Chapter Twelve

In late autumn we heard that some of our former course mates were operating in Halifaxes. They had done a conversion course first on Wellingtons and then on to Hallies. Bomber Command had set up a new training gunnery station centre at Skellingthorpe, Lincolnshire, which was really something. Apparently someone had awakened to the fact that sending half-baked gunners out with well-trained crews was a costly business. This, after almost three years of war!

Despite this advantage, both in training and planes, news of casualties started to come in of RAF crews battling into Germany in rapidly worsening weather conditions.

We got five days leave every six weeks. At the end of this period three crews were granted leave, including Hally, Blondie, Smithy, Kiwi and myself. Because our crew were English they all made for their families. We decided to go up to London.

There we ran into Bourke who told us ten of the gunners had completed a conversion course from Wellingtons to Halifaxes at Lichfield and were now on operations. Pascoe, Poast and Driscoll were already posted missing, presumed dead; all going in their first three ops. Due to a false alarm on a social disease scare Bourke had not yet entered the fray but said that in the last month of the training course, thirteen planes had been lost. He blamed this on the worn-out training Wimpys and poor flying conditions. ‘I tell you,’ he added seriously, ‘it’s as bad as ops.’

‘Like bloody hell it is,’ said Kiwi. ‘We fly into Germany on those same worn-out Wimpys. You wait till you get on ops, boy, then you’ll know the difference.’

One interesting bit of information was that Clarkey’s crew had been amongst one of the lost training planes. They had run into a mountain top, the rear turret had broken off and, although the rest of the crew had been burnt to death, he had been miraculously saved because his turret had rolled away from the fire. Strangely enough he had suffered nothing worse than bruises which, however, gave him a good excuse for a neurosis and he was now off ops and recuperating at some hospital.

Bourke told us he had not regretted missing our special posting as they were doing intensive training and he felt they would be immeasurably better prepared than we had been.

That night, Bourke, Kiwi and myself started off with the intention of seeing a show but ended up in the inevitable pub. Later Kiwi attached himself to a brunette and disappeared into the night with the information that he would see us later. Somewhere along the line Bourke and I picked up two females. One was a little Cockney, the other a well-developed Lancashire lass. The Cockney went for Bourke, whilst the well-developed female, who was as tall as myself, found an accord with me. By the time the pubs closed we had come to a suitable arrangement. My partner stated that she wasn’t going to have a knee-trembler or a do in the park, but if we liked to get a room it was on. She added she could take us to a place where such arrangements could be made.

A cab took us to a tenement-packed street. A greasy proprietor answered the door and offered no objections when we said we’d missed the last train, and could he put us and our wives up for the night.

The rooms were the usual lodging-house type with a rickety double bed, dressing table and wardrobe. Some doubts assailed me when I looked at Mary, the little Cockney, standing beside Bourke with an artificial coyness. She was, I decided, in for a surprise.

My partner was unashamedly keen. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get cracking. I’ve got to start work at 6.30 am.’

In the morning we made arrangements to meet the girls again that night, but during the afternoon ran into Hally, Blondie and Happy at the Boomerang Club. They told us that Martin and Sherwin, with their crews, had been posted missing the night after we’d left. This cast a gloom over the party, and when the pubs opened we started a session in which we finally forgot all about the girls. Later in the night, Bourke remembered our appointment, but it was too late to do anything about it. ‘To tell the truth,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t care less. In fact, I must be getting as old as I feel. I’m not as interested in women as I used to be.’

‘Neither am I,’ said Hally. ‘They must be putting something in the food.’

This brought up the serviceman’s pet subject that the food was doctored.

‘That’s all bullsh,’ said Happy. ‘It’s just that you’re so occupied keeping alive you haven’t got any thoughts for sex.’

‘I still reckon they put bromide in our food,’ Blondie declared.

***

We arrived back at the station the next day at 5.30 pm. As soon as we reported to the guard we were told we were wanted at flight.

‘What the hell do they want us for?’, demanded Kiwi.

Our crew were already there when we arrived.

‘What’s the panic?’, I asked.

‘We’re on tonight,’ said Snowden. ‘We were afraid you two mightn’t get back on time. You’d better hurry up and get into your battle jackets.’

‘But we weren’t due back until 5.30,’ Kiwi stated. ‘What clot’s put us on the battle order anyway?’

The pilot and observer exchanged glances. We thus learnt the Wingco had us set. It was not usual for crews to go on battle order after they’d just returned from leave, mainly because they wouldn’t be very bright.

