Australians at War Film Archive

Well I was born in Mosman, 9th November 1916, I grew up in Manly. I went to Manly Primary School and North Sydney Boys’ High School, left school in the

middle of the depression in 1932 and got a job with the Australian subsidiary of WNTA, Avery Limited, scale makers. I married in October 1939 when I was appointed the Avery representative for Western Australian to work in conjunction with our agents there.

I worked there, well until I joined the air force. I joined the air force when the Japs came into the war, I joined about early December. We had one child and another one on the way and arranged with the air force that they would get me called up in Sydney

and get me at least a months notice to get my wife and family back to Sydney. After the war I was appointed by Avery to be the district manager, Newcastle, which covered the territory from Gosford to the Queensland border, and all the way out west of the western boarder.

That was, I wasn’t discharged until 1946………

A brief summary of my service well as I say I was called up in Sydney on June 1942, yeah ’42 and

after finishing recruit depot there was some delay of getting a posting. But eventually I was posted for training to Canada; I was selected to be a bomb aimer. I spent about six months training in Canada then we were shipped by Queen Mary to Scotland, and from there down to Brighton, a holding camp at Brighton for quite a while.

Then posted to various training camps, do you want to know what the training camps were?

So I went through the various training camps and eventually posted to 460 Squadron, in June

1944. And I did nine ops and on the ninth our plane was very badly damaged and our pilot badly injured in a raid on Stettin, Germany, which is now Poland. And we were incredibly lucky and in a very helpless condition we were able to stagger

across the border to Sweden. There again we were incredibly lucky we found a landing field, turned out to be a Swedish air force landing field and we landed on that. We were interned in Sweden for about three months and the Swedes were very good to us. Then we were repatriated to England and we didn’t do any further ops.

And eventually, it was quite some delay before I was repatriated, but eventually came back. Oh arrived back in Australia about September 1945 and I was expecting to be discharged pretty soon, but they decided to operate on a damaged knee which I had

incurred. And I was eventually discharged on Anzac Day eve 1946.

Yes it was then that I was appointed to the district manager of Avery, I got a bit mixed up a bit back there. It was

then I was appointed to be district manager Avery. And then the end of 1954, about November 1954 I was appointed the industrial sales supervisor in Sydney for Avery. And after oh a few years at that I was appointed the

industrial sales manager for Australia, for the company. And I carried on doing that until, oh about the last five or six years of my service with Avery when I was appointed projects manager. Because our business had changed somewhat and we were not only selling scales but had to take on a pretty well a, oh general contracting jobs to

install the machines and all the associated equipment with them into automatic weighing and handling systems, that sort of thing. And I eventually retired ’79, October ’79 I retired.

I’ve been living the life of a retired man. Well looking after the house and family and doing a bit of swimming and golf, nothing very spectacular. And my dear wife died four and a half years ago,

November 1999 to be precise. And all my family have left home, oh some time before that so I’ve been living here on my own ever since. Different times I’ve had, oh my daughter on one occasion for a while and one of my grandsons now for a while. That’s pretty well it.

Well my earliest memory was we were living in a little house down in Alexander Street.

Manly at that time, that was around 1920 or thereabouts, Manly was known as the village. It was rather like a village I think, a fairly big village, but everybody knew everybody else. And we had a very pleasant life.

It hasn’t changed tremendously over the years except it’s obviously got a lot bigger and it’s still a good place to live. As I say I went to Manly Primary School, we kids that were going there we weren’t organised as much as the children are today, we just made our own

fun. Manly, the Corso was a lot different from what it is today, it was a general shopping area. There were a couple of big stores, what’s the name, general stores, couple of big general stores.

Campbell’s was one…can’t recall the name of the other one of hand, I’ll think of it about two o’clock tomorrow morning. But there were all sorts of shops along the Corso and a few restaurants. The Manly Oval was the centre of sporting activity.

Manly was a stronghold of rugby union, I was horrified when I came back from the war and found they were playing rugby league in Manly. Manly was that sort of place, it had most of the young people went surfing and swimming in the summer. Play a bit of cricket, not a lot, most of us played rugby union in

the winter. As kids we didn’t have any organised teams we just used to make up games amongst ourselves. Manly was a good place to live, it was always…well it was always the natural attraction of the place, the beaches. So it was a good place and everybody was very friendly.

It was a fairly close-knit community and we organised all our own activities to a large extent. We were to a large extent separate from Sydney, particularly the city. The main transport of course was the Ferry.

When I was a boy the Spit Bridge wasn’t there, I think it was about 1929, so to get to Sydney other than by ferry there were no buses, or very, very few, the main transport was trams. We had to get the tram to the Spit, ferry across, another tram

from the Spit, oh eventually you’d get to Sydney by tram.

Oh Harbour Bridge wasn’t there either, so obviously the way to go was the ferry. If you wanted to go by car you had to go way up and through St Ives and get onto the Pacific Highway. I don’t think the Roseville Bridge was there then,

pretty sure it wasn’t, I think you had to go all the way up to St Ives and get onto the road to Sydney.

Well when I started work at fifteen, yes I had to travel to Sydney six days a week. It was a forty four hour week then, five days plus half a day on Saturday.

For which I got one dollar fifty per week.

My father was an artist by profession. He was born in Liverpool England,

his father was a ship’s captain, back in the old sailing ship days of course. And both his parents died by the time he was about eight years old, they had both died. And he was handed over to a married aunt who had no children, didn’t have a good idea about bringing up children

according to the little he told me about it. Anyhow he went to school there and was an apprentice to a graphic artist. He was a genius my father, he was painting pictures when he was a boy at school and he become quite famous for that just as a boy. And it was about all he ever wanted to do was paint pictures. And he ran away to sea

when he was sixteen and spent nearly ten years sailing, mostly in sailing ships but occasionally in steam. And pretty well all over the world. And eventually he settled in Sydney and married my mother and

set out to earn a living as an artist. And he specialised in ships, sailing ships and he became in the course of his lifetime, he became quite famous. He got an OBE [Order of the British Empire] presented to him by Sir Roden Cutler in 1970 and

so that was about all he ever did was painting pictures. He was a remarkable man and in his early days, to get a bit of business, he wasn’t making enough out of ships, he did landscapes. And he was already becoming well

known, people used to ask him to go to their country properties and do portraits of them and paint their prize horses and cattle. And he used to do a bit of canvassing, in that business, which was remarkable for a man who was born and breed as he was. And only about five feet tall, for him to

hire a horse and sulky to drive around the country, I don’t know how he ever got his foot on the step to get into the sulky. So I don’t know that I can tell you much more about my father.

He was a very attractive personality, he was a very

good looking man, except for being so very short. Had a very attractive personality, he was not a good family man; he was never cut out to be a family man. I think that applies quite a lot to artists, to be a real artists you have to have two things, you have to have the gift to do it,

and you have to be obsessed with doing that. And that’s how my father was, so although he had a very attractive personality and attracted a lot of friends he was not a good family man.

That’s correct

yes, didn’t see a lot of him or get close to him, no. We remained friends he and I, and he and my sister until the end of his life, he died in 1973, he was just on eighty five when he died. So we were

still friendly but never saw a lot of him.

My mother was a very good women, she didn’t have any special…trying to think of the word…she didn’t have any special qualifications. I think

the first job she had, she was a retoucher for a photographic studio and I think that’s probably where my father met her. Because he used to, when he first started he used to work for a photographer in Sydney who used to take photographs of ships

and then get my father to colour them. And from that my father developed a friendship with the captains and crews and passengers of the ships. But getting back to my mother she really was a very good women, without any special qualifications as I said. And it was she who battled and provided for,

very largely, for me and my sister and looked after us very well. And she was quite an attractive woman and had quite a few friends, pretty much in her own walk of life and she eventually died aged eighty nine, about 1982 I think it was.

How did we get on?

It was pretty hard for us there weren’t too many people buying pictures in the depression. We had a very hard life, although then again my mother managed

things so that my sister and I never really felt that we were in a somewhat impoverished lifestyle. But we were well fed and clothed and looked after and we were quite happy. But looking back now I realise what a battle it was for my mother, but she

never said anything about that or complained about it, just went about things. So the depression was pretty hard for us, as it was for most people. You would find it hard to believe how bad things were in the depression, anyhow we survived it.

Yes I did I used to mow people’s lawns for threepence and run messages for them for threepence, and all that sort of thing. I don’t know how old I was, I was maybe about ten, we kids

in those days used to get together and make things out of practically nothing, such as billy carts and tin can canoes that cost us practically nothing. We could buy a beautiful timber box, just the right size for a billy cart, for threepence.

It used to hold two four gallon tins of calcimine. We’d buy a set of wheels and axles for about I don’t know maybe two and six, five bob something of that sort, which we’d scrounge from our parents and from our threepence jobs. And we’d make a billy cart. So anyhow I was about ten I suppose and we had a billy cart so I got a job delivering orders for a greengrocer on Saturday

morning, and that was well paid I got two and six for that, twenty five cents for Saturday morning. And after a while I went to a pushbike which I bought from Les Looper I think his name, he was pretty famous in Manly he had a bicycle shop for I think it was two pound fifteen.

Two bob down and two bob a week, no signed contract, I think I was about twelve then. And my two and six on Saturday morning, I’d get me two and six and I’d ride down to Les Looper and give him his two shillings, that left me six pence to go to the pictures and if

one customer, dear old Mrs Smith, if she happened to be home when I delivered her order she gave me threepence, that did me for an ice cream at half time. I also got a job, between the age of twelve and, around the age of twelve, fourteen, fifteen, I also sold chocolates at a picture show, with the tray hanging from my neck,

“Chocolates!” And I often, that was on ten percent commission, I often used to make two bob out of that a night. And I also had a job, there was a dance hall in Manly, Don Gowen, which wasn’t always being used as a dance hall and

somebody started a roller skating rink there. And I got a job two and six a night putting the skates on the customers. So I did a few odd jobs.

Beg your pardon?

Had to be, I wasn’t alone in that sort of thing, in the depression, there were lots of kids doing things like that. Yes I was well up

with them I think.

Fair amount, there were several roller skating rinks around Sydney, there were several ice skating rinks as well. And that roller skating rink that was at Dungowan in Manly, later on became an ice skating rink,

but I didn’t need to have a job putting the skates on by then, I used to be a customer.

Yes, but I never did any except in the skating rinks, I never went to the snow, still don’t want to go there, I’ve seen enough of it.

School was

good, as I say we were all kids together, we made our own fun at playtime and so forth.

Well we used to play marbles of course; that was one thing, these things were seasonal. We used to play marbles

and we had a game, we used to collect cigarette cards, not that we smoked cigarettes but cigarette companies in those days put a little card into every packet of cigarettes and people collected these. And we played a game where we’d throw, pitch our cards up against a wall and the one who got closets had the first go at tossing them all up and all that came down face up were his. And

oh we played cowboys and Indians, maybe eight or ten of us, oh could be a dozen of us, six would be cowboys and six would be Indians. And the cowboys had to catch all the Indians, we didn’t shoot them we just caught them, that sort of thing. We used to play hop, step and jump, where from a standing start you’d have to do that, hop, step and jump and

see how could jump the furthest. And just all sorts of things like that, we had no organised games, didn’t have any organised games as kids.

Oh they were various…they might run a series of pictures of all the different

types of dogs for example. Film stars, motor cars, all the different types of motor cars, some of them were quite elaborate in the bigger packets were twenty were there’d be a little square of silk with a picture of some sort on it. It might have been a copy of a classical picture.

And people used to collect those, or the idea was people collected those and made a patchwork cushion cover, that sort of thing. I’ve probably still got some somewhere; I wouldn’t be able to find them.

I was a bit better than average scholar, yes, I didn’t have much trouble.

I was never a genius but I had no problem with the scholastic tasks.

Oh yes all the kids used to go with their afternoon matinee on Saturday and

the pictures then were good, there would be two main pictures. It was a good solid three hours, there’d be two main pictures, there’d be a newsreel and there’d be a short comedy. And for Saturday afternoon, which was mostly patronised by

the kids, when I’m saying kids up to about fourteen, fifteen I suppose there was always a serial and it was usually something very adventurous and, “Don’t miss next weeks thrilling episodes.” So that was that, but the pictures were pretty good to, there were quite a lot of good comedies. They were all

American, very, very few English used to come out in those days and no Australian, all American, they were good. There was Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, oh yeah they were pretty good.

Well they had to be action films,

there was lots of cowboy films, cowboys and Indians. They weren’t, I don’t recall any of those gangster films, crime films, don’t really recall many of those. Oh I didn’t go to them, put it that way, most of us kids used to like the action

films, cowboys and Indians and goodies and badies of various sorts. Charlie Chaplin and the rest, he was wonderful. I remember, I particularly remember one the Phantom of the Opera, the original Phantom of the Opera

with Lon Chaney in it, I don’t know whether you’ve heard of Lon Chaney, but the man of a thousand faces, he was a wonderful makeup man. Anyhow he was the phantom and I think I must have been only nine or ten years old, I don’t really recall, I might have been a bit older. But the fact is the scene where she pulls the mask off his face it horrified

me, I was really horrified, it’s never gone out of my mind.

I was pretty?

Yes I suppose so I never really thought of it in that way but I suppose I was yes. I’ve got a copy of, I’ve got a video of it which I picked

up in a shop, a year ago I suppose. And, but it didn’t effect me as much, obviously now, but seeing it again I can still easily imagine how it would have affected a nine or ten year old.

Yes.

Not really, no. One of my mother’s brothers, my mother had two brothers, six sisters, the two brothers went to the war and one of them was killed in the war. But no, we didn’t know much about it, we were aware of it of course, I mean I was born in the middle of it in 1916, didn’t know much about it them

obviously. But no we, apart from the fact that there had been a war and that the Anzacs had become famous as a result of it. And there’s a lot of Australians had fought in it and had done very well. We knew that much about it.

Well I was only average I guess at drawing, never really tried any painting. But I wasn’t terribly interested, but there was a time, I think I might have been about

twelve years old, I know it was still at a time when my father wasn’t making a lot of money. That would have been about ’28 wouldn’t it, anyhow the fact is I was mildly interested in it. So I did a drawing which I considered was pretty good and I took it to my father and said, “What do you think of this Dad?” He hardly glanced at it.

He said, “For God’s sake, Rodney, don’t become an artist.” Guess who settled for a job in an office with some money coming in every week? And I’ve wondered since whether he said that to give you the idea of getting something that would give me a steady income or whether he said it because he could see that I would never become an artist. So no I never became an artist.

But my second son has the gift, he’s like my father, he has the gift he can sit down and dash off a drawing or a painting, but he doesn’t do it, he hasn’t got the obsession like my father had.

Was my family?

Not really,

no. We belonged to the Anglican Church and I went to Sunday School in Manly until I was, I don’t think I went there beyond about six years old. We used to go to church, I don’t think my father ever went to church but my mother and my sister and I used to go to church

occasionally, but no we were never really religious.

She’s two years younger than me.

Not very close, we got along, we got along well. But no we had completely different lifestyles.

I was always more interested in doing something, making billy carts and canoes and doing odd jobs and kicking a football round and going swimming, that sort of thing. And my sister didn’t do anything of that sort, well girls didn’t in those days, she did what girls do and she learned dancing and became

a ballet dancer. So we never really had a lot in common and still haven’t; course we’re still good friends.

Well that’s one of the things that I feel sorry about in regard to my mother. She could not play any musical instrument but yes

she was very interested in music, we used to like going to concerts. And she used to take us kids to concerts to and we enjoyed them. And my mother somehow bought a violin and got me having violin lessons and I didn’t cooperate. And somehow she bought a piano on time payment and tried to have me taught to play the piano

and again I didn’t cooperate so gave them both up. But looking back now I feel sad about that.

No she was worse than me in that regards, she liked the dancing, but no she was worse than me in regards to playing the piano. But my mother, I wish I could tell her I never really thought of telling her before she died

but I wish I could tell her she did achieve something…

Well I was a bit better than average.

Well in high school I did French, Latin, English, history,

elementary science. And I think I was mostly interested in the languages, English, French and Latin and physics and chemistry I was interested in. I wasn’t terribly interested in history because the way it was taught in those days was mainly a matter of memorising dates.

So only in later years I realised how interesting history is.

Well I don’t recall a tremendous a lot of Australian history really. They told us that Captain Cook discovered Australia

in 1770 and the First Fleet was 1788. There wasn’t really a lot of Australian history, it was almost entirely a matter of memorising the dates of the various events and wars in European history. And I don’t think it was very interesting the way it was presented

to us, and I don’t think any of us were very interested in it.

Oh yes, oh yes we had practically nothing apart from that.

Oh we were very proud of being part of the British Empire. We felt we had very close ties with Britain.

Oh yes, yes we used to, oh

I’m trying to remember exactly what the ceremony was. But oh I think they used to raise the flag on Empire Day and we’d all be paraded there and we’d sing God Save the Queen, that sort of thing.

North Sydney, North Sydney Boys.

Well when I started had to travel by tram. And by that time the Spit Bridge was built so we had to get the

tram from Manly to the Spit and walk over the bridge and there’d be a tram the other side which took us to North Sydney Boys High. And then when I bought the pushbike, as I explained I used to ride my pushbike from Manly to North Sydney and back everyday, or five days a week.

I was,

yes I was quite fit. I used to go with a couple of mates for a ride out to Palm Beach and back, fairly often at the weekend.

Oh it was single gear yeah, single gear. Bikes were very simple in those days and

they were a lot more expensive, comparatively, than what they are now. They pay hundreds of dollars for a bike today but a new bike in those days, the popular one, almost the only one was the Speedwell which cost twelve pound ten, twenty five dollars. So that would be about seven hundred dollars today.

Hang on twenty five dollars in those days you multiply……………..that would be about twelve hundred dollars today.

It was yes; oh it was quite a thing to own a pushbike, oh yes.

Oh practically none, no I wouldn’t say that I was typical. But I wasn’t interested really in the females at that age.

Oh quite a bit. We always

went swimming and for still water we used to swim at Manly Baths which doesn’t exist now, it used to be, you know where the Skiff Club is at Manly? Anyhow but more than that we used to go down the surf. So the beach played a big part.

Oh to a large extent in the winter and the summer. And I joined, oh in the early ‘30’s when the Manly Harbour Pool was built one of the conditions under which it was allowed to be built was that a

lifesaving activities would be there. So the Royal Lifesaving Club was joined. Well I joined that, I would have been about fifteen then I suppose and I joined the Royal Lifesaving Club, Manly Harbour Beach Lifesaving Club. And then later on I joined the Queenscliff Surf Lifesaving Club. So yeah the beach played a large part in our lives.

Oh well we had to, we were trained for rescuing people and particularly with the Royal Club, Royal Lifesaving Club was operated in still waters, that was we didn’t have a reel, we just had to swim out, we didn’t have a reel.

And there’s certain ways that you had to hold people and pull them back to shore. And we were trained in resuscitation, or trained in the shafer method in those days. Which doesn’t exist today, they use a different method today. I hope I haven’t got the name back to front, maybe shafer is the one they use now, but it’s a different one from what they used in those days anyhow,

that’s what we were trained in. And then in the surf club again of course again we were trained in rescuing people, there was the work with the reel. Then there was the belt where somebody had to, we were trained to be belt swimmers and we were trained to be reel operators. And then we were trained in proper ways to carry people up the beach and resuscitate them.

