Australians at War Film Archive

Oh well, I was born in Marrickville and moved from there to Coogee when I was about six. I went to the Marist Brothers. They call it Marcellin now, college in Randwick. Did my Leaving [Certificate] there. And then I was apprenticed at Washington Souls Pharmacy.

I left them and enlisted at Woolloomooloo. I went to Bradfield Park initial training and down to Melbourne. And went across to San Francisco in Matsonia. From there up to Vancouver, Edmonton. And

air observer school in Quebec. And departed from Halifax, then went across in the Louis Pasteur. Landed in Brighton. Went from Brighton down to Wales and did some night training there. And then we went up to

the OTU [Operational Training Unit] in Lichfield, on a conversion unit and then onto 101 Squadron. Or in reverse actually went to 7th Squadron as PFF [Pathfinder Force] and then went to 101 Squadron then back to 7. Then home on the Dominion Monarch through the Panama Canal.

And back in Sydney.

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Yeah, married as soon as I got back actually, about a fortnight after I got back. We were engaged already. And then I went back to Washington Souls.

Oh I worked for Souls. From then on I went to a place called Barraba out near Tamworth. And we were there until our eldest son was coming to high school and there as no high school so we came back to Sydney. And went to down to

Bulli and worked there. Then came back to Sydney and worked in different pharmacies till eventually I went with one that I stayed with until I retired. And after I retired I came down to Canberra. And we’ve been here ever since.

No I’ve got two sons and a daughter. And the two sons are here in Canberra. The daughter’s in Melbourne.

Yeah I’ve got two grandchildren. They’re both here. Oh no they’re not, I’m sorry. Wait up. Oh hang on. I’ve got one two three, I’ve got four grandchildren. Getting away on me. There’s two

in Melbourne and there’s two up here.

Well first memories of growing up were at Marrickville. My Dad died when I was about two years old and I can just remember the surroundings of Marrickville, a very industrial area.

And also there was a little shop in front of the home where Madam Clubert, some French woman did some hem stitching or something or rather. But I was fascinated by her. But I don’t remember a great deal more about Marrickville than that.

Oh I

think the old man had a – they were all New Zealanders except I was born over here. He was manager of a butter factory in Te Puke in New Zealand. And he came over here and I think he was something to do with a milking machinery over here. So I think they were, without being well off, I think they were reasonably

okay. And then the boys – I’m the youngest one and the next one was six years older than me so there were some boys much older than me. So they were working, two of them were working anyhow. And I think that helped. But we moved from Marrickville when I was about six to Coogee and I have a much more vivid recollection of Coogee.

No, no she didn’t.

Nothing virtually. We were a fairly close family but very private individually, that’s the strange side of it. We didn’t dwell on the past at all.

He got

tuberculosis which most of the people involved with dairy seemed to succumb to in those days. And New Zealand’s climate’s pretty hard so he was advised to come over here. Better climate. But apparently he was pretty far gone because he didn’t last very long. I guess if I was

only two when he died.

Coogee.

Oh well the beaches of course, the swimming and all that sort of thing. Used to be a weekend thing – as I say I was the youngest. We used to all go down to the beach in the morning and it was a pretty

regular thing and I thoroughly enjoyed it of course. And I started school there and went to – gee I can’t remember the convent – but anyhow went there. Didn’t have pre school in those days, it was infants. And I was there until – I got to sixth class and then I went to Clovelly – I can’t remember the name of the

convent there either but anyhow, and then I went from there to Marcellin College in Randwick and I did my leaving there. And my memories of all that of course, are cricket and hand ball and tennis. That sort of thing.

No I don’t. As I say I was too young to have that discussed with sit down and mind your own business. But I presumed it was – it was quite a nice area but it was very much an industrial area and I think they probably felt that – there were better places to live. But I really don’t know because as I say, I lived virtually

in the home so the outside didn’t really affect me.

Well comparing it to the last time I saw it – do you know Coogee? Well you wouldn’t know Coogee at all. Now Alison Road goes from

the cliff face basically in Coogee right through past the Randwick Racecourse. When we went there there was a huge gully, sand bottom to it, between half a mile of it I suppose. And at the back of us there was a huge area with a convent on it and that was all that was there. And there were no cars, virtually none.

There was the tram. And while we were there they brought on the new invention, the buses. And everyone wanted to have a go riding in a bus. Yeah, my recollections were at school basically with the sport. And using the beach. And I used to of an afternoon, on the way home from school go down to the beach and the fishing boats’d come in with the

fish and I’d spend time watching them. Yeah that’s basically it.

Oh I don’t remember ever having any – probably if anything I had – the eldest brother was a solicitor and I probably thought – not really. Apart from anything else it was the middle of the Depression

and I was starting to know what was going on. What the Depression was 1929, around about that area, so I was just going to high school. So in those days it was a matter of not what you wanted to be but what you could get. I can remember that very distinctly from my elder brothers. They didn’t go into what they went into – the eldest one did – but the others

didn’t go into what they wanted to. They got into what they could.

I had three brothers and a sister. The eldest one was Bill, the next one was Garnet and everyone called him Joe at his request. I don’t know where Garnet came from – it’s the only one in the

blood line that I’ve heard of. And then there was Roy, he was six years older than me and the others were eighteen months and so on. Oh and the sister was Doris. Doris Melvina. I know the name Melvina came from an aunt. She was conveniently called Mel.

No I don’t think so. Dad’s name

was Morris. He must’ve had a second name. I can’t remember that. But the uncles, no I can’t remember any uncles with a Kenneth in it. It was a real brumby I think.

No they were all too – as I say the next one was six years older and Bill was – oh he must’ve been – oh I don’t know. He was doing an articled clerk at the time so he was definitely grown. He’d been to Joey’s [St Joseph’s] so he did his leaving there. So he must’ve been

seventeen or eighteen when I was – God, he must’ve been – I don’t know, I can’t work that one out. But he was very much an adult so – I always looked upon him as a Dad, he definitely took my Dad’s place. And the second one, he was a victim of the Depression and he went in the bush up in Coonamble.

In the hope of getting a job which he did. And Roy he came through just towards the end of the Depression and he went into the army and back tracking a bit, being a bit garbled about it – but Bill went into the air force too as an adjutant, he became an adjutant. Garnet had a

bus run out at Cabramatta. Roy went into the army, he went up to New Guinea.

Oh I could always felt like I could go to Bill and not always get the answers I wanted.

Garnet I – we were all very good – we didn’t quarrel or anything like that. Got on very well. We all led very private lives, I don’t know why. But we didn’t discuss things with each other and that sort of thing. I don’t know, that’s something I never could understand. My wife could never understand it either. She came from the exact opposite.

I don’t really remember anything very specific other than the fact that I enjoyed it. Seemed to be very happy and nobody stood over you or anything, cause they were all nuns there. No they seemed to be – my memory of it’s very very happy.

No not with us, not with the kids. I think they may have with the girls and that later and I know some pretty horror stories about the orphanages and that. But my recollection of the nuns at St. Bridget’s – got it – they were lovely. I was very happy there, really was.

No just run of the mill. I got through the intermediate. Six Bs I think it was and I got through the leaving much the same, about five Bs or something like that.

Yeah I enjoyed cricket and we used to have what was called hand ball there. But it was like, three walls. The backs are

open and the end wall is quite tall. You’d had a small rubber ball and you used to belt that with your hand and it’d ricochet off – the same as squash only it was – I’ve never seen it anywhere else but they had this thing in the school yard there and we used to you know, whenever you could get on you’d have a game. But other than that the cricket, the football. Yeah we used to play in the Catholic

Colleges competition at Lewisham, Ryde. I can’t remember there was only about – I can only remember Lewisham and Ryde and Randwick – oh there was someone else too. I don’t know, I can’t remember that one.

There was always some good hearted person that would come along. Eventually there

was a mature student – this was when I was not at the primary school, this was in the high school. That’s getting ahead of myself. Shall I skip that and go on later?

Yeah, well in the primary school you didn’t go anywhere very much. We walked to school of course. That was probably a twenty minute walk. But that was normal for those days.

No no. No I don’t think you could afford them in those days.

Oh God, I can’t remember that. I don’t remember.

Shorts. Oh yes we had shoes, but we had shorts, I can remember that. But I don’t know must’ve been some sort of a shirt, I just don’t remember that that’s all. Doesn’t register.

I think we were reasonably well behaved. We used to – there was a shopping centre close by St. Bridget’s down at what was called the loop. And of course we used to dart down there in the lunch hour. And we used to make a short cut across the lawns of the church

and eventually made a path in there. And the Parish Priest objected. And he let the edict ‘you don’t do that’. Which we ignored and he had a walking stick and I got it across my backside from him. I didn’t go across the path any more. Actions speak louder than words. He was

a crotchety old thing. He’d been in the First World War as a chaplain. I can remember that quite vividly. Other than that, I don’t remember getting up to any mischief.

Oh no, no, in those days they didn’t talk about anything. If they didn’t say it from the pulpit, they didn’t talk to you. I never met him other than via his walking stick.

Remote control.

Oh it was the ordinary black trousers and coat thing and the dog collar. That was the traditional thing. He was all right.

Yeah, used to go to church on a Sunday

morning. Walk to St. Bridget’s.

I don’t ever remember going to Sunday school. No, I don’t remember that. We used to have an hour a week or something at school, religious training, religious teaching. And we always knocked off at twelve o’clock.

Had a short Hail Mary or something, I don’t know, I can’t remember that. I didn’t object but it doesn’t stick in my mind particularly.

I don’t think so. She used to go to church and all that. But no religious things around the house. She had rosary beads and we

all did. But I don’t ever remember any religious pictures or anything around the place. We didn’t say grace before meals or anything like that. Yeah she used to pull you up rather smartly if you said anything that was – any sort of a slight to religion or to religious people. But no we didn’t say the rosary at home.

Never thought anything about it but that’s the way it was. Seemed to work.

I never struck it a great deal but it was, definitely. I know there was always – I won’t say

anything derogatory so you won’t have to censor it. No there was always a nasty attitude between the – there was a little primary school I think it was, I don’t remember the denomination but it wasn’t us. So walk across the other side of the road when you go past, that sort of attitude. Not from the nuns, I never struck any of that from the nuns. It was more the, the bloody priests were more inclined to be like that.

And later on the brothers.

Not except that the fact that you know, “We will be saved, but they won’t.” I don’t know whether it was actually put that way but that was the inference, if it wasn’t put into words. I can give you a very nasty example of

– in high school – which affected me very, very deeply. But no, I never came across it myself but I know it was very much the factor of a certain Mark Foy’s [department store] – if you were a Catholic you stood a good chance of getting a job but for Anthony Hordern’s, well you could forget it, and that sort of thing. But never came up against it really myself.

Well he was – the brother was a – he was a you know, regular brother. But he was also a fund manager so he was a business manager. I suppose my feelings are clouded by the fact that I didn’t like him. He was –

anyhow that’s just personal. But anyhow there was an old boy who got married, I’ll quote you the words. And he got married down in another church and he leapt forth this day in class about this old boy who’d got married in that tin pot little place down the road.

I thought, “Well if that’s a sample of your Christianity, I’d have a look at it.” That wasn’t typical, that’s why it sticks in my mind. The brothers were great. Ones that I struck. One was a very much a sergeant major and I don’t think he mixed with the boys at all. But the rest of them were good, really good, you could talk to them any time.

About anything. Always cajole them into coming and having a game of handball, cricket – they’d use the cricket pitch and they’d come have a bowl, a bat anything you want. No they were good. Very good memories of them.

Well I just thought if that’s the sort of bigotry that comes

from somebody who’s supposed to be the purveyor of Christianity and Catholicism. I don’t say I dumped it but I was very, very, very upset about it.

Oh yeah in those days they were all – oh we did have one lay teacher, but they were all

teachers, the brothers. Cause they had plenty of them in those days. Yeah.

No, no. No, I don’t like what it was like inside, I never saw it. Some of the boys did, it wasn’t barred going into the place or anything like that. But it was a big two storey place. And the outside, they’re just teaching and the odd

times in the yard, they didn’t get out of there very much. They were all saying their litanies or whatever it was. We had one bloke, it used to be a stables, Marcellin College and where they’d had the stalls at the end of the yard there, they’d knocked all the partition out and they used that for wet weather and lunches and that sort of thing. And this

brother used to have his rosary beads and he’d do his constitutional up and down, up and down. Finished up calling him ‘Kruschen’ from Kruschen salts It got that much that, a lot of them didn’t know any other name and they used to call him Kruschen to his face. He took it all in good part.

Oh no, no.

No I can’t even – I’ve probably blotted him out of my mind. Can’t remember his name.

That was the only thing other than the fact – a personality clash. I don’t ever remember seeing him smile. And oh, I don’t know, I just didn’t like him. And that was before he made that

comment.

No, no, no and I can’t ever remember it personally coming up. And certainly by the time – although it was still very prevalent with the Masons [Freemasons] and the Catholics were bitter enemies.

But Washington Souls Patterson and company – old Louis Mile Patterson, he was a Scot and I don’t know what Freddy Patterson was. And I went to uni with Jimmy Milner who was his nephew. But

religion never came into it. But Catholics they weren’t I’m sure of that. But that was never a problem. Never saw any of that in all the time I worked with them. None of the managers. I don’t know any of them, I don’t know what their religions were. Don’t think it ever came up.

Oh I think so, because

you see, you had a very big Irish population of migrants. And they were very much bigoted, very bigoted. So it spread through the church, I think that attitude without it being actually verbal. It was the attitude, I don’t

have much to do with them, they’re not us and that sort of thing. But of course from the hierarchy in the Catholic church, Dr Mannix he was – I might moderate my language. But he was no help. And I had met Archbishop Gilroy and he was another ex AIF [Australian Imperial Force] guy. He was good, quite okay, very down to earth.

And I don’t think – Archbishop Kelly was another rabid Irishman that didn’t help I’m sure. And this is all my opinion of course. Very subjective.

Oh he came out to Randwick to the school. Oh I don’t know what it was for but he spent a few days there and pressed the flesh and went around amongst the boys and that. But

that’s why I remember him because as I say, other than – now this seems starting from the wrong end but Archbishop Gilroy I think was the only priest that I ever met and shook hands with other than being on the other end of a walking stick. Sticks in my memory. I got the impression that we were up here and you were down there, keep your distance.

This wasn’t till many many years later that I met a priest just as friend, it wasn’t for parish or anything like that. I met him through the bloke that I walked for. And we became reasonably good friends, not intimate but yeah, always asked after each other and how things were going and all that.

I liked him, he was a very nice guy. But outside him, after mass you’d – he’d disappear and the parishioners disappear out the front door and he’d go out into the sacrestrial I think it was called. And we’d be off down to the beach and he’d go wherever he went, I don’t know. But it wasn’t –

if it wasn’t frowned upon, it wasn’t encouraged. That again, is a subjective view.

Oh yes he was – I think he would’ve been head of the Catholic Church in Australia at the time. I don’t know whether – he wasn’t the same guy – I don’t know whether

he was at the same time as Mannix. I don’t who it was but he certainly was head of the Catholic Church in New South Wales. Yeah. I’d say he would’ve had quite a good influence.

No. No it was announced that he’d be coming out and I think we were all warned to be on our best behaviour or something like that. But nothing else changed. I don’t remember any great

fanfare put on. My recollection, he just appeared in class one morning. Took over in the class. I can’t even remember what he talked about.

Yeah.

No I can remember it, but I really don’t – I remember

preparations for it. We had four weeks ahead – before it you had to go to lessons. And on my first communion I remember that – again this I think was probably because it was with the nuns and much more personal, much more family sort of thing. Then of course we had the breakfast after it and oh well that

stuck in your mind if nothing else did.

Oh well just a special do. And all the communion class went to it and they had a lot of goodies. In those days a lot of families didn’t have much in the way of goodies. They had basic food but you didn’t have frills. I think – my recollection mostly, jam on bread was a good dessert.

It was all right, nobody worried about it, that was normal. So and so’s out at La Perouse living in tin sheds and things, so you were still well off.

Oh it was a double brick. Don’t know how long it’d been built. It wasn’t new, not by any means.

It had – oh gee now – I know it had a lounge – well it was not called a lounge room – we had one of these extension tables with legs that you put in it. And we used to have ping pong on that so that sticks very much in my mind, I can remember that. And that big table with chairs, it’d seat about six or eight. Then there was one, two, three, three bedrooms

and a back verandah which had portions of a – walled off and it was used as a bedroom also. The bathroom was – it wasn’t tiled floor. And you had a chip heater with a shower and that. Kitchen

was a traditional kitchen with stove and everything in it. Then there was a breakfast room off that. That was a smaller room. And that was it. The main bedroom was quite large and the lounge – what did they call it? Something in those days. Drawing room, hooray. Got it. Yeah, drawing room. That was quite big. The other rooms were –

and a bed in each room. The others. Yeah.

Oh from memory it was a gas stove, so it must have been a reasonably modern – it wasn’t a wooden fuel stove. I think it was a gas stove. Gas was more common than electricity I would say in those days.

And a push mower.

And we all reluctantly took our turn – it was buffalo grass of all things, I can remember that – some things stick in your mind. But it was hard work. Not a lot but with a hand mower – nobody volunteered.

Yeah, well it was

two metal wheels with corrugations on them to give traction. And then blades set on a central rod and they had a sort of a curve which allowed them to cut across a bottom blade, a fixed one, allowed them to – if you had it just straight

it’d go bang and either it would break itself and wouldn’t go around. And with curve, used to slide over it and catch the grass in between. And then you had a grass catcher on – that weighed as much as the mower. And then a handle up with a thing and there and you pushed. Oh it was a lot of fun, I can remember that. Fortunately I was too young

in the early stages, but my turn came and again I didn’t volunteer.

Oh, it was hard work, very hard work. Summer time particularly, nearly killed you.

Oh, we had those things that we’ve still got, those clippers. They weren’t funny.

That was the worse part.

Well, it was a long way around, it was back breaking. It was just back breaking. And you had to sort of dig in – you couldn’t get away with going around and just chopping off the little bits and leaving it. Mum’d turn her toes to that one up. But yeah it was

very time consuming too, because it used to take a long while. Cause you can imagine going around and there’s a path down the centre. I think there was a path around the side, I can’t remember that. But then the back yard that was bigger, no, it was hard work.

Well I really was fortunate because being so much younger than the others, they all copped the chores and

I didn’t get – I don’t remember having to do very much. My sister, she started work during the Depression and she was laid off and she never got back to work. So she was home with Mum so she looked after us virtually. We didn’t – I didn’t appreciate her till I got older and knew how much she’d done for us and for me.

But she did all the housework and helped with the cooking. Mum at this stage I suppose, must’ve been in her fifties. Yeah. Yes. I don’t know it’s hard to put it in context. But when I was seventeen, eighteen, Mum must’ve been well into her fifties. Cause I don’t think she’d been married

like they do very often these days, very young.

She was very reserved. She was a lovely person. She really was. But not – very loving, but not affectionate. I don’t ever remember her sort of putting around my shoulders or anything

but I never felt that I was isolated from her in any way at all. She was great.

Oh it’s hard to describe. I can get you a photo.

No she was short, shortish, I’d say probably about five eight. But she was

- she’d have been twelve stone I would think. She was big boned as well I think but she was pretty solid. Yeah.

Oh no I can only say happy and very very fond memories of her. Very loving memories. She was always terrific to me but as I say, this

private sort of thing it seemed to go right through. I don’t know about the old man, haven’t got a clue what he was like but I’ve got a photo in there of the wedding. And of course it’s the old style where father stands at the back and lets you know who runs this place. So I don’t know but somewhere or other, I can only assume it came from Mum that passed onto the boys. We didn’t

discuss things with her but it wasn’t an isolation feeling as well, just the reserve. No, only got very very fond memories of her and all through until she died.