Williams expressed some doubts as to whether Wingco’s parents had ever been married. It didn’t alter the fact that we had to spring off our tails as briefing was in thirty minutes.

The target was Hamburg. As we flew out over the darkening countryside with that feeling of loneliness and fear I pondered Happy’s words in London – we were certainly preoccupied with the thought of keeping alive. ‘How long,’ I wondered, ‘could we keep going?’ It was bad enough fighting in these antiquated, worn-out bombers, but to have a hostile station-commander made it worse.

***

Next day we learned the squadron was to be equipped with a new type of bomb. Previously our load had been made up of 1,000 pounders. This new dealer of destruction was a huge 4,000 pounder called a ‘cookie’. It looked like an oversized 44-gallon drum and we noticed the armourers treated it with the utmost respect. It was a horrible-looking piece of ironmongery. In the afternoon the entire squadron was treated to a special lecture on the care and handling of this newcomer. When we learned that we were under no circumstances to land with it, we liked it even less. The reason for this instruction and the unreliability of this monster were indicated a few nights later when a plane carrying one blew up with a mighty roar before it even left the runway.

The terrific blast blew in windows and made a tremendous hole in the ground, but what really shook us was the rain of shrapnel, pieces of plane and other debris that were scattered over the entire squadron. Next day bits of human anatomy were found spread over an amazingly wide area. One of the boys found a thumb sticking upwards in a little shrub near one of the huts. It was a ghastly gesture. Inspection of this gruesome war souvenir provoked some macabre jokes till it was appropriated by the orderlies who were picking up pieces suitable for burial.

This illustration of the unhealthy reaction of this bomb added immeasurably to the fears of take-off. While I flew with these ‘cookies’ rumbling under us, that thirty-second run till we lifted off the runway seemed an eternity.1

***

With the passing of the short autumn, freezing winds blew from the North Sea across the flat countryside. The days shortened, the nights lengthened and though we had thought it cold before, we now came to realise just what cold was. To combat this new enemy we were issued with silken padded flying-suits which were donned over every possible piece of warm clothing we could lay our hands on. What the well-dressed gunner wore during this period was a thick woollen singlet, long woollen underpants, commonly known as passion killers, one or two outsized woollen sweaters and battle dress. All this was then covered by a silken padded flying suit. Our fleecy-lined boots and a pair of silken-lined gloves completed the outfit so that even Happy, with his skinny frame, looked like a fat waddling penguin. With all this flying finery aircrew, particularly the gunners, still froze. With the coming of early frosts and the first snows, we grew to dread the cold as much as the flak and fighters.

As winter progressed, flying conditions over Germany deteriorated in exact ratio – to the multitudinous dangers of operational life were added new ones: sleet, snow, and wing icing. It was rare to get good weather over targets. The met forecasts were rarely right. We afterwards found that each Group was likely to issue a different forecast as the RAF had not yet learnt to synchronise meteorological reports. Because of this, bombing became mostly a matter of guesswork. In addition, the Germans, with their colossal capacity for guile and camouflage, built satellite towns away from their cities and ‘defended’ these imitations with searchlights and flak and, as the bombers came droning in on the cold night air, set tremendous oil fires burning. Is it any wonder that young, inexperienced crews and even old ones, seeing the glow of fires through the cloud and fog, bombed those apparent signs of an important centre and, after battling back to their stations with a steady loss of planes and air crew, were berated next day by their station commander for poor bombing results?

The Germans were later found to have completely covered – with boards, imitation grass and trees – a lake that had previously acted as an indicator for one of their main towns. They then built an exact replica some forty miles farther east, so that bombing crews, when they used this imitation as a marker, were forty miles out in their calculations.

One remarkable feature of this aerial warfare was that we saw no bloodshed, corpses or other evidence of war. Now and then a plane would return badly shot up with some of its crew either wounded or dead. On such occasions corpses and wounded were quickly whisked away and evidence of their passing erased, as such sights were considered bad for morale.

One morning a Wellington returned with a dead rear gunner. He had taken an explosive cannon shell in his chest and from the waist up had been literally blown to pieces. When the facts became known the plane exercised a morbid fascination for air crew, particularly the gunners, and most made their way out to view the grisly scene. When Kiwi and I got there, the erks were trying to remove the evidence of the fellow’s passing with scrubbing brushes and hose. This, I think, is how the story about hosing gunners out of their turrets originated. It was the only way to remove the blood and guts splattered in the confined space.