That’s a bit hard to remember. There were shifts of course and I suppose about once a fortnight we’d be on patrol. I mean an individual there’d be a,

the patrols were always on duty Saturday and Sunday every week, the patrols were on duty. But the individual and the patrol, I’m finding it hard to remember but I’d say a couple of times a month.

Well there was always a lot of people came down on the ferry at weekends. And it was always a great holiday place for the graziers inland, the wool people particularly. The Steyne and the

Brighton, not the Brighton Pacific on the ocean front, the Brighton might of done, anyway hotels in Manly particular the Pacific on the ocean front they were greatly patronised by the fairly well off country people in the summer particularly. There were, I really wouldn’t know how

much, but there was always a lot of visitors, some staying for holidays and some just coming down for the day.

Oh they didn’t really affect us; well they didn’t affect my crowd anyhow.

I honestly don’t know, but I don’t think so, I don’t think he mixed with a lot of the other artists, but I could be wrong, as I’ve mentioned I really didn’t……

Oh no, his studio was to a large extent, when I was working in Sydney I used to call into his studio, oh once or twice a week I’d say, only for half an hour maybe. And there was almost always somebody there talking with him. But I don’t think they were artists, well some might have been, but they were more people

who were interested in ships, and who also just enjoyed talking with him. He was quite an attractive personality and he’d be standing up there painting a picture and talking at the same time.

First one I remember, well they were in Sydney. The first one I remember was in Phillip Street Sydney,

then he had one at twenty four Bond Street Sydney, Hardys Chambers. No that wasn’t Bond Street, anyway he had one in Hardys Chambers, which was near Wynyard, and then his last studio in the city was at twenty four Bond Street. And then when he was getting old

he and, he bought a house in North Sydney and he had a studio there in Church Street North Sydney, overlooking the church.

I don’t think I really had any, I don’t think I really had any

ambitions, any special ambition. No I don’t think I really did, I wanted to leave school and get a job. But then again in the depression most kids of my age that didn’t have wealthy fathers that was the ambition of most of them, was to leave school and get a job.

No, oh no I couldn’t possibly have afforded university and I don’t think there was anything like the public funding of universities then that there is now.

Well

as I say I was just fifteen, well my tile was the boy, didn’t have any specially defined duties. I was sort of handy person around the place to do whatever bit of a job needed doing. And gradually, and run errands, and gradually

got into doing all sorts of jobs associated with the business. That was the sales and service branch, wasn’t at the factory. And I gradually got a pretty sound knowledge of all the aspects of the business. You know the setting up the scales, cleaning the scales, doing a bit of office work doing a bit of recording

work, doing a bit of packing and storing, just general odd jobs. But because of that I got a pretty sound knowledge of the business, that’s how I came to be appointed to the sole Avery representative in Western Australia.

We were scale makers and repairers

and there’s a thing that I don’t think is generally realised but it’s an absolutely essential service, how civilisation is based on weights and measures. And so that was what we were doing, we were making and selling scales. And there again most people when

you mention scales they think of the scales on the shop counter, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is hardly anything that weighing doesn’t come into it somewhere, just about every industry. I finished up after forty odd years knowing a little bit about everything, not much about anything. But I had to know

enough about every industry to see there’s an opportunity to sell a scale, or maybe if they’ve already got one sell a scale that’s more suited to what they were doing. So it was a very interesting job to have really, I was very lucky to get into a job I liked.

Some

was made in Australia, we had a factory at Waterloo and most of the shop scales, it was retail and industrial, retail was the sub scale, that sort of thing, most of them were made in England and most of the industrial, the heavier machines and the special machines were made at our factory in Waterloo.

In those days, yes.

That was it to start with, my job was to do whatever anyone told me to do; that was when I started.

Oh just ordinary clothes.

Oh no

well not to start with, they were astounded when I first turned up wearing short pants, cause I was a fairly short boy. But it wasn’t long before I got into long pants. Oh after a couple of yes, yes I suppose after a couple of years I was wearing a suit and tie. But there again I also had a leather apron, which I also had to wear quite a lot, depending on what sort of

job I was doing.

That’s right yes; I still didn’t have any title until 1939 when as I say I was appointed the Avery representative in Western Australia.

No I never did a lot of clerking work, bit hard to describe but, well for example all the scales that used to come from England I used to unpack them, open up the cases and unpack them. Then I developed into setting them up, putting them together, that’s how I came to know quite a bit about scales. There were scale mechanics there,

whose job it was but if they happen to be very busy I would do it. So that was one thing and I became an official storeman and packer and then again if Woolworths rang up at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon saying a scale was playing up and there weren’t any mechanics available I’d be shot out in the bosses car to see if I could fix it, and that sort of thing.

That’s right I finished up knowing a lot about weighing machines.

Well soon after I started work I started at Sydney Tech at night time and I did what was called the

Diploma Preparatory Course. I left school at what was then called the intermediate; it’s now the school certificate. In other words I didn’t do the next two years to get the leaving certificate, now called the HSC. And you asked me before if I had any

ambition and I said, “Not really,” I did have a bit of an ambition to become a chemical engineer. And to do that you either had to go to university and get a degree or you could do it by

study at a technical college, but to do either of those you had to have a leaving certificate, the HSC in other words. And at the tech they had this Diploma Preparatory Course, which enabled you to go to university or to a tech college to do a diploma course. So I did that; that was a two year course at night time

and I passed that. But I didn’t have the money to go to the university and to carry on doing a diploma course you had to be working at a firm doing that work. And again middle of the depression there was no such job available. So at least I had that diploma preparatory graduate, which is the

equivalent of today’s HSC and entry to university. So the Avery branch manger said, “It would be a good idea for you to study to become an accountant, even if you don’t want to be an accountant.” I said, “I don’t want to be an accountant.” He said, “Oh it’s good stuff to learn.” So I did, so I started an accountancy course at the tech,

at night time. And I carried on with that until the war started and I got married and I went to Perth and I did nothing after that during the war. But after the war I took it up again but then by private study, and that was very hard to do that with a pretty demanding job I had and a job that interested me far more than the accountancy did.

So I kept doing that for many, many years, I did it for about thirty years altogether I think, a little bit at a time and passed all the exams except two. And I said, “To hell with it I don’t want to be an accountant anyhow, I don’t need to be,” so I dropped it at that stage. So that’s all the other study I did, I almost became a qualified accountant

but I don’t regret doing either of those things they were both very useful to me, the fact of having done them, even though I didn’t finish up working at them.

Oh yes, oh yes

some were able to do, as I said this diploma course, even though they couldn’t go to university they were able to get jobs in the business they wanted to be in and study at the tech. But there were a lot like me weren’t able to do that.

Not much really until, well by the late 1930’s we were all aware that the situation was very difficult. Although when Hitler started taking over the Rhineland and the Sudetenland and

Austria, it was pretty obvious that war would be looming for oh I find it hard to put a time on it, probably from 1936 on, that’s my guess, but I wouldn’t say how accurate I am. Chamberlain

went to Europe, Germany I think to see Hitler and came back waving this bit of paper, he’d been able to avoid the war by making some concession, I forget what it was now. So yes, there was an awareness that there was a very good chance of war.

Yes that’s………

She was a ballet dancer, I mentioned to you my sister became a ballet dancer and I had to go to the ballet, this was before the war,

they were the first Australian ballet incidentally, there was an Australian Ballet Company before the war. And my sister was in it and she was in a night performance in the city I had to go in order to escort her home. And at that time I was driving an Avery van and

very often I’d be able to wangle a ride of the van over night, take the van and pick up my sister. And my sister one night said, “Dorothy Evans lives at McMahon’s Point we could drop her on the way.” So that’s how I met my wife and she was a beautiful ballet dancer, she was the prima ballerina of the first Australian ballet.

That’s right, in a work van yes without a proper seat to sit on.

Oh we were courting for quite a long time, that would have been oh, she was at my twenty first birthday party and that was 1937, so would have been about ’36 I suppose. We were courting for a

couple of years before we decided to get married. Course we didn’t fix a date because we had no money, but when I got appointed to Western Australia she said, “You’re not going without me.” So we got married and off we went.

No she was a dressmaker; she worked for a firm called

Germaine Roche who was at that time about the most expensive and exclusive dressmaking establishment in Sydney. She was a very accomplished women, she was a top dressmaker and top ballet dancer.

Well before I met her, in 1929 to be precise she had been a professional dancer. I don’t know for how long, I think it was about twelve months where she was touring Australia and New Zealand in a musical called Rio Rita.

Don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it? Gladys Moncrieff was the star, you might not have heard of her. But Gladys Moncrieff was a very, very popular performer in musicals of those days. And so my wife as a professional toe dancer was in that ballet company, that

musical company, and I think it was about twelve months. When that finished she then became apprentice to a dressmaker, she was only, I think she was only about, oh she’d have been seventeen.

On 23rd October 1939 and we left for Perth a week or two afterwards.

Approximately yes.

Oh, excuse me……………….

it wasn’t bad really. It was a bit of an ordeal I think it was, I forget whether five nights and four days or four nights and five days, I think it was that. But the change of gauge was

what made it a bit awkward, you had to change at Aubrey then Melbourne and you had to change at Adelaide, Port Augusta, had to change at Kalgoorlie and eventually you got to Perth. And at all those places there was some delay, you never got out of one train and into the next one. And we had sleepers

so it wasn’t too bad. And by the standard of today we’d say it was pretty awful, but by the standard of those days we regarded it as not bad, we rather enjoyed it.

Oh yes worked paid for the ticket? Oh yes.

That’s right yes, oh yes we quite enjoyed

the railway trip. As a matter of fact we went to Perth and back by train twice since I retired, but that’s been the last twenty five years. To see old friends there and also because we rather like the train journey, but it’s much better now than it was then of course, without having to do all those changes.

Oh Perth was a nice place to live. It was rather like a big country town, it was a nice climate, nice people and it was a nice area, nice surroundings, there was the Swan River. And there weren’t too many beaches along the river but there was lots of

scenic places. And only problem there really was that it wasn’t very good for my wife to make friends because she started having babies straight away and she was a bit self conscious about

meeting people in the condition she was in. She was always a bit, I wouldn’t say nervous but…can’t think of the word, but she was always lets say a bit nervous about meeting people. And after a while…so that was a bit of a handicap to

our life in Perth. But altogether we enjoyed Perth and Perth is still in my opinion, well it comes next to Sydney in my opinion as a good place to live. And we did make some good friends there, unfortunately their both dead now, but the particular

good friends I mean. Well couple of things their just about all dead; they haven’t all lasted as long as I have.

Well Avery had

there own branch in every capital city except Perth and Darwin. And in Perth they had had an agent for many years who had done a very good job, they didn’t have anything in Darwin. And we also had, the agent was responsible for the sales

and administration and we also had a service workshop there and they were paid by Avery direct. And the only person really in charge of them was the foreman. So our agent, who was as I say had done a good job for us but also had other agencies and they were taking

more and more of his time, in other words he wasn’t able to give enough time to the Avery business. And also the scale business had become a lot more complicated, needed somebody with a real knowledge of scales. So my job was to be a representative there and to be completely responsible for the sales, and also for the contractors, cause we had a lot of maintenance contacts,

and the workshop. So I was in charge of the sales and maintenance. And our agent then simply provided the premises; that was about all he did. Oh and he did the clerical work, his clerical staff did the invoicing and all that sort of stuff, the same as they always had. So I was not responsible

for the office work, otherwise I was responsible for every part of the Avery business in Western Australia.

The most positive evidence was that all the, well nearly all the

shop windows in Perth were completely covered with timber at least one inch thick. The other great evidence was every now and then we had a blackout exercise. There were quite a few servicemen

around the place, including Americans who were rather conspicuous. I can’t think of any other great evidence really, everybody was aware of it of course.

Yes that’s right, yes they did. We did have some blackout drills, but I’m trying to recall, we did not have our houses permanently blacked out, I don’t really recall that for sure

but I don’t think so. But we definitely did have some blackout drills.

Well simply the fact that we had to erect blackout curtains of some sort over all our windows, and just not have any outside lights of course.

Well I suppose only because Perth was a comparatively small city and when you’d got a fair number of them, at times, they weren’t there very often, wasn’t very often, but at times there would be quite a few Americans there. And in a comparatively small

city they were pretty conspicuous. And of course everybody was interested in them.

Oh yes, oh yes the Americans were very popular with the local girls.

No.

Well for one thing scale making was a reserved occupation. As I mentioned earlier it is an essential factor and so nobody employed by a scale company,

a really recognised scale company such as Avery could join up without the permission of the company. That was one thing, the other was I didn’t really think they needed me for the European war and having just got married and a family on the way

and a responsible job I really had no intentions of joining the European war. But when the Japs came into it well that was a different story altogether, I mean it was obvious that Australia was directly threatened by the Japanese and didn’t take me long to decide

that it was my duty to join the services to fight for my country and for my wife and family. So that was my attitude.

Oh yes and there wasn’t a lot of debate about it, she simply said, “Well I don’t want

lose you but I won’t stand in your way, if you think that’s what you should do, okay I’ll support you fully.”

No, no we were quite separate at that stage from both our families, partly because we were so

far away. We didn’t have any telephone for example, not everybody had a telephone in those days, we just didn’t have a telephone. And if we had had a telephone I doubt we could have afforded the trunk line calls. And so the only communication was by writing and we didn’t do a lot of that. But we were pretty well

separated from our families anyhow. We were still in touch and fond of one another but we weren’t really wrapped in each other at all.

Oh from Perth to Sydney and back, I wouldn’t be too sure about that but I’d say at least a week.

I’m not sure if mail went by air even, so I don’t really know, I would say it would be more likely a fortnight, depends on whether people answered immediately of course. Yeah we communicated more by telegram if there was something urgent

or by long distant phone call, or from the office, that was frowned on to, wasting money on phone calls.

They received it pretty well really. Thinking back I didn’t discuss it with them

at all, I never thought about that before until you asked me. But I just simply wrote and told them that I would be leaving when I was called up and they simply said, “Okay.” They, cause I wasn’t as essential as a scale mechanic for example,

I mean I was mainly selling and managing. But it was the mechanics who were more essential to keep the weighing machines working properly.

Oh yes.

I suppose I thought it would be more exciting and the prospect of flying, it was quite attractive. Like everybody else I hoped

to be a pilot, but it was the first time I had ever had my eyes tested. So when I went for the physical examination they decided that my eyesight was not very good for a pilot to be able to see instruments close up. But I’d be ideal for a bomb aimer because I was long sighted.

So I think that’s the main reason I joined the air force, the prospect of flying appealed to me more than being on the ground.

Not really, no, not really. I was very interested in Kingsford Smith and his exploits for example.

But no, I wasn’t ‘specially interested in aviation.

Well the first thing was

that now that the Japanese were in it I should take some part in defending the country. The next thing was what is the best thing for me to do. I really didn’t have to think very much about deciding that the most likely would be the join the air force. I didn’t have any great cogitation about that.

Yes.

Well then I went along to the recruiting office in Perth, I explained to them I’m only temporarily in Western Australia cause I never really intended to stay there forever. And I said, “I would like to join the air force but

I can’t just simply walk out on my wife and child, and with another one on the way. And leave her stranded here in Perth, four thousand kilometres from our home and family. I’ll only volunteer to join if you will undertake that I will be called up in Sydney and give me at least a month’s notice of the call up date

so that I can leave my job here and get my wife and family.” The second one would have been born by then, “Back to Sydney.” And they agreed with that and they stuck to it. So I joined early December, put my name down in Perth and in due course they gave me notice that I would be

called up.............

On the 30th,’41 yes, early December ’41. And in due course they notified me that I would be called up in Sydney on the 30th June ’42. So I, my second son was born on the 6th April ’42 and we left Perth,

oh early to mid May I suppose and came back to Sydney. The second boy was only about six weeks old and we didn’t have sleepers, seeing as I had to pay for it myself. The firm said, “We’re not paying

your fare back; it’s your decision.” Anyhow Rob my second boy, Robert, he did the whole journey in his bath, we had one of these long narrow babies baths and my wife made up a bed in that and he slept up in the racks, the luggage rack. Every four hours I’d take him down and she’d feed him and I’d put him up again.

I don’t think he had a bath all the way, we had to go through all those changes of course. And on the journey we had a youngish women who came into our compartment, she had got out of Singapore when the Japs took over

but her husband didn’t get out, and at that stage she did not know what had happened to him. And she had a little boy three years old and twins thirteen months, somehow she got out of Singapore, I don’t know how she got from Singapore to Perth. But she was on the way

to relatives in New Zealand and she was on her own. So there was me with two women and five babies, it was an interesting journey I can tell you. And her elder kid he was about three years old and he never stopped whinging, every now and again she’d say, “Oh Geoffrey be quite.”

Anyhow we left her in Sydney and somehow, I don’t know how it happened we didn’t get her address she was going to, we didn’t really like to ask her, so anyhow we never heard from her again. But all those changes with all those kids, I was moving them from once place to another in a sort of relay system. One woman would come with me with one of the kids I’d leave her there with

him and go back and get one of the others from the other women and gradually we’d all get to the same place.

Yeah.

Well when we arrived in Sydney first of all we had to find somewhere to live, which we did. And we didn’t have very long to go before I had to report

to Bradfield Park, so that’s what happened. I reported to Bradfield Park, by that time my wife was installed in a flat in Manly with the two boys. And I stayed there with her until the call up day and then I just simply reported and I was in the air force, Number two Recruit Depot, Bradfield Park.

Yes, yes we did about, I think it was about three months, about three months initial training, most drill and a bit of classroom subject and fair amount of learning Morse code.

Oh I was just fair at the Morse code, just fair, I was just hoping I would never ever become a wireless operator. But it was the fairly early stages we went through the selection process; I wouldn’t say exactly when it was. But anyhow we’d been selected into whether we were going to be

pilots or bomb aimers or navigators at the recruit depot.

I wasn’t upset about it, quite philosophic about it. Well I didn’t accept their word very graciously I eventually had

three eye sight tests protesting about not being selected to be a pilot, but I was never really fanatical about it. And all the eyesight tests came up with the same result, so I was quite philosophical about it. Few others who were like me were told

they’d be bomb aimers. We got along quite happily; I’m still in touch with two of them.

Yes.

Yes.

Well it was quite a long while before there was a posting for us

and so we were given all sorts of menial jobs to do around the place to keep us busy.

Well for a while I and a few other fellows were given the job as being cleaners at one of the canteens,

which wasn’t too bad really, wasn’t really what we’d joined up to do, oh it was all right. There wasn’t much of that. But then I was posted to be an aircrew guard and I was sent to number two stores depot at Waterloo.

And I’m not sure how long I was there, couple of months I think. And we were armed with 1916 model 303 rifles with fixed bayonet and we were guarding these stores. It was quite a big place with several big buildings,

the one particularly that we were assigned to guard was absolutely crammed with rows and rows of shelving. And what was in this stores depot was spare parts for aircraft that were operating, oh mostly in New Guinea and around the coast.