No, she would

occasionally put about back in New Zealand. But the boys never talked about – they were born there. The rest of them. But they never talked about it. Very, very rarely. And I think I can only remember there was an uncle who came over, he had the same problem as Dad and he came over here for the cure and died. And

I met or had a lot to do with, his wife. She was gorgeous, I have very fond memories of her. And there was an uncle that came over, another uncle. I have very vague memories of him. Seemed a bit odd actually. Even as a kid I felt he was a bit odd. But the aunties,

yes there was one in Marrickville and one in Newtown and I was quite fond of both those. And the one in Newtown had a good Catholic family, a lot of kids. Had a clutch of daughters and two sons, had a lot to do with the two boys. One of them lived out at Clovelly when we were living at Coogee. And on the summer nights

I can still remember him coming over, walking over for a constitutional, they’d have an hour or so, a cup of tea and then go off. And the other one lived over La Perouse way and we saw a fair bit of him too. But as for the rest of them, we went to New Zealand. Eve and I went to New Zealand for a holiday and we caught up with a lot of them then. And I must say

I liked them, all of them. It’s a bit of a first I suppose. But no, they were good.

Oh well I was still – they were again, the same vintage as my brothers, might have even been a bit older. So I just – all I can remember is them sitting of an evening out on the front verandah and talking. Oh there’s where

Garnet came from. Garnet Mac, Garnet McCormack, forgotten about that, yeah. He went to the country too and he was – oh I don’t know what he was doing there, amongst other things he was – I think he was horse breaking from the stories I remember vaguely. But they’d talk about the life in the country. The two Garnets and Bill’d never been there

so – yeah I remember Jack, Jack Mac, Jack McCormack, he’d been to the First World War. And on the odd occasions he spoke but he didn’t say much about it.

Oh yes I was very interested in it, yeah definitely.

Well it came from school really from history more than anything else. There was no TV and no radio for the average Joe. It was 1917 – see, it was all over before I was born

so it was very much hearsay. But I don’t know where I got most of my information, I can’t remember. But I know I was very – I can remember that – very absorbed with it. I seem to remember it with the school. Would have to have been history.

Not really.

I can’t remember – I don’t remember having much to do with Anzac Day before the war. Again I suppose, I remember the limited media outlets in those days and we didn’t have a car. So you had Buckley’s of getting into Martin Place

or anywhere like that. So we didn’t have a radio in those – I can remember Garnet in the very early stages had a crystal set – you know those things you used to have a little crystal and a cat’s hair and you’d move it around on it and all of a sudden you’d get a signal and I can still remember saying, Pennant Hills, Pennant Hills and there was a transmitter at Pennant Hills.

Didn’t transmit voices just signals. And that was a miracle. So the media wasn’t – I don’t remember papers. Well I would’ve been able to read bloody papers until basically probably till high school before you start to read a paper in the sense of understanding and

question what it was all about?

Well I don’t know. I should’ve but it was one of those things. It was some sort of a crystal. It looked like a little sparkly thing and it was in a cradle and then there had this other arm which I think it’s supposed to be a cat’s hair or something, some weird thing. And you used to move it around on it

and somehow or other it would pick up these signals. I think Pennant Hills was about the only place that was – it was the only place I ever remember them mentioning. But I don’t know how it worked, I really don’t. Was magic. Was good enough for me.

There was no such thing. Mostly we couldn’t afford that. The only holiday I can

ever remember was I went into St Vincent’s Hospital and they took my tonsils out in the morning and sent me home in the afternoon and I didn’t do too well and eventually Mum took me to the doctor. I wasn’t eating too well. I imagine the throat wasn’t very receptive to food. Anyhow he must’ve said, “Go on a holiday,” somehow or other and Mum took me out to

Campbelltown, outside of Campbelltown somewhere. Lumea, God what a memory. Lumea, it was a little farm out there. And we had a couple of weeks there, just being fed up and wandering around amongst the animals and so forth. I can remember that very clearly, it was great, it was a highlight.

Oh, I don’t remember.

Must’ve had some problem with it – I suppose sore throats or something. Infection, I don’t know. At that age, again as I say, down boy.

I can’t remember if it was before or after I started school. It was very early; I must’ve only been about eight. Something like that.

So it must’ve been after I started primary school.

No. We had a crowd there all waiting for the production line. The only thing I can remember is them grabbing my arms and then I got a bloody mask over my face. And smothered me. And then the next thing I know I was being told to get ready to go home.

I’d come out of it and Mum took me home in the tram. And we got to Coogee, and it was about a mile from the terminus there up to the house. And I couldn’t walk, she couldn’t carry me. And some kind hearted bloke in a garage, one of the workmen must’ve spoken to his boss and he okayed it, he carried me. As I say, I was six or eight, I wasn’t

very robust but up hill, yeah it was up hill and down dale. So I never heard his name or anything but I always think, thank God for him, cause Mum couldn’t have carried me. Yeah so that was it.

Oh I just ate a lot of things, and cause being on the farm they had plenty

of dairy produce and vegies and stuff like that. And we weren’t poor, not when you compared with those around us but as I say, bread and jam was, if you wanted something after your meal, that was it. So you didn’t have any frills. So the whole experience, the eating, and they were nice people.

Very friendly like most country people are. And that was country in those days. And just wandering around amongst the animals, wandering around the paddocks and so forth.

I can’t remember. We went by train a certain distance. I don’t remember how we got there, I don’t remember the last part of it. Can’t even remember how we came back.

I know they may have had some transport on the farm, a truck or something I don’t know, just don’t remember that.

Well the fact that you didn’t always had what the other guy had. There was a lot of hand down

of clothing and so forth. Shoes were always a problem cause you didn’t have shoes. And they were not these sort of things or the big synthetic soles or leather. So they didn’t take too much rough wear. And I know they were a major

expense and there was always a problem. I know at one stage we had a last, a three pronged thing, which you used to put the shoe on it – slide it on it and then you could take the old sole off and you could buy these leather soles and some stuff to stick them on, plus nails. You wouldn’t want to know about it but anyhow that

gave you a new sole. So you always made sure, before it really got right through, so you’d have a bit of solid stuff… No I can always remember that was always a real problem. That was the only thing, and as I say new clothes were very rare. You always had something hand down. Altered. Mum was always very handy, which they had to be in those days and

particularly I think in New Zealand, it was a matter of distance then and transport. So she was quite handy with her sewing and so forth.

It was called a last. It was just like – the shape of three soles and it stood on two of them,

triangular type of thing. So it was quite steady and the third one was up the top and that was the one – like these lasts that you put in your shoes to spread them and that, it was like that. You bring the shoe onto that so it was nice and firm. And you had tacks, not nails, they were tacks. I think you had some glue to start with and then you tacked all around the

side and then you had to make sure it didn’t go right through because they were pretty sharp and uncomfortable. So you had to go, try and hammer them down from the inside if they went through where your foot went through. It was very crude, it really was. But they were shoes, something on your feet and it wasn’t everybody who had that so, that was probably the height of it, height of

the Depression.

I don’t remember socks being a problem but, you probably took them off when you got home. I don’t remember that even. But you probably had to take them off when you got home. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. There was grass outside and no such thing as carpets inside. There were all board floors, wooden floors. Linoleum.

The bathroom was just a wooden board floor. I think the kitchen, I’m guessing a bit here, but I think the kitchen might have had linoleum. I think there might have been a linoleum square in the drawing room.

Yeah yeah. Same stuff as you get today.

Yeah La Perouse is a rifle range. Malabar and La Perouse, part of it was a rifle range in those days, and was just open country. Obviously they weren’t on – I don’t know that there was any firing

ever done. At that time they probably – the government probably couldn’t afford it either but anyhow there was a part of it and they used to use kerosene tins and belt them out flat. I don’t know how, I wouldn’t know how they detached them together. But somehow or other they used to do, attach them together a lot of them like that. Anything that was building material they could scrounge they’d do. And

it was a – I think you used to pay, those that were working used to pay sixpence or something, sixpence a week or something like that. And so they got a dole but it would have been very very meagre. And it was a bit of work for the dole. I know they had – I don’t know whether it was true but the folklore was that

- I can’t think of the name of the lake opposite Randwick Racecourse. Anyhow there’s lakes there and they use these guys, they used to drain the lakes and then they’d fill it again and give them a job draining it again. Moore Park. Yeah, so other than that

the used to do work on the roads too. That sort of thing. But there was a limited amount of that available. We didn’t get the dole so we were well off, relatively.

No see that was more, pretty close to the centre of Sydney.

La Perouse was out on the perimeter. There was no urban development out there so whatever cropped up there didn’t have neighbours complaining. If you’d done anything in Centennial Park you’d have all the hoi polloi around, I know that was a very upmarket area – you’d have had the screams like they do about the lights at the cricket ground now. They’d have had that in tenfold so nobody – I don’t think they would’ve been allowed.

Unlike the Aboriginal Embassy, I think they would have knocked them down before they got a chance to get going.

No we never actually had that. But we did have people who tried to sing and then’d come and knock at your door. What was even more pathetic and sad

were professional musicians who’d come and play a tune and then come and bring the hat around, that sort of thing. Oh it was, as I say, we were well off. Tough and all as it may have been for us we – and of course when Garnet went to the bush, it was one off, how Mum ever paid –

Roy went to Joey’s too and I don’t know whether she ever paid for him there, she’d have to pay something I think. But they had bursaries and things in those days, the Catholic schools had their own bursaries – I feel he must have had some sort of a bursary because I can’t imagine she’d have been able to pay very much towards it.

No they’d wander up the

street and basically rely upon people coming out and giving them something. I can always remember one bloke, he had a really very, very good baritone voice. And he sang one of the – I can’t remember but one of the popular ones at the time. And then he let forth, after he’d finished and nobody came out and he let forth with a torrent of abuse.

Cursed them all and so forth and I felt, I don’t think I’ve felt as sorry for anybody since, or very few as I did for him because I thought, he must’ve been really at the bottom of the Depression. Anyhow that was that but I don’t ever remember any –

again if anybody came to door I probably wouldn’t know. Mum’d answer it and – she’d go to the door with, “Down boy, it’s not for you.” No that’s not right she wasn’t like that but no you, you know if it didn’t concern you so keep out of it. Wasn’t really, children are to be seen and not heard, it wasn’t

really that. But it wasn’t the thing. I suppose basically if there was anyone at the door it wouldn’t be for you, so don’t worry about it.

Oh I can’t remember that. We always managed a Sunday dinner. Other days I can’t remember what we had normal times. I can remember we never went hungry that’s for sure.

But she always managed to get some sort of a roast dinner on the Sunday. I can also remember that Dorrie used to cook Yorkshire pudding which I hated. But I don’t know how you make Yorkshire pudding but I guess its basic ingredients aren’t a lot.

No I can’t remember that. Yeah.

No, no, no. No, it was just lawn. We had a few flowers but that’s about it. And the front was nearly all – oh we had a couple of – I can remember those, a couple of hydrangeas but the rest of it was just lawn.

Lawn and path.

I can’t remember all the time but some of the time Garnet was working at McIlwraith’s and I think he used to bring the groceries home and probably any meat

or whatever we had, meat, I can’t remember. But the shopping he would’ve brought home I think. And then when Roy left school, that’s the one next to me, he worked for McIlwraith’s at Randwick and he worked there for quite a while. I know he used to bring the stuff home, again. Because I remember again, on strict instructions, he used to bring home plum jam which was about the bottom of barrel

for me but that was the cheapest. So don’t bring home anything else. Yeah.

Well Garnet was out there in Broadway, a branch there and it was just a shop assistant. And Roy was – diverging a little – it’s

Garnet McCormack, the other Garnet, he was working at McIlwraith’s at Randwick, when they had the horse and cart. And for whatever reason, I don’t know, he went bush too. And Roy, not following him, but Roy got a job with McIlwraith’s at Randwick and they had then progressed to the T Model Ford. So he was

quite a few years he was working for them and doing the Randwick/Coogee area. And I remember they had a little ice chest where the passenger seat would be and they put the perishables in there. And the rest of it just went in the back. The orders were all done up of course and the parcels. Yeah.

Oh well just the Depression, they were putting staff off, being dismissed left, right and centre.

I don’t really know. Again see Dorrie was the third in the family so she was pretty remote from me. And although I had more to do with her of course

after she came home, but I don’t know what – I’ve got some idea she was somewhere out around the Newtown area but what she was doing, I haven’t got a clue.

Oh the toilet was outside but it was just, it was a brick thing part of

the original house. It was just like a bit of an L shaped and it was, proper sewerage and everything. Yeah you had to go through an uncovered area to get to it but it was only a matter of two or three yards so it was reasonably convenient.

Oh yeah, oh yes. Yes

it was ordinary sewerage system. The pedestal and what have you. Yeah.

No, newspaper. I don’t know whether there was – well I suppose there must’ve been toilet paper in those days. We used to cut the newspaper up and dig a hole in it

and put a piece of string and hang it.

Oh Dorrie mainly probably. I never did it I know that.

I think I really, I enjoyed all of them. Maths too. Somewhere early in the piece and I lost the plot and I always battled with that. But as for the others we did Maths 1 and 2. I quite enjoyed Maths. Latin, French, English.

History, yes History. There were seven subjects anyhow. And I really didn’t mind any of them. The only one I really struggled with – I was not as I say, very average run of the mill with all of them, so it was all relatively hard work. It was. But I could cope with it. But the Maths 2 I lost it somewhere and I was always

fumbling along in the dark. But no they were quite good. The teachers were good.

Oh yeah we had this mature student. He was, oh about twenty five I would guess, perhaps a little less. And he had a driver’s license and

this was, oh I don’t know how old. This’d be before the Intermediate. Anyhow someone lent them a utility and we used to pile in the back of this and go out to Ryde or Lewisham or wherever we had to go, Darlinghurst was the other one I couldn’t think of. Take us out there and bring us back.

Nobody minded. As I say, even in those days cars were not that plentiful so it was quite an enjoyment to have a trip in the back of a ute.

I don’t know. I can only presume that he’d finished his school Intermediate or something like that and he was coming back

as a pupil, he was coming back for his Leaving. His Leaving Certificate. I never got the history of him. We had another one too but I don’t know the history of him at all.

Yeah, yes.

Well I think it had been tradition more than anything else. Although Garnet hadn’t. Garnet left

the end of primary school. Bill had gone through. He’d been through leaving and he became an articled clerk. I can even remember them, Garland Seymour and Abbott. Trivia eh. God never mind. And Roy he did his at Joey’s also so I think it was tradition and you know that was the thing to do

as far as Mum was concerned I mean. Oh even then – in those days the crafts, the what’s the word for it? Go to tech and so forth.

Trades. The trades were more significant and from

my recollection had far more credit given to them or esteem or whatever it is you like to call it than it has now. And my recollections back in – a bit further along of two very good mates who were doing engineering at the tech and they done the Intermediate and gone to tech. And

yeah it was held in very high esteem compared with the present day.

Well it was just answering ads in the paper

that was about all I could do. Because when you got to wherever it was you found that there were a hundred people there and that was just the luck of the game. Even if you were number one there, with that sort of numbers they didn’t just have to pick the first one. So it was very, very luck, absolute luck.

Well again I was fortunate. I worked in a woollen mills

for a couple of months or whatever. One of our friends worked there in this mills over in Newtown and he came in this day and said, “Hey they’re looking for someone over there,” so he said, “I’ve put a word in for you so whiz over.” So I went over and of course they already the, knew somebody who knew somebody

sort of thing yeah, so I got it. I was there for a couple of months only. And out at Randwick I’d got to know – oh to me he was an old bloke – he was probably middle aged and his name was Flattery and his brother was a QC [Queen’s Counsel]. They were pretty well off.

He wasn’t married and he just lived in this house with his brother. Big house in Randwick. Be worth a bloody fortune these days. Anyhow after I left school I went up to see him, oh a couple of times, and once he said, would I think about pharmacy at all.

I said, “I’ll think about anything if it’s a job.” And so he said, “Well I’ll speak to my brother who knows Freddy Patterson, see what we can do.” So to cut a long story short I go in, and see Doctor Patterson and John Spalding. And yeah the gates were open. I wouldn’t have had Buckley’s [no chance] if it hadn’t been for that. I don’t know what would’ve

happened, I wouldn’t have a clue. I’d still probably be working in the woollen mill.

Oh yeah they had more than fifty shops all around New South Wales. I was apprentice at Annandale and I spent the whole of my apprenticeship at Annandale.

And after – I had to repeat first year Botany, so I repeated a whole year. So I ran out of my apprenticeship twelve months early and they wouldn’t renew it and then I went and worked as an unregistered up with a chap in Eastwood.

And I worked with him until – I don’t know when I – oh that’s right, until I was registered. And then I went back as a registered and worked at Annandale. And the war had broken out at that stage.

I can’t remember how long I was with them after that but quite a while. And then they had manpower in those days, in the Government and they controlled, you couldn’t leave your place of employment without the consent of the boss. So I wanted to join the air force. I had a small stint in the army which was enough for me.

So I thought well the way things are going I’m going to be in it sooner or later so I thought I’ll try to get into the air force. And of course Doctor Patterson wouldn’t release me. I don’t know who put me onto it but somebody put me on to go down to the pharmacy board. There was a Major Hanlon who was the registrar. And I saw him and he said, “Yeah, well the way we can do it

if you resign, they can’t stop you resigning, but you can’t be employed anywhere else.” But he said, “If you come down here we can employ you as a locum. And we’ll give you a release.” So I went there and did a couple of locums and then they released me so I went down to Woolloomooloo and enlisted.

I had a lot of time for him, he was a very square shooter, no frills about him. Fairly brusque, but not unpleasant with it. And I didn’t have much to do with him till after the war. Didn’t have much to do with period. But we only saw him when he came

In to check the register and then he’d see the manager and say g’day generally to the rest of us. He didn’t come around to shake hands to the individual but I never took any notice of that because they’ve got a hell of a lot of shops they’ve got to go around to and if he spent all his day shaking hands and saying, g’day Joe, he’d never got around it. But he was very pleasant.

Yeah. He and John Spalding was the secretary. No I had a lot of respect for him and he was, as I say very direct. When my apprenticeship was finished they – you could have it

extended but he wouldn’t do it. But I didn’t hold that against him, he didn’t have to and it was my own fault I had to repeat first year otherwise I wouldn’t have to repeat it so I never held that against him. But apart from that the only other incident I have any – well even now it was impersonal contact. But I was working at

- they used to close at half past seven in those days. And there’d be only one registered on. And I was on that night and a drunk – the front of a pharmacy had a window each side and the entrance in the centre of it like a lot of them did in those days. And this drunk came around and went bang and went straight through the window on the side. So we had a number to ring and an engineer came out.

And boarded it up and so forth. And I finished knocking off about midnight or something like that. And I got on well with the manager and I liked him but he was a bit pedantic. And when it came to – Freddy was due in, and he said, “I don’t know how he’ll go about paying for the overtime.” And I thought, “Oh well.” I couldn’t care less. I’ve got nothing to do with anyhow.

So I didn’t worry about it. Anyhow I heard him. He brought the subject up and Freddy in his usual brisk way said, “He worked the time, didn’t he?” in a high pitched voice. “He worked the time, didn’t he? Well pay him.” Bang that was it, good bye. So you know that was typical. He didn’t – no palaver but he was fair, very, very fair. And I always found him that way.

You had the apprenticeship which you spent, I can’t remember the details of it, a certain number of mornings at Sydney University and the rest of the time you spent in the pharmacy learning the practical part. You did have laboratory work at the university but it was pretty far removed from the actual every day pharmacy and that was

you had the training for.

It was entirely different in those days. Most of it was extemporaneous stuff. You made up mixtures. You made ointments; you might have half a dozen, two or three. You made very rarely but you did make –

the uni particularly made pills. You used to roll thing – tier it out into a pipe and you had things that cut it and then you put it in a thing to roll them so they were round and then you varnished them. But it was still done. And a lot of others, suppositories and pessaries. And cachets, they were a weird thing. They were two hats

put together made of starch and you used to put, unpalatable substance in one side and then you’d moisten the rim of the other, put it together so it’d stick. So then you could swallow that and it was reasonably easy to swallow and you didn’t taste it. You get that occasionally. Capsules used to be a real pain in the neck. We used to get a lot of those. And give you their own

prescription for these capsules. And the gelatine ones and you used to have to weigh them until you had the right weight and then push them together. But that was ninety percent of it, was that sort of work, was extemporaneous stuff.