After a while, damaged planes and battered turrets lost their interest unless you were closely connected with the dead or wounded airmen. Generally a crew would just disappear out of the mess, so that if three planes were lost and the crews were sergeants, as most of them were, eighteen persons whom you either knew to speak to or by sight, didn’t show up any more.

On the other hand, when we returned safely from a flight we wanted for nothing. We slept in good beds, food was good and you could drink when you liked. I never heard of an airman being charged with drunkenness. In addition we had nearly every amenity we could ask for. Cigarettes were plentiful. We received regular parcels from home. Feminine company was there for the asking. On an active squadron bullsh was cut to a minimum, there was no saluting and we had few parades. As Hally said, ‘This is a bloody good life, all you’ve got to do is stay alive to enjoy it.’

As time progressed our operations gradually increased. In our log books appeared such names as Essen, Kiel, Duisburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Nuremberg.2 Every entry was a memory of nerve-racking take-offs with the unpredictable cookie and fear that could raise a cold sweat despite the freezing conditions; the concentration of watching and searching for the black shadow, darker than night itself, that would mean annihilation and flaming death; the searching cones of the searchlights; flak that jolted, rattled and shook the plane; the interminable battle to gain height; the frightening Guy Fawkes displays over every target; the dragging trip back with prevailing westerly winds seeking to retard the plane as its crew members urged it home; the struggle after leaving the target to keep tiredness at bay and keep a high standard of concentration; fear of the vengeful fighters, directed by instruments and radar, that roamed the skies to bring down in flames the bombers that so arrogantly rode the German skies in direct contradiction of Goerings’ boastful words that ‘no bombs would ever fall on German soil’.3

In late November we had our first snow – the first sighting for most of the Australians. For a while we revelled in it. Then the novelty wore off and we cursed the damn stuff as we slipped and slithered in the slush around the station.

At the same time icy gales blew in from the North Sea and the crews looked with dread and fear at this hundred-mile water hazard. It was said that any unfortunates unlucky enough to bail out over it had fifteen seconds to divest themselves of their harness and inflate their rubber dinghies when they hit the water. After that they would be paralysed by cold. From the tales we heard of survivors who performed this seemingly impossible feat and were rescued frozen and frostbitten after drifting around for days, it was considered by some better to take it easy for those initial seconds and accept the kinder fate of freezing to death immediately. However, my guess was that every man would battle valiantly till overcome by the numbing cold.

In December 1941, the crushing news of Japan’s entry into the war sent a wave of unrest through the Australians and New Zealanders on the squadron. At the end of the first week a strong rumour developed that we were to be returned home. This persisted and to counter its unsettling effect, an official announcement was made that bomber crews would remain in England.

Christmas 1941 was, for the Australians, the most miserable ever. The disquieting news of Japanese progress, the poor bombing results, the heavy losses in men and planes, and the appalling weather all contributed to create a feeling of gloom, frustration and defeat, a conviction that we were on the losing side and that on the law of averages it would be completely impossible to survive thirty operations. By the New Year we had completed fifteen ops, which was half-way and were looked upon as a veteran crew.

About this time, two incidents connected with crew members occurred which did not help to lift the morale. The first concerned Maxie, a little Cockney WAG whose white, peaked face and skinny frame were the result of malnutrition from Depression days, for it appears that from the age of ten to fifteen he had existed mainly on bread and dripping.

Despite the fact that he always had a prodigious appetite and ate at a breakneck speed Maxie remained as pale and as skinny as ever. He was an inoffensive, quiet little fellow who should never have gone to war, and we noticed as the ops increased, a nervous little mannerism that developed, a kind of involuntary fluttering of the muscles on the right side of his face.

Men got rid of their tensions in various ways; some drank, others became cantankerous, some brawled, but Maxie seemed to have no outlet for his emotional stress except this continuous nervous twitching of his facial muscles. There was speculation as to how long he would last.

After a particularly tough op his plane was badly shot up by a fighter and the rear gunner killed. He had been instructed to go down and take over the dead gunner’s place. We could readily imagine Maxie’s nerve-racking journey down the catwalk after the tension of the fighter’s attack. It appears, as he released the catch and groped in the darkness to remove the dead man, his hands had met a horrible ghastly mass of blood, guts and flesh. Despite the shock and horror of his find he had dragged the smashed remains back into the plane and crawled into the reeking battered turret and for three hours had taken over the dead man’s duties.

We never discovered what transpired after they had landed but he had acted quite normally at interrogation. The first indication anything was wrong was while we were having our meal and Maxie came into the dining-room.

Blondie, who was sitting beside me facing the door, exclaimed, ‘Christ, have a look at this joker. He looks as though he’s seen a ghost.’