There were million of dollars worth of spare parts all in these rows and rows of shelving. And the guard commander who was a big strong fellow who had been a professional boxer in his time said to us, “A 303 rifle with a fixed bayonet is absolutely ridiculous

for people guarding a place like that. What you should have is revolvers, again nothing is much good really parading around and around amongst those rows of shelving. If there is a saboteur in there he will just sneak up on you and stab you in the back if he’s going to do anything,” which he probably won’t, he’d just stay quiet. And he said, “So I’d suggest that when you first go

in the guard that you’re relieving the two of you then make a good search, complete from front to back and then you just get in a corner and stay there and listen. And if you hear anything fire your rifle and the whole guard will turn out.” And there was a little belligerent fellow, one of our group, he was a nice little fellow but he was a real Jimmy Cagney type, oh you’ve never heard

of Jimmy Cagney maybe?

Anyway he was a little aggressive red haired fellow, we called him Bluey, “I’m not standing in any corner, I’ll be parading round and round there, anybody comes near me I’ll just let him have it.” And this is going on and the old Bull the guard commander is trying to convince him, didn’t succeed. So anyhow one night Bull sneaked into the,

he arranged with the outgoing guard that he got in there first, just got in a corner and kept quite. Bluey in due course came on guard and as he said he’s walking up and down between these rows and rows of shelving and Bull sneaked up behind him, big strong fellow and this little red headed fellow. Bull grabbed him like that, he was completely helpless and he screamed his

head off, he screamed and screamed, the guard turned out and rushed in there so he could see the object.

Well

I accepted it fairly well I think, but there was some discipline, which in my opinion wasn’t really necessary and some that was. And some of the things that I thought weren’t really necessary I was a bit reluctant to

comply with and got into a certain amount of trouble with that, now and again over the years. But altogether more and more as it went on I accepted that all these things were necessary and that I was not really on the right track in not complying with them at times.

But discipline in the air force I think was pretty good.

Well I wasn’t happy about it, I was concerned about

well about leaving her with two kids to raise. But that was why I was so determined that I’d get her back to Sydney, near her family and friends, her whole background. So that was it,

everybody had to do it, it had to be done, you couldn’t have everybody with a wife and child saying, “Well I don’t have to go to the war.”

Well one of the jobs that we were told to do, and one of the breeches of discipline that not only I, but a lot of other fellows took part in was when a ship came into Sydney loaded with drums of mustard gas. And the wharf labourers refused to

handle these drums of mustard gas so they sent us air crew trainees down to the wharf’s to unload this mustard gas. And we refused and we were put on buses and I got off the bus half way and went home for a couple of days

and a lot of others did the same. And those who eventually got to the wharf still refused to handle mustard gas. And after a couple of days I thought, “Oh well better go back to camp and see what happens.” And sure enough I was lined up with all these others who had refused to do it, I don’t know what happened eventually but we didn’t do it. And we were put on a train, they said,

“Pack your bags,” put on a train and we went up to Marrangaroo, up near Lithgow. And before we got to Marrangaroo somehow the word had got around that we were being sent up there because somehow this mustard gas had been unloaded and sent up to Marrangaroo, and we were being sent up to handle it into trucks and so forth to

take it up into the mountains where it was going to be stored in some disused tunnels in the mountains. So we, overnight we talked to one another and we went on parade in the morning, quite prepared to mutiny again, we weren’t going to handle these bloody drums, which the wharf labourers and nobody else would handle.

So we all went on parade expecting more trouble and we were told to go and pack your bags there’s a ship arrived in the harbour to take you overseas. So we went back and we got on board the good ship Hermitage. So that was the end of that episode.

No, no it was strict security, there were submarines operating off the coast and there was lots of submarines between us and where we were going. So there was strict security, you just did not have any way of letting anybody know. But of course I think

it was, I don’t know how long afterwards it was, I never really went into that, I don’t know how long it was before she was told that we had gone. Cause we didn’t go home every night you’ll understand; only went home once every three or four weeks, when we got forty eight hour leave. So the fact of me not going home didn’t mean anything to her, and I think,

I’m only thinking about this for the first time now but I imagine that she would have been told before the time arrived that she was expecting me home and I didn’t turn up. I think she would have been told by then, I’m only guessing.

Oh it wasn’t bad, it was originally

a Mediterranean cruise ship belonging to the Italians, it had been captured by the Americans and turned into a troop ship. And it was a lot of Australian air force personnel and had a lot of American army personnel going back to the States. And because there

was a hell of a lot more people than it had originally designed for we air force chaps were housed in what had been the ballroom, it had been filled with three tier bunks, and that was where we slept. So it wasn’t luxurious but it was all right, I mean it was the sort of thing you were accustomed to when you go into the services,

so it was all right. The journey was quite good, the food wasn’t bad, it was more American style, it was under the command of the Americans, it was more American style food which we soon got used to, oh the trip wasn’t bad.

No, no hardly at all, hardly at all,

they were a different section of the ship and we could of, there was no restriction, but it just so happened that we mostly stayed amongst ourselves.

I don’t think so; oh I think there were a few cases, none of my group, none of my group

were seasick.

Yes quite a few really, we were pretty close for a long time, we used to go round together. I still, there’s two of them that I still see three

or fours times a year, one of them is living in Sydney and one’s up on the Central Coast. The one that’s on the Central Coast comes down here, oh three or four, maybe more times a year, and every time he does he gets in touch with us and we go and have a meal together.

Oh pretty cheerful I think, pretty cheerful we had told jokes, oh it was quite cheerful, the voyage wasn’t bad at all.

Know?

Well I think, yes we knew we were going to Canada. See the Empire Air Training Scheme was in force then

and oh yes we knew we were going to Canada, but just exactly where we were going to on the ship we didn’t know, we knew we were going to finish in Canada. As it happened we called at Pago Pago, that’s Samoa and we called at Honolulu and we disembarked at San Francisco and we were put straight on a train

up to Vancouver. The journey was about four weeks I think.

Not really, we were only there a day and the skipper for some reason, I don’t know what, both at

Pango Pango he only allowed a comparatively small number to go ashore, I don’t know why. So we didn’t really get much of a look around Samoa at all. As I say we were only there oh about three quarters of a day I suppose. We were a couple of days in Honolulu so we did see a bit of Honolulu. And we went

out to, I think it was somebody, the American army took us out to, is it Pearl Bay, is that, what was the place?

Pearl Harbour, yeah took us out to Pearl Harbour and all those ships that were sunk by the Japs they were still lying there, one of them was upside down. At that stage nothing had been done about removing them.

It was interesting.

It was yes. Yeah it was nice having a quick look at Honolulu but we didn’t really see a lot of it.

Oh yes.

We didn’t see anything at all of San Francisco, we were expecting to. Even when we got on the train we didn’t know it was going to take us to Vancouver, we thought it was just going to take us up into the town, and it just kept going and going and going. And so we didn’t see anything of San Francisco.

Yes, yes we were

disappointed about that, we were rather annoyed about it in fact, we thought. “Well this is not a fair go,” anyhow we got over it.

Yes, I think we spent a couple of days in Vancouver and the Canadians were very nice people and it wasn’t any time

before we were picked up by a married couple, that’s me and two or three of my friends. We were pretty crowded in their car and they took us on a bit of a tour around Vancouver and out onto Vancouver Island, which if I remember rightly was mostly parkland at that time. Vancouver impressed me, it’s a very nice place.

And it’s got a bit better climate than the rest of Canada. It was winter, it was the middle of winter in Vancouver when we were there, we had left Australia in the middle of summer and in four weeks we were in the middle of winter.

Well there wasn’t any snow in Vancouver but when we left Vancouver

heading east it wasn’t long before the whole country was covered with snow.

Yes, oh yes the Canadians were all right.

We didn’t have any special preparation for the climate at all. We had………………..

Oh we didn’t have any special preparation for it at all. We simply had our normal Australian full dress uniform; we wore winter and summer when full dress was required. And the uniform we had for Australia was shorts and shirts of course. So to meet the Canadian mid winter climate

all we had was comparatively light full uniform and a great coat and a forehead cap. And no body told us, that I ever heard of that the design of the forehead caps was such that the two flaps that buttoned up at the top they were really to pull down over your ear, which they were sensible to have in a Canadian winter. But we didn’t know

that, I never heard of anyone realising that that’s what they were for.

It was.

I learned that it’s best avoided. I think it might have been our first or second day going through the Rockies

the trained stopped in the middle of a forest because there was a snow blockage on the rail ahead of us. And we were told that we’d be there for an hour or two. And naturally we got out and even though it was cold we were frolicking around in the snow throwing snowballs, most of had never seen snow. So we’re frolicking around in the snow

and suddenly the snow had a sort of a crust on the top of it and suddenly the crust broke and I found myself up to my neck in snow. There was a hollow in the ground, which was full of snow. I think I was lucky there were a lot of people around me who held branches out and I got out of it without any trouble. But it didn’t give me any great liking for snow and

I still don’t care if I never see it again.

I reckon, yes.

There wasn’t any place where we were just a couple of days. The first place we stopped at was Edmonton which is a

fairly big city, and it’s reputed to be one of the coldest cities on earth. And it was cold, it got down to thirty below zero every night and it rose to zero every day, or most days. And we were there for about a fortnight. And apart from that Edmonton was quite a nice place, people there were very good

and we didn’t have any great fun there. Well in Edmonton, in places like that in Canada nobody stays outside very long in the middle of winter, your just out, your so organised that you only stay outdoors for a very short time, and so that’s how it was. But we did meet quite a few people

in Edmonton and we had a nice time there. One of my friends very nearly lost an ear from frostbite. We were very lucky we were walking along and there happen to be a Canadian with us, and suddenly he grabbed hold of Herbie and wheeled us into the nearest house. He had noticed his ear had gone dead white. And over the

next two or three weeks his ear went bright red, then it went green, then it went black, he very nearly lost his ear. So that’s what that sort of climate is like.

I suppose so but they didn’t give any evidence of that. I suppose they felt sorry for us.

Yes, oh yes they should of given us better clothing for that climate.

I think so, there some very nice girls in Edmonton and it’s a place where

a lot of the early settlers in Edmonton were Scottish people, a lot of Scottish background in Edmonton. And the girls in Edmonton had lovely accents, lovely voices, just a slice American twang, but very soft lovely voices, made my memories of Edmonton.

None amongst my group, not amongst my group no.

Well we weren’t doing anything much. I mean it was,

I think we did a few classroom subjects, as I say very little time spent outside, I don’t really remember doing any drill or that sort of thing. We were probably doing, I don’t really remember a lot about what we were doing there to be honest. Cause we were probably doing a bit more Morse code and probably at bit of theory of

bombing and that sort of thing, the different sort of bombs, not much at all, it was purely holding place waiting for a posting.

None, none at all.

No.

Hmm.

We went to number two bombing and gunnery school at Mossbank, that’s in Saskatchewan, the nearest big city is Regina; Regina is the capital of the province of Saskatchewan.

We were doing bombing and gunnery, that’s in the air and classroom subjects.

Yes.

An Anson, Avro Anson, oh enjoyed it, it was good fun. And so we were doing,

well, theory of bombing and learning something about bombs and all that sort of thing on the ground. And then practice bombing in the air, we’d go up with a staff pilot, I don’t know how many of us would have been, no more than three or four at a time I guess. Practice bombing was ten pound practice bombs.

Well first of all we just sat in the plane until we got to the practice bombing area where there was a target sitting in the middle of a lake. And then just had to get down on our belly and sight up through the bombsight and press the button

and hope we landed somewhere near the target. And we could see where we landed there would be a little splash, even though any bits of water around the place were frozen over, with the bombs so continually being dropped there the ice was broken up to an extent that at least you’d see a bit of a splash or if it wasn’t a splash there’d be a spurt

of snow. You’d see where the bomb landed, this was daylight of course.

Well it didn’t look very big, I couldn’t tell you in real dimensions, actual dimensions, nor do I remember exactly what height we were at. But I think we were only bombing from about two thousand feet, I’m not at all sure

about that.

I would say be, I think it was triangular shape, I think, and it would be about half the size of this room I would say.

Yes, yes.

I was about average, I was about average. I think we might have been more than a couple of thousand. Anyhow I don’t think I ever had a direct hit, very few people ever had a direct hit. If you got within twenty or thirty yards of the target you were doing pretty well.

No not necessarily, no I don’t think so, because they were about the same shape as a high explosive bomb, they were around the same shape. Well there’d be more air resistance I think because they weren’t highly

finished, they weren’t highly finished like the operational bombs. So they’d probably offer a bit more air resistance, but it would be very minor I think, they would behave pretty much the same as an operational bomb, I think.

Well only when it was actually snowing, well there’d be no visibility if it was actually snowing. But as it happened that didn’t happen very often in the time we were there, so the weather didn’t hamper us very much, in my recollection.

At Mossbank I think we did some air gunnery there…

Yes, oh yes.

Oh I enjoyed that.

What they called a drogue, there’d be another Anson flying parallel with us and it would be towing, again I can’t think of the word, but there’d be sort of a sleeve of fabric,

cloth thing, about half the length of this room. And it would be streaming straight out like that, they call it a drogue and that’s what we would be aiming at. And it would be travelling at about the same speed we were and parallel with us.

Yes.

Oh I was about average, bit better than average I think, not marvellous.

About three months, about three months at Mossbank.

Yes I think in that time we had at least two forty eight hour leaves. And we used to go into Regina, I don’t really know how far that was but there were buses available. I think Regina was about twenty miles away, but I’m guessing. So we used to go into Regina and

most of us would make our way to a certain dance hall there and some nice girls there. So we had a pretty good time in Regina. Those who didn’t go to Regina I don’t know where they went, but most of us that’s what we did. We’d spend a lot of time just amongst ourselves of course and as I say

have a bit of female company at the dance hall.

Not really, no.

That’s right, yes.

I don’t think they knew much, I don’t really know. But my impression is they didn’t know

much about Australia. The Canadians, oh I found the Canadians pretty good people but I don’t think they were, I really shouldn’t give an opinion because I really don’t know.

Very little, practically nothing, practically nothing, I knew where it was and I knew it was a pretty colony originally. Well I assumed that they would be rather like the Americans, which they turned out to be in my opinion. But there again I didn’t get to know the Americans very well.

Yes that’s right, Canadian mounted police. I found the Canadians pretty much like ourselves really, I found them pretty much like ourselves. If anything I did form the opinion that they were somewhat less well informed then the average Australian,

but even that I wouldn’t be sure of. It wasn’t the sort of thing that came up.

Well not a lot really, we simply knew that there was an air war going on.

We didn’t really know anything much about it. I think we all felt quite confident that we were doing better than the Germans, I mean having beaten them in the Battle of Britain and knowing how much bombing of Germany we were doing.

I think all we knew was that we were putting up a great air war and we were doing pretty well.

We went to an air observer school at a place called Prince Albert, we were moving

east all the time, Vancouver’s in the west and we kept moving east. So Prince Albert the nearest big city there is, big town in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Prince Albert was an air observer school where we did again bombing, gunnery, but more navigation than we had done at Mossbank. And

quite a bit of navigation and aerial photography.

Ansons again, oh Ansons and for gunnery we were in a plane called the Bolingbroke which was really the British Bristol Blenheim but

made in Canada, and the ones that were made in Canada were called Bolingbrokes instead of Blenheims. So Ansons for the bombing and navigation, aerial photography, Bolingbrokes for the gunning.

Well one of the bomb aimers had the job of winding up the under cart, which took a hundred and sixty turns. The most important duty apart from the bomb aiming was map reading, which was a good assistance, one of the best things you can do for navigation as long

as you can actually see and identify something on the ground. So those were the, that was the most important thing and the very important thing that the bomb aimers did apart from just dropping the bombs. And daytime of course you could see the ground all right, if your flying from hundreds of miles over a completely flat prairie that doesn’t get you very far.

But you can see things like railway lines and roads and towns and rivers particularly, so that was the other very important duty of a bomb aimer.

I was pretty good at that, my long sight helped and also I think

I got a bit of my father’s gift of observation. Some people see things but don’t observe, don’t realise what they’re looking at, so I was pretty good as a map reader.

No, navigators in

bomber command had to work very, very hard and not the sort of job that appeals to me, not because it’s hard it just didn’t appeal to me. Navigation in those days was very difficult at night time particularly because it’s so hard to know exactly where you are. See with navigation

you’ve got to go from this point to that point over there, which is on a course of two hundred and fifty, let’s say. So you steer to two hundred and fifty but the wind is blowing you that way and it’s very hard for you to find out just how far the wind is blowing you. Navigators in bomber command on an op had to fix their position every six minutes,

it’s very hard to do. The point was we flew altogether, you had to stay in the stream, it’s not the word but anyway in the stream, you had to stay in the bomber stream all together, close together so that the zoom radar cannot pick out any single aircraft.

All it can see is a great lot of confetti up there. If you got six miles off track out of the group, out of the stream you were dead because the German radar could pick you out as a single aircraft and it could guide a fighter right onto you. So the poor navigator had to fix his position every six minutes and he had to do that with a

sharp pointed pencil and a ruler and a very accurate eye. Not my cup of tea at all and we had a very good navigator.

Yes.

Well it involved identifying what your suppose to photograph,

it was very similar to bomb aiming really, except that instead of actually dropping a bomb you pressed a button and you simply took a photo of what you were aiming at.

I don’t know really, well I only assume that they were trying to assess whether you’d be good

for aerial reconnaissance. See there’s reconnaissance planes take photographs of the ground underneath them. The RAF, when we dropped the bomb we took a photo of what was underneath us, and the RAF could look at the photo of the ground underneath you and tell you exactly where you were, over the whole of Europe.

No I can’t recall any. Only one and that was because he was deaf and his name was Robinson, he was a Scotsman

and it was astounding how he got as far as he did before he was scrubbed out. When he was asked how he ever got into aircrew at all he said, “Well at the recruit depot when they were doing the hearing tests.” He said, “There was another fellow there called Robinson and there were several of these people doing these tests and I never heard my name called.” But this other Robinson he did two

hearing tests. So he was selected for aircrew, and how he got as far as he did before they discovered how deaf he was, don’t know.

Yes.

Oh great, very happy

we had a big celebration.

Well since you asked me that involved me as a professional salesman going knocking on doors in the nearby town of Prince Albert asking if I could buy from them some of their liquor ration. Because nobody could walk into a shop or a pub in Canada at that time

and buy grog, not officially only on the black market. It was all licensed and all homes, this might have only been in Prince Albert, I don’t know, but only residents with a license or permit, whatever you like to call it, could buy liquor. There’s no way that we could go into any place and buy liquor. So I just had to canvass the local people

and buy some grog and we had a great party.

Oh most of them were very sympathetic, but quite a few of them just gave us a couple of bottles. Oh the people were very good about it.

Yes.

Well they gave us a rail ticket and said, “Make your own way to Halifax in Nova Scotia and you have to be there in a fortnight’s time.” So Halifax was simply a place where we waited until a ship

was there to take us to the UK. So as I say we simply made our own way in our own time and arrived at Halifax a fortnight later.