Oh well Aspirin of course

was number one. Paracetamol was a goer. Caffeine was a goer. Morphine was a goer. Diamorphine, that was a goer. Lozenges, some lozenges. There was a lot of drugs. Fry’s Balsam and Opium, various

varieties of those sorts of things. And if you’re interested I’ve even got a BP [British Pharmacopoeia] of those days still here. And a lot of infusions of drugs. Senegar, Buchu and all these things. But various things I feel were the present day were placebos, I don’t if they did a hell of a lot of good.

Everything was restricted to a doctor’s prescription and you had to record it in a drug register. But outside that. The funny thing now that estrogens they were not restricted at all. Truckies’d come in and they didn’t abuse them, they’d get a dozen or something like that

over the counter. And no problems. So it’s a social thing, it’s not really a cultural thing. But anyhow, yes…

I never did, no and I was never encouraged to. Never saw a bloody doctor in the air force. Only reference of it

and you can delete this if you like was when they came into give the usual warnings about transmitted diseases, sexually transmitted diseases. “Don’t use the excuse you got it from a lavatory seat, that’s for group captains and above.” And that was about all they were any bloody use for the doctors. They really were. I mean on the squadrons, I never saw

a doctor. Never had a reason to. But no, no.

Middle class, it was a middle class suburb. Middle to working class suburb. Really nice people. They were

as good as anywhere else I’ve ever been in pharmacy. They were great. No airs and graces. Appreciated anything you did for them and no, they were nice people. Just again I thoroughly enjoyed my apprenticeship.

Oh no, I think, no they did have a very definite function apart from prescription trade. Because they used to – people would come in with all their problems. And you used to get the OTC – over the counter prescribing. And they used to rely upon the pharmacist to be able to advise them

that the kids got this, or the kids got that. Or they’d cut in with a cut finger or something or other. And they’d never go to the doctor; they couldn’t afford to even in those days. You couldn’t afford to go to the doctor for most people in that sort of a suburb. So they’d come in and we’d do a bit of patchwork on them and they’d go away happy. You didn’t charge them so they appreciated it.

Oh no not in those days. Leichhardt, Annandale was very much Anglo-Saxon. There was a smattering that was starting to get in but no, it was – there’d be the very rare one.

Yeah, yeah.

No.

You had to have a registered there, so I just worked for a registered pharmacy, for a pharmacy in Eastwood. A bloke named Arthur Walker. So you just did the same as he was doing but you couldn’t do it without a register there. The same still applies today. You can’t operate a pharmacy without having a registered pharmacist present.

Well I don’t think – I think the penny dropped really – well I’m sure it dropped with Britain because it started rearming long before Chamberlain came home waving a bit of paper. “Peace in our time and Hitler’s a good guy.” But I think the writing was on the wall and I think most people realised.

I mean you’d have to be pretty thick to see them occupy Czechoslovakia, Austria and all this sort of thing and what was the … it was called something else then I think.

Yeah it was part of the Rhineland and that. You’d have to be pretty naïve. But I don’t think anybody ever anticipated

the extent that it would go and particularly Japan. Cause they always had a phobia about the yellow so and so’s. But I don’t think anybody really expected it to go the way it did.

I was with my girlfriend; she was only at that time. At her home with her family.

And they had a radio. People were just starting to get radios. And from memory it was nine or ten o’clock at night-time in the evening. Anyhow Menzies came on and said, “It is my melancholy duty…” etcetera. Yeah. Which immediately made you think – had to think, “Well it’s all going to change, whatever’s

going to happen”.

Oh well, as I say, with trepidation yeah. I mean I wasn’t so naïve that I could think that we were not going to be involved. That life would go on the same way. Just watch it unfold then. I did

a stint as I say in the army, as a reserve. So it was sufficiently realistic to me that I think I accepted the fact that I was going to become involved eventually one way or another.

Oh course it was.

Yes yes. They didn’t. I can’t remember when they had rationing but there was no blackouts or anything like that. And that had at that stage, had no attack on Australia, not on Darwin certainly. And it wasn’t till

’41 was it, when the subs came into the harbour, something like that. And all they got was from Britain and that was all censored. And yes they heard that they’d – you know in the blitz, that they’d been bombed. But yes they’ve been bombed, so it’s happened, that’s a terrible thing. But

what’s bombing? It was a fool’s paradise but I don’t – I was one of them. And I don’t blame them because everything was censored so you only got what they allowed through and it was very remote. I think the worst thing that they experienced was rationing and that was a pretty generous thing to real rationing.

Oh I don’t know. I can’t remember.

No, I’m sorry I can’t answer that one. From memory I don’t think so. No I doubt it.

Well the one that was

the solicitor, he went into the air force. Because of his profession he became an adjutant. The next one, Garnet he’d bought – already bought a bus service from Cabramatta out to Bonnyrigg. So of course that was reserved

occupation being transport. Roy went into the army, he went to New Guinea. And Doris stayed at home.

He went to New Guinea, yeah yeah.

Yeah yeah.

No it was a volunteer reserve. And as I say I didn’t know but I was fearful we were going to be in it whether we liked it or not.

I can’t remember now how that happened. I just finished up out at Wallgrove

and spent two or three months there I think it was doing, route marches and cleaning latrines. And kitchen picket at four o’clock in the morning, all the usual things that are very unfunny. Actually I shouldn’t say –

I was registered at that stage and the pharmacist there said, “Well you can have it,” and we hardly saw him because you practically got no scripts, very, very few. And I can only ever remember doing one for an Aspirin mixture. So I was left pretty much on my own. But I had it pretty easy. But it was a mindless sort of

existence. And I don’t claim to be brilliant but you do like to think a little bit.

That was it, three months and that was it.

I didn’t mind it, no problems with it except as I say it was mindless.

When they were short of something, have an emu parade. That meant everybody walks on and around the parade ground picking up butts and matches and bits of anything at all. Pick up nothing just look as though you were picking up. Just like filling ditches, and digging them and then filling them again. That was the only thing. No problem for discipline, I didn’t find that.

No it was a mixture. I don’t know what they were – I really don’t know what they were doing. What their civilian occupation was. It wasn’t something that you asked. You were in the army and that’s what you were doing and that’s all that was relevant. That’s my recollection of it.

Well they were called the chocos [militia: chocolate soldiers], and my brother was. He was a choco and he finished up beside the AIF in New Guinea. No I thought that was most unfair. It’s the same as in Vietnam. Didn’t ask to go. I was told to go.

I didn’t ask to go overseas. So we’re in all the same boat. They did what they were told. So don’t criticise.

Choco was the only thing I ever remember.

Oh, it was their own bloody army.

I don’t remember the air force calling them chocos. They’d probably start a brawl immediately if they did but their own blokes in the AIF particularly, they couldn’t start one with them.

No I think it was – I can’t

remember for sure but I think it was voluntary. I don’t think they ever had to enlist them. They may have later but certainly by the time the Japs got into New Guinea, they may have, they probably did. But I was overseas so I didn’t really know. But I always had the impression that it was voluntary.

Yeah. Yeah that’s something that my brother …

My brother, the one that had the bus run, he got one. They were ratbags. I never had anything like that from the ordinary people. They’re just bloody nuts. I often wonder what they were doing themselves.

The ones that sent

the white feathers.

Oh no, it was always sent in a bloody letter. Didn’t have the guts to front them. Oh anyhow that’s history. But that’s something that bites deep.

Well they were the reserved occupation which they could not be – couldn’t volunteer and they could not enlist. I mean it was common sense. If he had gone for example, the transport from Cabramatta to Bonnyrigg would have folded or else somebody else would come in.

And the same thing would apply there. So it was the logical way to retain the infrastructure of the country. If they were a reserved occupation they were essential so that was the way to guarantee it.

I knew it, yes.

Because they published the reserved occupations so I knew that yeah. I think it’s one of those things. There’s always a loop hole somewhere if you look for it.

Well I can’t remember the origin but somebody gave me the drum

to go down to the pharmacy board and see Major Hanlon, see him personally. He was the registrar. To see him personally. So I rang up and got an appointment with him and I went down and saw him and told him my problem. That I wanted to enlist but Souls wouldn’t release me. And he just said quite casually, “Well if you want to, this is

what you would do. Resign and come down to us and we’ll organise for you – we’re not your employer but we’ll organise for you to do some locum work.” And I think he said they weren’t your employer but maybe that was the crux of it. That as my employer, seeing as they were you know getting jobs for me, that they would be classified

as an employer and he said, “We’ll release you.” I said, “Right.” So I did that. I had to wait a while then for a call up so I worked around – I was still a registered pharmacist so I worked around, I worked up at the Cross, Kings Cross for quite a while actually.

Cause that was open twenty four hours a day. So he’d had the day off and then he’d do the night shift. Yeah so that’s what I did until I got the call up.

None. I had no feedback whatsoever. As I say, I didn’t see Doctor Patterson

then, I didn’t see him till after the war actually. I did once, saw him on Lindfield Station. Railway Station. We just gave a very courteous, no there was nothing nasty about it. It was just an acknowledgment, yes we’ve met and that was it.

No. Did I go back there after the war?

I went – oh Lord my memory’s getting – I can’t remember. Yes I must’ve – no wait a minute. No I don’t think so. I think there was a period, there was a period after, when I became registered after I was registered.

Yes there was a period then when I went back, but that was before the war. Yeah that’s right.

Oh I don’t know, I suppose it’s one thing was I didn’t want to be in the army. That was for sure. And I get horribly seasick so I certainly didn’t want to be in the navy. I also get air sick which I didn’t know at the time so what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you.

Yes so it only left the other. And I’d had a trip out at Mascot in the days of Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm, had a trip in an autogyro. Found that stimulating so I thought, yes I could handle this.

Yeah well it was –

the difference between a helicopter and an autogyro was that the autogyro had the thing up top. No I don’t think it had any rudder control, I think it was all blades of the autogyro. I think they just altered the blades to – we only went around Mascot aerodrome and down again.

Ten bob I think it was. I know something like that. My mother thought, “What a waste of money!” Yeah.

Oh yeah I mean again you’d have to be pretty thick not to realise but I mean look at New Guinea.

You know if it had to happen as far as that goes I’d hate to have been in New Guinea. But anyhow that’s taken out of your hands. No I don’t think I really thought about that seriously, well you can’t. If you think about what might happen, you just don’t do anything.

Oh I think I did with Eve yeah. I probably didn’t with my mother. As I say, that would not have been a very personal thing and as such you wouldn’t probably – but I think I would’ve, I’d have had to with Eve yeah. Can’t remember specifically the time we were doing it but

I don’t think I’d be so insensitive as to have done that. Although she was only my girlfriend at the time.

Went down to Woolloomooloo and we had – oh various tests

and eye tests and so forth and medical. I think it was only one day, we had the medical and everything else. And then that was it. Push off and we’ll let you know. And the next thing I got the actual call up to – well once again I think we went down to

Woolloomooloo and we were bussed up from there over to Bradfield Park.

Oh yes that was an odd ball thing. They said my blood pressure was high. They said come back in a week, fortnight’s time, something or other. I went to one of the local doctors and said, “What’ll I do to correct that?” He said, “Oh,

don’t do anything, just relax when you go.” He said, “Pounds to peanuts, you’ve been tearing around down there, doing various tests and everything else. Of course your blood pressure’s high.” So he said, “Just relax. Don’t let them get at you.” I said, “Right okay.” Which is what I did and went back the next morning and a miracle the blood pressure was all right. That was the only problem.

Well then life changed. Immediately you had the WO [Warrant Officer] and everybody on your back. And no it was quite good but discipline was quite strict there but it was fair, no complaints. But they did some preliminary checking on your manipulative skills and that sort of thing.

I think from memory. Anyhow it was there that they categorised you to what you were going to be. And then they sent you off from there to wherever, to elementary flying school or in that case the overseas ones or stayed there but were – I was classified

as an observer. I think it was about the last observer course that went through. They were the days of the twin engine bombers where you needed somebody who was a qualified navigator, bomb aimer and air gunner. So you get around in the aircraft like a blue tailed lizard. But that’s what they were.

Oh naturally

everyone wanted to be a pilot.

No, I never did. I tell you what I suppose it’s six of one or half a dozen of the other, you think about it. You’re in charge of an aircraft. With seven guys. And what you do dictates what happens to them. It’s a hell of a

responsibility. And it’s not all the glamour. You’ve got to be strong. Our skipper was an ex timber worker up in Queensland so he had wrists and arms on him like a bullock. You need it. I mean they’ve got hydraulics yeah, but it still takes a lot of strength to throw them around.

So that – I didn’t think I was – I doubted my ability to be suitable for that as much as I would have liked. I gained my ambition, I flew one for a short period till a navigator jacked up on me. Yeah.

Oh that was on a training flight, over England.

No it was good, conditions were great, we were learning something all the time. So it was, yeah that was fine. And this one as I say, was strict but it was fair even to the example of it. The drill sergeant that we had

he was as I say, on your back all the time, and everything else. But the guys were all reasonably co-operative. There was nobody mucking around so we got in a reasonably short time, became quite proficient at it. He was very happy. Until the last one, he said it was to be the last drill session. And he took us out on the parade ground and marched us around once.

And then turn a left turn. And we did the left turn and quick march, and the next thing we were in the bush and he’s behind us. And we spent the next half hour down having a smoke and so forth. He said, “I can’t teach you anything more, so why worry about it.” And here’s a bloke that had been on our back so you know, it’s not all as bad as it sounds.

I don’t know if he had a lot of respect but he was treated with respect, yes. But that was a forced respect. He wasn’t a popular guy, let’s put it that way. He can’t be by almost by definition. It’s like a sergeant major. No such thing as a kindly sergeant major. But that bloke was a typical

example. Yeah he’s strict and later on if – if you muck up or anything like that I don’t doubt he could be very – jump on you. But behind it there was a brain. As long as he achieved what he set out to achieve, okay, treat you like a human being.

Oh yeah. It was only – they’ve all got their own queer ways

but instead of left right left, he used to say, “Hip right hip right.” So they used to call him hip.

Good. No trouble. There was always a bit of chiacking between the ones that had been there for a month and the others that were coming and the next intake. Oh get some in and all this sort of

thing. Nobody ever took it seriously. I personally never indulged in it. It was pretty puerile. Oh they used to take it the way it was given. It was only the culture.

Oh it’s chalk and cheese. I think right from the word go, you were learning.

You were learning something at which you had to become proficient. Consequently there wasn’t the sheer boredom of as I say, digging holes and filling them in. So I don’t – I can’t remember anywhere that comes to mind where somebody was just fooling around for the sake of making a nuisance of themselves. They all had something to learn and it

was obviously something quite foreign to them. And I mean it didn’t matter whether it was navigator, bomb aimer, air gunner. Flight engineers, we never had anything to do with them before we got to England. But they all had – and I think they were realistic to know that necks were going to be on the line according to how efficient or inefficient

they were. And everybody else was going to have rely upon them so you wouldn’t get a very good reception from the rest of the crew.

Oh I was quite happy. Quite happy about it. Navigation was good, I enjoyed that.

Well then as I say, down to Melbourne to Ascot. And we were only there a very short time, did nothing, just a matter of staging place. And then we were bused out to the Matsonia. It had brought a whole heap of Yanks over. It was going back virtually empty. I don’t know how long it took us. A month or something like

that perhaps. We went right down south of New Zealand because the Japs were in at that stage and they were roaming the Pacific. We didn’t see icebergs, but it must’ve been very close. Oh it was bitterly cold. And conditions on the ship were great because as I say, there was so few on it and the discipline was virtually nothing. We had to do –

man the guns in shifts so that again was – it wasn’t arduous. And the galley was always open for you to go and have a bit of toast and something and a cuppa. You could have a cabin on your own or I think from memory I had one guy with me. So you weren’t crowded or anything like that.

No it was – after three days of it. Oh and seasick, cause when you go down the south there, the seas were rugged and I didn’t care whether I lived or died. If I had a preference I’d die and that was it. Oh it was shocking. I got over that and I never had it after that. So it was boring but pleasant.

Oh gee, I think we knew we were going to Canada, pretty sure we did. I can’t remember when we were actually told. But it would’ve got out anyhow one we got on – the crew would’ve known which port next they were going. But I can’t actually remember the

incident where we became aware of that.

Oh almost certain. From Canada you go either to ferry command which is most unlikely. No you wouldn’t go to ferry because they were all professional pilots. Or you go to coastal command or you go to

the Middle East. Oh bomber command of course. Those were the choices. Yeah. Coastal command, bomber command or the Middle East, there were the probabilities.

Well again I don’t ever remember thinking about it seriously

because we didn’t really know any more over there, than over here knew about over there. And I can’t remember the reaction to the bombing of Darwin but certainly we knew nothing, it was only very recently we realised the extent of the bombing of Darwin. I was certainly under the impression that it was one attack and that was it.

And certainly didn’t know about the damage or anything like that. And I think at the back of it, you had no choice anyhow whether you wanted to go home or stay over there. It was immaterial. You weren’t going to be asked. Same as you never asked whether you were going to go to bomber command or fighter command or where you were going.

Well we had embarkation leave. And I think that was it. Then after the embarkation leave went back to Bradfield Park and didn’t see them again, except for my dearly beloved. She had a bit of initiative. Her brother worked at the – you know the old gas company in Haymarket?

Well he was working there and he saw the bus loads coming down. And he rang her, she was working at Bryant’s and he rang her and said there was a whole heap of air crew. It wasn’t air crew, RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] coming down to the railroad. So she went down and got herself a platform ticket. And then

you can imagine the whistles and so forth. Asked and eventually somebody knew and pointed her out, so she came along to the carriage. And that was the farewell.

We were engaged, we were already engaged. I can’t remember now when we did get engaged, but it was

twelve months or more before hand.

Stupidly really because I just thought, I didn’t want to – don’t want to – I didn’t want to …

Comes back to me vividly, but I wasn’t fool enough to think that it couldn’t happen. So I didn’t want to leave her with – and I certainly didn’t want to get married and

leave a child. But if I had any bloody sense I would’ve because no matter what happened, she’d have had – if I came back as I did, she’d have had a wife’s allowance. If I’d gone for a row, she’d have been looked after for life.

Stupid, really was.

Yeah I know but still, even so as I say, if I hadn’t come back she’d have been better off.

She’d have a war widow’s pension; she wouldn’t have had to ever work again if she didn’t want to. So now I – wasn’t right in the mind, I really wasn’t.

No, no, no. No she would’ve got a married allowance, wife’s allowance which

was quite considerable cause she was being paid to live without – I made an allotment to her but that was voluntary but I don’t know how much she would’ve got because I never got around to that. But I know she would not have had to work if she didn’t want to and also she wouldn’t

have had an medical expenses cause as a war widow she virtually had a gold card. Anyhow.

Yeah, yeah it was. Yeah. I know we all say that but she was a gorgeous person.

No, no, the only submarine scare came; we were in the Irish Sea. And it blared out, “Any man that fires at that sub will be court martialled, it’s one of ours.” Loud and clear. No, never saw anything at all over there.

That was our first sight of hostilities at all, was the sub.

Yeah, down through the Irish Sea.

Oh lovely. Lovely place, nice city. People were terrific. They came down to the wharves and picked everybody up. “Where do you want to go?” They were great.

Really were. Yeah.

No, no, not at that stage.

No they hadn’t, not in 1942 they hadn’t. When was Japan…? Was December…

Was it?

No, well I didn’t realise that because certainly there was no sign of war in America when we went there. Oh of course there must’ve been because – yeah yeah. I don’t know if they had rationing or anything, we had no sign of it.

We went from San Francisco up to Vancouver.

And we only spent a day there I think it was. I think it was Orca Bay, in the bay there. And then we went to Edmonton and there we really did nothing. They did Morse code training but it was just a matter of something to keep them occupied. We were on leave most of the time. I went down to Calgary and Banff and Lake Louise. You could hitchhike anywhere at that time. And

I don’t know how long, I think about a month in Edmonton. It was really only a staging camp and then we went across to Quebec, a little place called L’Ancienne Lorette, a little village. And civil airport was just outside it. And we spent the next nine months thereabouts, something like that, doing navigation, bombing

and gunnery. And then down to Belleville in Lake Ontario. It was very pleasant. It was cold, very cold. Snowed like fury and they had to shift us in the end down to St John’s, down outside Montreal. The aerodrome was unserviceable. But again I liked Quebec.