Suddenly he came over to our table, slumped into a seat and, clutching his head in his hands, began to rock backwards and forwards, uttering a high-pitched cry intermingled with some gibberish.

We had never seen a man’s nerves break before. For a moment there was a shocked silence. Hally was the first to recover. ‘He’s broken down,’ he declared. ‘The poor bastard’s nuts.’

With some difficulty, Hally, Blondie and myself got him out into the open air, but despite our efforts to calm him he became more hysterical and distracted.

‘Better get him to the Doc,’ Blondie advised. ‘I think this bloke has had it.’

After some delay we got a wagon and carted Maxie down to sick bay. Except for routine inspections we had never had much to do with the medical officer, who was a supercilious young Englishman with an Oxford accent. He came into the room, looked at our broken patient and said, ‘Well?’

‘This man’s nerves have completely gone,’ said Hally. ‘He’s broken down.’

‘Broken down!’, mocked the medico. Then, moving across, he jerked the twisting face upwards. ‘I think he’s putting on an act.’

‘Putting on an act?’, we exclaimed incredulously, in unison.

‘Or perhaps a slight attack of hysterics,’ he replied, and slapped his patient’s face with two stunning backhanders.

Hearing the explosive expelling of Hally’s breath and reading the baleful message in three pairs of eyes, I think the medico realised how close he was to being flattened. He moved smartly to the door and called his orderlies. ‘Take this man away,’ he ordered. Then, turning to us he added maliciously, in his affected, bored voice; ‘The man’s an obvious malingerer. If he persists with this ridiculous behaviour I will charge him with LMF.’

We never heard what happened to poor little Maxie. We hoped that, when he got away from our half-baked medico he fell into more sympathetic hands and received proper attention.

The action of the doctor bore out the contention of most aircrews that operational squadrons were staffed by young doctors who were generally just out of University. They naturally mixed with and swallowed the doctrines of their superiors so that if a CO was a bastard so was the MO.

The complete anomaly and blatant injustice with regard to cowardice amongst aircrew was that whilst a sergeant or W/O could be charged with LMF, this label could not be tagged on to an officer.4

We had an instance of a flying officer pilot who had done a tour on Blenheims and was on his second tour with our squadron. The pilot, on four separate occasions, gave non-existent technical reasons why he could not take off, all of which were exploded by the mechanics. He was finally taken off ops and classified as unfit for flying duties. We contended there was no difference between this case and that of little Maxie.

The second occurrence was just after Maxie’s departure. A most unusual gunner was posted to the squadron. He was an elongated beanstalk over six feet tall and thin as a match. His pallid, freckled face was surrounded by a carroty thatch. How the hell they came to make him a gunner we never knew and how he fitted his long frame into the confined space of the rear turret was anyone’s guess.

This poor devil, in spite of his fiery hair, was obviously not a fighting man and showed all the outward signs of mental upset before he had ever done one operation. The day after his crew had done their pamphlet run he vomited continuously and was such a case of nervous tension that Hally and Blondie unsuccessfully tried to get him to see the MO.

Blondie said, ‘You can’t blame the poor bastard for not reporting to sick bay, particularly with a MO like that.’

On his crew’s first op we were on the same battle order and I sat beside him at the meal table and noticed that he did not eat anything. On the way to briefing Kiwi and I walked with him and tried to get the message across that the real thing wasn’t as bad as it was rumoured to be. ‘All you’ve got to do is keep your eyes open,’ we advised.

Getting out of the bus, Kiwi said, ‘Jesus, that poor bugger’s got the breeze up. Anyone would think he’s going before a firing squad.’

We had a reasonable trip and in between worrying about flak, searchlights and fighters, I kept wondering how he was going. On our arrival back we were greeted with the astonishing news that he had bailed out before crossing the English coast. His skipper had made a routine check just before he left England and, receiving no reply from his rear gunner, sent the WOP to see what was wrong. The WOP returned to report that they had no rear gunner.

Naturally, the plane had to return and the Wingco made no secret of the fact that the proper authorities had been alerted and that the deserter was as good as dead.

Next day he made a short announcement that the errant gunner had been picked up early that morning, had been court-martialled and shot within twelve hours. He made this statement with a kind of relish, as though to warn others who might have similar thoughts.

For many days we discussed the attitude of this man who had the guts to bail out in the dark over an area of treacherous tidal flats and quicksand, in the sure knowledge that if he escaped one of these, when he was caught, which was a certainty, he would be shot.