Oh yes, oh Canada was nice in the summer.

Yes I spent oh two or three days I guess in Winnipeg and

a couple of days in Toronto and a couple of days in Montreal, all nice places. Montreal’s a lovely place, well was then, I mean this was sixty years ago.

Well I didn’t find that

but I was only there a couple of days, oh two or three days I suppose. And on one of those days I spent quite a bit of time with a Frenchman who happen to be working, I introduced myself to the local managers of our main competition in Australia, the American

Toledo Scale Company. Cause Avery’s had no presence in America or Canada at that time. So this Frenchman that I introduced myself to he was quite a nice fellow and we had a pretty good day together. And I was choofing around on public transport a bit, but again I say I was only there two or three days at the most and I didn’t feel any

anti British feeling. There may have been, I couldn’t deny it, I didn’t experience it.

My experience is I didn’t find anything of that and as I say I spent a day, fairly closely with this Canadian fellow, who was a bit older than me. He was French.

French Canadian, yes.

Again I’d be guessing, three or four weeks I guess, maybe not that long, something in that order. There was thousands of us, not only air crew trainees but a lot of Canadian military people. It was a very

big holding camp.

Well quite a few of the Canadians of course were French Canadians, apart from that I don’t personally know of any others, but there could have been because a lot of the Free French and Free Polish,

the conquered countries, a lot of their people had managed to get to England and join the English services. And some of them in turn had been sent to Canada on this Empire Training Scheme. A lot of them were very good airman, some of them were qualified pilots already that had escaped from Poland particularly. But of course they still had to go through

the, to our training course to do things our way. And also polish up their English a bit, so there could have been other nationalities but I wasn’t aware of any except the French Canadians.

Oh Kiwis, oh yes there was Kiwis and South Africans,

but very few of those, very few South Africans, but there were a few Kiwis. I’m trying to think what other colonies, I don’t think there were any other colonies; there were no Indians. No, a few South Africans, very few, and a few Kiwis, not a lot of them either.

I spent most of my time hitchhiking around Nova Scotia in spite of the intense security. There was a wonderful bush wireless that let us know there’s a ship in the harbour you’d better get back to camp. I couldn’t explain, I couldn’t begin to explain how we knew, but we’d bump into some other Aussie who’d tell us,

“There’s a ship in the harbour,” and how he knew I don’t know and I’d pass it onto the next one and he never knew how I knew. So that’s what I did, Nova Scotia is a very attractive place, had a nice time. I didn’t spend all my time hitchhiking around there but when I wasn’t doing that we were doing practically nothing.

No we were almost unsupervised, we used to go on parade every morning for a roll call and one day we went on parade and the warrant officer, who was conducting the parade said, “Same

old story all over again, there’s four times as many Aussies as I’ve ever seen in parade before,” since the last time there was a ship in the harbour there’d be four more Aussies turn up there he’d never seen since the last ship.

To Britain, that’s right.

Don’t remember anything, don’t remember anything much. There were one or two incidents but no they’re not fit for recording.

No, I’m sorry I can’t help you there.

We went across on the Queen Mary, oh that was a trip. It was reputed to be fifteen thousand people on board and I think there could have been. We had to keep our kit with us all the time, all the cabins

had been fitted up with as many bunks as they possibly could. The rest of us just had to keep our kit with us all the time, we were given a blanket and we just slept anywhere we liked, on the deck, on the stairs, not in the dining room. There were, if you wanted to go to the lavatory

you had to make up your mind at least an hour beforehand cause it would take you that long to get there. The bloody queue for everything, every place that you wanted to go on the ship there’d be a tremendous long queue in front of you. As I say we just slept on the deck, anywhere at all, if you weren’t lucky enough to have got a cabin. How some of them got cabins I don’t know. But as I say

it was supposed to be fifteen thousand passengers and I think that could be right.

We had two meals a day and we were all issued with a big plastic badge with number one or number two on it, if you had number one you were the first lot in for breakfast.

It would take hours to have breakfast and we lined up, gradually got in there. The ones that were in front of us we had to wait until they’d finish before we could get in. There was a lot of tables, quite a big room, I don’t know it might have been originally the ballroom I don’t know, it was quite a big room and it was full of tables. And

a table big enough for eight people would have, trying to think of the word, washing up dishes, big bowls. There’d be several bowls on the table with enough food for eight people on a table to seat eight and you helped yourself. We picked up plates and knives and forks on our way in.

A table big enough for ten or twelve would have enough food on it in these big bowls for ten or twelve, you helped yourself. And by the time everybody had finished lunch and they had cleared up you’d be beginning to queue up for dinner.

Yes.

I forget whether it was five nights and four days or

five days and four nights, but it was one of the two, four or five days.

We certainly were yes and we came into a place called Greenock, which is a suburb of Glasgow

and Queen Mary was too big to get alongside the wharf at the place where we were and there was an absolute admirer of ferry’s and tug boats and launches and all sorts of vessels taking us from the ship to the shore. We didn’t see anything of Glasgow, I don’t really remember staying over night but I dare say we must of, there was so many of us.

But we were certainly no later than the next day, we were taken by train straight down to Brighton on the south coast of England, due south of London.

There again, that was a holding camp and there were thousands of, I’m trying to think of the word, colony aircrews lets say

from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, thousands of us. And there was also thousands of Canadian Army personnel, all in various holding camps around Brighton. And our lot, the Australian, New Zealand aircrew people, the officers were housed in a hotel, the Albion

at the far eastern end of Brighton Beach. And the other ranks, which included me at that time, went into big peacetime luxury hotels, the Grand and the Metropolis, again on the Brighton Beach front. But they weren’t luxury at the time we were there.

We were in the rooms of the hotel, which hadn’t been altered in anyway; just all the furniture had been taken out of them except as many beds as they could cram in reasonably. I think we had two or three wardrobes to hang our clothes in. And none of them in those days had built in bathrooms

and lavatories of course, I mean this is sixty years ago, so there were bathrooms on each floor with a lot of people clambering to use them. Apart from that it wasn’t bad.

Well depended on the size of the room of course, but we weren’t terribly crowded they were pretty big hotels with a lot of rooms. I reckon, I think there were four of us

in a fairly big room with a view over the English Channel, so it wasn’t too bad.

Well they used to have a parade and roll call everyday and there were so many of us coming and going all the time

that there wasn’t a great lot of organised activity. We used to do a bit of drill, not a lot and we’d go on an occasional route march, lets call it, it was going nowhere really, just marching through the town and round and round and back again. And just once or twice

we had a real bit of fun they put on some, not clay pigeon shooting, clay pigeon shooting, that’s the right thing, clay pigeon shooting which was useful training, it was a form of gunnery and it was good fun. But that only happened once or twice in, I was there for oh probably three months.

There was a couple of delays occurred so it was about three months I was hanging around there.

There was no real training, and as I say we mostly had to amuse ourselves except some occasional activities such as I’ve just described, bit of marching and bit of drill, not a lot.

Well we spent a fair amount of time in the pubs and there was an ice skating rink there, a few of us went ice skating, I went ice skating a few times. And that was one of the causes of delay, I fell over and

sprained my wrist ice skating, so that delayed my posting a bit. Apart from that there wasn’t anything much for us to do, we used to walk around the place and have a bit of a walk along the beach front, that was all there was, there wasn’t any great activity, it was pretty boring really.

Oh it was a mixture, locals

and air force trainees. One pub we spent a bit of time in was Tommy Farr’s pub, did you ever hear of Tommy Farr?

Tommy Farr very nearly beat Joe Louis, you might not have heard of Joe Louis. Joe Louis was the heavyweight champion of the world, he was an American negro, Tommy Farr was a big Welsh minor and he

very nearly beat Joe Louis on points, he was one of the few who didn’t get knocked out. And he ran a pub in Brighton, he looked, well he was a champion prize fighter, he was a very lovely rather aristocratic looking wife who occasionally used to come into the pub. He was in the pub practically every night, like me and a couple of my mates. And he never

said anything, or very rarely, he just stood there, he seemed a nice bloke, very little evidence occurred of what sort of fellow he was, but he did seem to be a nice sort of bloke. Anyhow you know how sometimes you get some impressive little fellow who wants to take on some giant bloke. This night there was this little fellow, he might have weighed nine stone, I doubt it, and he’s shaping up to Tommy Farr,

“Oh they say you nearly beat Joe Louis, you couldn’t fight your way out of paper bag.” Tommy Farr, “Please be quite, please go home.” This went on for quite while, the stage was reached where Tommy Farr said, “Look if you don’t stop this I’ll have to put you out.” “You put me out, you and what army?” And this goes on a bit and suddenly Tommy Farr reached out

grabbed him by the scruff of the neck of his jacket he was wearing, lifted him off the floor, held him out at arms length like that, here’s this little fellow dangling there punching away, Tommy Farr just calmly walked to the door, opened the door and dropped him. And we looked at one another and said, “God, fancy picking a fight with him,” strongest man I ever saw.

Oh there was plenty of women around. Well I had not long been married and had a couple of lovely kids, I was trying to behave myself, there was a lot of temptation. There was

plenty of lovemaking went on.

Oh yes, oh yes the women used to come to the hotels unescorted by any male, it was fairly obvious they were looking for a bit of romance.

It wasn’t bad really.

Well both I think, I really do think that, I thought a bit about it. I’m quite sure that a lot of them were just

looking for a bit of lovemaking while that boat was there, and when that went on then they’d be back there. I mean you could see it happening, I was there for three months or more, and quite a few of us were there all that time and we could see these same girls. They’d be there for a while with one fellow and then after a while he wouldn’t be there any more, we’d presume he’d been posted and it wouldn’t be long before that same girl was there with another bloke. It

was pretty obvious they were there for a good time, and they could have been looking for husbands, and some of them found husbands too. There was a lot of wartime romances that ended up in marriage. My rear gunner married an English girl and she came out here with him. Unfortunately it didn’t last very long, they

parted. But anyhow I know a few whom met and married out of those conditions, no most of them were quite successful.

Oh yes.

They were nice girls most of them, that I did encounter and have anything to do with, they were mostly nice girls.

Yes, I travelled around quite a bit, more so at the end of the war then at that stage, at that stage didn’t move far from

Brighton. Occasionally we’d go up to London but very rarely, it was only about an hour in the train to London. When I say very rarely we would have only done that once or twice and usually to meet some fellow that we knew and spend a bit of time with him, something to do.

Oh I think probably while we were at Brighton

I probably made my first trip to London.

Well the first time you don’t really get much of an impression of a place. But the first time it was obviously a very big city and I’m sorry to say that one of the impressions it made was how scruffy

it gradually grew during the day and how beautifully clean it was when you woke up in the morning, which we didn’t venture out until somewhere between eight and nine o’clock. And by that time all the mess had been cleaned up and the place was beautifully clean. By ten or eleven at night these piles of newspaper and rubbish and stuff all over the place, it was rather scruffy, in that

way. But it didn’t stay scruffy it was cleaned up everyday and then befouled again everyday. Apart from that London was, and I’m sure still is, a very interesting place. It’s a wonderful city, we went there again, my wife and I in 1974 when we spent a few weeks there, not as long as we intended, but

enough to confirm my previous opinion, it’s a wonderful place there’s so much there. Not only history but of what is still there today all the places like Kew Gardens and the London Museum and all the other places like that, which they have. Wonderful place to visit, I couldn’t possibly live there on account of the climate.

Oh the spirit of it was pretty good, there very cheerful people. London is particularly very cheerful people. And we met all sorts; mostly the ordinary people and we spent a lot of our time in pubs and pub life

in England at that time was so very different from our pubs here, they were mostly small pubs, mostly small family run pubs and most of the customers were locals. And they were all very cheerful and most of them had a piano and people would go around the piano and have a sing song and

they’d have a great conversation and a lot of laughs together. Oh yeah London was a good place for people like us ex-serviceman to visit and to be able to mix so easily with all the Londoners.

Oh they didn’t treat us very

differently, didn’t give us any special treatment that I noticed at all, except that they were nice and friendly to us, they sort of dealt with us the same as they did with their own people, their own friends. Just accepted us as if we were one of them, that was my experience. Oh all the people in England generally,

they all treated us very well.

Well eventually got a posting to an advance flying unit at a place called Halfpenny Green, which is up in the Midlands just outside Stourbridge

which is a suburb on the extreme south west edge of Birmingham. And Halfpenny Green of course was in the country, they don’t have aerodromes in the middle of town, Halfpenny Green was in the country and it was quite attractive country. Stourbridge itself was a very unattractive, trying to think of the word, industrial

town. But it was where we used to go into every time we had a, we didn’t get a lot of leave but we’d get a twenty four hour leave, we’d mostly go into Stourbridge. But otherwise we’d just go to the local pub and have a night and it’s wonderful how you can spend about

four hours drinking just two pints of wine, it was flat and it was warm, but wonderful what you get used to when you have to. So we got quite used to it and enjoyed it, but that’s about as much as we’d drink in maybe a three or four hour session, couple of pints. But there’d be lots of conversation and lots of singing around the piano or playing darts or something

like that. They were entertaining, the pubs were the source of entertainment for most of the populus, in England generally, they were the common meeting ground. There was no television; oh I don’t need to go on about that.

In Stourbridge?

Who’s told you about that? Yes wasn’t me actually what I think your talking about, but it was one of my mates. I don’t know whether it’s the same story but anyhow the story that occurs to me is about, he had one of the WAAFs [Women’s Auxiliary Air Force]

from the station with him and there was buses went every night from Stourbridge when the pubs closed back to camp. Anyhow somehow or rather they missed the bus, they’d in fact been wandering around and got lost, didn’t know where they were. And I don’t know if you can imagine how absolutely dark

it can be in a place like England where there’s always permanently overhead cloud and only about a couple of thousand feet high, like a blackout at night time. There is absolutely not a glimmer of light, no starlight, no moonlight; you could walk into a lamppost. Anyhow they’re wandering around

trying to work out where they are and they came to a place where they seemed to be walking through something like a bit of a park. And he said, “Look I’m sorry dear I’ve got to leave you for a minute I won’t be long.” And she guessed obviously whatever he’s going to do. So he wandered off to the left and he’s over there minding his own business doing what he had to do and he hears

a scream and a splash. She’s had the same idea but she’s wandered in the opposite direction, she’s fallen into a canal, is that the story you heard?

Oh I think I know what you’re talking about now, yes. That was when I found one of these industrial buses.

They had industrial buses that started off around six, half past in the morning driving around where all the workers were to bring them into the factories. I’m wandering around wondering where the hell I’m going to sleep for the night. I found one of these buses and I got into it and went right to the very back where’s there’s a seat going right across, the same as in our buses. And in no time at all I’m fast asleep on the seat

and the bus was moving, rocking along. And so I got up and staggered up to the front and grabbed hold of the driver’s shoulder and said, “Where are we going mate?” That was nearly the end of my days, is that the story you heard?

Yeah I don’t know where you got that one from, anyhow that was that. So anyhow

he was very decent about it, when he stopped swearing when he found out who I was and what I was doing and he calmed down, he said, “Where do you want to go?” so I told him, “Halfpenny Green.” “All right I’ll take you there.” So in due course he dropped me back at Halfpenny Green.

Well it was advanced flying unit and it was pretty much a repetition of

what we’d already been doing but it was rather more difficult, let’s say. But I mean instead of just flying from the station to a known target, if you knew exactly where you’re going, a known target in the lake somewhere and dropping a bomb and coming back. We were doing our bombing

as part of a training course, mainly for bomb aimers but there was another extent for navigator, in the course of cross country. There’d be maybe one or two, generally just one target, which we didn’t know, we were told where it was and the pilot knew where it was. So we had to find and see

that target and there was nothing familiar about it, we really had to be spotting that target and we’d bomb that target. So that was one of the things we used to do. And again we did a bit of navigation and again a bit more difficult. It was pretty much a repetition of what we’d been doing before but somewhat more difficult, that was advanced flying.

That was in Ansons.

Well after advanced flying unit we went to an OTU, operational training unit. And that was where pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, gunners all came together

for the first time to train as a crew. From thereon we didn’t do any training as individuals, we trained as a crew. And we picked our own crew; the idea was they wanted compatible people to be together in a crew which was very important. And the idea was that for the first couple of weeks we did very little,

we did some classroom work and a bit of 303 shooting on a rifle range. Bit of drill, but mainly just, no flying, for the first couple of weeks, we just all moving around together, getting to know one another. The idea was at the end of that two weeks you’d all

pick a crew for yourself. In practice if you waited two weeks to ask some fellow to be your bomb aimer you’d find that somebody had already grabbed him ten days ago. So in practice we were all crewed up within two or three days, but it works pretty well.

I’d be guessing but,

I’d be guessing there’d be two or three hundred I suppose, I don’t really know for sure, I’m just trying to picture. Sixty years ago, how many of us were together at lunchtime for mess that sort of thing, yeah I’d suppose there’d be two or three hundred because there were six to a crew, at that stage. Eventually

there were seven, but at that stage, we didn’t have any flight engineers available at that time, they came later. So I suppose fifty crews, two hundred maybe, something like that, two or three hundred, maybe forty or fifty crews, something like that. Anyhow my pilot and I

we knew one another for three hours before we decided to fly together. We met, we got there, we had the usual greeting from the CO or the adjutant or somebody, “This is Finningley, the nearest pub is over that way three miles away and you’ve got to look out for the girls. They had a

parade, had a meeting of the virgins in the town two weeks ago and they filled a telephone box,” this sort of thing. And we’d have dinner and we were on our own. And it so happened that Pete and I were sitting next to one another at dinner, by sheer coincidence and after dinner we went up to the local pub and had a couple of beers and as we came back to our billet,

Peter said to me, “How would you like to be my bomb aimer?” and I said, “Okay.” So so much for their fortnight mingling, anyhow that’s what happened there.

Oh yes, yes well this was it and it doesn’t need everybody to realise that, it only needs a few and then the rest see we’ve got to cotton on quick and lively. But I think most

knew from the start that they didn’t have any time to waste, if you saw a bloke that you thought would be a good crew mate, grab him.

Oh, we definitely wanted Australians and most of the people there were Australians, there were very few

that weren’t Australians. And in fact the chap that we first picked to be our rear gunner was an Englishman, his name was Bill Woodhouse, he was a very good fellow. And he and I somehow became quite friendly, I don’t just know how it happened but we did. And not long after we had all joined as a crew, and we’re still in this

selection process, it would have been within four or five days of getting to the place, we had a complete crew. And then the CO sent for Woodhouse and the skipper and he said, “I’ve received a signal from headquarters you have to have complete Australian crews, so Woodhouse will have to be taken from your crew.” And he was very upset about it he said, “I want to stay with Sandy,” that was me he said,

“I think Sandy’s lucky.” There’d been a couple of incidences where I had been lucky, “And I have a feeling that if I don’t stay with Sandy I won’t survive, if I stay with him I’ll survive.” The CO said, “I’m sorry there’s nothing I can do about that.” So we lost Woodhouse and, which was very sad, and Avery’s that I worked for

produced a house magazine, I don’t know how often it came out, maybe three months. And not very long after the war when I was back home there’s a list of casualties of people who worked for Avery’s…amongst this lot was Bill Woodhouse,

Parnell and Son’s Bristol, he had told me that he worked for an engineer firm in Bristol, he didn’t tell me the name of it, and I don’t know if I ever told him who I worked for but there it is Bill Woodhouse, Parnell and Son’s Bristol. Parnell was a subsidiary of Avery, we were working for the same company, never knew it.