Very nice. We met some great people there. English people but they were lovely, great to us. Met three lasses. No romantic attachment at all, they were just great friends, they really were. One worked for the bishop, Anglican bishop. And one she was much older than the other two but

she was a daughter of one of the early surveyors of the arctic area. So she knew it back to front. Used to take us skiing but wouldn’t go on the easier runs because she knew the area back to front. She’d been with her Dad on it on many occasions. She’d leave us and we’d go off, just break a trail ourselves and we had a wonderful time.

And as I say the bombing on the lake was very pleasant. St. John’s was very ordinary but we were only there for, I don’t know how long, a short period.

Well the main part was navigation so we did a lot

of dry runs as they call them. In other words they’d give you – they give you the co-ordinates of a certain spot. You set off from there and you go to the co-ordinates of another place or an actual village or something or other. And so on and so on, it’d go on. You might be a couple of hours and then you’d come back to base. And according to how you coped

you’d get back to base. Or you would be lost or fifty miles away or something like that. And then from that you’d go to the actual, they had Ansons and you’d go on actual navigation flights. I found it very difficult because everything was completely covered with snow

so there was nothing much to pick up and it was basically dead reckoning navigation and so a lot of it was pinpointing. I found it very difficult. But anyhow that’s as I say, when you did the gunnery – I can’t remember where but they used to just have a drogue pull a – or an aircraft

pull a drogue along and then you’d come like alongside and fire at it and the cartridges had colours on them so you’d be able to tell who got how many and so forth. That was done in a thing called a Bolingbroke which was a Canadian form of a Blenheim, twin engine medium bomber.

And we did some of it on the range, gunnery on the range too. And you did a certain amount on the turrets. They had different turrets. So they had – these turrets you used to have to do time in those. You’d have time off of course. But that was it and as far as

a New Zealander and myself, we met these – I met them only through Alan my friend and he said, “I’m going into Quebec to meet a lass there. Would you like to come?” And I said, “Yeah but threesome’s not my…” He said, “Oh no there’s nothing in it.” They were actually going to see her family. I said, “Oh yeah I’ll be in that.” So

we went along and we spent the Christmas, that must’ve been the Christmas ’43 with them. And we went on the Canadian version of a pub crawl. They had a band which went through all the streets of Quebec and they went into all the offices and everything. Everywhere they went you got shouted a drink and something to eat.

This was the Christmas celebration. By the time I’d finished I was full both ways. Anyhow I didn’t actually get stoned, I managed to restrain myself. And we spent Christmas Day with them. There was a younger sister too and the mother. They had a brother and he was over in England with the Canadian Army. Yeah so it was a lovely Christmas.

It gets back to – you can edit it out anyhow. But came Christmas Eve and they said, “Do you want to go to church?” And I said, “Yeah I’d love to go to midnight mass.” “Oh there’s a problem about that.” And I said, “Why?” “Well you’ve got to book.” I said, “You’ve got to what?” They said, “You’ve got to book.” I said, “I’m not bloody well going, thanks, the day I’ve got to book.”

“I’ll give it away.” Okay I can understand they have that many they’ve got to book to see them. But over here at that time, if you couldn’t get inside you could stand outside. I was absolutely disgusted. So anyhow I didn’t go to mass, I didn’t go to church. But we had a lovely day with them the next day, for Christmas Day. And we went skiing

and filled our time skiing. And we didn’t have a lot of time off from the flying and that but enough.

By and large they were very well behaved. I mean that in a social sense, yes. They were not so well behaved with the Canadian air force. The Canadian air force are very strict and very

much à la British. And our mob were a bit inclined to take the mickey out of them and they didn’t mind it. But they had one practise which got up the noses of – there was one particular course, the course before us. They had a flag. Of course they’d flown the flag in the middle of the parade ground. And every time you passed the flag

you were supposed to salute you see. So all the huts, no not the huts, they were long cabins, permanent things, had buckets of water and access for fire precautions so if there was a fire they could knock down doors and so forth. One morning when we got up – when they got up –

the flag pole was lying flat on the ground. They’d chopped the bloody thing down. But that was the only – that was strictly in service thing. But I never saw any sign of loutishness or anything like that. And never heard anybody complain. No nor should they, they were treated terrifically.

As I say we were made welcome like one of the family, Al and I.

Oh mostly French. That’s where we see racism. I went to send a cable home on one occasion and bugger wouldn’t send it. Nearly had a stand up brawl

before he eventually reluctantly sent it. Well I suppose he sent it, I don’t know, I never heard whether they got it or not. But he purported to send it anyhow. And the French don’t wear the English at all. The English from what I saw are quite, you know relaxed about it. But there’s a French part and the English part. And it’s unfortunate

that the English part is up on the plains of Abraham so I was up – looked down on the others down there. But basically I didn’t find any trouble. But the French blokes, they could nearly all speak English anyhow. And they didn’t make waves or anything like that.

Yes that was

done at Lake Ontario.

Oh well it’s all done with smoke bombs so they were seven pound things they were. No wait a minute I’m getting confused there. The gunnery was done on the Lake, that’s right, where you couldn’t do any damage. Hopefully.

But the bombing was done on the bombing range and they were seven pound smoke rounds. And you just – you went up, you found the wind which you did by getting drifts on three different directions and – oh it averages out and you work your wind out from that. You could work your wind

from the difference between your course and your track. Your course is set by the aircraft, the track is set by a – what was it called? Oh a drift gauge. And it’s a thing, it’s got two wires going straight up and down and you line it out and it moves this way. You line it up on an object on the ground and if your wind

is not right, your aircraft will deviate. If the wind is right it’ll just run down the drift wires. So that gives you your track. So you confirm it. But anyhow I think we used to have seven of these bombs and you just dropped them onto a target in the bombing raids.

Oh then you have

to put that on your bomb site, because that then it transfers the drift onto your bomb site. The bomb site again is a couple of drift wires running down and there’s one point where it’s release point. So if you’ve got your wind right you come onto the target and it comes, runs straight down the drift wires. If you don’t it keeps drifting off all the time. You’ve got to get – the skipper’s

got to keep changing course and you’re never going to get anywhere with it really cause you can’t do anything about it. So that’s it and when you get to the release point you press the bomb tip and away you go. And when it explodes it sends up a puff of smoke. And they’ve got a quadrant office which plots where it lands so they tell you what area it is and they phone that back to the bombing department.

So that was all quite pleasant, nothing very taxing, done in Ansons again.

Oh average, just average as usual.

No I became a bomb aimer by – well it’s getting

ahead, but do I come to that now?

No, by choice.

When we came to crewing up, the way they used to crew up you wouldn’t read about it, only the Poms could think up such a chaotic way. You all got into a big hangar and said, “Righto crew up.” So you look, “I don’t like the look of that bugger.” So, “Oh, he looks as though…” You got a bomb aimer or you got

a navigator. Anyway at this stage I was looking for a skipper as a navigator. And I was close friends with another navigator. And I hadn’t crewed up and in this mess I ran into Frank. And I said, “Have you crewed up?” And he said, “Yeah.” I said, “Oh good on you, I haven’t yet.” And he said, “Come on and meet the skipper.” So we came over and

I said g’day to him. And he seemed and he was a hell of a nice guy as it turned out. And I looked around and I still couldn’t see anybody and I said, “Look how about we go together, I’ll go as bomb aimer and you go as navigator.” And he said, “Well that’s up to you.” And the skipper said, “Yes it’s all right by me.” I said, “Right that’ll do me.” So that’s how I became at that stage a bomb aimer which changed later again

of course.

Yeah definitely. I had never planned to be a bomb aimer, certainly not. But yeah.

I don’t know it was just that it was, calculations and that’s all. And before I found out differently the idea of being able to calculate

and do things, I’ll be there, change course and I’ll be there. And all this sort of thing. A bit like being on a ship, I think. I’d love to be a navigator on a ship more so than on an aircraft. So anyway I think that’s what appealed to me really, the main thing.

No I didn’t have

any problems in Canada because you’re always flying straight and level.

On ops you’re doing and the bloody table’s coming out. No it’s a different proposition altogether.

No no none at all. Oh there’s another reason. Aggies [Avro Ansons] are only just ambling along, you can almost get out and walk if you wanted to and they’re

flying straight and level. And the pilots are bored witless. They were, come over civilian pilots. Or most of them. They were mainly civilian pilots.

Well it’s difficult to describe as I say, other than the fundamental thing was that

you had these two wires, parallel wires running down from the main part of the bomb site. And on the bomb site you had your height set to set the height and the wind. Had setting to apply both of those. Now if your height’s right and that’s up to you to settle on the bar. It’s already set for whatever height

you’re bombing at. So if the height’s right your bomb will land where it’s calculated that it’s supposed to land. If your wind is right it’ll follow the track so it again will go where the bomb goes because that’s the track that you’re on. And theoretically that’s it, that’s the way you go. But it’s a very simple straightforward thing. As I say

it’s just basically, you’ve got to be straight and level. As I say I think the Yanks had a gyro, I’m not sure but I think they had a gyro thing which self levelled. But that’s why you had to, with the ones that the British had, you had to fly straight and level for maybe a minute, maybe longer. Maybe less. Because if you didn’t, well

you’d throw them all over the place. But I’m talking theoretically here, as I understand, the gyro would level the bomb site for you. But unless you were straight, they’d throw them anywhere.

Oh yes, you had a course and the skipper had to use a course and an air speed. And the rest then was the track.

And the ground speed was out of your control. It was controlled by the wind and the course. So that was it.

The skipper as far as our crew was concerned was always, that’s why you called him the skipper. He was always in control. The culture was that the bomb aimer was in control

once he went down – got on the bombing run. And that meant that once the bomb aimer got down there and well, I’m being garbled here. There are two things too. It’s hard to get it in sequence. The original thing the bomb aimer was down lying flat on his stomach, down in the nose. And he’s trying to pick up pinpoints with

ten tenths cloud underneath you and Europe blacked out, so you can imagine what you can pick up at twenty thousand feet. But anyhow that was the theory of it. Now in practise when they got on, you may have heard a thing called H2S [air-to-ground navigation system], this is getting out of sequence but I don’t know whether you can sort that out perhaps. This H2S came on, available, and then I finished up

being with a navigator so we were virtually at that stage, flying as two navigators. And with this H2S I was able to pick up pinpoints through cloud or anything else. So I’d pick the pinpoints up and give him a wind and he’d give the skipper a course according to that wind, revised wind. And when it came towards the target run I’d go down into the bomb bay and then I’d

take over the bomb site and bomb. When that was finished I’d go back up onto the H2S and see if we could find our way back home. With the navigator setting the course. They’re doing the major thing, I was really just doing the pinpointing.

Oh

you’ve got to – yes you’ve got to know – you’ve got to be reasonably good at maths and you’ve got to be reasonably quick too because you know you’re travelling at two hundred and forty knots or something like that. So if you take five minutes to work out your calculations and your wind, it’s history because that’s where you were five minutes ago and you’re a hundred miles further on or knots further on or something. So yes you’ve got to be

able to concentrate very hard. And as I say with an aircraft doing this and bloody table going up and down, not easy.

Well fortunately that was with the Maths 2. Although there was trigonometry and all that, but no I never had any trouble with the trigonometry there on the course.

I don’t think I learned anything in between so I don’t know. I must’ve picked up something on the course that I’d missed somewhere.

Well, by his accuracy on the target.

Might even have – no wouldn’t be – no it’s not there. But we were bombing from six thousand feet and I think fifty metres is classed as being reasonable. Beyond that you’re starting to get a bit hairy. I don’t ever remember anybody hitting the target but …

No

You’re just in competition for your assessment. I’m sure it will only show the same thing, average.

Oh we had Canadian issue battle dress.

I think we had long johns from memory, I don’t think I ever wore them, but I think we had them. And then you had the special hat with the ear pieces like the lumber jackets you see. I think basically that was it. Gloves of course. We had – I think we had some sort of boots too.

Bit vague on that. But we didn’t have, we just had their Canadian clothing. But when we’re flying of course we had flying suits. But the rest of the time everywhere you went was air conditioned. The base was all air conditioned. So you darted

from one – all the ablutions and everything were all inside, toilets and that. And when you go into town the buses are all air conditioned and heated. And you go into Quebec and you dart from one shop to the next and pull the flaps down and push the flaps up.

Oh it’s hard to describe them

but they were fur lined and your boots were fur lined. And the gunners had electric attachments to their boots. Well it was just basically it, fur lined things. Why I’m so vague, I don’t remember, because I didn’t wear them. The heating in the aircraft came from the manifolds which is fed in up near the cockpit. So

up in the cockpit and the navigation compartment you’re always overheating and the gunners are screaming, and the wireless operator are screaming bloody murder, “More heat.” Yeah so I can remember wearing was the fur lined boots and the helmet. We didn’t wear gloves cause you couldn’t navigate courses and things with gloves. But we didn’t need it; that was quite warm.

They had boots tied up to the electrical system of the aircraft. They also had, I think they were silk socks, I think it was silk socks and then their big woollen ones. Often when it was winter

mostly it was winter time. I started in the December and went through to July but the bulk of that was in the winter, leading to and the middle of winter. And you’d be, nothing unusual for it to be ten degrees below on the ground and you’d drop two degrees for every thousand feet. So if you were at twenty thousand, you were minus

forty odd, minus forty degrees easy. So they had no heating in either the rear turret or the mid upper so they really do it tough. I think just to avoid frostbite they would have to have it. And the same the gloves, and all they were wearing, it was all heated. It was still very cold for them but at least

I really think it was – this is only an opinion but I think it was probably to stop frostbite.

No they never did and I never knew why, never worked that out. I mean I did gunnery although not in Canada, it’s still the same. They jammed at times but it was never as far as know, was never through icing.

What used to happen was the hooks that hold the bombs, they’d ice up. And the bombs wouldn’t drop, that happened quite frequently. And when it came down below freezing point, the bloody things’d defrost.

Well they’d drop into the bomb bay, but they were barometric fuses so they would go off. But when

you’d come back you’d have to let them know. Or very rarely let you know – open the bomb doors and let them go over the Channel, making sure we were well away from the navy. Those mad buggers, they’d fire at anything that moved. Yeah no so – but I never heard of the guns freezing up, because once they fired they wouldn’t.

We were introduced to the real war in Canada and Quebec. We used to go up to as I say to an aircraft, and this particular day, an easy of way of doing it, Bill, Bolla and Crump, the alphabet. So Bill and Bolla go in this one, Crump goes in this one. There’s only one in that one. So they collided in mid air.

Right at training. So it brought home with a jolt, it’s real.

No no I don’t think anybody saw it. It was somewhere out away from our ‘drome.

Oh I think it shook everybody up because it was the first. After that they lost a hell of a lot of aircraft in accidents one way or another. And it became just the same as, if you’re lost in an op, that’s it; well you’ve got to go on.

Yeah, there was.

We were given, when the course finished. Actually we were at St John when we finished and we were given leave. I don’t know how much it was but embarkation leave.

So we went up to – mate and myself went up to Quebec and sort of said goodbye eventually to the family there. And then we went over to Halifax but I can’t remember how long. It was probably a fortnight or something like that. Embarkation leave. We went over there.

Louis Pasteur, that was from Halifax.

Oh yes I remember that. It was choc a block with bloody Yanks. Most of whom had never been to sea before. It was choc a block, they were sleeping on shifts on tables. And leave the table for a meal. And they were vomiting

everywhere, you wouldn’t want to know about it. Fortunately, as I say, I’d had my dose in the Matsonia so I could – didn’t even make me sick. And if anything’d make you sick that would. But it was very fast and so she shot across – I don’t know how long it took. Very quick trip anyhow, yeah. But it was just a very

boring trip because you were so crowded, there was nothing you could do. Oh, it was an unpleasant trip, that’s all, plus the fact that you were going through the wolf packs, not terribly impressed with that. No we didn’t see a thing.

Oh nobody was game to mention it whether you were frightened or anything else. You just pretended it didn’t matter you know. I think one saving feature of it was if you went down, I think they worked out you had about two minutes to survive in the Atlantic and by that time your blood freezes and everything stops.

So at least you knew it was going to be quick.

Bournemouth. Yeah that was a staging camp again. And I don’t know how long we were there, not very long. Might have been a week. I don’t think it was any more than that. But we had nothing to do other than – oh I think we went to

a couple of lectures in the theatre, just to keep occupied. But even going back to the question you asked, I don’t see anybody misbehaving. It was really very pleasant wandering around Brighton, there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment. But it was a very pleasant place and the people agin, very nice. They really supported you.

And then we were moved from there over to a place in Wales. I don’t know how you spell it or pronounce it, the nearest we’d get was Pushnella, but P.W.L.L.A.I.I. or something [Pwllheli]. And we did I can’t even remember what aircraft we used there. It must have been a Blenheim again. But anyhow we did night

flying and night bombing. And then we dropped the real thing in the Atlantic, just to see what a big bang it makes. And when we finished there and that’s the only part in Britain that we weren’t welcome. They hated the British, they really do,

or really did. I suppose they still do. But they had no sympathy with them whatsoever. Anyway from there…

Oh didn’t matter and they hated – Britain was in the war so that was it, anybody who was in the war. I’m not saying they hated us, but they didn’t know, didn’t want to know you. As against most

other places at least were happy to say, “G’day where are you from?” and shake hands. But no. Never really worked that out.

Oh we came in

- well I’ve misled you there. We came in at Liverpool in ship and then we were transferred straight off the ship, straight over to Bournemouth. But Liverpool was just devastated. You couldn’t imagine anything like it. Just all this burnt out city. It had taken a pasting.

Well I didn’t see, cause we went straight from the ships to the buses and straight over to Bournemouth, so didn’t meet the people there. I did in London, and they were philosophical. Just you know, put up with it and get on with life. They were living out of shelters. I spent quite a few nights in an Anderson shelter on leave.

I spent a night in a hotel in Barclay Square cause I wanted to hear the nightingale and all I got was bloody bombs. No nightingale. They’d all gone, left for better places.

Oh yeah well I used to go down to a family down in Croydon.

And the buzz bombs were on at the time so they were coming over. It was before the straight up and downers, U2’s or something they called them. V2s. Before they started. But yeah had enough, sampled enough of the bombing to know I have great respect for the Brits, they’re the salt of the earth.

I think it might have been in London itself at Barclay Square, I think that was the first one. It probably was, that was before I met this family down in Croydon. Cause after that I hardly ever went to London I used to go straight down there with them and spend my leave with them.

When I wasn’t with another family in Glasgow doing the same thing.

Oh they were the last word compared with the Ansons. But they were obsolete compared with the Lance. So they were still using them. From necessity rather than anything else.

But they didn’t have a great load capacity and they didn’t have a great range, I don’t know what it was. Didn’t have anything to do with them like that. But they were classed as a medium bomber. And if you think that the Halifaxes I think – I’m doing a bit of guessing here but I think they probably

carried about ten thousand pound. So the Blenheims would have been back to I think probably six or eight. It’s a guess.

Oh it was an anti-climax. It just made a big splash. Only did the one, couldn’t afford any more.

Nothing. Just dropping to see what happened. I don’t think – it was just a gimmick cause it had no real purpose. Had no relation to dropping an actual bomb on operations. And making a big splash was one thing it didn’t do. So yeah.

Partly. We had to pick up a gunner and a flight engineer still. Yeah we did definitely. So I was still flying as a navigator at that stage. Navigator bomb aimer. So it wasn’t till we went to OTU that I crewed up as a bomb aimer.

From there we went – yeah must’ve Blenheims there, I’m a bit vague on that but it must’ve been Blenheims, I think. Anyhow from there we went to, what they call the OTU, Operational Training Unit at Lichfield. And that’s where you start your real training in operational aircraft.

