大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Justine Warwick on behalf of Stan Garbutt and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the terms and conditions of the site.

After wireless training in Blackpool and Yatesbury I had to wait to go to gunnery school as there was a waiting list, a bottle neck, and I was sent as a ground Wireless Operator in South Wales in 1940.

In 1941 I went up to Dumfries gunnery school and then went to the operations training unit at Harwell where I was crewed up. There were two wireless ops on the crew, one was the wireless op the other front gunner - I was front gunner. We found out then we were due for Middle East and flew a Wellington out there via Gibraltar and Malta. We went on to 108 squadron in Egypt in Fayid. I did a tour of ops and was then posted back to England to act as a wireless instructor. At the time you couldn鈥檛 go through the Mediterranean and you had to go around South Africa. But because they needed trainers back in England they flew us across to Lagos in Nigeria to get us home in a civilian aircraft to save time. I was posted to Wing in Bedfordshire as a wireless instructor. I did one of the 1000 bomber raids. I got commissioned and was posted to training command on the Isle of Man as a staff wireless op training navigators. I was there in 1944 and then two of us volunteered to go back on a second tour of ops and got onto a special operation on Airborne Radar Investigation. Then in 1945 I got posted out to India. I went out by boat and joined 1341V flight in Bengal. We were the first lot out in Halifax鈥檚 and by the time we had got tropicalised the Japanese packed it in. I got demobbed in June 1946 and came back home.

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