Sorry to bother you with that one?

Sorry to bother you with that, these memories come back

unfortunately.

They don’t do any good but it just happens.

So that was that and when we’d selected our crew we went to the satellite, Finningley was sort of a mother station which had two children, which were called satellite and we went to one called Bircotes, which was 18 OTU and there we trained together as a crew.

Yeah right well the pilot was Peter Aldred, he came from Perth and

he was, he’d have been twenty then, he was eighty last October, he would have been twenty then. Then there was me from Sydney and I’d have been what, what year are we in now, we’re in ’44 now aren’t we or ’43?

Yeah still in ’43 well that stage I would still have been twenty seven, no I wasn’t twenty seven until the end of ’43, I’d have been twenty six at that stage. The navigator, Don McNab he came from Townsville and

he would have been twenty six at that stage, he’s five months older than me, so he still would have been twenty six, he would have been twenty seven in June of that year. And we’re talking now about February, March, something like. Okay that’s McNab, now the mid upper gunner Dave Rice he

came from Murray Bridge in South Australia and he will be eighty next January, so he would have been barely nineteen, yeah barely nineteen at that age. Well at that time

don’t jot this down for the moment until you hear what I have to say. At that time our rear gunner was Clive Hill but in course of time found that he wasn’t really satisfactory and we were able to change him. So is there any point in jotting that down at this stage, it’s up to you?

And our wireless operator was I forget his first name, a man called Solomon and he also had to leave our, he also was taken off our crew not long afterwards, he was an Australia. I think he came from Melbourne, but he was also taken off our crew oh within a few months after that. And he was

replaced by Mike Whaling, wireless operator we’re talking about, he was replaced by Mike Whaling, W-h-a-l-i-n-g and he was eighty two in April of this year, so he would have only been twenty wouldn’t he?

Hang on……..

Yeah he’d been around twenty anyhow, that’s wireless operator, I think that covers them all. I’ve done the pilot, bomb aimer, navigator, mid upper gunner, wireless operator. And Hill Summers, hang on that would

make seven, pilot, navigator, bomb aimer, gunner, wireless operator that’s six, that’s all at this stage, that’s the six at this stage. If you want to know the others who joined us later…Bob Jackson our

rear gunner who we acquired later, Bob Jackson was eighty six in June, that would have made him twenty three at that time wouldn’t it?

Or he would have been just on twenty three, that’s Bob Jackson. And Johnny Troth that we acquired later, our flight engineer he will be eighty next January………………..

He was nineteen, he was nineteen yes, well that’s it.

Yes when we went to the flying station, which was part of the OTU

yes we spent almost all our time flying for oh I think it was the best part of three months we were there. We still did a certain amount of classroom work, theory of bombing and how bombs were composed, the difference between a high explosive

and the block busters and the incendiaries, there different characteristics of how they fall. The high explosive ones were always pretty well streamlined and paced so that they would hit the ground at the greatest possible speed. Whereas the blockbusters were a four thousand pound bomb, they

were pretty much the shape of the forty gallon drum, well that shape but longer. So we learnt a lot of that sort of stuff.

Wellington Mark ten.

Oh they were very good, the Wellington were very good aircraft. Not quite up to its, well combat at the stage that we were at now, but short of that

they were a very good aircraft. Especially the Mark 10, which was, well the Mark 2.

Yes well there again I as bomb aimer was doing again pretty much the same as I had always done and this was part of the basic route

of the training procedure, that you learned by repetition, do it over and over again, until in the moment of crisis you don’t have to think too much about what to do. So anyhow to answer your question, for me I was doing pretty much the same as I had been doing all along bombing and gunnery practice. And so had all the others, but this is the first time

when we’re all doing it on our own initiative not with an instructor being with us and being ultimately responsible that everything was done properly. We were responsible ourselves.

Oh I think every training flight

I had to drop a bomb somewhere, yeah I think every one I don’t think there was ever any training flight where I didn’t have to drop a bomb. Yes bomb aiming and map reading, because for the bomb aimer to be able to identify something on the ground and give the navigator a positive statement of where he was, was extremely valuable.

So that’s what I was doing.

That’s right yes, we did that at Sandtoft.

Oh it’s a bit east of Doncaster in Yorkshire.

That was Halifaxes yes.

Yes, yes that’s where flight engineers were allotted to crews and we were only at Sandtoft for about three weeks and in that time our skipper turned down the first two flight engineers that were allotted to him, I think they must have been leftovers that nobody wanted. And

the third on we got was a beauty.

Well as far as we were concerned they simply weren’t efficient and our skipper who was a pretty good skipper, and I agreed with him. He and I were the first to get together in the crew and we used to discuss these

things he and I and we both agreed that neither of them was efficient. And we didn’t have much time to make that decision but we were quite positive about it, both of us. And that was one of the things that I mentioned as regards to OTU, they did want compatible people together in a crew. So the third fellow

we were very lucky to get him, he had been assigned previously to another crew but he was up in the plane doing something and unknown to him somebody took the step ladder away. And when he finished doing what he was doing he came and stepped out the door and landed on his head on the ground. So he soon recovered and he was offered to us

and we just snapped him up quick and lively cause he was very good.

Yes.

Well each of them was a pleasant fellow to know and get along with and each of them we guessed at OTU in the

selection stage they sort of gave the impression that they would be efficient people. So those were the two things that we had to go on, at that stage when we picked them, they were both likeable which you could size up fairly quickly, and gave an impression that they would be efficient people. And that’s how it turned out, they were all good to get along with

and they were all efficient at their job, those two reasons are partly why were still friends.

Well I think it was partly because we were the first two to join, we liked one another immediately. And I think also

the fact that I was fairly old for air crew and had had a fair amount of, I’m stuck for the word again, supervisory not it, I had a fair amount of management, responsible positions, I had spent a fair time in very responsible job. So he liked me, he thought I had a bit

more maturity and had shown responsibility in the peace time job that I had. He never told me this but that I believe is why he discussed things with me rather than anybody else in the crew, that we were the first to get together and he thought

I had more maturity from himself and the others.

Yes, well I was nearly the oldest, McNab the navigator is five months older then me, he was eighty eight last month and I’ll be eighty eight in November.

That’s right, oh yes, well Dave Rice as I say was only nineteen.

Well we spent just a few days at a Lanc [Lancaster bomber] finishing school at Hemswell

which is not far from Lincoln. We spent a few days flying Lancasters which was pretty obvious, they’re not much different to fly then from the Halifaxes but they were an infinitely better aircraft than a Halifax. Especially the Halifaxes that we had had a Sandtoft;

they had Halifaxes with Merlin engines, these were the best engines ever. But somehow the Halifax and the Merlin engine didn’t go together well at all, and they didn’t persevere with them they reverted to radial engines for the Halifax. And why am I talking about Halifax now when we’re talking about Lancasters. So yes we did just a few days, three or four days that’s all at Lancasters

at Hemswell, flying Lancasters. We were flying them and operating them and bomb aiming from them, pretty much the same as with the Halifaxes. And that was the end of our training.

Yes, it was June ’44, yeah June ’44 when we reported to Binbrook, 460 Squadron.

About the 6th of June or thereabouts.

It was two or three days before D Day we joined the squadron. And for quite a while, I don’t know why but for quite a while we just did circuits and landings and that sort of thing, just sort of practice, bit of practice

flying until the 18th July was our first op.

Okay.

Well I was still a flight sergeant at that time, other ranks, in other words other ranks we were

there were some dormitories, Binbrook was a peacetime station so it had more permanent accommodation than the wartime station. So there were some dormitories and there were also a lot of married quarters, which were

two storey semi detached buildings, typical suburban council houses, in England at that time. And all these married quarters were no longer being used by married people because of the war. So those of us who weren’t accommodated in dormitories one crew would be allowed one house,

which meant living rooms on the ground floor, I don’t know if your familiar with an English two storey council house of 1940’s. But there was living rooms on the ground floor, dining room or parlour, not dining room lounge room or parlour as they called it, kitchen and sometimes a bathroom, but not often on the ground floor. And that was about,

wasn’t much beyond that on the ground floor. And then upstairs would be the bedrooms and bathroom. So we had one of these married quarters and at that time there was only one commissioned officer in our crew, that was Dave Rice who was the youngest of the lot. So he was in the officer’s quarters,

which meant he had a room to himself. The rest of us, the six of us we were in one of these married quarters which meant half of us were sleeping on the ground floor and the other half were sleeping in the one or two bedrooms upstairs.

Oh we all knew it was pretty dangerous, there was no hiding that. We all knew it was the most dangerous job in the war in terms of casualties. And we all knew that, but so what.

Hardly at all I hardly got to know anybody outside my own crew, but partly because well we weren’t there all that long and partly because we tended to go round with our own crew members, not necessarily the whole lot

of us together. But in two’s and three’s, we’d be going around with our own crewmembers. So as I say the fact, those two facts that we weren’t there very long and we mostly just went around with our own crewmembers. And when we weren’t flying or sleeping, we didn’t

spend a lot of time on the station anyhow, we’d mostly be down the local pub or scrounging round the local farms trying to buy eggs. As I mentioned before I think I became friendly with a family in the village and used to spend a bit of time with them. So we hardly got to know anybody on the squadron outside our own crew.

Oh we heard all about that, oh yes that was pretty well publicised all over England. I mean everybody knew that it was coming, south of England particularly was absolutely chock a block in all the streets of all the towns with tanks and trucks and guns, all equipment, all ready to be

shipped across. So we learnt a lot about D Day as I say, we all knew it was coming and we all knew when it came.

That’s right. It was a very exciting time, we left

Binbrook, oh about seven or seven thirty in the morning, broad daylight, it was the 18th July and as you no doubt know the allied army was beginning to get bogged down in Normandy and the German reinforcements were rushing up. And anyhow on the 18th July they put on this tremendous air bombing exercise,

there was something like fifteen hundred heavy bombers. And broad daylight, I was carrying fifteen thousand pound of high explosive bombs, all the Lancaster’s would have been carrying that. The Halifaxes would have been carrying something like that. The Fortresses and Liberators would not have been carrying that much unless they left behind half their gunners,

cause they weren’t needed, I don’t think they had the capacity to carry much more anyhow. But we must have dropped god knows how many tons of bombs on a section of the German army at Sannerville, which is near Caen, which was the main point of where the allies were being held up. And as I say broad daylight, each of us, well my contingent anyhow,

we were allotted an area of a square mile on which to drop our bombs on the German army. The place was saturated with bombs; no fighters came near us cause we had I don’t know how many fighters keeping the other fighters, keeping the German fighters away from us. And so that was it and when it was all over and we

retreated and our army advanced they found that there weren’t as many Germans actually killed as they thought there would be. But those that weren’t killed, they were wandering around stunned, they were just stunned and most of their tanks and guns had been destroyed. And it was a very big factor in the breakthrough that occurred just around that time.

So it was a very exciting and memorable trip to see all those hundreds of aircraft all converging on this poor little bit of land.

Yes it wasn’t usual at all, daylight bombing, we were,

we didn’t have any real defence against fighters. We fought a different air war from the Americans, and I’m not taking it away from the Americans at all, they had to display as much courage as we did perhaps more, I’m not going to argue about it. The fact is they didn’t have the same temperament as we did, but they could drone on

and on in pitch dark and getting fired at by flak and fighters and not be able to pick up a gun and brrrrrr, the Americans you give them a gun they’ll go through anything, they don’t like just sitting there and being shot at and not firing back. Anyhow the fact is the air war that they fought was a real battle from start to finish because

they knew without any doubt that they were going to be attacked by fighters with armament equal to their own, that’s why they had such a great crew. Where have I drifted off to now, oh the fact that we did night bombing, yeah.

Because the British outlook was that your aircraft should carry the greatest load of bombs

the furthest possible distance. And if you’ve got to have a crew of at least ten and about ten or fifteen, or twenty guns all firing point five ammunition you haven’t got much capacity left to carry bombs. Now the Fortress would only carry about a quarter of the weight of bombs to Berlin that a Lancaster would,

and yet they’d both be somewhere around the same all up weight. But so much of the Fortress capacity was taken up by the number of crew, the number of guns, the ammunition for those guns, they could only carry a small number of bombs. The Lancaster had minimum crew, no armour plating, very few guns and only 303 ammunition and

expected not to fire those guns much. Most Lanc’s never fired a gun, the Fortress never went out without knowing damn well they’d be firing off a lot of ammunition. So that’s why we went at night, to carry the greatest possible load the greatest possible distance.

Well there was still a lot of ships even at that stage, I don’t think there was anything like the great concentrations there was on D Day. But there were still a lot of ships going backwards and forwards on the 18th July, but of course they weren’t, I don’t know what they were carrying. But we could see them, as I say it was broad daylight and it,

as I recall, I don’t recall it being cloudy, it wasn’t cloudy beneath us anyhow, might have been cloud above.

We did one, that was the best fun we ever had on a serious business. The only thing I didn’t like about it was we probably killed a few

people. But we did one pretty remarkable and pretty rare, I think, daylight bombing exercise. We left England in broad daylight, must have been early in the morning. The fact is we flew due west hundreds of miles out into the Atlantic. And the object of that was to defeat the German

radar, radars as you probably know doesn’t follow the curvature of the earth. Radar beam projected from this point just goes straight out. So if you’re a few hundred miles out, or down below the horizon the German radar couldn’t see us. So when we got a few hundred miles out into the Atlantic we came down to a hundred feet, which is pretty dicey for a Lancaster. But anyhow we came down to a hundred

feet and flew back towards a place called Pauillac on the French coast, a bit north of Bordeaux where there was an oil refinery. So at a hundred feet we came roaring in out of the west and I don’t know how many miles short of the coast it was. Anyhow when we got to the designated

distance we climbed pretty sharply to ten thousand feet, which was still quite a bit lower than what we usually bomb at. And there’s this oil refinery laying down below us and we simply bombed the daylights out of it. And there was a master bomber ahead of us telling us what to do, “I want that big oil tank on the left there, that oil tank on the

port,” boom up goes the oil tank. “Oh good now that big administration building straight ahead of you there,” boom up goes the administration building. I mean broad daylight with a mark fourteen bombsight and no opposition, there’s no fighters, hardly any flak, it was a picnic. Only thing I felt sorry about was the fact that there was probably a lot of French civilians getting killed underneath. And then we just turned and roared back to

England. That was a long trip, it was about nine hours I think, we didn’t fly very far from England really, it was so far out of the Atlantic and back again.

From the moment of letting go?

No, I was doing something, I mightn’t have looked as if I was doing anything. If you want to know the details

of a bombing flight?

Well the first thing was to throw out what we call a window, you’ve probably heard of these, these strips of aluminium, so that was the bomb aimer’s job first of all was to throw that out.

Well first of all there were these paper bundles, each bundle

oh about that size if I remember rightly, contained lots of much smaller bundles of this window. And so what we had to do was first unwrap the main bundle and then pick up one of the small bundles, pull the cord on that to release all the strips and then chuck it out. And then we had to count, I think we had to count ten,

just about enough time to grab another one and undo it and throw it out. I think you’d have to count ten or twenty, so you’d throw it out and start counting.

Wherever we encountered back flak, just throw it out, oh there was a little sort of a porthole alongside in the fuselage alongside me, I just push it through this little bit of a porthole that was just

comfortable size to push one of these bundles through. And I could close it once I got rid of all the bundles. So, and they used to open up and each one of those paper strips or those aluminium strips gave the same signal on a radar screen as a Lancaster. So there’s the radar down below got great pictures of thousands of Lancasters going over. You couldn’t pick out one Lancaster, all they could do was fire at the

lot. So that was throwing out the bundle, throwing out the window [aluminium strips] was the first thing. From thereon all I had to do for a while was keep lying flat on my belly looking at the ground belong and hoping that I’d see something that I recognised, which didn’t happen all that often. With a complete blackout you can’t generally see much at night.

But some things you can see, coastline for example, and if there’s any moonlight at all you can see the coastline, you can see the difference between the land and the sea, and especially if there’s a bit of a swell and you can see waves breaking. So coastline and rivers same way you can with a bit of luck see and identify bits of coast, or bits of

river. Railway lines not so good especially on, well a continent highly populated places cause there’s so many of them. So there wasn’t all that much that I could see, but occasionally I did see something that was quite important. So that was something I just had to be doing all the time, even if I didn’t achieve much I had to be doing it, and occasionally I did do some good.

And then of course when we got near the target, as soon as we got to the target area I took over, I was in command, the pilot did what I told him.

Well from the markers that were put down by the Pathfinders, this is at my stage of the game, much earlier they didn’t have all this.

But in my time Pathfinders would go ahead of us and they would put down marker flares, at least two different colours, sometimes three different colours, maybe a red lot and a yellow lot and a green lot. The object of doing that was the Germans wouldn’t be sure, at the start, which ones we were going to

bomb at. So anyhow as we came in to the target and got within sight of the markers, and I had already been told at briefing, no I’m not sure about that. Anyhow either at briefing we were told that we’d be bombing on the orange markers, or perhaps the master bomber at the sight would say bomb on the orange markers. But one way or the other we were told which markers to

bomb at, to aim at. So whatever that instruction was and I just set my bomb aiming on it and if I wanted the pilot to turn left I’d say, “Left, left, left, left, left,” if I wanted him to turn right I’d say, “Right, right.” And when he was going exactly for the target I’d say, “Steady, steady, steady,” it all had to be said at precisely those

words and very clearly so there could be no mistake. And the pilot just did what I said and at the right moment, oh first of all I had to push a lot of switches down to make sure that the bombs were all fused, in other words there was nothing to stop the striker from going forward and hitting the detonator, had to remember to put all those switches down. So having done that

right before I even started the bombing run, at the appropriate moment I pressed the bomb tip and said, “Bomb’s gone,” and that was the signal to the pilot to close the bomb doors. Oh first of all I had told him, “Bomb doors open,” that’s pretty obvious isn’t it. So first command, “Bomb doors open,” and then I’d say, “Left, left, right, steady,” then, “Bomb’s gone,” and that was the end of it as far as

I was concerned, he closed the bomb doors and he took over again.

I did feel rather exposed because I was presenting the biggest target to the flak, I was lying flat on my belly. So yes I did feel quite exposed, I was glad when those bomb doors were closed.

Well it’s not very, not very, not very comfortable really. But I mean you might try it sometime. You were all the way there and all the way back, I still had to be there lying on my stomach, cause I’ve still got to do the map reading there and back. No not all our trips were, some of our trips were

eight hours, I think…thanks for doing that?

Not really no, no I never thought about it.

No I was just concentrating on my bombsight, I wasn’t thinking of anything else at all.

Well the mark fourteen bombsight, I’m going back sixty years now.

Not much, it was a wonderful contraption. In our early days, oh look I won’t waste time telling what I had to do on the old bombsight. On the mark fourteen bombsight it automatically compensated for air speed by signal from the air speed indicator.