Which were Wellingtons, but they were old Wellingtons. Very prone to motors cutting and they were fabric covered and you had a weird thing, you had to pump oil. And it had a thing with a joystick about that long and you had to pump this oil, pressure against it of course, I forget how many times. But you had to do that to keep oil up to the motors.

Nobody ever bothered asking, they just hated the ruddy thing. And the oil used to leak of course so all the fabric used to get oil soaked. And if you did prang, then it was almost certain it’d burst into flames. They weren’t terribly popular. You couldn’t – geodetic construction. A shell’d go straight through and wouldn’t

weaken the thing at all. But they suffered very much from being obsolescent basically. They did have a later marks which were better. So anyhow as I say, that’s where the pilot did circuits and bumps on the Wellingtons. And I think we did

- I think we had a bit of a joy ride there. It wasn’t that long. We must have done some cross countries or something, I can’t remember, I know we had a ball. Cause we had a lot of time off. We’d hardly got there when they moved us to a satellite, a few miles away. And discipline was non existent; you just had to be there when you had to be there.

Prior to that, they left you to your own devices. And we managed to acquire a couple of bicycles and we used to travel down the country lanes and wave to the squires in their leggings and so forth. No it was – this must’ve been – it must’ve been summer time because we were in summer drill. That was a very enjoyable time, I can remember that.

Without remembering the details.

Taking off and landing in a new aircraft, one you haven’t done before. There’s a big difference between taking off and landing in a Wellington for example to taking off and landing, particularly in a Blenheim. Blenheim were touchy aircraft from what I can gather for the pilot but not sure about – didn’t

seem to have a very good reputation. The Aggies of course, they’d come down of their own accord. But yeah, so they had to take off, land, take off, land until they got it right basically.

Well

I don’t – now this is where I’m getting vague because I was still flying as a navigator. I was still flying as a navigator. I don’t remember bombing in the Wellingtons. I think it must’ve been just training flights.

Oh no, it was much easier really although because it was so densely populated it had its problems because it was very easy to mistake one small town for another one. And you had to – rely on railway lines and various other things.

Landmarks that were very conspicuous. But it wasn’t as bad as Canada; well I didn’t think it was. I thought Canada, because of the snow, was very hard.

No never actually got lost. I got home I guess, rather than by skill, didn’t know we were there until the skipper said, “We’re over the ‘drome now.”

“Oh!” “Oh yeah, yeah of course.” Yeah, no we didn’t have any dicey do’s, not up to that point, the OTU.

Oh yes you had – well until when? No I think until we went to Wales, that’s when – no I’m getting confused. In Wales we had pilots, supplied by the aerodrome, so you had a different pilot every time. Cause I remember we had some Polish pilots there and they didn’t understand the difference between knots

and miles per hours. They knew they had to go up so they went up and they had to come down, they came down. Yeah that’s right. But we – where did we pick Les up? We picked Les up, must’ve been OTU. Yeah it was. That’s right, because I can remember

talking to one of the pilots at training, teaching. And somebody said, “How’d he go?” “Oh he’s an Australian.” “Oh he hasn’t got a bloody clue.” Familiar? Yeah so yes, at time we had Les. I can’t remember where

we actually picked Les up.

No that’s where we actually picked a pilot up. So they were RAF [Royal Air Force], well they would’ve been RAF pilots that’s right. Yeah. Seems strange how you just go vague at times like that. But definitely when Les –

that’s where he did circuits and bumps, so that’s where we picked Les up, somewhere along there.

I think we picked up the gunners. The gunners and the flight engineer – oh God

I’ve lost it now. I can’t even remember where we picked up the wireless operator. Must’ve been at OTU, but I don’t know how we acquired him. It wasn’t another one of these, you know go into one of the hangars and sort it out for yourselves, but we definitely had him, I’m sure we had him at OTU. At

the conversion unit.

Cross countries. It was all cross countries then. Which was fairly hairy because they had the balloon barrages and trigger-happy ack-ack [anti-aircraft] guns. Weather, weather was as big a problem as anything. Cause they used to fly when

they shouldn’t, naturally. Lost a lot in training.

Oh well not in training actually but yes, coming back more than once diverted to other aerodromes cause it’s fog covered and you had to land away and so forth. That happened more than once.

But the bad weather was probably the biggest weather with navigation because you could take off and it was all right and in an hour’s time its fog bound. Rain pelting down, lightning.

Best you could. You always had radio contact so you could get back to base and they’d tell you where it was clearing. Divert you to something where it was clear. They had that problem, they miscalculated. They sent them off one night on an op and they worked it out that they could get to the target and get back before the weather was forecast

to close in. And the weather didn’t play fair and most of East Anglia was fogged bound. So they were going around and around in circles and couldn’t get down. And finished up they were jumping out and let it go out to sea. All sorts of things. They lost about sixty, seventy aircraft just that way, that night.

No we weren’t actually, we got down. I think it was probably the blokes coming back later. See they’d be a good half an hour, three quarters of an hour probably from the time the first one’s landed to the last. So some of the first ones would have got down and then it closed in properly on the others. But we were never –

and part of our time too, we were on a aerodrome that had a thing they called FIDO [Fog Intensive Dispersal Of], it’s some fog dispersal something or other. And it consisted of, down both sides of the runway, they had flares lighting the runway up – well not to light the runway up. It did that but it was there to lift the

fog. And there were only a few of them, I don’t know how many, there were only a few. And we were on 101 Squadron which they had that, and we’ve come in on that okay. But it was a bit out of favour because if you came back dripping fuel

it was not the thing to do. She’d just go up like a balloon.

I don’t know exactly how far but a few miles from Manchester.

No,

I don’t remember any great damage being done there. But it was, we didn’t see a lot of it, or I didn’t anyhow. But we were out in the countryside, it was rural, Church Broughton, it was just stuck out on its own.

It was just familiarisation with the operation of the aircraft.

Which was for the whole crew. The pilot flying it and familiarisation. And us, the navigator, bomb aimer doing the cross countries and that type of thing, getting familiar with the countryside or the conditions more than the countryside.

Yeah, well,

Les the skipper was, as I say from Gympie in Queensland. And I think he was a timber worker. Oh he would’ve been about twenty-one probably. Then the flight engineer which we picked up very late, he was a Brit. Don’t know much about him, we never did. There was only – most of

us were Australians and the Brits of course went home on leave. So outside the actual flying we didn’t see a lot of them. Then was Frank who was a school teacher in Sydney and he was about twenty. And going back would be the wireless operator, that was Eric Cavanagh. He came

from Adelaide actually, I don’t know a lot about his history there. His Mum and Dad were separated and his father had a pub in Ipswich in England. And Terry was only about nineteen, he was quite young. And then we had mid upper gunner and a rear gunner. Now the mid upper, he was an Australian. He’s a real character.

I don’t know anything about his background. I don’t think any of us did but he was a real scruffy type and he was a hell of a nice guy. The rear gunner was a Brit, Scott and he was only about eighteen. They were all very nice blokes, they really were.

Oh well we went from there to conversion unit which converted over onto the four engines. So we had some cross country and stuff there on those. Then we went to, what was called a PFF Navigation Unit for further navigation to go to PFF which was Pathfinders, supposed to be the elite. And

then we went to 7th Squadron from there. But up till then that had been more or less repetition work, with just familiarisation with the new aircraft, or a different aircraft.

Oh Terry was the larrikin, he was an absolute larrikin. He was good fun. And Tom Watt the mid upper he was a bit of a character too.

But I was probably the more – most sober of them all. Les was a quiet sort of bloke but a good sense of humour. They all had a good sense of humour, really got on very well together.

Oh well it’s a classic, when we’d finished flying we were loafing around the squadron there

while they were finding out what to do with us. And the Cambridge area’s a fruit growing area. So we had nothing to do and no leave passes or anything like that to worry about. And they were very short of fruit pickers so Terry and I went picking fruit and we used to get two bob or something a punnet. Anyhow it was all good fun and the trouble was we’d come back at night and there be half the

mess had closed and Terry’d go and chat up the WAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Air Force] and they’d do something for us. And one night we came home and he struck a grumpy one. Now I must say that the hot plates were not really hot, they were just uncomfortably warm. He picked her up and dumped her on the hotplate when she wouldn’t get a meal for us. You could never predict what’d he do. And anywhere he’d go, you’d change

squadrons and he’d only be there half an hour and he’d disappear and he’d come back. He’d know all about it, where to go, who to dodge and everything else. He was a real typical gregarious Australian. Yeah. Yeah they were a good crew, they really were.

Oh mostly you didn’t have much chance for humour. No you

were all pretty well on your toes. I’ve heard of humour. A classic – this actually happened. The crew got in and flak started to hammer them and the rear gunner called out to the skipper, “Get weaving, there’s flaks on the tail.” And nothing happened and he’s yelled at him, “Get bloody weaving!

It’s getting close!” And the voice came back, “Fear not, the Lord was with us.” And the voice came back, “He might be up your bloody end but he’s not down here, get weaving!” That’s supposed to be true. I couldn’t guarantee it. But it was a good story anyhow. But I think it was because the actual sequel to that was that the crew refused to fly with him and the CO [Commanding Officer] at the time happened to be a bit of a so and so and, so

he court martialled them and the whole lot were stripped and sent to the – oh I forget the name of the place, but the equivalent of our Holsworthy out here.

It was on the squadron but before us. They weren’t there when we were there. But it was fairly recent though so there was a quite a bit of feeling about it.

Oh I think so. Mostly if crews didn’t get on they found reasons to switch, that sort of thing. But I never struck any crew, was not aware of any crew that had that problem. They usually bonded pretty well. Their necks were together and depended on each other.

Oh yes you had your odd flare ups but they were pretty rare and didn’t persist. Skipper got quite crotchety with me one night and I don’t blame him. But we had the wrong – we were always given a forecast wind for the target, run into the target. And this particular night it was absolutely hopeless.

And I couldn’t get the target on the – to go down the drift wire. And he went, left left left. And he kept – and in the end he tipped the bloody thing over. He’d had enough. By which time it was all over anyhow, we were through the target. No, I don’t think he was angry. I think he was just frustrated. Never grizzled about it afterwards. No, I think mostly the crews had to get on and they did.

Well it was a stupid thing. I really wanted my head read. As I say we always deferred to the pilot as the skipper but I opted to go around again. So we went around again and we had the same bloody trouble and we finished up dropping it as best I could but it’d be ineffective.

No they said, next time let them know beforehand and they’d get out and walk thanks. Cause we went back straight into the bomber stream too. So it was very hairy. I did it without thinking, but a bit of bloody common sense I should've known better.

Yeah yeah.

Well it was before Merlins and I don’t know what the horse power was but something pretty significant.

It had twin tails, fins, twin fins. It was basic, there was no lining of any description, it was just metallic skin. There were no comforts in it, there was nothing extra. They stripped it for everything that they could to minimise the weight. And the flight engineer spent most of his time standing up.

Skipper’s seat was very basic and wasn’t a comfortable thing, he used to sit on his parachute which was not a choice. The aft compartment was reasonably comfortable, you had a table about that long and repeaters for the air speed indicator and course and all that sort of thing.

I can’t think of much else in the nav compartment. We just had a bench seat. And then the wireless operator was back behind the spa. All this was in front of the spar then you climbed over the spar up to the back section. And wireless operator was there on the left hand side with all his gear there. And the mid upper was half way back

just behind actually, just behind where the wireless operator was. And then you went back past the photo flash tube to the rear gunner and it had the four guns, four .303 Brownings, hydraulic turret. And there was a nose turret which was supposed to be mine.

Well if you’re travelling at two hundred and fifty miles an hour or anything coming in the opposite speed in the dark, it was just pointless so I never used it. Yeah basically that’s it I suppose. They were a very good – they would fly on one engine. And we did it, and it does do it. Couldn’t hold height, it was slowly going down.

The skipper was always – they all said it was a lovely aircraft to handle.

Have we got the photo there? Well on the starboard side, the right hand side, just past the mid upper which was I suppose,

I don’t know, about ten or twelve feet from the rear turret probably. Yeah. It was also – in the bombing section there was a hatch there. And you could go out there and there was one above the skipper and you could go out there.

No you could only get in through the door. You’d get out but you could only get in through the door of the Lanc [Lancaster].

The Halifax was different, I can’t remember. I don’t think I ever actually saw it. Again it was all a bit of a placebo because if you were in trouble usually the G [gravity] would pin you down and you had Buckley’s. The bombing hatch, was only about like that, so you’d have trouble getting through

with a parachute. Wouldn’t be easy.

That’s right, that was the nearest one yeah. And the pilot might go out the top, it just depends.

No, there was only the door at the back, that was the only way the rear gunner could reverse his turret, go ninety degrees and

drop outside.

Oh no down towards the tail it sloped and you were bent but mostly you could stand up in it. But you couldn’t in the bombing hatch of course. That had the turret on top of it. Anyhow you had no reason to

stand up there in any case.

Oh the rear gunner.

Well theoretically he was to spot, both the gunners, to spot a fighter coming. Because they’d come in

from the rear naturally. And also when you got within any sort of reasonable distance you had four Merlin engine manifolds glowing like stop lights. So once you got around you had no trouble picking it out and coming in below and behind it. So that’s where most of the attacks took place. Sometimes, oh probably as often as not,

they’d come from one of the quarters high, come in on a dive. But they were supposed to hopefully pick them up and then we’d go into a corkscrew. It sounds great till you realise that the Browning had a range of about four hundred metres and the fighters with cannon had about eight hundred. So

you could spray the sky but you wouldn’t even hit anything. So I can’t understand how the ones that did – the fighters that did get shot down. A number of them did, they got shot down. But really there was no need for it. The mid upper had the same thing only he had a three sixty degrees.

It was. Yes because one, it was bitterly cold as I say, in spite of all the heating, it was still bitterly cold. It was very very cramped cause the thing was not very big anyhow, because it had to fit into the outline of the aircraft in the tail which was tapering. And

they had the heavy flying suit on. It was a devil’s own job to get in and much the same to get out. And obviously it felt very isolated down there but it was very dangerous because the fighters would target the rear gunner of course.

We had an intercom

and there was an on off switch. Went through to everyone. It wasn’t selective so that whatever you said, went through to the whole crew. So if the rear gunner said, “Fighter on…” wherever it is, the whole crew knew so you’d be prepared for what was coming then. As I say you were cork screwing, so you’d be flying all over the place.

But no seatbelts or anything like that, so you rolled around a fair bit.

No as far as, I don’t know what other crews – but as far as we were concerned it was limited to business. On the odd occasion Terry get addicted to music and he’d get a bit of – what was the guy, the American

bloke that got lost. Oh it doesn’t matter. Anyhow their band leader. Anyhow he’d get him occasionally and he’d say, “Listen to this, fellows.” And you’d shut him down pretty quickly but other than that, no it was – I mean you couldn’t really, couldn’t afford to because all eyes, the flight engineer – they had an astrodome up the top where you could take

theoretical stars with a – what do they call them?

Yeah, sexton. A bubble sexton which means it has to be dead level. And you’ve got an aircraft which by its very nature, flies more or less in circles. And you’re supposed to pick a star and if it isn’t clouded over.

I never used it and I never struck any of the other guys that did. But anyhow he’d be up in that searching, keeping an eye, trying to pick up anything. So everybody had that as a background thing. If you weren’t doing anything at least you’d do that. But the navigator didn’t have time to scratch. And at the time that I was on the H2S.

Once we got over the enemy coast of Europe the G, which the other, was very good electronic gear but it was jammed by the Germans. So from the time we reached the coast, enemy coast, the only thing we had to rely on was this H2S. And it was great to tell you where you were if you knew where you were because you had no way of knowing for sure what the town was that you were picking up.

But you could only do that on dead reckoning so, well should be, such and such a town should be coming up in five or ten minutes, and if something came up, a blip came up well you could be reasonably certain that was it. And then the screen used to be just a round one with a scanner thing on it where you could get the direction, the degrees, the bearing. And also the distance. It had a

marker ring, you could get the distance of it. So with that you had your position exactly, well within reason.

No. It hadn’t been. We went from them to 101 Squadron which was a main force. And when we

came back it was on but originally it wasn’t. They were just bringing them on.

Be down in the bomb hatch just looking, trying to pick up something. Because you weren’t really looking for fighters because they were not going to come at you from the front.

But as I say with ten tenths cloud it was really having a bit of a loaf until you got to the target. Sometimes you’d pick up a river or something and you might be able to fit your position from that. But rivers would show up very well at night particularly with a little bit of moon. They show up very very bright. That told you it was a river, it didn’t tell you what one, or whereabouts it was.

Well it was – again remembering the whole of Europe was blacked out and we were operating in darkness so you – mostly the only time you realised there was other aircraft you’d get the slip stream and you’d get buffeted around in the slip stream and you’d know there was something pretty close. It might be ahead, it might be the side. But

you’d increase your vigilance then but you really wouldn’t know. Once we got the H2S, that was handy because you could pick up other aircraft. The size of the blip and the speed, a fighter would come in reasonably fast whereas a Lanc would stay in the same position. And so you could pick them up like that.

Yes it was a electronic transmitter which transmitted a beam or a signal. A signal I guess. Transmitted a signal and when it hit an object it would bounce back and this H2S received it in the form of a blip.

As distinct from something like G, for example the one that they used over on the coast until it was jammed. That used to send a signal out, that was the end it was gone. They’d have a signal from another direction would intersect and that’d tell them where they were. But this thing transmitted and received, it couldn’t be jammed obviously because of that. But

it had its problems. They woke up to in the end the fighters were coming in on the signal, H2S signal so we used to just use it on dead reckoning when a town was coming on, they’d put it on, and then as soon as they got a fix, they’d turn it off again.

Just a blip on this fluorescent screen. And it was scanning and so it’d be, every time it came there it’d

blip, blip.

Well a town wouldn’t move but an aircraft as I say, would usually be another Lanc. See there’d be six or seven hundred or more all going to bomb within roughly a half an hour, forty minutes. So they were pretty closely packed. There must’ve been a lot of collisions definitely, but there was no way of telling what was a collision and what were enemy

attack, or flak or anything else. “Cause the flak used – German flak was very fierce. They used to have box flak, they’d box you in and…

Oh rivers, coastlines, coastlines are beaut. It was like a map, you could really pick where you were on a coastline. But

there’s actual identifiable blips. It was only really towns, buildings wouldn’t. You know individual buildings or anything like that. Had to be a decent. I doubt whether the villages would, had to be a decent town. There were plenty of those so you didn’t have any worries there.

It was right next to the

G and so forth, that the Navigator had. Right beside it set up on this bench.

Yeah only went down into the bombing bay when we got towards the run end of the target.

Oh everything was different about it. As I say the crew was increased to seven instead of the five that it had been before. The power of the take off, you know it was pin your ears back when it took off. It was a very

- in different circumstances, a lovely aircraft for flying. It really was. Although I must admit the first time I got in I thought, “God it looks like a bloody coffin.” They were black and felt like one. But no it didn’t have any nasty features, it was quite good. Really good.

No no, they took off – I think they used to swing to port a little bit

or used to swing to port, how much I don’t know. But that was an accepted thing and they just used rudder to control it and no they never, the pilots never complained about it.

Oh well with four Merlins and no ear pads, you only had this helmet with the earphones in it. So they

didn’t screen out anything. So you couldn’t hear yourself. You’d scream. Without the intercom you couldn’t, you’d have to do a hand signal which was the fall back in the case of the intercom failing or having troubles.

Oh I think we were told, but I think from memory we worked out our own.

You’d hear the flak if it was reasonably close. Normally all you’d see was a puff of smoke and the smell of cordite. You wouldn’t hear it. Not normally unless it was – if it heard it was too close and would almost certainly hit you.

I only heard it once.

No they were a really – I think docile would be the word, docile aircraft

for everybody within the limits of say, the rear gunners and things like that. And remembering it was a war machine not a civil thing so there was nothing in it – they used to have a piece of armoured plating at the back of the pilots and they got rid of that in the end. I think they reckoned if anything hit the pilot well the rest of the crew were gone anyhow.

