Chapter Twenty-eight

That morning we collected our officer’s kit, which included two pairs of shoes and a new issue of underwear. New battle jackets were also included, but as the store only had a grey English issue we stuck to our blue until new ones could be forwarded from London. Resplendent in our new uniforms we officially entered the officers’ mess for the first time. Previously, because of the uncertainty of our position, we had only eaten in the dining hall and discreetly adjourned to the local inns for beverage.

This transition from sergeant to officer was pleasant and interesting. The difference in service and cuisine was roughly that of a first and second class hotel; there was an air of deference in the attentions of the barmen and waiters. Silver pint pots on the shelves; the murmur of well-bred voices raised in genteel discussion; all reminiscent of a well-run club. There were other niceties that had us both declaring we should have been in it long ago.

The squadron leader’s WAG, Des Holstead, a Londoner with a wide-mouthed grin, and his straight AG, Jack Stokes, a quiet, easy-going Canadian whom we had previously met at flight, joined us at the bar. In addition to being one-tour men, they were both gunnery leaders; that is, they had done the gunnery leader’s course – a sound idea, because if one was knocked out the other could take over. There’s no place better than a bar to get to know a man. We soon found we all shared a common bond of wanting to come out of this show alive.

They both showed keen interest in our previous experiences, particularly the fact that we had flown with Bomber Command. We gathered that they had a very high opinion of their pilot and observer. The squadron leader in particular, was considered not only a wonderful pilot but a jolly decent fellow. In civvy life he was a person of some standing in the community, being a gentleman farmer with large estates. His navigator had been doing engineering at Cambridge when war broke out. Later in the evening, because of our morning experiences, I casually asked what they thought of the CO. They looked at each other and laughed.

Jack said, ‘He’s a clot. You’ll see in a minute. He’ll be coming in with his retinue of bootlickers any moment. If you want to get anywhere on this station you have to crawl. He was a school teacher in civvy life and his service glory has gone to his head.’

‘That accounts for the lecture he handed out this morning,’ I said. Normally a Groupy would hand such ordinary matters over to a subordinate. At that moment, a noisy group of perhaps a dozen officers came into the bar. Like an Eastern potentate surrounded by fawning sycophants, the CO held pride of place. Outdoing them all in bootlicking was a small bloke who virtually raced around pandering to his superior’s every wish.

‘Who’s the little runt?’, Smithy asked.

‘That’s the MO,’ said Jack. ‘He outcrawls them all.’

‘Makes sense, too,’ I said. ‘The MO generally patterns himself on the CO. If one’s a bastard, so’s the other. How is our little crawling friend?’

Des said nothing but expressively held his nose and pulled an imaginary chain. Smithy said, ‘I notice the adj is mixed up with this mob. He seems a decent enough chap.’

‘That’s the shame of it,’ said Jack. ‘He’s a damn nice fellow and the CO treats him like a lackey. Keeps him running like the office boy. I understand he comes from a poor family. It gives the CO a kind of perverted mental kick to wipe his boots on him. And the adj is afraid to kick for fear he’ll get a bad report. Poor bugger, works himself to death doing extra work that the CO loads onto him.’

‘The disgusting thing,’ said Des, ‘is that the CO himself crawls to our skipper and navigator like nobody’s business because they have wealth and social position.’

‘That’s a laugh. And what do they do?’

‘They can’t stand a bloody bar of him. Still, it’s very handy for us as we often get special treatment because of our crew association.’

A few nights later Des asked us if we would like to go down to the local with them as it was crew night. Enquiry elicited the fact that their skipper entertained the two gunners and his ground staff crew twice a month. Hearing of our experience they had invited Smithy and me to join the party. He was a big man with a prominent hooked nose and grey, piercing eyes. He looked a leader. Of such a mould, I felt, must have been men such as Drake, Cook and Flinders who had gone out into strange lands and seas to leave their mark.

His navigator, though not such an imposing figure, was the picture of the upper-crust Englishman who, because of his class rating, had no need to be anything but himself.

It was an easy, informal little gathering where the erks were as much at home as the skipper. Both being experts and keen rivals, the chief mechanic and the squadron leader battled out their game of darts, the deciding game being won by Chiefy amongst much light-hearted banter.