It automatically compensated for height likewise and it automatically levelled itself, that was part of the bombsight in itself, it automatically compensated for level. The only thing it could not compensate for is drift, you know what drift is, the plane’s going that way when your pointing that way.

That was up to the navigator to make sure that if the target’s over there and he’s pointing that way the bomb will land over there, you with me? So the plan itself is not necessarily aiming at the target, it is, no hang on, the course that’s set is not the course to

the target but the…I’m trying to think of the word, the track he’s following is down to the target. And that’s where my bombsight is aiming and my corrections have made sure that the plane is aiming dead at the target. So that’s all I had to do was actually watch the bombsight and pick when the

on the spot, I forget what it was now.

Cross hairs let’s say, when they hit the target I pressed the bomb tip. And provided the navigator had applied the right drift, the bomb would hit the target. So I really had nothing to do because all those other things were set automatically, or by the navigator deciding what course to be on. And

I just had to have faith in that fact and the fact that the automatic things on the bombsight itself would be taking place, and it was a very good bombsight.

Well when I pressed that bomb tip I took a photo of what was underneath me. And the boffins

back at camp looked at those photos and they would know if my bomb was going to be somewhere near the target.

No I never did.

Not really no, that’s something I regret that I never even thought of trying to find out. I think it’s quite possible that if I had

gone up to the intelligence section of the camp, I think it’s quite possible that they would have shown me the photos and told me, I don’t know. I never heard of anyone doing it really. But the fact that those photos were taken and analysed and the fact that nobody ever said, “You weren’t even there,” I think they must have been somewhere near the target.

Yes I did, but I didn’t worry me too much, I didn’t feel personally guilty. Obviously you’d have to devoid of any feelings at all

not to have some qualms about the people that you were possibly, or even probably were killing. But that’s war, war is dreadful and it is so stupid. But one thing I am a bit thankful for is I only did nine ops and only on three of those did I dropped a blockbuster, which was

the thing that devastated a whole area of building, presumably with people in them. I only dropped three of those out of nine bombing raids. But even then there’s no such thing as innocent civilians in war, I mean a lot of them are innocent, innocent is probably the right,

but there’s no such thing as uninvolved civilians. Civilians who didn’t want the war, or were against the war, nevertheless it’s the civilians who are producing the food and the clothing and the ammunitions and the tanks for the soldiers. That’s something that people have got to understand about war that everybody is involved in it.

Yes okay I’ll do my best. Well the first thing that would happen would be you’d be notified that you were required to go on a, we didn’t call them missions incidentally, that’s an American name, we called them ops, operation.

Yes we’d be going on

and op that night and to report to the briefing room at a certain time. So we’d duly report to the briefing, which would be sometime during the day obviously and there we would be told, the CO almost invariably would be there, there’d have to be some special reason if he wasn’t. And

a senior officer would be referred to as the briefing officer would be, it was like a school room with a blackboard, I think it was in those days. But anyhow on that blackboard would be a quite big map of the section of Europe

that we were going to have to travel over to the target. And the briefing officer would then tell us, “Well the target tonight is Berlin or Hamburg or wherever and take off time will be twenty one thirty, whatever. And here is the route that you will be required to follow.” And on this map the route would be drawn, where we were to follow

to the target. And I think they generally told us what bomb load we would be carrying, pretty sure they did that. And then he’d have a pointer and he’s say, “Well encounter flak here and you’re likely to encounter fighters here,” and all that sort of thing, tell us what dangers we were

likely to encounter on the way. And I’m not sure whether they would tell us then which markers we had to bomb on and they would tell us, he would tell us what met conditions were expected. Met conditions means what the weather forecast was, mainly

in relation to what cloud there might be, this was a very vital thing. Well to put it very briefing that was what went on at the briefing, where we had to go, what route we had to follow, oh and the times of course, the take off time and the time that we were expected to be at each turning point on the route, that was for the benefit of the navigators.

Some parts would be for the benefit of the navigators and some for pilots and some for gunners of where they had to keep a special lookout for fighters. In other words, all the conditions that we were likely to encounter, so that’s it. The target, the take off time, the conditions, the perils we might face and where to be especially careful and the time on target,

very important and the route home, which wasn’t always the same as the route out. Oh that’s about it for the briefing. And then of course if anybody’s got any questions and almost, oh there would always be a few questions, various people would ask various questions. There was nothing much for me to ask, all I had to do was,

I knew what I had to do. That was about it for the briefing. Okay so then the navigator would then have the job to do of copying down the route that he had to follow and what wind was forecast. And

I think the, I’m not sure if the navigation leader had already worked out what courses they should follow. Because as I’ve explained you had to allow for the drift and that was the most difficult thing about navigation, the almost impossibility of

being sure just what the wind was. So either the navigator was told that at briefing or he had to work it out for himself from the very latest forecast that was available before we took off. So the navigator had a very hard working man and of course,

I don’t know if there was anything special for the wireless operators there might have been I can’t really know. They also played a very important part in navigation because the main thing that they depended on to work out what the drift was the signals that the wireless operator received from the Gee stations in England. Do you know what Gee is, or was?

Well not having been a wireless operator I’m not an expert on it. But broadly the thing was there was a certain station, or stations in England sending out a wireless signal, which the wireless operator would pick up and just exactly how he knew

the direction that that came from I don’t know. But it would be a certain angle that would tell him where he was in relation to that station sending the signal. There would be two of those stations, that’s right I think he knew the direction that one station

was firing at and the direction the other station was firing at, and where those lines crossed on his little diagram that he drew, he’d say, “I’m at that station there, I’m at that station there,” and the point where those two lines met told him where he was. And he then told the navigator. So the wireless

operator had to know just what signals to expect and from that between him and the navigator they’d be able to set the course to get where we were aiming at. So whether that occurred with them at briefing or in consultation with the appropriate officers afterwards, I’m not

sure, I wasn’t really involved in that. And that was about it I didn’t have to get any special instructions, the bombs were designated by other people, they were loaded by other people. The fuses were set and the gunners well they just had to be ready, look out for fighters and shoot them if they saw any.

So that was the briefing. Well, and that entailed quite a lot of work for the navigator and wireless operator, not much for me. So then when the time came to take off well we were taken by bus out to what we called the dispersals where the planes were and we got aboard, everybody took up

his station and we taxied down to the runway, the take off runway at a time approaching the designated take off time. Obviously we couldn’t all take off together hundred of aircraft from all over England. There’d be, on our station there would be

two aircraft on the runway and sometimes three, but very rarely three, but there’d be two on the runway. One just about to leave the ground and another one just starting his take off run. So we’d take off.

No, well I just had to make sure that the window was there and the bombsight was there, just had to make sure that those things were there.

You know no, look my mid upper gunner in this little book, no look I won’t complicate things by talking about that. My recollection is that we got a special meal when we got back. Other seem to remember that we got it before we took up, but I’m quite sure they are wrong,

we got it when we got back, and that was bacon and eggs. And that was a real luxury anywhere, that was a real prize, bacon and eggs, I still love them. So anyhow in due course we’d take off and, well I didn’t have, the only thing I had to do from then on as I said to map read

as much as I could, or to toss out the window where it was designed to be tossed out, map read pass onto the navigator if I recognised anything that would be useful to him, and look out for anything I saw on the ground that could possibly be of any use. Advise if flak firing at us, well the skipper would see it anyhow

and the gunners. So I was busy doing that all the time, which is not strenuous but it required intense concentration. We had to concentrate intensely from the beginning of briefing till the time we landed back at base,

it was absolute concentration every minute from thereon, particularly for the navigator and wireless operator as I said. So we’d keep droning on, that was all I had to do, the navigator and wireless are flat out all the time doing their navigating. The skipper and engineer were, well the pilot obviously is flying the plane

and he had to concentrate on keeping at the designed height, that was what we’d be told that we had to fly at a certain height and change direction at certain points. And the engineer would be monitoring the engines all the time, checking on the rev counter and the temperature

and boost, whatever that was, I never did find out what boost was, but I think it’s something to do with the amount of air that their feeding into the engines. In other words the engineer was all the time monitoring the performance of the engines and the fuel consumption. They were the two important things that the flight engineer had to do. And the gunners as I say keeping their eyes out for fighters and

anything else. So that about covers it for all the journey. If we were attacked by fighters, which we sometimes were the gunner, the rear gunner would usually be the first to see him and he would immediately shout out, “Corkscrew left,” or, “Corkscrew right.” And the pilot would not ask any questions he’d just do whatever the gunner said, that was our evasive

action. The Lancaster was very manoeuvrable and if we spotted a fighter before he got a shot into us we had a very good chance of evading him. And we started evasive action and started firing our piddly little 303’s at him to let him know that we had seen him, there was a fair chance that he would just peel off

and go and try to find someone who hadn’t seen him. So they were pretty busy and the pilot had to be on the alert for corkscrew, some said, “Corkscrew left or right,” others said, “Corkscrew port or starboard,” which was more the correct thing to say. So that was how we made our way to the target and as

soon as we got insight of the target I took over as I’ve described, started sighting along the bombsight for my target. And the pilot had to be good at doing flat turns, cause he only had to turn a little bit each time. So if I wanted him to turn left

I’d simply say, “Left, left,” if I wanted him to turn right I’d say, “Right,” and when I’m on the target I’d say, “Steady, steady, steady, bomb’s gone,” and that was it. And then we’d close the bomb doors and head for home along the route that we’d been told to follow.

Yes when we got back and landed we had a debriefing session. Just, well obviously say that we had located and bombed the target. And then we had to report, the pilot and navigator, oh all crew really, except the bomber

I didn’t have much to say, but about anything that happened on the course of the trip that might be useful for future operations. For example wherever we found a special flak concentration, wherever we found a special fighter concentration, things like that. If we saw anything strange on

the ground, great munitions factory where there wasn’t one a fortnight before, report things that might be of interest and could be of use. And those mostly didn’t take very long and then we’d go and have our great feed of bacon and eggs, and off to bed.

Not generally,

no the mess would not be open, well not the bar, the mess would be open obviously to give us our bacon and eggs. But not the sergeants anyhow, I don’t know about the officers. Peter, our pilot, he got his commission shortly after we started ops,

I don’t think he had his commission when we started ops. Anyhow I don’t think they would have had any alcohol at all after the fight, I think they just had their bacon and eggs the same as the rest of us and went to bed, cause we were all pretty tired. As I said it was absolutely uninterrupted deep concentration for ten or twelve hours,

depending how long it was from briefing time till the time we got back, which was, oh most of our trips were, about half our trips were four to four and a half hours. And two or three were eight or nine hours.

Well we weren’t told bomb specifically, we weren’t told to find Krupp’s factory and bomb that, we were told to bomb on the markers. But from the bomb load we could tell whether the target was industrial or residential sort of thing. If all I was carrying was

high explosive bombs we would be bombing industrial targets, factories, railway marshalling yards, possibly troop concentrations, that sort of thing. If I had a four thousand pound cookie as part of my bomb load it would be a sort of blanket bombing business,

again it still could be an industrial area where there was a lot of factories grouped together and a block buster would damage the buildings there over a wide area. So even a blockbuster could be designated more for an industrial area and residential, but in some cases the blockbusters are simply to wipe out

a town or a city.

Well the first one was Sannerville as I said in Normandy and that same night, Sannerville as I explained was an army

concentration, although there were a lot of high explosive bombs which destroyed a lot of manpower and a lot of guns and tanks and equipment. That same night we did a raid to Gelsenkirchen, which is on the river, the Ruhr River, that was definitely very highly industrialised area,

or it was, I no doubt it still is. After that we did a couple in France, mainly on the Fontenay, something like that, Aire sur la Lys was one and Marmion Fontenay [Fontenay le Marmion] I think was another. And just exactly what they were I don’t know. I think I dropped a blockbuster on one of those and the other

was about fifteen thousand pound of high explosive, what’s that I’ve told you four. Then we did this raid on Pauillac, which was such a great fun for us, that’s the one I told you about the oil refinery on the French coast. And I think the next one was

over in Belgium, Ghent-Terneuzen [canal], that’s in Belgium not far from the French border, and I don’t really know what sort of target that was. But I didn’t know much about that one because I was a spare bomber, I didn’t fly with our own crew, my crew were not on for that night. And there was always a certain number of spares

so that if the bomb aimer of somebody’s crew was sick or missing, for some reason he wasn’t there, well a spare bomb aimer would be available so that they would still do that trip. So I did that trip with a crew, the pilot’s name was Ted Penning and I didn’t really know much about it, I don’t think it was at the briefing, I didn’t really know much about it.

All I know is I know what the bomb load was, I’m pretty sure there was one cookie and I’m not sure whether the other was incendiaries or high explosives. So that was Ghent-Terneuzen. Then we did a raid of Kiel, you know where Kiel is I guess, it was a very major port for Germany,

northern Germany on the North Sea, that was Kiel, that was a pretty tough one, that was all high explosives. How many have I given you so far, that’s about seven?

I think we did another one, which I can’t remember off hand.

Anyhow our number nine was the toughest and that was the

last.

Well we had a beautiful silk and wool combination long johns and I don’t recall any special singlets that we wore,

but would have been a pretty warm singlet, not an synthetic singlet, would have been a short sleeve singlet of some sort and as warm as possible. And over that we’d wear a shirt and over that we’d wear, what the name was for it, anyway it was like a boiler suit, padded,

I don’t what the padding was but it was either cotton or wool, it was probably cotton. And over that we Australians wore a magnificent wool sweater that was sent to us by the Australian Comforts Fund organisation I think, it had a crowd of women kitting these enormous woollen sweaters that came down to our knees with wool about a quarter

of an inch thick. And then over that we’d wear another boiler suit, which I think was made of cotton, it was a fairly thick tough and hard thing, like a boiler suit. Oh before the boiler, I’m not sure before the boiler suit or after the boiler suite, anyhow

we wore a Mae West, do you know what a Mae West is?

Did you ever hear of Mae West?

You know she had a big bosom?

Yes, it was a padded jacket with sleeves, you know the sort of jacket that you can wear with a zip down the front. And it

was inflatable and there was a compressed air container, it was part of it, and if we had the bad luck to come down in the North Sea, which happened quite a lot, there was a button to press and the compressed air would inflate this may west and it would keep us afloat.

And you can see why it was called a may west, I don’t know what the official name of it was. And of course we had wool or fur lined flying boots that came up to oh about there I suppose, they were leather outside and either wool lined or fur lined, and that’s about it.

Well I felt barely warm enough but I’m a fellow that feels the cold more than most people, I think most of the crew, they were warm enough to operate, none of us was particularly warm. There was a stage where they began to introduce little

electrically heated elements to go into your gloves, oh and we wore a pair of silk gloves and then over the silk gloves we had a pair of fur lined leather gloves. But of course for certain things we had to take them off to, I had to take the right one off to operate the bomb tip for example, cause I didn’t want to make any mistakes about that. But they

were pretty good. But somebody hit on the idea of having little electrical heater elements one for each foot and one for each glove. The only trouble is, I don’t know a lot about electricity but one thing I do know is it’s very difficult to have one power

out point feeding exactly the same wattage to four different terminals. So your right foot would be burning and your left hand would be freezing, it was abandoned after a while, you needed a pretty complicated control system to make sure that you delivered the same heat to each one of those four outlets. And

up to the time I finished bomb aiming they had not produced that, and had abandoned it.

Oh and we had a leather helmet of course, leather helmet with earphones on it to connect it to the intercom and a balaclava, a woollen balaclava, I’ve still got my balaclava.

Yes well you know I never did neither did any of my crew, it was a very, very rare event, even for an eight hour, nine hour flight for anybody to leave his post to go back to the toilet which was known as an elson, very, very rarely happened, somebody

had to be in real distress to do that. Not only because, well on a Lancaster particularly, it was very difficult to move about that far, that was one reason. The main reason was you couldn’t be spared from your post. But as I say it did sometimes happen, it was a, well you know the lavatory pans that used to be, well you didn’t have sewerage

you had the pan system. Well it was a pan like that in an enclosure with a seat on the top and some chemical in it, I don’t know what it was, I never used it. And that was available and it had to be emptied by the ground staff after every trip, just in case. In my experience I only once, only once encountered a fellow

using it. He was a pilot on the first station I went to, it was an advanced flying unit, and some of those staff pilots they were pilots who had done their tour and they were put on this job of flying the trainees around. Some of them were quite nasty about it, they didn’t like it. And this fellow was one of them

and anyhow when it came for me to drop my bomb as it was falling, in daylight you could follow the damn thing going down, and as it was falling I was quite happy, it seemed to be aiming for the target all right. But it went right over the target and kept on going about another half a mile and damn near hit a farmhouse. Anyhow when I got back and sat alongside the pilot he said to me,

“Have you ever flown before?” and I thought he was being sarcastic about my bombing ability. I said, “Yes of course I have.” He said, “Well, just take over for a minute. I’ve just got to go back to the Elsan [chemical toilet],” and with that he got up and went back. I’d never flown an Anson in my life, Jesus, got hold of the control column, oh air speed have a look at the airspeed that’s all right, altimeter, I looked at the altimeter

and we’re going down rather fast, so I pulled back on the control column, oh air speed, oh the air speed’s fallen off, push forward a bit. Next thing I know this is going backwards and forwards, the plane’s going up and down like that, next thing I’m going down this way and the pilot comes hurtling past me and crashes into the instrument board, he sat down and took over, looked over at me and I looked back at him. We were both saying

the same thing to each other under our breath. So he was the only one I ever knew to use the Elsan. So if ever an ex bomber command fellow in an argument says to you, “Oh you can get to the Elsan,” you know he’s not being complimentary.

No.

Not that I know of, no I don’t think so, I’m pretty sure not.

Yes he was very good.

Yes, yes even though he was one of the youngest he was a good skipper and a good leader.

It was good but we really didn’t have a lot to do with them. We didn’t really have much time, it might not seem like that but I don’t think any crews very mixed to any great extent with the ground crews. And looking back I sometimes wondered why not, why didn’t we,

but we really lived in different worlds. They were, well they were a different sort of people from us really, they were all English people for a start and we respected them and knew that we depended so much on them. And they,

even at the time we realised that they were very much concerned about us. When we got back there’d always be one or two of them around and it became quite obvious that they were so glad we got back all right. But no we didn’t mix a lot with the ground crew.

Oh well we felt like that before we started on ops. You know from a fairly early stage in our training we were quite confident that we could rely on all the others. And we all got

along together very well although we’re all quite different, in our personalities, our talents, our lifestyles. My old skipper lives in Vaucluse; he’s a multi millionaire, my lifestyle is quite different from his and we only see one another couple of times a year but we’re very fond of each other.

Sometimes yes, sometimes we’d be on ops two or three consecutive days or you’d two or three ops with only a few days in between, other

times it might be a week when we weren’t on ops. And we used to get together, again with one another then, we’d just go down to the pub or do something like that, well that’s about mainly what we did. There again, well we did go to the sergeant’s mess occasionally, but not often.