So they took that away. So they stripped them so that they had nothing that was not strictly necessary. It was all bomb bay, in the bottom underneath. At least half the length of it was bomb bay.

Well that was done at this conversion unit and navigation

training unit. But only about a couple of weeks there. But I think it again it was more to familiarise them with the PFF because that involved these target markers which – all the main force was connected with that was what they saw on the ground and what to hit, what to aim at. But PFF had to understand the

markers and use of them and so forth. So I think that’s all basically what it was for, because there was only as a say a couple of weeks or something like that, I think, without checking.

Oh yes they had crash landing and ditching and all that sort of thing. There’s a couple of endorsements in there to say that we’ve done the course and all that. Again it was pretty

psychological more than anything else.

Oh, they put racks around the aircraft and they were stuck on the racks.

Well the

first thing was where to get out. Somebody had the responsibility of releasing the dinghy in the case of the channel. But everybody then went out the various exits onto the wings. And then climbed into the dinghies from the wings. Lancs used to

float reasonably for I don’t know how long, but it didn’t go straight down.

Oh we had all sorts of funny things. Buttons, the little magnets that you peeled off part of it and there was a magnet underneath. And silk handkerchiefs. I don’t know where the hell they were stowed, somewhere anyhow, with a map of Europe

on it. And what else did they have? Oh they were always coming up with things. But when a Lanc went down, the G, very few got out. Particularly because the exits were not very friendly and plus the fact that almost invariably they caught alight

cause the fuel tanks’d go and the whole thing’d go up. And that’s if you still had your photo flash that went up, the whole thing’d be incinerated on the spot.

I don’t know where we first heard about it. I would suspect it was when we got to Britain.

Cause the commander of the 8 Group was a bloke named Bennett, he was an Australian. And he had a long aviation history behind him. And so we got, the Australians were very interested in him so we probably picked it up a bit earlier than a lot of others. But I don’t know. I can’t remember

where we first heard about it. I know the first time we took any real notice, when we were told we were going there. I wasn’t terribly enamoured because if you were in charge of the Luftwaffe [German air force] who would you pick on? The ones that were going to mark the target, never mind about the rest. Although they tended to be a little bit

expendable.

Well it was supposed to be a high grade navigation crew whose job was to mark the target with coloured markers which could be done with ground markers or sky markers. Which meant

that the ground markers were obvious that was the target. The sky markers they would calculate how long it would take for the flares, they were parachute flares, how long it would take them to float over the target if they got there. So that way you’d bomb them in the sky and then your bombs would go onto the target. That’s how they calculated

for it to work. And then they had, after every two minutes I think it was, they had back up, still pathfinders. And as the markers started to go out, others and come in and back up on those markers, and keep them going for a half hour or so long as the raid was on. So they were supposed to be top class navigators and

the rest of the crew I don’t think – that was the basic function. You had to be bloody good navigators. The rest of the crew…

That’s right, the markers were the be all and end all. That was the only difference between them and the main force in the actual practical bombing. Was that they were dropping markers instead of bombs.

Oh they always had a cookie as well but that was just thrown in for good measure.

No they had Halifaxes, Lancasters. Earlier when we first went there, only very few months before we went on, they’d had Stirlings. And Stirlings are definitely obsolete, they were. And there had been Whitleys. And they were still using Wellingtons. And they had, what they call,

their thousand bomber raids and they put everything on that, crews from OTU and everything. All available aircraft to make up the numbers so they were still operational. But the main ones, from the time I was on, was the Lancs and the Halifaxes.

Oh yeah, Mosquitoes were mostly while we were operating

were mostly used for reconnaissance and weather. They’d go over Europe and come back. They’d leave when we were going to briefing and they’d be back when we were getting ready to go. And they’d bring back weather forecasts. But the trouble was, weather in Europe changes like lightning, you know only a matter of an hour can change the conditions. So you never could never rely upon it

entirely but it helped. And then they’d do reconnaissance after the raid and they used to get up that high that nothing could get at them. Well the only thing that could get at them, couldn’t do anything because with ammunition and so forth on board they couldn’t reach them. They were a beautiful aircraft. They had those down – you could actually carry a cookie. Four thousand pounder and they had them on some of the raids

they were using those – they used them at times to bomb after the raid was all over in an hour or side and the fire fighters and all were busy, they’d drop a couple of those to stir them up and handicap them, that sort of thing.

Yeah they virtually did what was called the bull’s eye which was the co-operation with

the defences over England. It’s being able to pick up the squeakers off the balloon barrage and that sort of thing. Just straight out co-operation with the defences. That was called the bull’s eye. And then you did a nickel which was a leaflet raid over houses just off the coast of Normandy. It was pretty innocuous. Some of them were put over France, over

Paris and you got a bit of a caning, but usually it was a bit of a gift. Although we again, we all had our troubles. We had to land in an emergency. We had a ‘drome on the south coast of England. And stayed there a couple of days actually before they repaired it, whatever it was. And we flew back to base.

But the nickel was a non event as far as we were concerned.

Doing basically a cross country over England. And being aware of

primarily of the balloon barrage. I mean you had a warning, it used to have a squeaker thing that would come over the intercom. That was the main thing to worry about. The other thing was to have your finger on the colour of the day because the ack-ack boys could be pretty trigger happy too. So it was familiarisation I suppose it was really because there was nothing terrible dangerous about it.

We didn’t. But there were quite a few occasions that they did.

Oh just the usual propaganda about Hitler and how the war was going and we were winning it and don’t lose heart. I should’ve kept one. I didn’t. But like everything with hindsight, it’s great.

Anyhow, it’d be history now.

I don’t know. One of the engines was overheating I think from memory, and dangerously. So we put down at this – I don’t know, I can’t remember how we actually picked the drome but anyway it was a matter of getting down while we could.

But both engines were still going when we landed. Made a normal landing. We had a funny one up in the north of England on a training flight. And this was when we were in Lancs from memory. But I think we lost an engine. Now for some reason

we wanted to put down and this aerodrome was lit up with the runway lit and everything. Everything was going. So we did a circuit and called them up and answer. And called them up three or four times and no answer. We had an Aldis lamp aboard and we flashed the colours of the day plus a message and permission to land. And got no

answer, didn’t seem to be anybody home. So in the end Les said, “Oh bugger them, here we go.” And went in. Nobody knew we were there. Unbelievable. Spent the night there. I don’t know what it was but something – I think we only had one day there and then we flew it back. We flew it back anyhow.

I don’t know, they didn’t

tell you cause you could find out if you went to ask the ground crew. But then you had the problem of the engineers, the electricians and you go to one mob and they were, “I haven’t got a bloody clue, all I’m doing is this.”

Yeah.

Straight from OTU or NTU

which was the Navigation Training Unit for pathfinders. I went to that and I think it was a fortnight only there. Again it was just I think, familiarisation with the things that were different, as I say target marking and that sort of thing on the PFF. And then we went to Oakington, 7th Squadron. We got there just around about Christmas time.

Oh I think – see at that time, the shortage was air crew. And so they just had to have them, that’s all there was to it. So they had to scrounge from – the main force squadrons were very dirty about it. They naturally – they’re picking the ones that were classed as being the best and taking them

so they weren’t very happy about it at all.

No nothing different. As I say, other than being you know, explained the different flares and the ground flares, ground markers and the sky markers and the various colours. And the backing up procedure.

That type of thing was – it was purely target marking was the only thing any different. The rest of it was all exactly the same. The bombing was all done on a distributor once you let them go it went off at set intervals and the camera came on at the appropriate time. The flash’d go off at the same time so no it was, all just a fine tuning,

I suppose, really.

Yeah, well if it’s clear, if you can see the target they put ground markers and they’re coloured. Coloured lights. They glow for about two minutes roughly. And then they go out and then the backers up come in and pop another one down

before it goes out. So they keep the target lit. There’s nothing much more to it than that as far as the PFF is concerned, really. If as we were saying, if there’s ten tenths cloud which there very often was well then they’d use these sky markers which were the

same sort of thing only with a parachute. So they’d drift down and they were calculated, so that if you aimed at them your bombs would go onto the target, carry onto the target.

No, no, that was – I presume although I don’t know, I presume they made some sort of general

allowance cause you’d very rarely get a case where there was no wind and they would have again, the same as we did the forecast winds. So they would make a judgement on how far they would drift according to wind direction and speed. It’s pretty much guess work, as a matter of fact they more or less admitted that. They said, “Well if you don’t –

if you’re half a mile off target this time, well you won’t have to go back there, will you?” Get a bit crude but that was the idea. It was carpet bombing or area bombing was what it was actually called. So never mind whether you actually hit the target, if you flattened a square mile or something that like, there was a good chance it’d be your target and maybe other targets would be in it anyhow.

I think it was all about the same. It would’ve been because they were the same type of thing. And whatever pyrotechniques they used to light them like that. The sky markers, the Germans used to call them Christmas trees cause that’s how they used to –

be like a stream throwing down these lights.

Well not because as I say, the markers would be replenished all the time, so they’d each have their own time on target, was designed,

you know in your briefing you were given your time on target. So it was up to you to navigate to that time and theoretically there’d be some sort of order, which there was. But, oh, places like Berlin, it was like George Street. There’d be bloody Lancs everywhere and fighters everywhere and flak everywhere. It was like day,

lit up like day. With the search lights – particularly if it’s cloudy, the search lights on the bottom of the cloud would be like that and light it up. In the meantime the fighters are throwing in flares along the route into the target. So we had no trouble seeing what was going on.

No they had various colours designed to stop the Germans copying

them. And combinations of colours. There might be, say reds go down for a certain period of time and then they’d switch to greens, that sort of thing to try and out fox the Germans.

Oh they tried – they used to have spoof targets. They’d build wooden

cities outside Berlin and they’d show up as a good blip. And they had lakes, there were some lakes around Berlin so they put a few more into make it a bit more difficult.

Not really.

From memory you just reported to your section, bomb aimers to bomb aimers and navigators to navigators. Pilots to pilots, where they had their senior officer who was in charge of them. That’s where you got a greeting. It was just as a new crew and that was it, settle down. Yeah.

No. No they had – the WAAFs used to have vans and they’d take you to your aircraft and any time you had to go anywhere for an air test or anything like that. So they knew the place back to front, so you could’ve – some of them had push bikes and they’d go around on those. But there was no formal greeting at all like that. They had

a macabre sense of humour in the bombing section. You walked in and you were greeted and on the wall they had – you know the old English battle axes? Those things with the – they had one of those hanging on the wall with red paint all dripping from it. Delightful. That’s where you reported each morning because the battle order’d be up on that and you’d know

whether you were on or not. And from thereon if you were on well you had to be – it was left to you to be there and you knew what you had to do, and God help you if you weren’t. But if you did that then nobody bothered you. I don’t think we any did any PE [Physical Exercise] the whole time I was on the squadron.

Yeah well it’s a pretty complex thing. It starts early in the morning

about half past nine or so, depending upon what time you take off. You start there where you report to your section. And the bombing leader or the nav leader will give any last minute information that they have about tactics and so forth. They don’t know at that stage, I don’t think they even know the target. But it’d be just general things, if they’ve had a report that the flaks been moved somewhere and it’s particularly

heavy there. And anything they’ve got from reconnaissance about fighters and that sort of thing. And then it’s left to you and the normal thing was to go and check your aircraft. If there’d been anything wrong with it the previous night or the previous time, you’d do an air test. And if everything was okay well that was it. Well then you’d go back and probably that’d be all over by half past ten.

Give or take, I don’t know exactly the time but it was something like that. Then you’d have, if it was a late take off, you know, night time, or six o’clock or something, you’d have lunch. And then you’d go to the general briefing, which the whole squadron would attend that, all those that were on ops. And they had the big map on the wall with the route lined out with wool.

And then each leader would give his talk to you. The navigation leader would give the course, the route, the air speed, all that sort of thing which would vary from crew to crew obviously. Well the route wouldn’t, I think as a general rule it was try to pack them all together, you’re less vulnerable that way. But

each individual crew had its own idiosyncrasies too I suppose. After that was over then we’d go and have what was called an ops meal. Used to be bacon and eggs, or something like that – was a real treat. From there we’d go to the parachute section and pick up your parachutes. And

that’d be about an hour before you were due to take off, we’d go and do that. Had the time between the general briefing and doing that would vary according to take off time. When it came for you to go out to the aircraft the WAAFs’d pick you up in a covered van thing. Usually one crew to a van, sometimes there’d be two.

They’d muck in together. And she’d take you around to the aircraft. And you’d get out and have a cigarette and so forth, and have a last check of anything that you thought was worth checking. And then we’d wait then for the CO’d come around and wish you good luck and so forth. And then just wait for the time

for – you used to get a signal to get into your aircraft. Can’t remember how we got that but you had something to get into your aircraft. So you get into the aircraft and then the ground crew’d pull in the trolley and start the motors. And they’d check the revs and everything else, the skipper would. And then I think there was a light. I can’t

remember, there was some signal. Probably an Aldis light and you moved out of the dispersal into the perimeter and made your way around cause they’re all just following each other around. And then you queue up behind the take off point until you got a green light and then you move onto the runway. And then just open the throttle and go.

No we weren’t markers. No you – only again you had to do quite a few flights so that it was okay before you become a marker. So we got – blotted our copybook. On the first flight, I don’t know whether

it was something – the stub of the wing, main plane was billowing and going like this. And we had an Irish flight engineer and he wasn’t the keen type, he wasn’t interested really. Why he ever joined I don’t know. But anyhow, oh he created a fuss about it and we didn’t know any different. It was the first time we’d ever had a full bomb load on. If we’d thought about

it we’d know that with about thirteen thousand pounds of bomb load there’s got to be some give somewhere and it would have to billow a bit. So anyhow we turned back, we aborted. And that, I don’t know an hour’s flight or something. And it was daylight, so we could see it. And not happy. Then we did the second one and to this day I don’t know what happened but everything went, all the electrical stuff went haywire.

The gyro rolled, fell over, the repeater fell over, the P4 [magnetic compass] went haywire. And there was no ifs or buts about it, it did. And we just couldn’t fly a course and we had to come back again. Well they checked it the next day and according to the instrument makers there was nothing wrong with it. So they said, “Right back to main force.” So we went back to 101 Squadron. Oh we went to 101 Squadron and there we flew for ten or twelve

flights or something or other. And they decided no you go back to 7th Squadron. So they sent us back to 7th Squadron. The only startling thing was at 101 Squadron they had a maniac of a CO and he issued you the orders, “You will fly straight and level.” So everybody flew straight and level, like hell they did. But scared the daylights out of us anyhow. So when we survived that and then we went back

to – we didn’t fly straight and level I might say. We went back to 7th Squadron and from then on, well the thing was, we’re going to go no matter what, if the wheels fall off, tough, we’ll do without them.

Yeah, oh yeah. Oh she was all right to land

with a full bomb load. Yeah no problem about that. Easier to land than to take off with it. Sometimes – a lot of the runways were war time so by necessity they were relatively short and built before the heavies with the big bomb loads were taking off. So sometimes it was a bit – you had to hold them down right to the very end and then drag them up.

Well the skipper had to report to the squadron CO. And the rest of us just back to our section leaders. Didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything much, wasn’t really their concern. Cause there was nobody to point the finger at. Naturally you didn’t say that the – on the first occasion that the flight engineer had

dropped us into it. It wouldn’t have been fair because we still didn’t have to take what he said – and he had – was a relatively experienced, so he just didn’t want to go, that’s what it was too.

Oh he got a biking from them. But it was all said by sending us back to main force.

Oh I can’t remember. At that time it’d be a couple of nights, might even be the next night. But very soon after anyhow, it was very soon.

No, no, no. We had our permanent flight engineer by that time. This other one was – that brings up still relatively and in chronological

order – we had a little eighteen year old rear gunner, this little Scot. And this pilot used to have to go on a second dickie for one trip and so we were spares, hanging around. And another crew were short of a rear gunner and they took him and he never came back. It was on his first flight. Yeah so that

brought it home to us too pretty strongly.

Oh you got that way you can’t let it affect you, it’s just – we went away on leave for six days on one occasion there and came back and there wasn’t a crew that we knew. So you just

you get – oh it affects you but you just get to where you’ve got to do it, that’s it. Ignore it, it’s part of it and it’s not going to go away by getting upset with it. We even had occasions where crews have come on and they haven’t even had time to unpack and they’ve never come back. Not the usual thing admittedly.

We never got out of – I think it was Berlin from memory, but we never got out of England. You know it was just impossible. The bloody P4 compass was wagging all over the place and the gyro it toppled and the repeaters had toppled. Everything – there was some electrical problem I don’t know what it was. But anyhow, they obviously thought, you’re a bit chicken hearted

and so send you back to the main force. We’d just settled nicely in main force and I was doing Lanc trainer as second pilot and enjoying it. Then just of course as we were really getting settled in, go back to 7th Squadron, start all over again.

Not to me personally and I don’t think it was to any of the – other than the pilot

perhaps. I don’t know whether the flight engineer. No responsibility come back to the skipper and he never mentioned it, other than the fact he got a bollocking but he didn’t say exactly what had been said or anything. And I don’t think he was even told we were going back to main force. I think it was just done and that was it.

None. I don’t think – I never felt that any of the guys that we met on 7th Squadron felt they were better than the main force. They felt they were better air crew because they had better tools, better equipment. But outside that, they were capable of making big mistakes and poor navigating and everything else given the right set of

circumstances. No I never saw that. Main force had a bit of, oh they think they’re better than everybody else. I could understand it.

Well we had had extra training, and navigation training. And we had particularly the H2S. The G which they’d

relied on before cut out as soon as you got over the enemy coast. The Germans’d jam it so from then on you were flying on dead reckoning which is about, which way’s the wind? Oh I think it’s that way and hope for the best. Literally. And the H2S changed that, because you could still make mistakes as I did on one air – tragic occasion. But fundamentally – if

you could pick up a wind that gave you – that was the crux. And with H2S it gave you the opportunity. If you could definitely identify a town you could get a wind. And if you got a town, soon after you crossed the coast, that would give you a guarantee, you’d know where you are so you could use that wind for the next. And dead reckoning should identify the next town

for you. So it did help you immensely. But it had its traps.

Well that’s further on, do you want it now? It’s out of chronological order. Well we did a – I can’t remember which one but one of the rural towns. Anyhow it doesn’t matter which one. One of them and we’d been routed in and to

come out, they gave us a course out because that’s where the flak was light. Well we came in, we bombed. I could see the target that night, I was down in the bombing bay. And all of a sudden there was this God almighty bang and a big flash of lightning. Ping! I could hear things hitting. And

anyhow everything was okay. The four engines were going. And we got out, we ran out of the flak. And then one engine packed up. And then the hydraulics, we started to feel oil in the side of the cabin. The hydraulics went. And we were relying on, strictly on H2S.

Cause we came out of the target in a hell of a hurry and didn’t know what course of wind we’d been flying on. And I started tyring to pick up something on the H2S and I eventually picked up a town and I thought it might be that and then I picked up another in, according to the map in a reasonable position. So I thought that’ll be, that’s right –

identified that. And then I picked up the third one, so we’re home and hosed. So we got the winds and everything. And the next bloody thing we could see the coast line of Dieppe coming up dead ahead. So we did a ninety degrees to port without any explanation and got out of the way pretty smart. And afterwards when we did a post mortem there were four towns approximately the same but about fifty miles south. And they

lined up with these other four. Cause not knowing where to start from, I picked them up and fortunately with the coast coming up, I could pick it out on the H2S very clearly and knew where we were then. But I can imagine the flak blokes’d sitting there, “Oh yeah, got this sucker. Bugger him.”

No, we flew home on three engines but that was no problem. We didn’t lose height on three engines, that was no trouble at all. We landed on three engines but we found we’d burst the tyres, well one tyre was burst. So when he landed of course, with the hydraulics were shot, we could get the under cart down to begin with but you had oxygen,

compressed air I suppose it would’ve been. And you could use that in an emergency and you could put the wheels down but you couldn’t get them up again once they went down. So he got the wheels down, you couldn’t see anything wrong with the tyres from inside, they looked okay. But anyhow we suspected there might have been a problem. So when he landed he was prepared for it and one tyre burst.

