大象传媒

This story is about my father, Leading Aircraftsman (LAC) William Parker and, in his own words, tells of his war time RAF service 1941 鈥� 1946 in the Persia and Iraq Forces known as PAIFORCE.

Training

On joining the RAF in 1941, I did my initial training at Skegness. After this I was posted to a Flight Mechanics Course at RAF Locking, leaving as an AC1 flight mechanic. I joined Station Flight RAF Northolt and here I worked on a number of planes; Spitfires, Airspeed Oxfords and Dehavilands. The King and Churchill both flew from this base during my time there. Also based at Northolt were two Polish Squadrons of Spitfires.

After some time I was posted to RAF Squiresgate near Blackpool on an Engine Fitters Course which I passed as an AC1 and was again posted to RAF Northolt. While at Northolt I was on an overseas posting and transferred to Morecambe in transit to wait for a boat.

Overseas Posting

I left Liverpool on the Troopship 鈥楢lcantara鈥�, which after two weeks reached Alexandria in Egypt then by train to Kasferret transit camp to await a posting. Some weeks later I was on a desert convoy of open topped lorries across to PAIFORCE RAF Habbaniya and 119MU Iraq. Later I was transferred to RAF Shibah which was near Basra and had two large hangers in one of which I found myself building Spitfires that had come by sea in crates to Basra. Later I found out that at a meeting between Churchill and Stalin, Stalin required help from Churchill in the form of Spitfires to help in holding back the German advance towards the Russian town of Stalingrad.

The way in which the Russian pilots collected the plans was strange. Our pilots flew the spitfires over the border to Abadan in Persia from where they were collected. I did the engine check on the last one to cross the border.

When the work on the Spitfires ended there was a rumour that Stalin wished to give the Red Star medal to the airmen who has been involved in the supply of planes but this was refused by Churchill. To this day I do not know if this was fact or fiction.

As I was no longer needed at Shibah I was posted to RAF Sharjah, a desert airfield some distance from the Persian Gulf and the last possible landing base for planes flying on to India and Burma. It was here I stayed servicing aircraft until VE day and VJ Day came and went. During this time we moved from living in tents to huts made from woven palm branches which gave us more room to move but were home to lizards and scorpions and insects of all kinds, so there was every need to check the desert boots before putting a foot in!

The Journey Home

After the end of the war demob numbers were now of great importance and my number was 45. This depended on age, length of service and trade and this lead to a state known as 鈥渄emob happy鈥� and nothing much seemed to matter.

When my number came up it was early October 1946 and I returned to base at Habbaniya. Our route home was called 鈥淢edloc鈥� and this started by desert bus to Alexandria some two or three days. We then got on an old tramp steamer called the 鈥楥lan Lamont鈥� which took five days of bobbing up and down to cross the Mediterranean in a bad storm reaching Toulon in the South of France. One day later we were on the train to cross France taking two days to reach Calais. Here the paddle steamer 鈥楻oyal Daffodil鈥� took us to Dover and the white cliffs.

Once more by train, this time in England, to the demob centre at RAF Warton near Kirkham. It was November 5th 1946 when, with my pay, demob suit which was grey with a chalk stripe, raincoat and leave papers, I made my way south to West Molesey in Surrey. My war service was now over.

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