But we could have a noggin or two in the sergeant’s mess or, yes we socialised but only within the crew really. It so happens, it didn’t happen for any special reason but McNab the navigator and I, the two oldest, somehow we’d simply get together more than with the others, but not to any

special extent. I think possibly because we’re both around the same age, but yes we socialised with one another and as I say mostly you just go into the local pub or the sergeant’s mess. And it was on the OTU they used to have a dance now and again, not very often in the sergeants mess and I used to go along to that

occasionally, only once or twice I think. So yes we did socialise a bit.

Were there WAAFs? Oh yes, oh yes the WAAF were there, we couldn’t do without them. The WAAFs did a very important job they did a,

well they did transport work for example, they were driving light trucks and cars and there was a fair amount of traffic of that sort within any military establishment really. They mostly had men driving the big trucks, but there wasn’t much of that going on in our Squadron. And I think

they did some parachute packing on the squadron, I’m not sure about that and…

Oh we’ve just been talking about it.

Oh the WAAFs oh, well they did with some people yes but not with everybody, we well fairly

obviously we lived quite separately. And some of the aircrew people mixed with the WAAFs and some didn’t. I mean some finished up marrying WAAFs, the old fellow that was knocking at the door there, oh no he was RAF man anyhow. But Billy she was a WAAF and I don’t doubt that he actually met her

whilst in the RAF. So yes they did socialise to a certain extent, there was no bar against it. Well for starters, as far as aircrew were concerned most of them were, very few of them were officers or even sergeants, in other words they wouldn’t be eating in the officer’s mess or the sergeant’s mess. So

there wasn’t really much mixing with the WAAFs on most stations.

Well our pilot did, some did and some didn’t. I couldn’t answer that positively, but I think to a certain extent I would think they did.

I think the pilot was obviously the most glamorous man in the crew and our pilot was particularly good looking fellow and attractive to women, and I think that would have applied to quite a few.

Stettin.

At that time it was Germany, northern Germany on the Baltic Coast almost directly south of, I’m trying to think of the name,

Kalmar in Sweden. If you can picture, you know Denmark I don’t know a couple of hundred miles east of Denmark I guess.

It was a long flight it was, I think it was about six hundred miles each way, it was as far as Berlin, it was as far as Berlin, a bit further, a bit further than Berlin.

According to which way you went, but it was at least as far as Berlin and probably a bit further. It’s almost due north of Berlin, slightly north east of Berlin and it was a very important port for the Germans. Since the war it has become Poland.

Well it was a very tough night, there was another raid on, I can’t think of the name of the place. But there was another raid a bit ahead of us on the quite well know German town, which I can’t recall the name of

at the moment. Quite some distance further east. And our theory is that the German fighters had attacked that force on their way east and they’d come back to their stations and refuelled and were ready to incept them again on the way back and we ran into them. Anyhow

we ran into trouble first going over Denmark, we were attacked by fighters there and managed to evade them. We then proceeded over southern Sweden and we were attacked again by Junkers 88 there. And we think we shot that one down but our gunners weren’t positive enough for the skipper to make a claim, so we didn’t officially claim shooting down that

Junkers 88. But already we had been hit a few times and somehow they didn’t do any very bad damage and we managed to escape. So in due course, as I say we flew over southern Sweden and we were a bit to the north east of Stettin and then turned onto a south and slightly west course

and came in over the target. We’d been, at briefing we’d been told to come in at twelve thousand feet and just as we were approaching the target the cloud was very bad and we got a message to descend to, did I say twelve thousand feet? Eighteen thousand feet, eighteen thousand feet was the height we’d been told to bomb at at briefing. As we were approaching the target

we were told to come down to twelve thousand feet. So we had to go around again, which we did. And all this time we’re getting attacked by flak and fighters and we got a couple of hits by flak, lots of planes were shot down on that night. Anyhow we eventually got over the target and I had just dropped the bombs and said, “Bomb’s gone.” And before the skipper could close the bomb doors

we got hit by flak and by about fourteen four pound incendiaries from one of our own aircraft, which we can only guess didn’t hear, or didn’t want to hear the signal to come down to twelve thousand feet. And none of them ignited, luckily,

there’s a theoretical explanation of that, or theory but I don’t think it’s worth going into. But the fact is none of them ignited but they did a lot of damage by sheer impact, they must have fallen a long way to have such an impact. The one that did the most damage came through the windscreen, smashed the windscreen, hit the pilot’s right hand where he’s got hold of the control column and smashed his right hand to

mince meat and caused him to go like that. So the plane started going down in a screaming dive out of control, his almost unconscious from the pain and shock of his smashed right hand and his voice came through the intercom feebly, “Sandy come and help me,” that was my nickname. So I started to get up and as I did the plane dropped like a brick and

I wasn’t strapped into a seat, just lying flat out on the floor. And just as I started to get up, the plane dropped like a brick, I shot up, got a dreadful blow on the top of my head, which did a lot of damage to my neck. And I was flung to the floor again and I’m half dazed from that. But I got up on my hands and knees and scrambled up that dreadful little staircase and

he was in a pretty bad way. Anyhow I got hold of the control column with him and between the two of us and with some help from the flight engineer; he trimmed the plane, which tended to straighten it up. So between us we got the plane under control and we had fallen six thousand feet

and we had a look around then to see exactly what the situation was and the plane was in very bad condition. This bomb that came through the windscreen and smashed the pilot’s hand also smashed the pilot’s compass and it hit the flap lever and bashed on full flap and broke the lever off inside the housing. Do you understand what flap is on an aircraft? Well on the wings,

the back of the wing there’s an adjustable section that you can adjust up and down like that, which increases the lift when we’re taking off but also increases the drag if you leave it like that while it’s flying. In other words it’s like driving a car all the way in first gear. And the bomb doors were still open, something had hit the hydraulics, the bomb doors were still open, the

undercarriage was down, the ammunition line to the rear turret was cut and the rear turret was inoperable. And there was a great hole in the starboard wing and the flight engineer said, “That’s why we’re loosing so much petrol.” In other words we were down to about a hundred and ten knots which is barely above stalling speed for a Lancaster and loosing petrol fast

and our top sustainable cruising speed was about one hundred and ten knots, which is just above stalling speed for a Lancaster. So we were in a pretty bad way. Anyhow, and the pilot was losing blood badly. So having got the plane straight and level his still hanging onto the control column with his left

hand, the control column itself was damaged incidentally but it was still operating. And so I first got the navigator to give me the first aid kit, I put a tourniquet on his hand to try and stop the bleeding. And then I wound the whole lot up in a great bundle of bandages so that if we survived and got him to a doctor there wouldn’t be any bits missing. And

we then discovered that we were still on the course that we had come over Stettin and we’re getting pretty near the outskirts of Berlin, which wasn’t a good place to be. So we turned smartly north, as best we could, the engines were still running beautifully, the engines were not damaged at all. And whilst none of the hydraulic controls were working, that’s why we couldn’t get the under cart up or the bomb doors closed,

the mechanical controls were still working, which means that we could move the ailerons and the fin. The plane was flyable but not manoeuvrable; in fact we’re absolutely defenceless against a fighter. So we thought about what we were going to do, the engineer and the navigator between them said, “Well there’s no hope of us getting back to England,

even if a fighter didn’t get us in the first fifty miles we’d run out of petrol probably over about Denmark.” So the skipper said, “You’d better bale out.” Well none of us wanted to do that because we didn’t think he had a chance if we bailed out. So we said, “Oh no we’re heading for Sweden though,

we’ll keep going for Sweden.” And the nav and flight engineer said, “Yes with a bit of luck we’ll make it to Sweden,” so that’s what we did. We gradually lost height, had to keep the nose down a bit to maintain enough speed to keep flying. So we eventually lost height and eventually we were down to about two thousand feet and still clouds below us

and suddenly there’s a break in the clouds and we saw a brightly lit town underneath us, Sweden. So it was a town called Kalmar, we didn’t know that at that stage of course, we just knew that it was a fairly big town and the wireless operator sent out a message in English, “Damaged British plane with wounded men on board,

may we land?” and we got a message back, “You have permission to land.” So we thought there’s a landing field near here somewhere and then said, “Thank you, where do we land?” and they wouldn’t tell us, they had good reasons for that doubt so we stooged around there, oh for about three quarters of an hour and we got to the stage where we just barely see the ground.

And the rear gunner saw what looked like a decent looking paddock, skipper flew over to have a look at it and shook his head, “Oh not big enough for a Lancaster,” the flight engineer said, “We’ve got ten minutes of petrol left.” So the skipper said, “I’ll give it a go, it’s this or nothing,” so we landed it on it and did a beautiful landing. You cannot land a Lancaster with one hand so the

flight engineer did everything that the pilot would normally do with his right hand, following Peter’s instructions for every action that he did. At one stage he said, “Full flap,” that’s one of the normal things for landing, and Johnny the engineer, he and I shot a quick look at one another, Peter didn’t know or had forgotten we’d been flying for three hours with

full flap, which is something you just don’t do. And anyhow Johnny didn’t hesitate, he just went over and went through the motions of operating the flap lever and said, “Full flap,” and down we went. And Pete did a beautiful landing, my only part in the landing was to stand behind him and hold him firmly up and hang onto his right hand in the hope of saving him any further, his right arm really, hoping

of saving him any further damage if our landing turned out to be a crash. And that was it, that’s the story as briefly as I can make it. But we were incredibly lucky, it was incredible that we could fly all that distance, from just a bit north of Berlin all the way across the Baltic in a completely helpless condition and nothing came

near us. The clouds broke when we were over Kalmar and we spotted a Swedish air force landing field when we’re just about out of petrol, incredibly lucky, you’re looking at one of the luckiest men alive. So that was it and…

I don’t mind no, excuse me a moment.

Yes.

Yes, yes because, well we think so we don’t know for sure except for the big hole in the wing we don’t think a four

pound incendiary could have done that, that must have been a flak shell, but there again went through the wing without exploding. But there were holes from flak in the plane and again we’re not sure whether it was the flak or the incendiary bombs that damaged the hydraulic system. We never found out for sure just exactly what the damage was to the hydraulic system,

all we knew was that it wasn’t working.

It ended up down in my bombing hatch, it came through the windscreen, hit the pilot’s hand, hit the flap lever, must of, don’t know how it bounced across the floor but it bounced down

the stairs and I found it just around my legs, down in the bombing hatch, and there was nothing I could do but just leave it there. And it was only the Swedes who told us afterwards that there was fourteen of them in the plane.

Yes, we had varying stories about that, all I can say is that there was some and we found that some of these people were somewhat inclined

to make statements that they weren’t entirely sure about. But there were certainly some, there might have been fourteen, I can’t swear to that. But there was a number of them.

We wouldn’t have had a chance. Are you interested in the theory of why they didn’t?

No they weren’t very elaborate thing at all, they were about the shape of a hexagonal pencil only bigger, they’d be oh maybe that diameter, sort of hexagonal.

Couple of inches across, not circular but like a hexagonal pencil, and oh about that long I suppose. They were a very simple thing,

the striker was held back by a spring and the end that had the detonator in it was heavier, it was a heavy end and the other end was lighter, so that when it left the plane they were just tumbling. They were held in a thing like a bathtub that had bars across it that stopped them from falling out. And when I pressed the bomb jets those bars fell away and those bombs fell out and they just tumbled. But eventually

they straightened out so that they were falling down like that, you with me. They were falling down like that with the detonator and striker at that end, and when they hit the ground of course they went off. Well the theory is that in addition to falling down like that they were travelling forward at around the same speed as we were travelling forward, a little bit less because

we were still being pulled along by the engines where they were just coming down by gravity. So we’re going along at a slightly higher speed than them and they hit us like that and just fell like that, that’s the theory. And the one that came through the windscreen, well while it was going down like that it didn’t hit a surface like that, which would have

set it off. Our windscreen hit it like that which would not release the striker, that’s theory, there’s no fact about it. But all we know is we were hit by a lot of incenduries that didn’t ignite.

Yes.

No,

I don’t think so, no our engineer would have known.

Well I do think so.

No, well the Ansons didn’t have any hydraulic system for that. I don’t know those technical details really but on the Anson I do know there was no

hydraulics system for operating the undercarriage, the landing gear, they had to be manually wound down and wound up again.

That’s right all the way, he fainted away two or three times and when he did I just hung onto the control column and kept it straight and level, that’s about all I could do. And he

didn’t faint away for very long, he recovered and took over again. He finished up with a DFC [Distinguished Flying Cross].

His hand was saved, it took a long time, it still looks a mess today, oh it’s sort of like that today, you know but it was saved. But they operated on it, well they started in Sweden and

he was back in England after about six months I think and they did in hospitals in England for quite a while. And then after that he eventually came back and then the military hospitals in Western Australia, they were still operating on it. I think altogether it was about four or five years they were repairing his hand, a bit at a time. It’s all there and usable and

it’s not a pretty sight.

Yes.

Well my immediate thought was, “This is it, we’ve had it.” And my mind was pretty blank then

but not for very long because it was almost immediately I heard the pilots voice saying, “Sandy come and help me.” And I didn’t think about anything else from then on, just saving his hand and helping him fly the plane, so that was all I really thought about it. I thought, we’d had it and I said that to myself, “This is it we’ve had it.”

I was quite sort of inactive, but that was only for seconds really and Peter’s voice came through…we were all in great confidence that we’d get through, I don’t think any of us was really worried, can’t explain why.

I certainly know that I didn’t think about anything except doing our best to get to Sweden.

It was freezing cold, freezing. The temperate was zero

Fahrenheit and we had a hundred and ten mile an hour wind blowing on us, for three hours. So conditions weren’t very pleasant at all, we had two or three blankets in a bit of a first aid kit and I put those over the skipper, so he was, oh well he was pretty cold still but

anyhow he survived. With those three blankets on top of him, on top of all the rest the gear he was pretty well insulated. But as I say the temperature was zero Fahrenheit, that’s about minus eighteen centigrade, it’s bloody cold.

Well there again I don’t think any of us thought a great lot about it, none of us was keen on the idea of bailing out over Germany if there was an alternative. But also the fact that we were

not very sure that Peter would get out of the plane. I don’t think he had much chance of getting out of the plane in his condition when all the rest of us had gone and the plane’s falling with nobody controlling it and him barely conscious. I don’t think he would have had much chance of getting out. As I said, it’s very difficult to move around in a Lancaster especially

under those conditions. So those were our reasons but there was very little debate about it, nobody said, “No, we won’t do that because Peter wouldn’t survive,” nobody said that, but I’m sure it was in all our minds. But we agreed without any great debate, “Oh no, we’re not going to bale out, we’re heading for Sweden.” No one mentioned the fact of being concerned about Peter, but

I certainly was and I’m sure all the others were too, in fact they very quietly independently told me that over the years.

Yes, absolutely because there was, whether we bailed out or didn’t

there was no guarantee of survival either way, I mean even bailing out is risky. So there was a certain risk there and there was a certain risk in not bailing out. And as I say we didn’t have much hesitation in saying, “We’re not going to bale out, we’ll head for Sweden.” I mentioned at one stage that we had a wireless operator by the name of Solomon

who was afterwards taken from our crew, he finished up with another crew. He was on the same raid we were on, the Stettin raid, that same raid and he was posted missing, they found him dangling in a tree in Sweden three months afterwards. That’s what it was like bailing out over

Sweden and for all we knew there might have been a forest underneath us where we were in Germany, you don’t know. It’s very risky bailing out in absolute complete dark not knowing for sure what’s underneath you. So as I say there was no certainty of survival if we bailed out, there was no certainty of survival if we made for Sweden. But there was more chance of the skipper surviving if we made for Sweden, so that’s what we did. I say

again without any great debate at all.

I don’t know if there was any policy, I don’t know if there was any policy, all I can say was, all I can say is that the Swedes turned out to be very friendly. And they treated us very well and we had a very good time in Sweden,

had the holiday of a lifetime.

None that we were told about, no. I think there might have been some agreement between the Swedish and British governments, in fact I’m pretty sure there was. But all we were told…no we weren’t really told anything on that question come to think of it.

All we knew was that we were expected to do all we could to survive and nobody ever told us not to bale out over neutral country. We shouldn’t have been flying over southern Sweden.

Well I can only

guess that, I mean this was on wireless, it was open for all the world to hear and I can only guess that they didn’t want any German aircraft to be somewhere within receiving range to get an exact location of the landing field, I can only guess that. I think that

would have been the policy in England to if somebody flying over an air force landing field in England and asking permission to land and where is it, I think it would have been the same in England, you don’t disclose things like that that the enemy might hear. That’s my guess we never asked them and they never told us.

Yes.

No he didn’t, the flight, no the flight engineer didn’t touch the control column. Even at the landing when he was doing the things that the pilot would normally do with his right hand he didn’t touch the control column, Peter didn’t ask him to and it was only Peter’s left hand on the control column. And he was wonderful, he was wonderful really,

he got a DFC for it of course.

No it was only me and the skipper, he got a DFC because he was an officer I got the DFM [Distinguished Flying Medal] cause at that time I was officially a flight sergeant. I got my commission, when my commission came through, it didn’t come through till after we were back in England, but when it did come through

it was dated the day before we took off for Stettin.

Well he didn’t, oh I think all he said was, “Thanks Sandy,” or something to that effect. But he didn’t really have to say anything; it was just the way he went on

it was obvious he was grateful. Over the years since, it’s about sixty years now isn’t it, over the years since he has more than once said that he was grateful for me saving his life. Which I possibly did, by nursing him, that’s all I did to save his life was nursing him but his, one of his sons is a doctor and he said, “You probably saved

Peter’s life.” So yeah Peter has thanked me over the years more than once for saving his life, I’m only telling you this because you asked me that question.

That’s possible yes, that’s quite possible. I don’t think any of the other of us could have landed the plane, I could have had a go at it,

but I wouldn’t be at all confident of succeeding.

I think so, I think so, yes.

It was very good, as I told you the wireless operator had said we had a wounded man on board

and there was a, oh quite a number of them waiting and being right at the very spot when we finally came to a halt. And they helped us get Peter from the plane, our fears about him being able to get out were proved justified. We had a hell of a job getting him out; look he was just about unconscious

when we came to a halt. Sheer determination had kept him going and when we had landed and come to a halt he just collapsed. We had to carry him and that was very difficult, very difficult in a Lanc. And we decided it was too difficult to get him over that main spar and back to

the normal exit, and it was even very difficult to take him down the steps to the bomb aimer’s hatch, but that’s what we did. And there’s an escape hatch in the nose for the bomb aimer, so we lowered him through the escape hatch and the Swedes helped us with all this. And they had an ambulance waiting to take him to the hospital and the ambulance raced off and we were very well looked after. We had a brief

interrogation, very polite and friendly and they gave us the best breakfast we’d had since we’d joined the air force. And then they gave us a room each to sleep in and that was the beginning of a very friendly time. For all the time we were in Sweden, everywhere we went we were treated with great respect and friendliness,

had a wonderful time.