He held it up well and didn’t leave the runway till the end. And as soon as he got off the runway she bogged down. And he got a bollocking for that, for blocking the runway, which was bloody ridiculous but still, that’s the way things were with them. It was blocked certainly, but I don’t know whether they had to divert

or not. There was nothing he could do about it. It’s a miracle he got the thing down without cart wheeling us. He held it up, definitely held it up.

Yeah that was 7th Squadron.

Oh no,

the popular film version of having your own aircraft, maybe, I don’t know, maybe there were some that did have that. But as far as we were concerned you had whatever aircraft was serviceable. And if your aircraft was unserviceable well it went in and you took whatever was sitting there. So the log book gives the different aircraft, almost a different one every night.

There was no having your own – as the matter of fact that one that we got clobbered in, it was a new one. And they took it off to maintenance, we never saw it again. As I say it was really peppered with the flak. Holes this size in it.

No no they’re aborted and as such they don’t count. We aborted another one but that did count because we were halfway to Berlin I suppose. And we got boxed by searchlight; they put a box of those and the flak at the same time. So we were did evasive action, dived and cork screwed and all sorts of things, but they kept

moving us ahead and eventually we managed to get out, but we were down about ten thousand feet and hadn’t got a clue in the world where we were. And while we were trying to make up our minds in which direction to go, another lot copped us so we had another twenty five minutes all told it was anyhow. And when we came out of that, the G was okay – H2S was okay and we’re

over the bloody Baltic Sea. So there was no point in going on there. We’d have been on our own by the time we got there and pretty futile so we turned back. But that was counted as an op because there was usually a fighter waiting. As soon as the searchlights went out a fighter would come in and finish you off. But I

don’t know whether it was true but we had a Mosquito squadron on the aerodrome with us and there was, somewhere, I don’t know who told us, someone told us that the Mosquito saw us and came in and there was a fighter and he harassed him that much – they had a very short range the fighters. And oh this is going back a bit, but going back onto 101 we had

– what was it called? Cigar. Airborne Cigar [equipment for jamming enemy radio]. And of all things there was a Russian Jew who spoke perfect German and he had a second radio set and he used to tune into the German fighters and give them conflicting instructions. “Ignore that, that’s

British interference,” and give them another course and in the end they’d finish up not knowing where they were going, running out of petrol and all sorts of things. When it was successful. Then they brought on the equivalent of Tokyo Rose, had some obscene name for her, a woman who took over and then they put microphones in each of the Merlin engines. So when things started to get a bit interesting they’d turn all four microphones on.

Let them have the blast of the four Merlins in their ear. Which to some extent would affect them I think. There were a couple of occasions where this Airborne Cigar guy chuckled because he had them in chaos.

No no no. He was an extra bod, an eighth bod in the crew.

No he was with us, yeah he stayed with us while we were there. But when we left he stayed on the squadron, on the 101, he didn’t come with us. He continued as this running interference.

Oh he was a nice guy. Little Russian Jew. Cockney. He was a hard doer.

I don’t know. I don’t think there would’ve been too many fluently speaking German air crew. So I think it might’ve only been one. Well you’d probably only need one. I don’t know maybe you’d clutter it up for yourselves

if you had conflicting ones. I don’t know that.

No that was the German controller. I can’t even think of her name now, it was something obscene, I can remember that. But she was – they put her on because so that we couldn’t use the RAF guys to

masquerade. Used to get a real good falsetto.

Oh yeah. Yeah well this was, as I was saying a round glass piece

instrument on the cockpit dash. And if you were scanned by a fighter or ground control, you would get – it would light up which warned you that there was a fighter being vectored onto you. And we found that every time we turned the ruddy thing on it’d light up. No sooner turn it on than it’d light up. You’d turn it off

and leave it off for a while, and turn it on again, and it’d be off for a while then on it’d come again. So we thought, “Oh blow this for a joke, something’s not adding up.” So we never used it. We turned the ruddy thing off and left it off. Now there was another bloke that I know, a friend that was in the – over in England exposed to this and their experience of it was, that it was used – through the

intercom used to go ‘pff pff pff’. This puff puffing noise, and it drove the crew to distraction so they turned it off. But that was an earlier or later version I don’t know which of the same thing. But it turned out later, they found out, that they were vectoring onto this Monica. So it was one vectoring onto the other.

Just one of those things that are insoluble. But we didn’t know for sure but it was too much to be just coincidence.

No no we were never accused of it.

I didn’t hear of any. There was some talk you’d hear about some crew that had been scrubbed because of it and that. But never came in contact with it. They weren’t paranoid about it. And I don’t think, nothing in my experience, I don’t think there was ever justification, or very rarely. Because nobody ever refused to fly.

And once you took off you were on your own and that was it.

No I don’t think so.

I think there was one which we always found necessary. It wasn’t a superstition but we found it necessary, the last thing you did before you got in the aircraft was relieve your bladder because you’d better do it then, because it might be another six hours before you got a chance. But other than that wasn’t a superstition. No we didn’t have any that I can ever remember.

Oh no

I think they usually did it on one of the tyres or something or other. But again I think that was more convenience. That’s where you were gathered around the wheels.

Well if you couldn’t do anything about it you just had to relieve yourself and the ground crew were not happy boys. Because any leak had to be investigated. They didn’t know

what it was. So they always had to identify it. But we never found it necessary to – might have been – want to relieve the bowels a few times but that was not a physical requirement.

Oh yeah they had

what was called the Elson, it was down between the, on the starboard side between the door and the rear turret. It was just like a four gallon drum, six gallon drum thing like that.

Well to be quite honest it was terrifying because he was just throwing it all over the place. Wouldn’t have been surprised if the wings had come off but he was not going to give in on it so he was cork screwing and diving, as I say we went from twenty down to ten thousand feet.

And started to get into the range of light flak and we just outran them, as I say getting over the Baltic – our next problem was we had to keep clear of Kiel. The German navy was just as touchy as the British navy. So we came down the Baltic and eventually

reached the channel and back home. It was a three or four hour trip, I think it was so. Oh there was a sequel to that too. There was an island called Texal off the Dutch coast. And I don’t know who had the bright idea but I did it, so I’ll take the blame. We were coming back and we had the

bombs still aboard. We hadn’t dropped them. I think it was purely and simply because we were too busy to get down to the bomb bay because as I say, we were thrown all over the place with no seat belts or nothing to restrain you. And really bouncing around in the aircraft. So we’re coming back and somebody had the bright idea, there’s an anti aircraft battery on Texal, how about we bomb

them? So we zoomed in and I did a salvo, dropped the lot in one go. And bloody near the lot came back up. They were just waiting for us and let us have the works. I think they must’ve been sprogs [new recruits] or something cause they didn’t hit us. There was plenty of smoke around but they didn’t – never laid a hand on us. We didn’t do that again.

On Texal. Oh there was a German anti ack-ack battery we knew that. But it was a matter of bombing the open countryside or dropping them in the channel. The channel was just about full of ships and bombs. I think it must’ve risen a few feet. So it was a matter of taking them back which you don’t fancy that either really unless you’ve got to do.

Could be done without a great deal of – just defuse them and land. But in our wisdom we decided we’d do something constructive.

Oh it was all over – you can look at the log book there, but the Ruhr got a real pasting. But there was Essen and Arnhem and Düsseldorf and Duisburg. They got almost nightly attention from some part of the air force. But I did Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Berlin.

What other places? Mannheim. I can’t remember the others. We did a daylight on France, on a marshalling yard in France there. They used to have, later in the stages of the war they had what they call a master bomber.

He used to circle around up top and correct their bombing if they were on, they were on a red and they dropped short by half a mile, quarter of mile, he’d tell them, over shoot that and go crook on them and so forth. They had a pretty dicey life naturally, so they always had a deputy. So we were chosen as a deputy on

a daylight. We had a fighter escort but in actual factor we never had to be used.

There was nothing much to it. As I say, it was daylight that was the only unique thing about it. Was the only daylight we ever did. And we had the

spits up on top. And from memory I think – well it was a marshalling yard so they’d probably just have co-ordinates. But I can’t remember for sure whether they escorted us all the way there and back. I think they didn’t, I think they probably escorted us to the target and then shot back and left us to it. Because again, they don’t have a big range to fire a round and use petrol.

We didn’t – we didn’t orbit the target at all. We had our bombs aboard and we bombed. But we were prepared to use the markers if he went down.

Oh, Berlin. Fighters were like bloody flies. They had – you probably remember Hamburg which had a fire storm there. Well they got a lot of the survivors from that, the ack-ack gunners from that they put them in the big tower in Berlin.

They had an axe to grind so it was deadly. So between the search lights. You could see everything going on. You could see the aircraft going down and fighters attacking. It was literally, almost as bright as this.

Just keep my eyes on the drift wires and the target. You don’t get time to worry about what was going on around you. And as I say, you had to be straight and level. So you had about a minute I would guess where all hell was breaking loose around and that was the most difficult part. The usual thing was, the bomb’s gone, get the hell

out of this. It was almost a creed.

Get the hell out of this.

Mm.

Well you manipulate it with a pilot, the skipper – direct him left left. We had a thing in ours, left left

relatively quickly said, means get moving. And if it was left, left, that was just small correction or right whatever it might be. And then when you got the target coming down the drift wires, steady for steady. And just keep calling steady, steady as long as it was in the drift wires. And so you had make sure you fused all the bombs before – first thing you did.

And set the distributor going which set the interval of the bombs. That’s about all. Plug yourself into the oxygen, don’t forget that or start singing Annie Laurie or something. And that was basically it.

Well the fuse was a switch; you just put that on and it

fused all the – well the bombs were already fused I think really. But it connected the bomb releases and it was called fuse though, fuse them on. But anyhow that was the one where the bombs were all on hooks and that opened the claws, and that used to open. So you had that turned ready

for when you got the target. And as soon as you got the target you pressed a bomb tip and away they all went, hopefully. I think that was all we had to do and then the distributor again, put the switch on that and that was like a rheostat, used to go across and release the bombs at regular intervals. And the

photo flash was synchronised with the bombs so. I think they were synchronised with the cookie.

Oh no it varied according to the target. But always carried, a cookie was always mandatory, the four thousand pounder. Then you’d often have, depending upon the bombs, because the bomb stations,

with some bombs they’d overlap the next stage, so you couldn’t get another bomb on that one. So you’d have sometimes two thousand pounders, there was also incendiaries. They were in cans. Used to just drop off and they’d fall down. And then was phosphorous bombs which I was never very happy about that. That was

how they set things alight when they didn’t have any other choice. They were devilish to have that dripping all over the place.

Be a target

marker. Half the time you wouldn’t be able – particularly if you were back a bit in the attack because by the time I got there the attack got going there’d be that much smoke around that you couldn’t really see the ground. You could see the markers through it but you wouldn’t be able to identify the target. But theoretically the markers were on the target, a factory or something like that. A munitions plant or something.

Not a thing cause as I would say, probably seven times out of ten we’d be ten tenths cloud so you couldn’t see anything through it anyhow other than the markers. And the other occasions the smoke and that would obscure it. We used to bomb off the H2S.

You could pick up a blip on the H2S. If everything else had failed you’d pick up a blip which would be in Berlin, that’s about all you could say and let them go. That was just wanton bombing really, cause you couldn’t take them back.

Oh you could see the fires from miles, half an hour you’d see them. But yeah there was no problem about that.

Oh smoke and glow, a big glow. That’s

mainly what it was, just a big glow. You’d see that coming into the target too if you were in the middle of the raid, you’d see the target lit up with the fires. Oh yes. This is a bit out of sequence. While I was at 101 Squadron, I went with another crew one night and – Leipzig,

or Stuttgart, I can’t remember. But anyway it was way down the south east in Germany. And I was in the bomb bay the whole time. They didn’t have H2S. And we couldn’t see anything and we went on and on and nothing happened. And then the rear gunner says, “Hey there’s a hell of a lot of lights and things behind us.” So then

we turned around and there was the raid going on behind us. And ahead of us lit up was Lake Constantine in Switzerland. So he obviously hadn’t got a clue where he was or anything. Again on another stupid occasion we went back and it was all over and we dropped our bomb load. So they’re all too busy, fighters have probably run out of fuel and went back for refuelling. One last kite, let him go silly bugger and that’s it.

Oh yeah it was always a worry. There was one case where they didn’t know about it – I don’t think I was on that one. But they were bombing one of the industrial cities, a big one and

I don’t know what went wrong but the markers went down wrong and they’d landed squarely on a little small town. And of course the whole bloody thing, they bloody near wiped out the whole population and everything there, it was slaughter. There was quite a stink in the RAF after that but it was unintentional, it was just one of those things in war, I’m afraid. But as I say, people don’t realise.

Just think the whole of Europe was blacked out so there was nothing to indicate a city or anything like that, it was all just a black void. And then you had, very often, lousy weather with cloud. So even if nothing else was wrong, the cloud would stop you seeing through it. And before they got the H2S,

it was all done on dead reckoning and it was pathetic.

No, you never saw that, thank God. But that’s not

right. We did once see the result of it. And it was just before the Normandy landing and they were targeting marshalling yards and so forth. I think it was a marshalling yard at Lille, I think Lille. We went in in moonlight at six thousand feet. And there was hardly a bomb dropped outside the marshalling yard. And the smoke and stuff

came up, six thousand feet. You could see them landing then, you could see the devastation. But that was the only time really I saw the ground. Oh and D Day. For that we went up.

Well that one didn’t because it was military, purely

military so you didn’t have to worry but I think most of the guys were not happy with the civilian casualties but get back to it, what happened in parliament? He set the ground rules, it’s no use being another Chamberlain and saying, “Oh we won’t do that.” It was – and I think the German people didn’t know a lot of what was going on in Germany but I also think

they didn’t want to know. I don’t think the Brits had any choice. As I say that wasn’t – I do know from the history that initially they refrained from bombing in Europe. They were doing the shipping ports and things like that.

Oh well there’d been rumours, I mean obviously the build up of troops and that. But it had been kept pretty well within Britain apparently because the Germans don’t seem to have been aware of what exactly was going on. But we were briefed to fly but we were not told the target. And then it was postponed and then it was scrubbed.

And then it came on the next time, a couple of nights later whatever it was. And we knew nothing about it until we got into the briefing, the general briefing. And then they said, “Over onto the Normandy front,” and then they said straight out with it, “You’re on the gun batteries.” And there was silence then and that was the first we knew about it. And we took off about twenty to four in the morning and

we went over and it wasn’t daylight, but I can’t remember, it must’ve been enough light by the time we got there, there would’ve been enough light to see them. But you couldn’t identify anything really, they were fortifications, you could see that. But concrete things, half a mile thick sort of thing.

But let the whole works go on them and I think it silenced them completely because the concussion from it would’ve killed them, it would’ve had to. Or even if it didn’t they’d be so crazy they wouldn’t know what they were doing. And we were coming back and I got down from the H2S set to

just have a look at things in daylight. And looked down the channel and here, I don’t know how many thousands of ships there were. And I’m the nose too with a box seat view of it. Just choc a block with bloody ships of all descriptions. And it was probably half an hour before they actually landed. I’ll never

forget that.

They were up above the beach on the heights above the beach. They weren’t that far up but they commanded the beaches.

Oh while this is going on the Dakotas are going over with gliders taking paratroopers over. And I don’t know how many but the sky was just thick with aircraft. But at least it was daylight then so you could see where you were going.

I was just flabbergasted I guess. I just couldn’t believe it. It boggles the imagination of so many ships in such a congested manner and yet they remained organised. I don’t know how many individual ships there were or vessels of various kind. But it had to run into thousands.

But all this time I think Rommel had an idea but Hitler was quite convinced that it was going to be up near Dieppe and up along there. And the Brits did something that was quite cunning really. They had gun navigators and these were really top guys. And they had aircraft

orbiting across the channel over towards Dieppe and that area and they navigated so that each time they progressed a little further at the rate a ship would go, a naval vessel would go. So they transversed the channel just doing that, just going around and around in these circles. On the shore as far as the Germans were concerned it looked like another armada coming across the channel up there. And I

think that – well according to the records that definitely fooled them. It was one of the reasons that they held off from Normandy until it was too late.

7th Squadron.

Oh I don’t know might have been

a couple of months perhaps. Yeah, probably a couple of months. That would take it into February and I finished up in July. So yeah.

Well on PFF you had forty five straight and that was it. On main force you had

thirty and then you were screened and go on in structuring. And then you had twenty. I did about thirty-five, I think it was, without a break. And at that stage the invasion was on they weren’t talking about breaks and I was getting in a bad way

with the air sickness at this stage so they called it quits for me. And then of course we were organised to be sent back to Australia. And by the time we got back here of course it was basically over and they didn’t need. Anyhow they wouldn’t have had the aircraft so it was a foregone sort of thing.

Well after looking at that then I found I was even having it in the Ansons. You just feel so nauseated you can’t vomit but you wish the hell you could and it gets in the end to, “Oh I don’t care whether I’m alive or dead,” sort of thing. I was all right on straight and level stuff like that, it was no problem.

But if we got into any, you know heavy cork screwing and bouncing around, that’d get the better of me in the end. But they were okay about that, they said, “Righto, call it quits for now.”

Well it didn’t until I went and saw the CO because I was feeling at that stage, I was getting to the stage

where I didn’t give a bugger what was going on and I obviously wasn’t really doing my job. And what worried me the same as it did over being a pilot, was the fact that the rest of the crew were being jeopardised as long as I was involved in any way with the navigation. That wasn’t fair on the crew.

No, no, no.

Oh, it wasn’t uncommon not by any means.

Well you get the G force straight away because you go down, straight down five hundred feet or so and then straight up the other way and then roll over – not roll over but change course again going up and

then keep on doing that. Well depending upon how vigorous it is, your eyes start to pop out, you lose vision, you can’t co-ordinate. Your eyes literally start to bludge and you can’t co-ordinate. And it’s very uncomfortable of course as well. But you bounce around in the aircraft, there’s no restraining things.

Then she goes down and when she starts to come up again the table comes up and you have the devil’s own job not to bang your face on the table. And it goes the other way and you come off the seat and you hang onto it for grim death. We pulled the seat out – we both hung on like this and the

G it pulled the rivets out. And of course I was about eleven stone and Frank was somewhere around about the same so you’ve got twenty two stone, whatever the G force pulling, it’s not surprising it gives up the ghost.

Oh yeah, yeah definitely. That’s the only time we were hit and lost equipment.

You didn’t see it, you didn’t hear it.

Unless it was very close you wouldn’t hear it. There’d just be this puff of smoke and then you’d smell the cordite. Even from a fair distance. But you could smell that. And basically that was it. But if you heard it it was like when we copped it, we were too close. Otherwise you wouldn’t hear it. And the other interesting thing about that too – when we had a look at the aircraft

the next morning, it was still on the squadron, apart from the hole in it. The inner port air screw, the boss where it goes into the engine is about that big. And a piece of the flak had cut right through, half way through it. And this thing had been rotating around the cockpit. So how it didn’t

snap I don’t know but it didn’t, but we didn’t know, so it didn’t worry us.

Oh well it was just metal on metal. A bit like, depending on the size of it, be a bit like gravel hitting it I suppose.

Oh it’s all over before you can worry about it I guess, that’s probably it. One decent sized piece came between Frank and myself, about chest high. I don’t know where it finished, I never saw it in the aircraft but it was a decent lump. But we didn’t hear that. Or weren’t aware of hearing it. It wasn’t until the next morning when we had a look.

Oh I never – you used to have what they call flak happy. It’s people who twitch and go on and all sorts of silly things. There’s quite a few of them acted very strangely but I didn’t feel that it really affected me that way.

There was no suggestion of counselling or anything like that. It was just part of it. I wasn’t really aware of – it was only when I got home and I was at my mother’s place and I wasn’t aware of it but she lost patience in the end. And she said, “For God’s sake will you sit still.” So I must be

jiggling around. I wasn’t aware that it was a problem. I don’t have nightmares, but I don’t suppose a day goes by when something doesn’t come to mind.

