Chapter Thirty-nine

During my absence from flying a drastic change had come over the operational sphere. Both TAF and Bomber Command had started the pre-invasion round-the-clock bombing of marshalling yards and other key points of the network or railways the Germans had at their command. The intent was if not to paralyse, at least to seriously impede the German’s ability to bring up troops and reinforcements when the invasion started.

Recognising these portents and in an endeavour to lessen its effect, the Nazi High Command had moved in army anti-aircraft units. These forces, unlike their civilian counterparts, were showing such unexpected accuracy it was decided they must be using some new direction-finding equipment.

The disquieting part of this new peril was that their first shots were usually bang on target; there was no warning. Also, they ranged on Number One, which meant the percentage of hits on box leaders was unusually high. After a while it was considered a highly dangerous occupation to fly with the leader. Having no desire to terminate my flying at this stage of the game, I chose my pilots where possible and evaded the One, Two and Three positions.

While there was slight fighter opposition, the RAF and Yanks dominated the skies. When enemy aircraft did break through their attacks were only half-hearted, proving either that the calibre of the pilots was poor or, what was more likely, they didn’t relish the combined fire power of twelve .5 guns spitting cannon shell at them. It was a long cry from the days when they brushed .303 fire aside like peas from a pea-shooter and pressed their attacks viciously right on our tails.

One occasion when I couldn’t miss out flying with a leader was when the CO asked me to fly with the Dutch Wingco. The squadron by this time were using OBOE, a radar system worked by two stations in England which sent out radar pulses. These pulses were received by the aircraft and sent back to the ground station. The navigator, using this equipment, tracked in on his target, following a defined path with dots on one side, dashes on the other. When the dots stopped he pressed the teat and bombed. In good or bad weather it was supposed to give a hit or miss error of fifty feet. Its use necessitated an extra bod who sat in the second pilot’s seat and industriously wound a handle which activated some part of the mechanism.

I had heard of some of the idiosyncrasies of this pilot. One was that he was completely contemptuous of danger, the other that as soon as he had cleared the enemy coast on the way back he put his aircraft on George, the automatic pilot, sat back and sucked a large meerschaum pipe. I found these things to be true. This flier was one of those people who had no nerves; coming onto the target, despite concentrated and accurate flak he flew straight and level for a good thirty seconds which, while securing a very accurate bombing pattern, was mighty hard on the nerves. Because he had a record of some hundred and forty ops I could only conclude he was very lucky.

One interesting fact I learnt about the Dutchies on this trip was that, unlike the RAF, they had no rest period after tours. A Dutch pilot was a trained navigator and the navigator a trained pilot, which must have made them the most efficient air force in the world. All they did after they had completed thirty ops was to swap places and do another tour. I never found out how they calculated their tours, but as I was finding it mighty hard work to get through three, I could only conclude they had not operated over Germany. Nevertheless, they were doing a mighty job, extremely co-operative, and were gentlemen of the first water.

An aftermath of this trip was that the Dutchies, who had taken over a large barn-like building and turned it into a mess, invited the Australian officers to a Bols night. For the uninitiated, Bols to the Dutch is what aqua vitae is to the Swedes, vodka to the Russians, beer to the Australians. There is only one true blue Bols and that is made in Holland and bottled in earthenware jars. To get the fair-dinkum product they flew a plane to Spain every two weeks for supplies. How they got over Franco’s peevishness with all things democratic I never knew. Perhaps by this time he had seen the writing on the wall and was more kindly disposed toward the Allies.

We never knew if our hosts put one over us. At the party they reckoned there was only one way to drink Bols: neat and fast! It was the nearest thing to firewater I ever drank; you could feel it burning right down to your kidneys. I didn’t wake till 4 pm next day then, as I went to get up, suffered such paralysing neck and head pains that I thought I had polio. It wasn’t till I found all the other Aussie imbibers were similarly smitten that I realised it was a Dutch hangover.

***

About this time a strong rumour came out of occupied Europe that Hitler had a fanatical force of some fifty thousand parachute troops who were to be dropped into the Southern Downs in suicide forays as soon as the Second Front began. The intention of these troops was to do as much damage as possible and fight to the death.

The High Command must have felt there was some truth in these reports because the tents were uprooted from their open paddock positions and replaced in woods. In addition, all flying crew were issued with .44 revolvers and twenty rounds of ammunition and some ground crew with tommy guns.

The only time any of us had seen a .44 was at the films when they appeared to be used with great accuracy and nonchalance by both goodies and baddies. A close personal acquaintanceship with these portable howitzers revealed them to be great cumbersome pieces of ironmongery with which it would be difficult to hit the proverbial haystack at nine paces. The thought of meeting a highly trained, murderously inclined Nazi parachutist didn’t appeal to anyone and I’m certain if the threatened drop had eventuated they would have had to be Olympic champions to have caught most of the station personnel.

