Chapter Seventeen

A cold wind was blowing from the North Sea and an icy drizzle was slanting across the aerodrome the day we left. As we drove through the gates Hally, Blondie, Smithy and I sang, ‘Fugg ’em All’, with fervour.

To get to our new drome entailed a five mile bus trip, a twenty-five mile train journey and then another six mile trip in a station wagon. This took five hours. Because there were no pubs near either station it was a cold and somewhat testy quartet that arrived at Beltwell.1 We bucked up, however, when we saw the solid and imposing buildings that comprised the station.

The sergeant’s mess was almost as imposing as the one at Group Headquarters, and we weren’t surprised to hear this was a permanent station, and one of the best equipped in England.

We learned that the bulk of the squadron members had already arrived, so that all the rooms in the mess block were taken. The mess sergeant explained we could go into dormitories close by or take rooms in the double-storied cottages that had once housed pre-war permanent married couples, the disadvantage being the ten minute walk from the mess. Further enquiries revealed the disappointing fact that there were no femmes in married quarters.

Hally gave us a wink and intimated it would be a good idea if we looked them over. The more we saw of the station the better we liked it – bitumen roads, concrete paths, solid brick buildings – all gave the air of a well-laid out town. The ‘married quarters’ were a neat line of perhaps twenty cottages, all looking very much the same in design and very English. The bottom floor consisted of what was presumably a dining-sitting room and a kitchen, the top a large room which would have been a bedroom. Each room had a grate although all evidence of the kitchen had been removed. Both top and bottom rooms were equipped with sink and hot water.

We looked at each other and Hally said, ‘Married quarters, eh! Tell you what, we’ll try to get two of these. There may be a time when one or even two may wish to entertain a prospective wife alone.’ He walloped Smithy on the back with a ham-sized hand.

As we sped back to the mess, Blondie said, ‘Now, if we have any trouble we’ll slip the Pom a couple of quid. They’re as poor as church mice. Give me ten bob each.’

‘Don’t offer it all at once.’

The sergeant listened impassively to our protestations that each could not sleep with the other due to snoring, screaming and other less polite demeanours. ‘The instructions,’ he said firmly, ‘are four to a cottage.’

Blondie said, ‘But Sarge, our nerves are all shot to pieces. We’ve just completed a tour on Wimps. Here,’ passing over a fiddly, ‘be a good sport and help us.’

The Sarge wasn’t too certain; after all, orders were orders. After further persuasion the second fiddly was passed over and the deal settled. ‘Mind you,’ he warned, ‘should the accommodation position be grave, this arrangement will have to be changed. And make sure you keep some clothes in each room,’ he said with a wink.

During our stay there we kept in his good graces and, as was usual with the RAF, once a place was shown as occupied, no-one worried.

Our arrangements were that Hally and Blondie took over one cottage and Smithy and I the other. We slept in the top room and used the bottom as a lounge-cum-bedroom, the advantage being if one had a prospect the other could retire to bed upstairs. If, say, Hally and Smithy had appointments and wanted to put on a little show, we would turn one of the cottages over to them and their visitors, ourselves retiring to the other. These turned out to be excellent arrangements and I never knew a cross word or lack of co-operation on anyone’s part while we were there.

The completion of these matters left us with a holiday feeling. ‘I’m going to like this joint,’ Blondie remarked. ‘I like the look of the mess and quarters, but what I like most is being off those bloody Wimpys.’

That evening when we went over to the mess, we were surprised to find Tom Hedge, one of the original thirty-two gunners, sitting in the lounge. In reply to our enquiries he said his crew had crashed on their return from their first op. Two had been killed and he had spent five months in hospital. He further reported Jimmy Sullivan, the ex-naval type, was on the squadron. Jim had been shoved into a training school but had kicked so hard he had been transferred to Beltwell. Tempe and most of the other gunners were dead, Tempe going on his twentieth operation. He had won fame by showing his complete disregard for superstition and air force instruction by flying on his thirteenth sortie without a parachute.

As far as he knew, only nine of the original thirty-two were left. Of these, Bourke had had a leg blown off. Whether it was the left, right or centre leg, no-one knew. Hally said there was only one like it in captivity and such a catastrophe was liable to throw at least a third of the femmes in England into mourning!