Oh there seems to be a multitude of things. Certainly getting hammered by the flak and the conning. Because that went on for so long.

Again the three guys going before we even got into it in Canada. And some of the guys I’ve got to know too on the squadron. You didn’t get to know them very well because you were a unit to yourself. The same as the WAAFs – well in my experience the WAAFs didn’t want to know you. They were not nasty or anything like that but

there was only two all the time I was on 7th Squadron that’d go past and say, g’day and shake hands. They weren’t nasty or anything like that; they just didn’t want to know you.

Well I think some of them might have had the experience and a lot of them might’ve had the experience and didn’t want it.

I don’t think any of our crew were chasing anything romantically but to be in feminine company for a change was quite a thrill.

And he said, told us that we’d have the night off.

Oh before D Day and we were having, scheduled to fly and it was off and then it was on.

Kept these postponements and scrubs and so on. And so this – came over the tannoy [public address system] and said we’re having leave for the night. But we must let him know exactly where we were. So if you’re with a family somewhere you could leave the address and so forth. Phone numbers anything that’s available. But it’s not enough just to say that you’re in a haystack, we must

know what haystack. Which over went well with the boys of course. Particularly when it comes over in a cultured British voice.

Well first of all there was the ones in Glasgow. And Jim

used to…

Well it was in one of the clubs. This woman, I must’ve been looking a bit dismal or something because she – she was in her forties I think, and she asked me where I lived and so forth in Australia. And then eventually she said, asked me what I was going to do and I had nothing that I had in mind.

And she said, “Would you like to meet her family?” And I said, “Yeah yes I’d love to.” And she said, “Oh I think they’d be very happy to see you.” So she gave me the address and I went out there. Well they treated me like their own son. They were terrific. And he drove buses, all night shift stuff for the coal mines and things like that. And Jim

was a mechanic in a garage there invalided out. And as I say, the other one had this – a couple of times he took me on a tour in it so I saw more bits of Scotland. And yeah they were nice people, really really nice people. And she was a doll, her mother.

About three quarters of an hour walk back into Glasgow. And we used to sit and talk and talk and sit. I’d wake up to find the last bus had gone. Looks like I’ve got to walk home. Well that’s all right. Before I’d go she’d bring out a little flask. “He’s some whisky, drink that, it’ll keep you warm.” Never missed. Had a funny do there coming home one night. Cause

that was the colour of the uniform and the police had the same colour in Glasgow. And they’ve got these, what they call closes, we’ve got – very similar to this, a walled in thing with a number of units in it. There’s a lot of them and of course they’re very dark places. And I was waltzing home this night and in the shadows on the other side I saw this

bloke move out. And I wasn’t thinking anything about it at all but as I walked on he angled over and as he got close to me I saw it was a copper. And he said, “Oh it’s all right I thought you were one of us.” He said, “Where are you going?” And I said, “Into Glasgow.” And he said, “Take my advice. Walk along the middle of the road and only move off for a car or something.” But he said, “You’re in dangerous territory here.” So he said, “Don’t be a fool.

Walk in the middle of the road and don’t waste time. Get out of it as quick as you can.” Fool’s walking where angels fear to tread.

Oh, the Sauchiehall gangs and that, they had there even in the war time. Gangs. Criminal gangs.

No never saw it. Just as I say, just in the lap of the gods the way things happen.

But the copper was quite serious and he meant it.

Well I think – see I was three or more years over there and I think most of the guys would be the same. They miss their families. And all you see is day in and day out is guys.

You miss it. As I say missed the feminine company too. Not romantically at all but just to be able to sit and have a yarn with them. And have a beer and that sort of thing. And I think that was fundamental to it. You felt at home and it was the very thing that was missing over there, no matter

how nice people were in the street or so forth. It still wasn’t – we got quite intimate with the families. Well I did. And I know the skipper had a cousin over there and he used to go somewhere there. He used to go there on his leave. And Frank and I went into London once or twice but then he got tangled up with some family too where again, it wasn’t a

romantic thing but he was with some family and he used to dart off there. And I used to go to Croydon with that family. Spend a few nights in the Anderson shelters.

Yeah, because they took a bit of a pasting too.

Well that goes back to Canada. The family that I was with there, their

son was in the Canadian Army. And he’d met this lass over in England and he married her actually. And of course he was – he went to their home and all that sort of thing. And then one of the girls in Canada

she had a letter from him recently and she said, “Oh I had a letter from John. You’re going over there, would you like to know somebody to go and see?” And I said, “Oh yes sure.” So she gave me the address and when I was on leave I made my way down there and made myself known. And how I came to turn up there. And oh they welcomed me with open arms. It was terrific.

Yeah, down the Croydon area did, yeah.

No, I never addressed that. I think you don’t want to know about it. I think that’s the base of it. I don’t, as I say, they were all copping the buzz bombs and so forth so

you’d have to be unlucky in an Anderson shelter to – and the port area where you – multi-storied things where a place could come down over the top of you and you’d be in greater danger there. But I never really, I don’t think I really felt in any imminent danger there. And I was only a couple of nights in London when the blitz was on.

And we bombed one night on the squadron. But no I don’t remember that ever.

Oh it was well the outside just looked like nothing. It was just a hole dug in the ground and they had some sort of

metal reinforcing inside just to stop the earth falling in and out I think. It’d be – well I don’t know whether they varied. The one I was in would be, oh twenty feet by eight or ten. And it had bedding down there, so you climbed into bed and went off to sleep if you could.

Oh they had emergency rations but not as a permanent thing. They were left there yes in case for any length of time you had to have water particularly. But other than that we ate – never had a meal down there – always ate in the home. There was a lot of damage around the Croydon area.

In residential and business area.

Oh there was an intruder and I don’t know what size bomb it was but he came in at low level and just dropped it and it had a dramatic effect. It hit a hangar, I think there was one or two aircraft in it but

there was some dope there and it went up in a flash. So you could go home and say, “Yes, he saw the fire and it was wonderful.” But as soon as the dope had burnt out there was practically no damage done. Hell of a noise but outside that no.

Just the one yeah, an intruder. Didn’t affect us anyway really. The artillery boys are the ones

that – they had about a month of pack drill every night cause they never opened up. It was all over before they – they weren’t expecting, they weren’t used to it. And oh you know you can understand. But of course there were brick bats flying in all directions after it. These poor devils bashing around in the square for an hour when everyone was having tea.

Yeah. Now that’s a point. Those photos, you got them there?

Well that’d explain it even more but you can’t see it on this anyhow. Yes it was on a farm and there was a Squire Martin as we called him. I don’t know whether he was called squire or not, and his wife.

And he had two or three daughters. Anyhow the whole family had been purloined by the land army or the army and what have you. And there was only this couple on their own so they didn’t do very much on the place. All they had was WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, a few WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and that. And they had a smoke room there with all hams hung up along there. Now

how long they’d been there, where that was from, I don’t know. But I don’t think they had a piggery so I think it’s probably come from the past. But somewhere, I don’t know, have no idea how it started but somewhere there used to be, some of the air crew used to go down there of a morning and they’d collect eggs and do a few odd little jobs like that and then have a cup of tea with them. And it became an Australian tradition

more than anything else. And crew after crew would go down there. As one left another would come and again, it was a lovely break from the squadron. And we thoroughly enjoyed it. And there’s a photo there with a whole lot of us there in the room, just having a sing song and what have you that night. And again they were a lovely couple. But they were

unfortunate too. Because runways were built as best they could and they had their farmhouses below the runway and only about a hundred yards past the runway. You know cause whenever the lights’d go on, they’d know it was on and these Lancs loaded would take over and sink over them and – so they used to go into town. Ludford Magna was

- it’s not a big town, I never went in there, it was only a village I think. But they used to go in, get away from the place until it was all – everybody had taken off and then they’d come back in the night. Yeah so they had a very very uncomfortable few years.

Well I don’t know, I really can’t put it in words. I know one way was of a morning, a sunny morning, outside the flight offices, once we knew we were on, we’d sit like old men outside there and snooze. There was nothing to do and we just literally

relaxed that much that you’d sleep. Snooze off and fill in the time that way until you had to start doing an air test or do whatever you had to do. And without being conscious of it I think you probably did it two ways. You learnt to physically relax, consciously relax and second you, just put it out of your mind.

Can’t do anything about so don’t worry about it. And I think you can develop that technique.

Yes it was. I could never handle a lot so it was never a real problem with me. But yeah they used to get on the turps a lot. Apart from the relaxation of it, it was dirt cheap in the messes and you could get spirit and everything.

As a matter of fact they had a very sad situation there. The section leaders were supposed to do a certain number of trips per month. I don’t know it might have only been one or two or something like that. But there were a few of them there who had got into the habit of – they rostered who was on and off sort of thing. And they’d

been sitting on their backsides and dodging the issue. And we got a new CO in and he picked it up. So he picked everyone of them as his crew, for his crew. The gunnery leader and I don’t know whether it was the bombing leader. But anyhow the gunnery leader and the nav leader, about four of them he picked as his crew and some odd bods for the others.

And they were done to the eyeballs before they took off. They took off and never came back. It was inevitable. I don’t think they’d have been capable of a coherent thought. Silly bugger.

No there was never anything said or suggested to us. It was more or less put as sprogs. You know don’t know which way’s up.

No not really. But you wouldn’t hear about it if you did because they wouldn’t make a great fuss. The squadrons wouldn’t either. They’d ship them off quietly and that’s it. But I am not aware

of anybody, hearing of it happening at all. Not on main force or PFF.

Yeah about our third or fourth, where a JU88 came right across – well it looked like – you saw a tracer with it and it looked to be about

a couple of feet above us and he was just too high with his elevation.

Well I don’t know what the target was, I can look it up in the log book but I can’t remember what the target was. But we went into a dive, straight away dived in towards it. He was on our starboard side, when the gunners picked him up.

They picked him up around about the time that he fired actually. So if he’d have been accurate we’d have copped the lot. But he just went into a steep dive straight away in the dark and never saw him again.

Well the main thing was the four red manifolds glowing – they were red hot and they were glowing like red stop lights. And if you come up from behind it’s a dead giveaway. There’s nothing you can do about it, so that’s it.

No never saw him. Very hard to pick you up again. It did

happen at times but you have to be pretty lucky to have to predict what the bomber was going to do, where it was going turn and that sort of thing. I think mostly you’d have to wait to get a vector from the ground again before you took him up. By that time there’d probably be another half a dozen around to take a vector. I’m only presuming that.

Well that was on the Ruhr, Duisburg. Yeah. That’s when we came in and got hit by the flak and had trouble finding our way back and so forth. But when we came back to base and skipper told them that we’d lost an engine and they gave him pancake and so he came in.

No only lost the one. No it’d had been dicey getting home. I think it’d be dicey getting home on one engine probably. I don’t know, you wouldn’t have much fuel so yeah, probably could. But you couldn’t maintain height.

Oh no, no. No that was the only time we actually lost an engine. The other times when we landed away it was some other malfunction. I don’t know whether – could’ve been overheating, I don’t know.

Sometime

in July ’44. Yeah.

Oh yeah, that’s another story too. We were sent to a place called Inverness, right up in the north of Scotland and it was just a staging place to get rid of us out of the squadron. Cause at that stage they had more than enough air crew and aeroplanes

were the shortage. So they sent us up there and it was the station that was way out in the scrub. The only thing you ever saw were a few crofters’ huts around, a really crude place. So we used to go into Inverness to have a meal and there was nothing there, no entertainment or anything. But we’d go in there to get off the station. And some bright spark spread the story that

this was a station for demented air crew and the locals apparently believed it, because they walked across the other side of the street rather than go near these demented people. Of course needless to say the boys played it up too. Yeah. The only time I’ve ever had a ride in a Rolls Royce. You wouldn’t believe it, the taxi from the station at Inverness was a Rolls Royce.

Very, very old, but still a Rolls Royce.

No, no, we were just at a loose end. The next thing was to go down to Brighton where we got ready for going home.

Oh we had

things that were called air letters which went by air somehow or other and it was always very late but yeah, it was pretty regular. I don’t know how mine was. That was something I found very hard, to write. Couldn’t settle down to writing and never sort of thing of anything to say without involving

the air force. And Eve’s got a stack of letters still there. She’s a real sentimentalist if ever there was one. Yeah. No mail was pretty good and we got a lot of parcels, comfort parcels from the Red Cross and that was – didn’t finish that part of Washington Soul. When I came back,

Manpower control was still in and I was in a bit of a dilemma. I thought, “I don’t know whether I want to be pinned down with Soul.” I didn’t know what I wanted to do at that stage. So I was talking to one of the guys I’d been friendly with before I went away and he said, “No no don’t be trapped into it.” I said, “Well I feel a bit lousy.” And he said, “No forget about it.” And so I made arrangements to see Doctor Patterson and we had a very amicable

and pleasant meeting, he was quite nice to me and that. And then I said, “Well I’m sorry but I’m going to – I feel very self conscious about doing this and it’s really a shame but I’m – I don’t feel I can come back to you.” He said, “Yeah it’s all right. Okay, well I wish you all the very best.” That was it. All the time until my air force pay was more than a civilian

pay, Souls made it up. And the girls all had a comfort funds and they used to send – get these parcels together and send those over. And two or three times a year I’d get those and then the Red Cross and parcels from home and that. No, we got a lot of help like that.

Well that was pretty well all just the family news at home. Because Eve had three sisters and a brother, two brothers. Three sisters and two brothers. And her mother was still alive. So they had all – one brother was in the army, the other one was working at the gas company. He was a reserved occupation so he

couldn’t. And the girls all worked and all lived in the same place. They were not married at that time. Oh one was. And that’s where her mother was living with the eldest daughter and they eventually graduated there too. So there was always the news about the family direct and then the grandchildren and things that were happening in Sydney.

That was nothing, you couldn’t say very much anyhow because the censor’d go through it all and cut the tripe out of it. So, nothing more depressing than to get a letter with all bits cut out of it. No I found that very hard, but I think I did a reasonably honest effort.

Oh, cakes and cigarettes. They seemed to be the main things I remember. Cakes and cigarettes. Plum puddings. Yeah, mainly that. I suppose there must’ve been biscuits at times too.

Oh yes, usually. On 7th Squadron we had two to a room, it was a peace time station

so it was pretty good. So I think everybody would have shared with their mates, yeah.

Well the Brits as far as I’m concerned are the salt of the earth. The Americans are unfortunate. They have a saying ‘overpaid, over-sexed and over here’.

But to compete with the pay that they were getting it left the poor old Brits dragging the anchor. There was a lot of – I wouldn’t say it was animosity because they did appreciate the fact that the Yanks were there as again, there was a little bit of, they didn’t come in until it was worth their while or they basically had to. In the meantime they’d been bartering islands and God knows what for their munitions.

And that sort of wrangled I think bit with them. No but they were pretty good. The services didn’t get on well at all. To the point where Cambridge had one pub that was air force only and another one that was Yanks only. And they both respected that religiously. There was never any trouble. But as soon as they got together, there would always be a brawl.

No because as I say, I always went to the pub where it was all the RAF and the rest of that. That was about all, the only places you’d go are really those sort of things or some of the service clubs. The TOC H Lounge, Talbot House. They’d always have coffee and tea and

seemed to have biscuits and things like that if you’d go there. But that was about the only other entertainment you’d get. But down in London you’d get the Windmill Club and places like that. And one, and it was one of the hilarious things I’d ever seen, was Flanagan and Allan. You wouldn’t know them probably but they were comedians, British comedians and oh, it was absolutely hilarious. But there wasn’t too much of that on either

because they couldn’t afford to have that sort of thing. Oh and there – our blokes used to love to have to put down at the Yank aerodrome because oh God blimey, steaks and ice cream and God knows what. The Yanks were always very good in that respect. The odd guys that I met that had to put down on an American air field,

they were welcomed.

No I don’t think so. We came home on the Dominion Monarch. Was comfortable, wasn’t crowded. And came home in February ’45 so

the war had just about fizzled out in the – on the sea so we had a pleasant trip all the way. Came down the Panama Canal. Through the Panama and the food on it was quite good. Nothing elaborate, but it was quite good. There was no discipline. And most of us were commissioned by that time anyhow so they just left us to our own devices.

There was nothing to do. We played five hundred until we were sick to the sight of the cards but that was about the only thing we could fill in the time. Five hundred and pontoon. Pontoon was an incestuous thing. You had your crew and you started off with a certain amount of money and when you lost yours you’d borrow it from one of the crew. You’d get track of it, you’d definitely keep track of it.

And eventually he’d lose and you were winning so he’d borrow it and it just kept going around. The crew never got anywhere else.

No because our mid upper gunner – to start with the flight engineer that we had who was grounded right from the word go, to

fly below ten thousand feet. So that was the end of him, he left. And then we got odd bods until we got one British bloke permanently. The mid upper gunner he was grounded. I suspect it was ulcers or something like that. He had some stomach trouble. The rear gunner, we had a couple of odd bods fill in and then we

got a bloke coming back on his second tour on the main force. We had him until he only had – he had of course the twenty so he’d finished his tour before we’d finished our first tour. And then we got odd bods again. And the two that didn’t fit in with the crew, they came as a package. They were mates and sort of kept to themselves.

So we didn’t have any real affinity to them and the mid upper had gone. So we got a new bloke and he was a nice guy, we got on very well with him. But we didn’t have the bonding that we had had with the others. And the wireless operator, he was grounded, he had suspected lung cancer but it wasn’t. He had a shadow on his lung anyhow and he was grounded, and by the time he came out of hospital, we’d finished.

When I finished then Les crewed up with another crew which was basically a completely new crew. And he only did about two trips and they didn’t come back from a trip. A place called – oh forget – Boljet or something in France [Bolbec]. Only just over the coast. A night fighter must’ve caught up with them I think.

So yes there was a breaking up there but not the expected way. He was the only one of the original crew that was on that. And this other wireless operator, he’s up in Caloundra. Been up a couple of times to him. He’s a terrific bloke. And navigator. We used

to go to a PFF meeting in Sydney once a year. And that’s the only time – at this stage when we’d moved away, only time that I was in contact with him was at this night and they were announcing he had died. I think it was cancer of the stomach because he had some problem before we finished flying. He’d finished the same time at I did, he was grounded. He hardly ate, he played with his food and he

just couldn’t seem to get it down or something. But he never let on what was wrong. And we had a few years after we got back here when we lived closer to each other. I was living in Allawah and he was living in the next station down. And then we moved up to the bush, up to the country to Tamworth. You know after

- we were for a while in the pharmacy out at San Souci and then we went from there up to Barraba outside Tamworth. And I was there until the eldest bloke came to high school stage and they only had, I forget what they used to call it, but it didn’t go to high school, it only went to sixth class. So he bitterly opposed

going to boarding school and we had three of them. So the little country pharmacy wasn’t going to cope with that so we thought, we’ve got to face it sooner or later so we came back down to Sydney then.

Ohh. Had her spoilt.

Eve came up, we came back to Bradfield Park. We landed in Sydney and Eve came up to Bradfield Park and met me up there while we were in the station. We were having a meal actually and, if she’d a bit later I’d have been three parts stoned.

Yeah so a fortnight later, that was a fortnight – oh, about a fortnight later we were married. And we had fifty eight years of it so we can’t complain.

Oh it’s quite significant.

I don’t know whether, Australians really appreciate how much that they owe to the service men, New Guinea and all. See nobody can tell you what New Guinea really was like. You can’t describe it. It’s the same as you can’t describe raids on Berlin and places

like that. You can put it in words but you don’t get the feeling. Yeah so to me, and it’s coming true more now, in more and more of the young people, seeing more of it and taking more notice of it. I think down here the last Anzac Day I think they had the biggest mob they’ve ever had

both at the dawn service and out in the march. Plus the fact you meet some of your mates although we don’t, the air force crowd don’t because there’s not that many of them came back. So the ones that we knew are really over, if they’re alive, are in England. They’re RAF.

I’ve got a great mate here. Two of us, three of us go to pitch and putt. And one’s a RAF and the other’s an ex coastal commander who did it in England of course. And yeah, they’re very precious to me. I don’t know anybody that was

on the squadron when I was there.