still there but no luck. I didn鈥檛 realise how desperate this would leave me until some time later.

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