We found the planes were Venturas, two-engined jobs, an improved version of the Hudson, with a crew of four; pilot, navigator, WAG and straight gunner.2

The set-up of the mess building could only be described as magnificent. The reading-lounge room was better than Boomerang House. The bar had a quiet dignity. Efficient stewards flitted to and fro attending to our needs. I could not help thinking of that night at Group Headquarters. We sat up well into the night, talking of old friends, dead and alive.

Next day we went over to the hangars. These were massive, solid brick permanent buildings. Inspecting one of the bombers being repaired, it looked about half the size of a Wimpy, with a heavy underslung body and a mid-upper turret midway between the nose and tail.

Smithy summed them up; ‘Looks like a pregnant Hudson to me.’

We had a look through one. There appeared to be bags of room. Armament was four .5s in front, two .303s in the top turret, with two guns pointing downwards from the tail. This one had us tricked until one of the erks explained, ‘The WAG uses it when he’s not otherwise engaged.’

During the day two flying officers, one a tall navigator, the other a shorter, pleasant-looking pilot, introduced themselves as Jack Parr and Wilbur Cronin. They mentioned that they were looking for a gunner; would I be interested?

I had decided to shop around before I picked my crew as ninety per cent of this squadron were sprogs and I didn’t feel like going through those critical five ops again.

Yet somehow I liked the look of these two and all my prearranged plans of hand-picking a crew went astray. Instead of asking, ‘How many ops have you done?’, I found myself asking, ‘What are the Venturas like?’

‘They seem to be okay,’ said Wilbur. ‘Handle very well.’

‘What’s their endurance?’

‘About five hours full up.’

‘Can’t be going to use us on any German do’s then. Sounds like occupied Europe stuff.’

‘Believe you’ve done a few ops,’ said Jack.

‘Twenty-two,’ I replied. ‘We lost three of the crew on the last one, including both pilots.’

They looked at me doubtfully. ‘Both pilots!’, they exclaimed incredulously.

‘Yes,’ I replied nonchalantly, ‘one died later in hospital. Pretty grim show.’

Then, for a period, the bomber star was in the ascendant. We did not lose a trick in letting all concerned know we had been through the mill.

Later I met our WAG, a hearty Australian officer called Bill Fogg, an open-faced, bubbling, enthusiastic type.

Smithy said later; ‘You’ve got a pretty posh crew, haven’t you? All officers. You’re the only bugger who’s done any ops.’

‘They seem all right,’ I replied. ‘In fact, we’re doing a flip early in the morning. The keener they are the better I like it.’ I added lamely; ‘I was going to hand-pick my crew, but they all appear to be sprogs and the few experienced ones are tied up.’

We struck an immediate accord. Jack in civvy life was a barrister, Wilbur a BA and Maths teacher from Tasmania. Bill was an ex-Melbournite, an enthusiastic WAG, genuinely interested in wireless.

Next morning we went up for a spin. I liked the way Wilbur handled the Vent. We took off smoothly, went for a half-hour stooge and landed without a jar. The mid-upper turret, I found, had two .303 Brownings and rotated a full 360 degrees. Cut-out solenoids obviated the possibility of blowing the observer’s head off as he looked out the astro hatch or of slicing off the twin tail-rudders.

That night the four old gunners were guarded in their comments as to the value of our new planes. From all aspects they seemed to be a backward step; endurance was only half the outmoded Wimpy; they could carry only two thousand-pound bombs or four five-hundred-pounders; top speed was in the vicinity of two hundred and seventy miles per hour, without a bomb-load. We speculated on what they were to be used for. Germany appeared to be out; perhaps Holland and occupied France.

In the next few days the rest of the boys joined crews; Smithy found a balding, quiet Australian pilot, Hally a slight, boyish-looking Queenslander who we were amazed to find was not only married but the proud father of twins whom he had never seen as they were born after he left Australia. Blondie teamed up with a Canadian called Parker, a slow drawling type with a smooth, bland face.

We all seemed happy with our choices. When I asked Hally why he had picked such an unlikely warrior, he said, ‘Well, the poor little bastard wants a good gunner to look after him.’

