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This story is submitted to the People's War site on behalf of my Uncle-in-Law Mr Charles Waghorn and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Charles Waghorn understands the site's terms and conditions.

It was early May, 1944, and I was about to experience one of the more memorable weeks of my life. I had received my call-up papers. It was nearly nine months since I had been accepted for RAF aircrew training, and I was just one of thousands impatiently waiting to achieve our ambition to fly. The fact that we were part of the reserve to fill anticipated losses somehow passed us by.

I had some holiday due, so I left my tedious clerical job some ten days before my reporting date of 27 May 1944. Out of the blue came an invitation. Bill and Harold (aka Sam) Holford were two of my Canadian cousins serving in the RCAF and based at a heavy bomber airfield in Lincolnshire. They had contrived to get themselves a comfortable billet on a farm near their base — would I like to join them for a week? The opportunity to escape from the constraints of the parental home and join this undisciplined pair was irresistible.

The reality surpassed any expectations I might have had. The farmer, Albert, and his wife were kind and hospitable. All the male farmhands had been called up and were replaced by four Land Army girls, two of whom were extremely attractive. Civilian food rations had no meaning in this rural environment, so eggs, bacon, milk, butter and meat were almost embarrassingly plentiful.

Then there was Bill and Sam. Hard drinkers both, and Albert was not reluctant to compete either. I think they regarded this holiday as a rite of passage for me, to prepare me for the opportunities service life provided to make life tolerable and even occasionally enjoyable. Not that I felt that much of a green horn, but being far from home was a freedom I had not so far experienced. So on at least three nights in that week, we all piled into Albert’s pick-up truck — along with a couple of bales of hay, a bag or two of fertilizer and a mysterious piece of agricultural equipment — and drove into Lincoln. This random collection of items was a necessary precaution. Agriculture had special dispensation so far as petrol rationing was concerned, but the special pink dyed petrol had to be used for agricultural purposes. I don’t believe the police would have been deceived for a moment by Albert’s ruse, but I think that blind eyes were often turned.

I was introduced to Black Velvet. There are variants of this particular drink, but for us it was a mixture of Guinness and port. Lethal in quantity! The straight but narrow country roads across flat Lincolnshire farmland had drainage ditches on both sides. How Albert managed to drive us home safely I’ll never know. Well, almost safely. We did, on one occasion, slide off the road on one of the few bends, our nose dipping into a few inches of mud and water. Unloading the spurious farm supplies and standing ankle deep in mud to push was just about enough, eventually, for the rear wheels to get a grip and pull the vehicle out.

On other nights it was a walk to the local pub with the Land Army girls. It was a glorious May, warm days and clear starlit nights; just the environment for romance. Brenda (number one Land Army girl) and I enjoyed our country walks. It was no more than a holiday affair, perhaps more chaste than I might have wished, but the cuddles in the hay barn were a bonus nevertheless. Bill and Sam, of course, regarded it as their duty to give every encouragement to our evening trysts.

But there was a war on. Lincolnshire was dotted with heavy bomber airfields, and there must have been half a dozen within an eight mile radius. As dusk fell there would be a distant sound of engines starting up, gradually more and more joined in until we felt surrounded by a roaring chorus of aircraft straining at the leash. Within the next few hours literally hundreds of aircraft passed over, silhouetted against a starlit sky lightened by the first glow of a rising moon. We didn’t realize that this was part of the build-up to D-Day.

Within a few days of returning home I reported to the Air Crew Reception Centre (known at Arsy Tarsy) at St. John’s Wood, London and was billeted in a high rise block of flats. On June 6, the D-Day invasion was launched and about the same time the first flying bombs (V1’s) were targeting London. We raw recruits had to take our turn of duty on the roof, spotting for any V1’s coming our way and pressing an alarm bell if peril seemed likely. It was amazing how quickly we could run down six floors to relative safety when the need arose.

In two weeks I think I must have grown up by a couple of years.

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