“In those days...if you agreed to help a farmer with the harvest you could get off school...My uncle had a farm, so I applied to go and work on his farm. August 1940 this was...We were in one of the fields...stacking up sheaves of corn after the binder had cut it. I suddenly looked up at the sky over towards Weymouth. I said to some of the farm chaps ‘there’s a fight going on up there, there’s a battle going on. Look at that aircraft plunging out of the sky on fire’. I said ‘Jerry must be coming over the coast’. ‘Jerry’ll never get over our coast’ they said. It wasn’t long before they gradually got closer and closer. The sky was thick with fighter aircraft, and bombers all over the place. That was the start of the battle of Britain...
“I was staying on a friend’s farm...we heard this roar of aircraft and we went outside...The sky was absolutely black with German aircraft. You’d never believe there could be so many of them. Then the fighters started getting in amongst them. One of the jerry aircraft came down...The old farmer got in his car and we drove until we found out where it was. There was the aircraft in a field and one of the crew sat under a tree, smoking a fag. Of course all the locals were gathered round him, feeling a bit angry...he didn’t speak, he just sat there... “One morning, about half past eight, I was going to work...being as I was RAF reserve, I had to get genned up on aircraft recognition. I was cycling up the road and I heard this aircraft coming. I looked round and I thought ‘Dornier 217’...It was so low that it had to go up to go over the electric light pylons....it was that low. I saw some tracer bullets heading towards me. I fell off my bike and got into the hedge a bit quick... “...I think I was nearly 19 before I was actually called up, about 1943....(after basic and gunnery training) we went to Market Harborough, which was an operational training unit...the pilot’s name was Flying Officer Phillips...he picked us. There was ‘Shep’ (Donald Shepherd) and myself, the wireless operator had already done a tour of duty on Hudsons...a navigator with no experience, an Australian bomb aimer with no experience and a Mexican flight engineer. That made up the crew...I was in the rear gunner turret. “...we were doing ‘circuits and bumps’ and I think the pilot, the instructor had let him go on his own. For some reason we had to land cross wind...we touched down and I looked out of the turret and I saw this wheel going across the grass. I thought ‘that’s funny, where did that come from’. Next thing, I knew...it was ours. We crash landed. The undercarriage collapsed and we skidded along the runway...luckily the bomb aimer that day was ill...If he’d been with us he’d have been a goner...Where the bomb bay was was completely flattened...he was dead lucky... “...(on another occasion) the instructor said to the pilot ‘I’m now going to show you how this amazing Lancaster aircraft can fly on one engine...we heard him over the intercom ‘port outer feathered, port inner feathered, starboard inner feathered’...It was at this time a knock came on my door. It was Don. He said ‘Come on, get your parachute...the engines are packing up. We didn’t know, his intercom was faulty. He couldn’t hear what was going on... “Our flight engineer was a Mexican (former) fighter pilot. We were on a flight one day and he was sat in the co-pilot’s seat...All of a sudden he said ‘look out’ and he pushed the control column down...Our aircraft went down and I looked out of the turret. There was a Halifax, it went straight over the top of us. If he hadn’t done that, we’d have had a head on collision...” |