We found the squadron, supposedly an Australian one, was only fifty per cent Aussie, the balance consisting of Canadians and Englishmen, with the odd New Zealander.

On the second day we found to our astonishment that an almost one hundred per cent Kiwi squadron was also housed on the drome. Such was the size of the place, they were installed in completely separate quarters. These boys were the best behaved crowd I’d ever seen. We frequently met them in our travels and the only thing that happened was a polite passing of the day. Blondie said one day, ‘Surely these blokes don’t come from the same place as Kiwi did – they’re the politest lot of bastards I’ve ever met.’3

In addition to the six bomber gunners, we found fifteen Australian straight AGs who, like ourselves, had come direct from Stormy Downs Gunnery School without undergoing any conversion course. The same old racket had been practised on them; a promise that the first fifteen would go straight onto a squadron. They all had from six to ten hours flying up so it looked as though things hadn’t improved much in gunnery training.

The Groupy was a permanent officer of the RAF, the Wingco a handsome blonde six-footer, an Englishman and a damn nice fellow. The officers, I would say, were hand-picked. Perhaps by this time it was agreed that Australians were difficult to deal with; they could be led, not driven. The squadron leaders were all good types; even our gunnery leader, a thin aesthetic young fellow with a DFM won in France on Defiants, was OK.4

He had his work cut out with the gunners under his charge. Most had had very little training and many of these young fellows couldn’t’ve cared less. There was the usual smattering of complete dills. It was the old story over again of highly trained crews with uninterested untrained gunners.

After we had been on the place a week, we were sent across to the Group Training School. Because we knew from hard experience the unhealthiness of going out half-equipped against a well-trained deadly foe, we tried to instil into these young fellows the necessity of cramming every possible piece of knowledge into their heads. However, possibly because the first awe was already wearing off, our advice was treated with scant respect. In fact, they had already got to the stage where they felt we were line-shooting.

The bulk of these young fellows, we found, were aircrew who had been classified as WAGs and either couldn’t do Morse or couldn’t be bothered to learn. Counterparts of the original thirty-two, there was a percentage of wild men who had never attempted to learn anything and had inevitably gone off course and who couldn’t have cared less; a middle group who had had a go and finally thrown in the sponge at the tediousness of a WAG’s life; and finally the group of serious young fellows who had tried hard to complete the course but, because of their inability to take Morse and absorb the intricacies of the radio world, had finally had to drop to the lowly position of air gunner. They felt their position keenly and even now hoped for transfers to navigation schools with the remote possibility of becoming pilots.

Our statements that we had been drafted straight from Winter’s as gunners and were not refugees from a WAG course were greeted with polite scepticism or outright disbelief. This was brought to a head one day by Hally declaring to an unbeliever; ‘Call me a bloody liar, do you? Want to make something of it, hey?’ The fellow hastily declined; henceforth any scepticism disappeared underground.

With the passing of time, the squadron gradually wore into shape and it was us who were finally absorbed into the squadron, rather in the fashion of the way the Chinese absorb their conquerors. This transition was not carried out without some upheavals.

One day at flight I was telling of how I had been rebuffed by two fighter pilots in a London pub. In the group was a sprog Aussie gunner called Ian Potter. This fellow was an angular whipcord type with a lantern jaw, a pasty complexion and was noted for his outspoken comments.

‘Of course there’s class distinction in the RAAF,’ he said. ‘The fighter pilot thinks his shit doesn’t stink and won’t speak to anyone below a bomber pilot, the navigators think they’re Christ Almighty. Even WAGs think they’re a class above the gunner and you bastards, because you’ve done a few ops, think you’re a class above us.’

There was silence for a while, then I heard Hally growl; but as the remarks had been addressed to me, I said, ‘What do you bloody-well mean?’

‘I mean,’ said Potter, ‘you bomber gunners give me a bloody pain. All we hear is “in bombers we do this, in bombers we do that”. It’s about time you woke up to yourselves and realised you’re not the little tin gods you think you are.’

These were fighting words. Blondie said, ‘I’ll take this bastard.’

‘No, you won’t,’ I said, ‘he’s mine.’