Des said, ‘I’ll bet you a tanner Lord Muck turns up before the night’s out. He knows we’re here and will decide to do a bit of slumming. You wait and see.’

Sure enough, as the party was clicking merrily along, the CO, followed by the ever-attentive MO, the glum adj and a couple of hangers-on, came in. He came across to our group but baulked when he saw Smithy and me. He said a few words, eyed us sourly and repaired to a civilian group which Jack declared included the local squire and the bank manager.

Their skipper looked at us both and said, ‘You don’t seem to be too popular.’

I said, ‘No. We had a little upset a few days back.’

He laughed and said, ‘Yes, I heard about it.’

From there the talk moved to our previous experiences. He was the type of man who could make you feel as though he was interested in you, and I like to feel he was. Des said, ‘These boys have an idea on fighter control that seems good. I believe they used it on their previous squadron.’

We explained the clock system and the elimination of nautical terms in evasion patter. He evinced a genuine interest in this and asked his gunners what they thought of it. They both declared that it allowed for a more specific pin-pointing of the attack and that the terms right and left were more direct than port and starboard.

During the discussion, the CO sent the adj over asking the squadron leader to join his party, but he politely declined, indicating it was crew night.

***

Life in the officers’ mess was in direct contrast to that in the sergeants’ mess. In the latter you saw the top brass only at flight or at other odd places on the station. If you got full it was nobody’s concern but your own. In our new environment, however, you fell over the powers-that-be at every step. Getting full or boisterous behaviour was frowned on, the CO considering the inhabitants of the mess should act as officers and gentlemen. The result was the Australians, except for a few drinks before supper, did their drinking in the local hostelries. In this respect the drinking habits of Australians and Englishmen differed widely; the Aussies, because of their six’o’clock-swill habits from home, drank before they ate; while the English, because of saner drinking laws, ate first and then wanted to drink afterwards.

The hotels were completely different from the yokel-filled ones of Norfolk. Here, in this lovely tree-covered country, they matched their surroundings. In each hotel there were at least three separate entertainment rooms, one with a piano, one for games, and a quiet retreat where you could drink and carry on a conversation away from the distractions of the other two rooms.

In these parts the femme interest was also bright and varied. Besides WAAFs, there was the local talent, Land Army girls, nurses from a nearby hospital, and a variety of others. One interesting facet of our new positions was the attraction that the officers’ uniforms had for women. We found we had a ready entree to the company of females who would not have looked at us when we were sergeants. Few of them had a clue as to rank, and it was generally assumed that every commissioned officer flew a plane.

About this time three matters of internal interest claimed the attention of the squadron. One was the advent of the 1939–43 Star.

Fliers generally looked on this star with some contempt. It was awarded to all ranks, the only requirement being that you had been in some branch of the services in the European theatre between September 1939 and June 1943.

Aircrew felt the award of a Star for men completing a tour, with a bar for each additional tour, would have some merit, but we know of course the shiny-bums would not be in this as it would have sifted the fliers from the staff boys. Tommy the Kiwi said, ‘They’re like arseholes – everyone’s got one.’ We excluded the ground staff boys from the headquarters bludgers for, if anyone played a major part in winning the war, they did.

This Star was soon contemptuously referred to as ‘spam’, an ersatz and thoroughly disliked sausage and was unofficially banned by sixty per cent of aircrew, particularly the Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians. The only ones who put it up were the CO and his menagerie and some of the Poms who were used to following orders.

The CO got over this little problem by issuing an order that ribbons were to be attached as directed by a certain date. Anyone failing to comply with this direction would be confined to barracks, and so the red and blue star blossomed, as directed, on thirty or forty rebellious chests.

A few weeks later there was a funny sequel to this order. Smithy and I were up in London and ran into one of my former Sydney acquaintances who had just arrived in England, was not qualified to wear spam, but had obtained his commission in Australia. The three of us adjourned to a quiet hostelry to catch up on what was happening back home.

While we were quaffing beers, reminiscing and listening to what the Yanks were doing in Australia, a living example of English snobbery interjected. He was around the forty mark, wore the morning dress and spats of an English businessman, and spoke in clipped correct English.

