Chapter Forty-two

That evening in September 1944 we witnessed a strange phenomenon. There were two sharp, almost simultaneous explosions, different from anything we had heard before. Seconds later the cloudy sky was suffused with a pink glow and, after a pause, there was a sound like that of an express train travelling at tremendous speed overhead. About a minute later, this performance was repeated. The Londoners looked at each other and asked, ‘What the bloody hell’s this?’1

No-one except the High Command knew that these were the first V2 rockets, the forerunners of some eleven hundred missiles that were to add another burden to the ordinary Englishman’s life until the advancing Allied armies were able finally to over-run their launching bases.

Unlike the V1 buzz-bomb, the V2 gave no prior notice of its arrival and the three thousand people killed would never have known what hit them. In my opinion, this event marked the end not only of the air gunner but aircrew, and was a grim portent for the unarmed populations of the world of what another – a nuclear war – holds for them.

Next morning Smithy left to start packing prior to his move to the pre-embarkation depot at Brighton. He was a new man, his ‘A’ pass, removal from all flying and transfer home, were triple tonics that were working wonders. ‘Jeez,’ he said, ‘I only hope we can go back together.’

The station was in a state of flux, getting ready to transfer to France. I sweated it out for a week, waiting and wondering. I must have been a burden to my fellow-men because, sitting in the mess behind a paper, I heard a young Australian officer say, ‘Who’s that garrulous old bastard who gets around on his own?’. His companion laughed and said, ‘Oh, he’s supposed to have done three tours and is waiting for the magic word. From all reports, he’s a bit flak-happy.’

One day when I went up to the mess the letter from Kodak House was there. I was afraid to open it. What if they decided to send me on this bloody course?

I retired to a corner and looked at it for five minutes. Finally I plucked up courage. ‘Well, Sydney or the bush.’

It read in part, ‘You are to report to the pre-embarkation depot at Brighton in six days time.’

There wasn’t anyone around I could share the good news with, so I made a quick trip to London. There were a few goodbyes I wanted to say. I dropped in to thank the doc. He declared he had had little to do with my transfer. I said, ‘Like hell! But someday I may be able to do you a good turn too.’

I left many friends in England, both in civil and service life. I do not think I was a shrewdie, or trouble-maker, possibly because I was years older than my young flying companions, and had knocked around a lot before joining up. I couldn’t stand the phony grandeur with which some officers invested themselves. These dills were in the minority, the top operating echelon were down to earth good fellows.

Brighton was a staging area for incoming and outgoing Aussie airmen. Nearly all of the big hotels on the sea front were occupied by the RAAF. Here you met the young enthusiastic newcomers anxious to be in the fight before it was all over and the sober young-old men who had done their one, two, and in some cases three tours, the ordeal of battles over. Europe was reflected in their eyes and faces.

It would be hard for the average person to calculate what a tour of thirty operations meant. Air Vice-Marshall D.C.T. Bennett, the father of the Pathfinder Force, speaking in his book of that title, stated, ‘I believe that particularly in the other services, and indeed amongst the public, it is seldom appreciated that an ordinary bomber pilot (which included the crew) was called upon to do about thirty operations and that each of these operations was equivalent to a major battle which, in either of the other two services, would be regarded as the experience of a lifetime.’

After I had found my billet I went in search of Smithy. I found him in his room flat-out asleep and tickled his nose with a feather pulled from a pillow.

He opened his eyes and looked at me blankly for a second, then yelled, ‘Johnny, you bloody beaut. I knew you’d make it.’

There were some three hundred bods comprising pilots, WAGS, observers and gunners marked for embarkation. Happily enough, the old class distinction of the early years was gone; the gunners were accorded an honourable place in this company. As an indication of this, we became good friends with two fighter pilots who had completed a tour on Typhoons and two Pathfinder boys who had completed seventy-five operations.

As though it was a judgement for the tale I had tried to put over the doc at Kodak House, the pain in my back, which had worried me only slightly, now began to increase in severity. It wasn’t till I started to pass blood I realised something was radically wrong.

I thought this would happen to me. If I go to the quack I’m a moral to go into hospital, miss the boat and perhaps be stuck in England for another three months.

I conferred with my mates – two were in favour of my going to the MO but Smithy and the two fighter boys said, ‘Why not stick it out for a couple of days, it may clear up.’

At the end of this period I was worse. Then one of the crowd had a brainwave. He said, ‘I know one of the medical orderlies in charge of prescriptions. We’ll have a few drinks with him tonight.’ He was a ginger-haired Queenslander who listened sympathetically to my problem. He advised me to see the quack. ‘Sounds like kidney trouble,’ he said. ‘Sulpha tablets might fix it temporarily till you get on board the boat, but I’m not sure of your reactions.’

I recounted my pill-swallowing efforts in hospital. So it was decided to give them a go. In appreciation I handed over a quid and received thirty pills, to be taken at the rate of three a day. If anything unusual happened I was to go to the doctor immediately. They must have been just what he would have ordered, for they stopped the discharge and relieved the pain considerably.

It is not my intention to bore the reader with my aches and pains but, believe me, while I waited for that embarkation order I was a miserable poor coot.

At last it came. We were told to be ready the following day. The only trouble was we had to carry all our goods with us. My mates were champions, they shared most of my heavy gear between them.

The rumour was we were to board the Queen Mary at Liverpool. We entrained at dusk. As the train started to glide through the quiet countryside, I thought of a trip so like this one, more than three years before, only that time we had been moving south instead of north and this little island had been a hard-pressed fortress.

Today the picture was completely reversed. A million troops had already crossed the Channel; something Hitler, with all his might, had never been able to accomplish. With Russian troops hammering from the east and Allied armies pushing from the south and west, it was now Germany which was the beleaguered fortress.

I looked at the little hamlets flashing by, with the untiring workers in the fields. I saw in my mind row upon row of sleeping forms in the underground stations. I thought of the thousands of flimsy shelters in the back yards of hundreds of thousands of homes in London, into which the families crawled as the buzz-bombs beat their staccato way across the skies by day and night.

The indomitable spirit of the English working man and his family was something that Hitler had been able to bend but never break. These people had stood steadfast during five years of tribulation and destruction, joining the endless queues for their meagre rations, suffering bombs, fire, buzz-bombs and V2 rockets. They were the solid base on which certain victory had ultimately been built; had they failed, everything would have been lost.

The blackout curtains should have been in place, but so remote was the chance of an air raid that the conductor had not bothered to tell us to pull them down. The lights shone dully in the windows, and as I looked out into the darkening countryside I saw, as though in a dream, my mates again, not as they were now, lying in their graves on alien shores or resting at the bottom of the cold North Sea, but rather in the full vigour of their youth and strength, with all the joy of living that is the birthright of the young. There was Hally with his bear-like hug; Blondie with his deep, grating laugh; Mac with his sad, dog-like eyes; Happy arguing his political points; Aub with his heart-warming smile; ebullient, happy-go-lucky Kiwi. I saw them all as I had known them, was it three or thirty years ago?

So clear was my vision that I raised my hand in an involuntary salute.

Then, in a moment they were gone, lost in the mist and shadows of the gathering dusk.