We streamed over to the back of a hangar. Even though I was no champ, I was pretty confident of victory. When I was around 18–20 years-old I’d had a crack at the NSW Amateur Championships, and by the simple expedient of training like hell and dieting, I had been able to get my weight down under the light welter limit of 10 stone for the weighing-in. Once this was accomplished you had no further worry regarding weight, as under amateur rules you did not then have to weigh-in before each bout. This meant I fought at about 10–5, 10–6, which was the full welter division.5 Despite this advantage, I was never able to get further than the last eight, and in getting this far copped some good hidings. Whether there were a lot of other bushy-tails like myself I never knew, but after my second effort and a super pasting from the eventual champion, I came to the conclusion I was no world-beater.

During the Depression, while working with a shearing team, I had palled up with a professional pug and had worked out with him. He had prevailed on me to have a go in the professional sphere on the Inverell circuit. Probably like every pug I had dreamed my dreams of some day being champion.

I had done all right while I stopped with the mugs in the four- to six-rounders. Ambition and bad advice had pushed me into the 10’s. The blokes who got this far were no mugs, but generally cagey ambitious fighters. Two beatings in this class was finally climaxed by the father of all hidings handed out by a little Aborigine, all of 5' 3" tall and weighing 8 stone 6 and a half pounds.

Little was I to know that this tough little scrapper was, in twelve month’s time, to be bantam and featherweight champion of Australia. At the time, however, it was a blow to my ego and I thought, ‘If I cop a hiding from this little joker, what will happen if I meet someone good in my own weight division?’

In the nine fights and six months I was in the professional ranks, I learnt more about training and fighting than I would have in a lifetime, as an amateur.

In my wanderings I had learned the average untrained bloke was soft in the belly, and the quickest way to stop a bush or city lair was to move in and hit him with everything you had, in the guts. This would generally bring his guard down and his head forward, so you could crack him on the jaw, then belt him in the belly again. These three punches won nine out of ten fights against average mugs.

If he came up after these three wallops, you still had the advantage. Most street fighters are suckers for a straight left. If he absorbed these, you could keep away and let him punch air; this will slow most fighters to a walk in no time. If he was still around after all this, you knew you had a bloody good fight on your hands.

On this occasion, I could see no reason why these tactics should fail with Potter. In addition, I had a good two-and-a-half-inch advantage in height and at least half a stone in weight. Things worked perfectly. I threw the left, crashed the right and then nearly broke my knuckles on my opponent’s outsized jaw. From here on, however, things didn’t go to plan, for in the next five seconds I was hit with a conglomeration of punches that seemed to come from so many angles I thought for a moment I was fighting half a dozen men.

It’s hard to say what makes a fighter but one attribute must be a fighting heart and that’s what this bloke had in large lumps. Fighting experience pulled me out of trouble over the next minute and I attempted to hold him off with straight lefts while I collected my scattered senses.

My lefts bounced off Potter’s chin like peas off a brick wall, then he bored in, arms flailing. I hit him half a dozen times with my best Sunday punches,6 but they had no effect. He threw so many punches he was hitting me six to one. I thought, ‘I’ll need an axe to stop this bugger.’ I decided I was going to cop a hiding anyway, so I tried to match him punch for punch. A minute of this slugging had me buggered. I thought, ‘I’ve had it’, when a cold authoritative voice said, ‘What’s going on here?’

It was the Wingco. He looked at the dishevelled fighters, then at the silent gallery for a full minute, then said; ‘You two men get dressed and report to my office immediately.’

Our interview was short and to the point. ‘I don’t care what you two were fighting about,’ he stated, ‘the main thing is I don’t want to catch either of you two, or anyone else, fighting again, or believe me, you will be sorry. Now shake hands and forget about it.’

We shook hands, saluted and went out. Outside we looked sheepishly at each other. Potter said, ‘I guess it was my fault. How about shaking hands again?’ We did this and walked back to the flight.

If the boys thought there was going to be animosity and a return bout, they were disappointed. Hally and Blondie pulled me aside and asked, ‘What was wrong with you? He was all over you like a rash.’

‘There was only one reason,’ I replied, ‘why I didn’t do him over.’

‘What?’, they asked.

‘He was too bloody good.’