He asked could we acquaint him as to what were the decorations we were wearing. Smithy, a hard-doer, took one look at him and said jocularly, ‘Don’t you know a VC when you see one?’

To our surprise he said, ‘Really? May I congratulate you two officers on winning this highest British award for valour and bravery. May I buy you drinks?’

Smithy and I looked at each other in surprise and I was just going to make an explanation when Smithy shoved his heel down on my toe and said, ‘I’m sure we’ll only be too pleased to accept.’

Our new acquaintance insisted on turning on Scotch, advised us he was a barrister from the Inns of Court and most unfortunately had been too young for the first war and too old for the second, but was helping the war effort by keeping his practice going while his partner, who was in a not so fortunate age-group, did his bit in the Middle East.

We intended breaking the news to him but he turned out to be such an insufferable prig the explanation was deferred, particularly when, on learning we were flying officers, he declared despite our AG insignias, fighter pilots were the cream of the air force, and naturally socially superior to the common bomber or other air force types.

After that, we really took him for a ride, allowing him to do the honours for the rest of the night.

One funny aspect of our forced deception was when five RAAF types came in, all wearing spams, but our host was such a dill he didn’t even notice them, although Smithy did an effective screening job. We often wondered what his reactions were when he got around to noticing the thousands of VC’s adorning nearly every serviceman in London.

***

The second incident was when the CO decided some of the officers didn’t measure up to his idea of officers and gentlemen, and to improve their manners and gentlemanly instincts, declared the first Tuesday of every month would be a full-dress dinner night, with all the trimmings.

The dinner edict met with just as much success as spam. The Groupy’s cronies turned up in force but the Dominion blokes and a proportion of English officers who couldn’t stand a bar of him stayed away. Finally the rebels were brought to heel by an order advising any officer absenting himself from the next mess dinner without reasonable excuse would be subject to disciplinary action. Everyone turned up for the next one, the rebels in self-defence, sitting together. These do’s were tedious formal gatherings, beset with bull and long-winded speeches, which lasted up to three hours.

There was an old English custom we hadn’t met before, and that was the passing of the port. At the end of the dinner the procedure was that the bottle or bottles were passed around and if you wanted some you helped yourself; if not, you passed it on. A rigid rule here was: the plonk must be passed from left to right.

To educate the ignorant newcomers, the initiates kept up a chant of ‘Pass the port from left to right.’ The Overseas, by unanimous assent, left the wine alone. Port, for my part, is one drink I could not stand, but these pseudo-English gentlemen seemed to consider they had to live up to the standards that gauged a man’s social standing on his ability to drink one, two or even three bottles of port.

Thus, these sessions after dinner often lasted an hour, while the drinkers consumed from twenty to thirty bottles and were exceedingly tedious to the abstainers.

One night the non-drinkers chanced upon a diversion from the normal routine that, for a while, added a little welcome variety. The bottle had passed Smithy when he suddenly changed his mind and decided he would have some, so the diner, some two or three removed on his right, obligingly passed it back.

The effect on the gathering was spontaneous. There was a shocked silence, then a crescendo of ‘Pass the port from left to right, left to right’. This change from the accepted practice so shook the gathering that Smithy declared, ‘Let’s try it again.’

From then on, every now and then, some ignoramus would belatedly change his mind after the port had passed till the Groupy, realising he was being taken for a ride, put an end to this little bit of fun by decreeing that the next man (not officer) that digressed from this hallowed English custom would miss out on his leave.

***

The third matter of interest was the coming of the Yanks. It was decided in higher places that we were to train four American crews a month in our low-level technique.

We found that with these crews the pilot and navigator were officers, the WOP and gunners were what was referred to as ‘enlisted men’, the officers presumably being volunteers, and that there was a deep class distinction between the two.

The two officers in each crew had a Jeep for their own personal use and, in addition, enjoyed rates of pay about four times higher than the Aussies and six above the Poms.

Two of the Yanks were domiciled in our hut. One was a tall, lean lantern-jawed Texan, the other an athletic six-footer from Carolina. We found these boys easy to get on with. Perhaps they had been well-briefed. Whatever it was, they refused to be drawn into these contentious issues, side-stepped arguments and proved such good fellows that they were soon accepted into the squadron. Soon, the blood of these newcomers was mingling with their instructors in occupied Europe.