While we had our six-shooters there were some highly exciting and funny incidents, bearing in mind that most of the men had never handled, let alone fired, a revolver. The result, after one week, was two fingers and a toe shot off, and various narrow escapes as guns exploded unexpectedly by night and day.

A lanky Australian pilot called Bluey chanced upon one of the ammunition boxes containing .44 ammunition and grabbed a fistful, then passed the word onto myself and this little Aussie gunner, a bloke called Murph, and we too helped ourselves.

Often aircrew walked back to the mess taking a short cut through a pretty little wooded depression in which blackberries grew and rabbits abounded. We had tried unsuccessfully to snare this furry mutton. Now, with plenty of ammo, we started taking pot shots at these difficult targets. The odds against hitting a moving rabbit even with a rifle are high but with those cumbersome pieces I’d say they were astronomical.

One evening, reinforced by three of the boys who had been let into the know, we decided to see if we could really bag a bunny. We split into three pairs and started a stealthy stalk. After several ineffectual pots, there was a yell from Murph. Sure enough, he had scored a direct hit. We were all gathered around viewing the still-kicking victim when out of the woods stepped a gamekeeper and his henchman.

This bloke put on an act as though, as Bluey said later, we’d shot a bloody bullock. The gamekeeper declared the rabbit belonged to His Lordship and our action constituted outright poaching, a culpable and punishable offence. He demanded we hand over the property. One of the boys told him to go to buggery. We moved off carrying the evidence and the gamekeeper withdrew, declaring he would immediately report our unlawful actions to his master.

We debated whether we should dispose of the evidence by tossing it into a clump of blackberries. Murph said, ‘Why don’t we eat the bloody thing! His Lordship won’t be able to put his bloodhounds on the trail until tomorrow anyway.’

That night we partook of barbecued rabbit and, while there wasn’t much for each of us, it was very tasty.

Still later proceedings were enlivened by a duel between two very full Australian sergeant gunners. These two fell out and decided to fight it out with .44s in a wheat field near the tent area. As this was a courting area used by the boys and Land Army girls, some consternation was caused as the two duellists, thirty paces apart, started to blaze away, each shot being punctuated with such pleasantries as ‘Missed, ya bastard!’ and ‘Cop this, mug!’. Because one bloke’s fire was direct into the camp area, everyone hit the ground until they ran out of ammunition.

Our landlord visited the camp next day with his hirelings while we were absent on a sortie and put on a fair old yike. He demanded the squadron be paraded so the miscreants who had shot his rabbit could be identified and punished. The CO had first tried being conciliatory; finding this unsuccessful he had really got stuck into him, asking him didn’t he know there was a war on; telling him the men who had shot his miserable rabbit were now flying over Europe risking their lives. Finally, the Groupy point-blank refused his request for a line-up and told him to go to buggery; at which the Lord of the Manor departed, loudly declaring he would take this matter to higher quarters.

That afternoon, Blue, Murph and I received a message to parade before the CO. He looked annoyed as we marched in and saluted. ‘Did you men shoot a rabbit yesterday afternoon?’

We said, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Would you please leave his bloody rabbits alone,’ he said. ‘That goat hasn’t found out there’s a God-damned war on yet,’ and returned to his papers.

We waited expectantly. He looked up and said, ‘What are you waiting for? You can go.’

Three days later an order came through we were to hand in our revolvers. Whether headquarters decided we were an untrustworthy mob with arms or the order stemmed from His Lordship’s complaint we never discovered.

***

The aerial warfare was rushing towards a climax as the date for the invasion neared and the squadron flew daily in good or bad weather, often squeezing in two ops while the long daylight hours lasted.

If flying was the order of the day, l’amour reigned by night. The wheat was ripening in the fields. This we soon found was an uncomfortable base for such recreation. The procedure was for the boys to take the femmes of their choice and a blanket each to the nearest field, trample an area flat, lay the blanket over the hay and they had an excellent couch for love-making.

For those who favoured this particular type of outdoor entertainment there was no lack of partners as the WAAF and Land Army girls were very generous. As an instance, it was said one pretty blonde in the sergeants’ mess entertained a new lover every night. Let me hasten to add, new areas were not trampled every time, as most had their favourite spots and returned to them whenever possible.

A week after the rabbit episode His Lordship decided to retaliate and sent his servants forth to stop this crop-trampling pastime. They had done a few amorous couples over when they chanced upon Bull who was entertaining his piece. The modus operandi of these fellows was to wallop the offending airmen over the bottom with a cudgel and tell them to get the hell out of the place. Lesser souls slunk off in embarrassment. Bull was made of sterner stuff and reacted violently to the wallop across his stern. His roars of rage could be heard for a mile as he chased his assailants across the fields and through the woods, bellowing murderous threats. After that, the outdoor lovers were left severely alone.