We had absolute freedom, there weren’t many RAF internees, to be precise there were normally only around sixteen in the so called camp that we were in, but after this Stettin incident, which I mentioned was a very bad night,

that number just about doubled. But we were housed in a small private hotel on the shore of a beautiful lake up in central Sweden. It was a holiday resort and that’s what it was for us, we were provided with civilian clothes, the RAF paid for them, we chose them ourselves. This hotel

we were in was a private hotel, no liquor there unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately. In a couple of days we were told a bus would take us up to the nearby city, Falun and we could spend x krona on civilian clothes, we could pick them ourselves up to a certain limit and I don’t think any of us

spent it all, it was really more than we needed to get what we considered enough. So we had civilian clothes and the little private hotel where we were. There was no military personnel of any sort, there was no male staff. There was an elderly widow that owned and ran the place and her elderly unmarried sister was the cook.

She was a lovely old lady and she mothered us all and there was oh three or four, maybe five young women who lived in the village and they did the housework

and helped mama in the kitchen and served the table. And that was all, no guards, no fences, we were absolutely free to come and go as we liked, when we liked, except we must not move more than four kilometres, five kilometres from Saladin, that was the name of the hotel. And it was…

Yes, yes.

Must have had?

Yeah, yes

oh we really did have a good time in Sweden. Well I, this private hotel that we were, it was on the fringe of a village called Korsnas and we made lots of friends in the village, older people than us, didn’t

encounter more than one or two of around our age really. But older people with teenage children mainly and established homes and business and so forth. They took us into their homes for dinner parties and all the social events that went on around the place. Old mama as I said she mothered us we were very fond of mama.

And I corresponded with people for up to forty years in that village, until they all died. As I say they were older people than us. And our mid upper gunner is still in touch with the daughter of one of those families who was only about a year younger than him at the time. In other words he was eighteen at the time, he’s still in touch with her and he and his wife have been to visit her

in Falun twice since the war. Yeah lovely people the Swedes, really lovely. I’ve only encountered two Swedes in Australia, one here in Harbord and another one in Brisbane and their lovely people. But my two crew mates who live in Brisbane there’s quite a close knit Swedish community in Brisbane,

and my two crew mates up there they have become part of that community. So we had a good time, good memories of Sweden.

No, all secondary educated Swedes spoke English fairly well. And that applied to just about everybody in that village, so there wasn’t any language

problem.

Within five kilometres of Saladin. And that allowed us to go to the nearby big city of Falun and we used to, we hired pushbikes

by the week, I don’t think I told you the RAF gave us an advance on our pay of twenty krona a week and the Swedish government gave us twenty krona a week on the condition we spent it in Sweden, which we did. So we had spending money, clothes, good food. Anyhow

we hired pushbikes and we used to ride up to Falun and one of the things we used to do up there was we had free passes three times a week to the local public baths, which incorporated quite a big sauna, none of us had even heard of a sauna let alone been in one. And the first time we went in there we were astonished

to see a lot of men walking around talking, swimming, pretty decent swimming pool incorporated in it, all stark naked and three or four women walking around fully dressed picking up clothes and towels and generally looking after the place. We were astounded; it’s wonderful what you get used to when you have to.

That’s how it was in Sweden, but there were no women customers, never really asked but it seems that it was for men only or perhaps it was men only on the days that we went there, maybe it was women only the other days. But anyhow that was one of our early experiences of Sweden.

It was

yes. Well and it was an even greater shock for us on one occasion we went there and there was a middle aged Swede, no they were boys up to middle aged men that were there, nearly every time we went there, quite a few times. And this middle aged Swede on this occasion he got a good sweat up in the sauna room and came out of that

and there were hot and cold showers adjacent to the swimming pool. He got under the hot shower and washed all the sweat off and then he laid down on a raised marble slab, about that high off the ground, it was adjacent to the showers, still with nothing on. And a woman came along with a cake of soap in one hand and a sort of a scrubbing pan in the other hand and gave him a good scrubbing all over, missing nothing,

front and back. And we were watching this all the time, once she’d finished she just gave him a slap on the bum and he stood up and went along and stood in front of his dressing cubicle and she came along with a towel and dried him. We had to let the women dry us, none of us overcame his inhibitions enough to submit to a scrubbing, but when we asked for a towel a women came with it

and she dried us, and we just had to get used to that. But as you say it was a new culture experience. The Swedes are very straightforward about it. Two families were friends, for example we’d go on a picnic to some reasonably isolated spot and if there was a

swimming hole nearby they’d all strip off and go in for a swim together, and no harm in it. And they used to, firms selling home saunas and there’d be advertisements in the newspapers of somebody selling a home sauna and there’d be a picture of the home sauna with Grandma and Grandpa, Mum and Dad

and all the kids all in it together, all stark naked and I don’t think any harm ever came of it.

It was an eye opener, my word it was yes. So.

Only by the ones who had been there

before us. Here again I don’t know just how it was arranged between Britain and Sweden, but we were being smuggled back let’s say, just one or two or three at a time. There was a fairly constant stream of air traffic between Stockholm and the north of Scotland,

possibly all diplomatic couriers I don’t know but the fact is there’s a fairly constant stream of Dakotas flying backwards and forwards. And from what we gathered whenever there was a spare seat in one of those planes an internee from Saladin would be flown back. And from those who had been there before us

they said, “Well it normally works out at about three months before you’ll be sent back,” and that’s about how it worked out in our case, it was about three months.

Oh yes, if you violate a neutral country in war they are supposed to

detain you there because if they don’t, well they’re helping you aren’t they, they’re helping your country. And you’re doing something against the other country, in other words you’re not neutral. So you’re not supposed to be repatriated or even allowed to escape from a neutral country. But for them actually to know that you’re being loaded onto a plane it was obviously an agreement between

the British and the Swedes there. Somebody said, I don’t know whether or not this is true, but somebody said that this arose because when the Germans invaded Norway a fair number of German planes were shot down and landed in Sweden and were suppose to be interned in Sweden. And there was far more

Germans in that position than British, there were not very many British planes were able to take part in the Norway business and get shot down and land in Sweden. So there’s a lot of German pilots, and not very many British pilots interned in Sweden and the Germans having taken over Norway said to the Swedes, “We want you to send our pilots back here to Germany.”

The Swedes, this is according to this story I heard said, “We can’t do that, we’re a neutral country, we have to detain these people.” the Germans said, “If you don’t send them back we’ll come and get them,” which they obviously could have done at that stage. So the Swedes appealed to Britain, what should we do about this and Britain being a very long, a far seeing country,

the British are very crafty far seeing people, they were already looking four years ahead. They said, “Tell them they can have their pilots back as long as you can send us our pilots back.” So the Swedes agreed like a shot and it just went on from there; that was the story I heard and could be true.

Yes.

There could have been yes, because there were some Germans interned not far from us and a lot of Americans, there were a lot of Americans came down in Sweden, hundreds. When they were interrogated the answer mostly was, “Oh we got lost,” and that could be so because they were not good navigators.

Oh it went pretty well, it took a long time as I’ve explained. But oh yes it went pretty smoothly, both in Sweden and in England and in Western Australia. He eventually moved to Sydney, oh a few years after the war and built up a very big business,

as I said he’s a very wealthy man. So his recovery went quite well but his health over the years has not been good. Quite apart from that, nothing to do with that injury at all, he’s had quite a few bits of bad health over the years and his not in very good condition now.

Well we didn’t get in touch with one another strange to say, we didn’t all come back together. And we made no attempt to get in touch with one another, which might seem strange but it never occurred to us, we didn’t think it would be necessary, we thought they would just give us a new pilot

and we’d get together again. But that never happened and we realised afterwards Britain at that stage had all the fully trained aircrew that they needed and they didn’t want to be cobbling together remnants like us. So all the others were sent back home pretty soon, but while I was hanging around

doing practically nothing and living at the expense of the RAF. Avery’s head office people in Birmingham got in touch with me and suggested that I should try to get some special leave to go and do rehabilitation course with them. So I approached the RAF and they said, “Well yes we’ll give you a

three month special leave without pay.” So I reported that to Avery and they said, “Oh that’s okay what do they pay you?” I told them and they said, “Oh we’ll pay you that and then pay your board.” So I got special leave and did three months rehabilitation course with Avery’s and when I got back to the air force and reported back to Brighton, I didn’t find out until a long time afterwards

they had somehow lost my papers. And I was hanging around England, oh must have been another five or six months until eventually I thought, “Oh god my poor wife and kids and here am I hanging around here playing rugby union and socialising around and travelling around the country.” I was having a great time. So eventually I went up to the

repatriation officer at Brighton and said, “When am I going home?” He said, “What’s your name and number?” and he looked at his book he said, “You went home in February.” I said, “No I didn’t.” He said, “You’ll be on the next boat.” So that’s what happened, I was floating around England enjoying myself, I became a full member

of the Nuneaton Rugby Union team, which at that time was the second best team in England. I had one of the best times of my life playing rugby union in England at that time because it was a purely social game, there was no official competition at all, it was just a lot of people who only played rugby because they liked playing rugby. It was nothing to be gained from it at all and it was beautiful.

So there was all these social teams and after the games both teams and all the wives and girlfriends and hangers on all used to go on a pub crawl together, oh we had a lovely time. But my conscious kept pricking me that I really should do something about this, and eventually I did. So that’s what happened

to me pretty well, that’s pretty well the story of what happened when I got back to England.

Oh a little, yes put it this way I would not have been unhappy if they had put me into another crew and told me to keep on flying, I would have accepted that quite gracefully.

But I wasn’t that enthusiastic that I’d go to the RAAF and demand to be put on ops again. One of the English pilots that was interned with us at Saladin and we became very friendly with us, we became very friendly with him, he was a lovely fellow.

In fact he came out to Australia, we had a reunion of all the Australian members of the crew in 1984 and he came out to that and spent about six weeks with us at that. Anyhow to get back to what I was saying, when he was repatriated to England he insisted on being put back on ops and so they duly did that and he was shot

down again, I didn’t really get where and how that happened. But his navigator who’d been with him on the first occasion also went with him back on ops on the second occasion and his navigator was killed. So that put an end to his enthusiasm to go on any further ops. So I don’t think there were many people

went back on ops after they’d been shot down and detained, as we were technically. But I think some of them became staff pilots, like the fellow I’ve described, the flying I was doing on training, I think they gave them that sort of job to do. And they were called screens, and

there were screens for every category, in other words there were pilots and bomb aimers and wireless operators who flew with people on training. And not a lot of them were very enthusiastic about doing that.

Yes,

I think, yes that happened, I think I was living with friends in the midlands in Birmingham, that I’d become friendly with when I was doing that rehabilitation course with them. But for some reason I took off for Blackpool, there was great celebrations going on in

Blackpool. So that’s where I was for a few days and nights after VE [Victory in Europe] Day. Oh Blackpool was all right, it was really intensive holiday place, it wasn’t an easy going place at all. So anyhow that’s where I was on VE night

and a few days afterwards, then I went back to Birmingham.

Yes, oh yes we were getting news about that and in fact one of the reasons why I eventually went up to the repatriation officer

and demanded to be sent home was because Avro people were producing a bigger version of the Lancaster, I’m trying to think what the name of it was. Anyhow they were producing a plane, which was much bigger, about one and a half times the size of the Lancaster, one hundred and fifty foot wing span and the Lancaster

had a hundred foot. And, Lincoln, it was going to be called a Lincoln and the rumour was that a squadron was going to be formed in Australia to fly Lincolns against the Japs. So that’s when I thought, “Well that’s another reason why I must make an effort to get home, for my dear wife and kids and to get into this Lincoln squadron and have a crack at the Japs.” But anyhow the Japs must

of heard about that and they tossed it in, when we were half way across the Atlantic, they must of heard the news that a great team of Aussies was back on it’s way home to form a Lincoln squadron and fight against the Japs. And that’s when they decided to toss it in; some people think it’s because of the atom bomb.

Yes.

We had a luxury trip home on a P&O liner the Orion and it started in August and we were not overcrowded, we did have a good crowd on board, except me they were all ex POWs [Prisoners of War]. And

the only reason I got included on it I think one because of this repatriation officer trying to get rid of me as quick as he could and two because I wasn’t internee, which really didn’t qualify me to go along with ex POWs. But anyhow I was the only ex internee. Whether the British government paid for this luxury voyage

out of gratitude to all these ex POW’s or whether the P&O company put it on as a publicity exercise, I don’t know. The fact is we had reasonably good quarters bit more crowded then a peacetime cruise and wonderful food, it was a wonderful trip on the Orion; that was in August.

cause the Japs as I said tossed it in half way across the Atlantic, when we were half way across the Atlantic.

Well a lot of them were not in very good condition, they had had bare minimum treatment in Germany, I don’t think any of them

had actually been abused but as I say they’d just had enough to survive and that’s all. And some of them were not in a very good condition psychologically, most of them were not in good condition physically and a lot were in poor condition psychologically. And there was an incident that happened in reference to that, we were

halfway across the Atlantic and the Orion was an armed merchant ship, she had a few six inch guns and a few depth charges and that sort of thing. And one morning, nice sunny morning most of us are out on deck enjoying the sunshine and just walking around and relaxing and suddenly without warning

every gun on the ship opened up. And this went on firing madly for about five minutes and then it stopped. And a very high falutin’ British voice came floating over the loud speaker, “I suppose you’re wondering what’s that’s all about, we have just received by wireless wonderful news, the Japanese have surrendered.

This is the captain speaking.” The bloody idiot, there was about two hundred of those ex POW’s down in the sickbay in a dreadful psychological condition, anyhow they got over it. But that was the only untoward incident. Coming through the Panama Canal was

very interesting, there was one stage where the captain had to speak over the loud speaker and say, “Will you please stop running from one side of the ship to the other.” We’re all up on deck looking at the scenery, this is when we’re not in the actual narrow canal itself but in the somewhat wider approach waters, but still very narrow where you could see banks on each side.

And somebody would see something, made some beautiful bit of scenery or a village or a crocodile or some damn thing and everybody would rush over that side and you’d be rushing back the other side, the captain said, “It makes it very difficult to steer the ship,” so that was the Panama Canal.

To get to Sydney?

Oh wonderful, just wonderful,

it was a beautiful spring morning in September, perfect spring day. Yeah in Sydney coming through the Heads, it was wonderful and the war being over there was no great restriction of publicity, in other words there was just about every craft on the harbour was there to welcome us. And up on Dobroyd

Point there was hundred, thousands of people up on Dobroyd Point where you get a full view of the ship coming through the heads. My wife and the kids were there, and my mother, they were up there and then from there everybody rushed up to Bradfield Park, because that was the first place we would actually meet together. So it was a wonderful day, yeah wonderful.

About?

No they had only been told what I told them, they did receive notice that, I don’t know whether they used to words, “Shot down”

or what, but they did receive, I don’t know what the actual words were, but they were told that I’d been shot down and was interned in Sweden and was in perfect good condition, uninjured and in good condition. And that was wonderful news for them of course. And my wife, I only found this out after my wife

died and going through her papers, and she didn’t keep letters except a couple. And one was one I wrote her the day we came down in Sweden where I told her that I was all right and interned in Sweden where I expected to be well treated and I would be coming home by the look of things. And the other was a letter from the Swedish Consult in Sydney

replying to a letter that she obviously had written to him, saying that I had been forced landed in Sweden and she wondered what sort of conditions I’d be living under. And he had written back saying if he had to come down he couldn’t have picked a better place, and he was dead right.

So yes she did have notice and…..

Oh quite easily really, had no trouble there, I had a good home to come back to and a great welcome from my wife and the kids. I don’t know

if the elder boy remembered me at all, he may of done, bit hard to tell but the younger one I was just a baby, or he was just a baby when I went away. But they were both very thrilled to see me back, the younger one particularly, he followed me around for days and everybody he met he’d point to me and say, “My Daddy, my Daddy.”

And oh I’d only been back a couple of weeks and we were still enjoying a homecoming holiday and the firm got in touch with me, they wanted me to go up to Newcastle straight away to take over as district manager of Newcastle because the manager there was going to Adelaide. We weren’t too happy about that, we thought they might have had a lot of,

bit more feeling, but anyhow as it happened we agreed to it, I say we because I debated it with my wife and she was going to insist on having a bit more of a holiday together first and I was going to agree with her. So anyhow she said, “Oh yeah I suppose you’d better do it.” But as it happened when I went to the air force

to get discharged to take up this job and they examined my records and they discovered that this knee had been damaged and had a look at it and said, “Oh we’ll have to operate on that.” Well at that time the understanding was if they wanted to give you some treatment of that sort and you refused

treatment no good coming back to them later on. So here again we decided we’d better have this done before I got discharged and so it was another couple of months before I finally got discharged and went up to Newcastle, started work again.

Yes,

yes I think so, I still get trouble with it and well both my knees and they did say. You always will get some trouble, you’ll never be completely clear of it, but you would have got a lot more trouble if we hadn’t done this operation.” Oh I get very little trouble with it, very little, just conks out on me now and again, and I know what I have to do, just go and sit down for half an hour

and then it’s all right. And…

I was just about to say I’m very lucky.

Yes the neck is pretty bad really, three of the top vertebrae is very badly damaged, I can only turn me head that far and that hurts,

it hurts to turn it that far and there’s nothing can be done about that.

Oh occasionally but I wouldn’t say a lot, not often, I think that’s partly because most ex serviceman don’t really want to talk about it anyhow. I don’t

really know why I agreed to do this, but Stacey, is that the name of one of your?

Tracey that’s right, Tracey rang me from Orange out of the blue, that was the first I’d heard of this and she talked to me for an hour and a half. And at the end of that time she asked me would I take part in this and without giving it much thought I said, “Oh yes I’ll be in it.”

Afterwards I thought, “Why did I let myself in for that?”

I beg your pardon?

Oh no I’ve enjoyed it really, I have enjoyed it it’s nice now and again to talk about some of these things. Even when we’re together, some of my crew

we don’t talk about it really, just enjoy being together like friends. But occasionally something, for some reason we talk about some incident, do you remember this or do you remember so and so? It happens now and again, talk quite freely about it.

Well I

was always a pretty easy going sort of chap but I think if anything it’s tended to make me more feeling towards the misfortunes of other people, which I don’t think I thought very much about before. But of course I was younger then, whereas the war experience that’s caused me to be a bit

more observant and compassionate about things like that, or whether it would have happened anyhow, I don’t really know. So I don’t think it’s possible to give a positive answer to that question. But I do think it tended to make me a bit more thoughtful about other people. Like old Chris for example, he’s a bloody pest but I still feel compassionate

and don’t want to be cruel to him.

Sheer luck, well oh we did contribute to it ourselves, well we had a wonderful aircraft and a wonderful pilot and we were a well trained

disciplined, competent crew and I’d say faith and courage kept us going, we just didn’t give in. There’s lots and lots of cases where various members of aircrew simply bailed out as soon as they got hit with something and the rest of the crew

just kept going and survived. But we didn’t, faith and courage we just kept going. And we were very lucky, we were incredibly lucky. But even though the plane was so badly damaged the engines were still going and the mechanical controls were still workable, that was tremendous luck.

A fighter not seeing us was tremendous luck, finding that airfield was tremendous luck, but we made it possible I think for luck to help us and be the deciding factor. That’s in answer to your question.

If I had a what?

Well I would say in times of trouble or hardship, have faith and press on with what you believe to be

the best thing to do.