大象传媒

In 1939 I was in the Merchant Navy as an apprentice engineer and whilst on leave in August 1940, in Bognor Regis, saw part of the Battle of Britain. What sticks in my mind was the amazing sight of the contrails made by the aircraft fighting. One incident I remember very clearly was a bomb being dropped on a house nearby and a lady was discovered in her bath having been blown from the second floor to the ground without being harmed beyond bruises.

The next incident I clearly remember was waiting for my ship, the Rangitiki, at the Victoria and Albert Docks, London when the blitz started. The dock area was very badly damaged and I spent several days helping the airraid wardens and saw feats of amazing bravery resecuing peple from houses bown down. I was also nearly arrested for looting after picking up an apple from a scattering over the docks following a cargo ship being damaged. As the ship was deleayed I was sent to Bristol where she was supposed to dock at Avonmouth, but before she arrived there was a blitz on Bristol, Nov 24th 1940. I was helping to put out incendiary bombs when I was hit in the leg by shrapnel and blown 50 yards down the road and ended up in hospital. I was in hospital 6 months. I then joined the RAF as aircrew and did my ITW at Aberswyth, Grading School at Coventry flying Tiger Moths, and saw the results of the blitz on Coventry. I was then posted to Calgary in Canada for training and eventually finished up on Liberators destined for Coastal Command. We did operational training at New Providence Island in the Bahamas. This also involved escort duty to ships travelling up the east coast of the USA. After finishing training I was posted to Montreal to be advised of my operational squadron which turned out to be in the Far East - India / Burma Theatre. To get there I had a most interesting journey flying the Atlantic from Dorval, Montreal to Prestwick in Scotland. After 14 days leave I then flew out from England via Eygpt, Bahrain to Karachi. From there I went to my squadron at Salbani, hundred miles north of Calcutta. We were engaged on bombing Jap installations - Rangoon, Mandalay, Bangkok - also shipping attacks and low level attacks on the Burma railway.

A sequel to one of the operations was after I came to live in Bungay I met a golfing friend, Berkerly-Smith, and after a round we were talking about Burma and it transpired we had actually bombed the POW camp he was incarcerated in. It was complete surprise to me that the Japs kept prisoners in the middle of an ammuntion dump. Fortunately only Japanese guards were killed.

At a later date I was talking to the Rotary Club about my experiences and my friend who was also a member was asked to give the vote of thanks. He told the story of being bombed by our aircraft. Also present was Tony Clarke, a reporter for the EDP, this gave me a cetain amount of notority.

I returned home to England in 1946 and was posted to RAF Titchfield were I met my wife who was a naval nurse at Lee-on-Solent. We met in March, engaged on the 9th August and married on 2nd September 1940. The village my wife Joan came from in Essex, Langdon Hills, didn't believe it would last, but it still is. It brought home to me some of the horrors I had missed such as rationing. When we went out to do our first shopping as man and wife and couldn't believe what we got to live on for a week. I also heard about doodle bugs, rockets and the Americans, something of which I knew nothing.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Andrew Milner of Suffolk Libraries on behalf of David Wuyts and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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