Lost in the air
During the war I nearly died several times. When we were out in Malta, I nearly died several times. The first thing, just getting to Malta, we had a new aircraft we took from pick up from England and went down and we had to fly over a Spain and then we stopped, landed in Gibraltar, we took off there at dusk, and all we had on board to navigate was our radio and our drift sight. A drift sight gives you an opportunity of testing how strong the wind was because when your aeroplane is pointing this way, and you're going that way, your drift sight gives you an idea of what, if you want to stay on track, you've got to go this way a bit more. So those were the only tools we had and when we got over the Sahara Desert, we were sent on a long route because the aircraft was a secret aircraft was the latest radar on board, and we're sent on a long route there to Malta where we had to go out over because if we, if anything happened to us, they didn't want us to fall into enemy hands which almost turned out to be a joke but anyway. We hadn't gone very far and all that was covered with cloud, so we never saw the ground to get a drift sight, and so we thought, "Well, we'll just have to go to Malta and work out, we knew how, we had our maps and everything, and we''ll work it out, and we'd call them on the radio and get any help we needed. And when we came to use the radio, the radio was no good, just didn't work at all. So, we were left airborne over the Mediterranean, not knowing where we were, without any aids, and not knowing where we were supposed to be going, whether we're north, south, east or west. And we finished up being in the air in the end for eight and three quarter hours in a Beaufighter, and I had to make a decision of what we do because all we wanted to do, it's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't been in that situation, but for eight and three quarter hours we agonized over the water, knowing that we were probably going to have a watery grave and no one will ever know what had happened to us. And if you don't know what tension is – that's it! So, I decided I'd fly Northwest because all we wanted to do was find some land that we could land on and we didn't really care whose land it was whether it was German land or French land, Cyprus or whatever, Italy, because we had absolutely no idea where we were. It turned out the wind, afterwards, the wind was blowing about twice as strong as what we were given. Anyway, after, just at the end of our eight and three quarter hours when were running out of petrol, we struck land, and we didn't even know what country it was.
Emergency landing in the Sahara desert
So having found land, I flew in a little bit to get away from the coast where all the action was going on – everyone – the Germans and Italians were all retreating then. So I flew out far enough so we'd be in the Sahara Desert – far enough to work our way – we'd try to walk back to – if we got down. So I got down – the engines were coughing and I turned my landing light on – and I found the dunes were going this way and that way – so I didn't want to fly across them –so I found, I just had enough petrol to keep going along enough to find I can land in between the dunes. So I went down and I did the best landing that I've ever done in my whole life – I never want to – but we didn't put the wheels down – we just landed in the sand – and we knew we were behind enemy lines there – we were quite certain we were behind enemy lines. First of all we knew that this aircraft was one that had information on it that the German would have had – although at the time the Germans were just busy trying to get out of the way. Rommel and all the Italians on the main had packed it in anyway – they were fleeing into Tunisia. So we landed safely – but we found out quick enough – Bill took my revolver and ran over to towards where [he could] see all the traffic – he found the sign with Zuwarah on it – that's where we were in Zuwarah in Tunisia – that's the name of the town – we knew the enemy were there, he saw the enemy – we came back and we went to set fire to the aircraft which sounds easy but the wind was blowing a fair bit – and I took the tops off both of the petrol tanks and I threw a match in and it just went 'swoosh' – no fire – so I tried the other one and it did the same 'swoosh' – no fire. They didn't have any gas left in them – so then all I could do I went and got the Very Pistol – I fired the Very Pistol – it had the colours of the day – I fired that into both the tanks and we set fire to it. And we left there, we walked inland enough – to walk back to where we knew – Tripoli had been taken – we were probably only about 60 miles from there if all went well.
Tracked in the desert
The second day we got, two Arabs decided to follow us and we thought that was peculiar. One of them was dressed like Lawrence of Arabia on a white horse with a sword and the other bloke had a gun and walked with the gun and they obviously became quite obstreperous and looked as if they were going to try and knock us off which they did try to and the bloke would get down on his knee and aim and we're doing zigzag until we walked as long as we could thinking we could shake them off or anything but no chance of doing that and we finished up, I just couldn't walk another yard in the sand. I had a great coat on, I had everything, and I had a pocket full of black and white cigarettes we'd bought three of in Gibraltar, so I thought before I busted my boiler and was going to set up camp and have a battle, I threw the cigarettes away and we went on and the bloke with the gun he dived behind a, I've never thought about it anymore, I thought it might slow them up or something. I didn't have time to see the bloke on the horse anymore, so I got down and Muhammad Ali Bengali Gassi was his name I found out, and we tried to kill each other. And I had my revolver, and I fired four shots at him and every time his head came up, I got the sand right, just where his, the top of his head was, and the sand would go up and I'd think, "I think I might have got him' and up would come his head again and that happened four times and just after the fourth time, I looked up and this bloke on the horse riding around and he came galloping up towards us waving his arms and everything, put his sword away and he was going, "Sunisi, Englisi", they thought we were Germans and when we found they were English, they were friendly. If I had killed him, we didn't know, we only had the two of them we thought we were fighting and four more Arab heads popped up over the nearest sandbags, they're watching what was going on, and we would we would have been dead. So that was pretty scary.
Survival and shock
And my observer, I don't think he ever got out of the aircraft, which was really sad, but I can't speak for him because he didn't even get out. He was probably suffering from the same problem that I was, the high G in the aircraft just jammed you against the thing, you couldn't move hardly, it was so strong. So, I just think he may have been, he was a fine man too. So I lost him and I wrote, I hadn't had my twenty-first birthday then, I had just had it in Malta and I wrote this letter to his parents, but they never answered me … I had two or three that I could quite easily have been dead. And they picked me up in the hospital ship in the end and two Australian nurses on board and they made a fuss of me, cleaned me all up, put me into bed and that night, they brought in six sailors that had been in a ship that had been sunk and they'd been blown up in a magazine or something. And they brought them all in and they rustled they're just all covered like brown paper like back paper, and they rustled. They were all 100% burned, and two or three of them were still alive. And I got out of bed, I couldn't bear it and they all died during the night. Anyway, I saw all the wounded coming on board and I found a lump of lumber from the German aircraft stuck in my leg and I got the got one of the doctors to take that out and I watched him doing it and I'd had injections galore, but I watched him doing it and he stuck the needle in and I just went … He picked me up off the floor and I said. "Gawd. I hardly felt a prick. I don't know why I …" He said, "Boy that's what happens to you when you got shock.
Baling out: A fairly shakey do
The Battle of Sicily was on, invasion of Sicily and we were flying at night. One night up there, we'd already been shooting at trains and one thing or another but we got up there that night and we got in a stream of bombers that were dropping bombs on Sicily and some of them were landing in the sea, and we noticed a hospital ship down there with a cross on it, all lit up, and we didn't take much notice of it at the time but something we took notice of, and then we got behind a Junkers 88 and I fired at him and the first of our cannon shells hit a bomb, they were dropping land mines as well, a bomb or a mine on board and the whole world blew up, the enemy aircraft just vanished in dust and we were in a ball of fire, we were right in the middle of it. Our aircraft was all badly damaged and we knew, but I stayed just long enough to try and see if I could make it fly, and found nothing worked and then I decided I'd better open my hatch so we could bale out and my observer, in a Beaufighter sat at a seat further back in the aircraft, and he was singing out "Bale out, bale out." The next thing he called to me is, "I can't find the handle of my escape hatch." So I said to him, "Well you better come and jump out of mine." I thought that was the best advice I could give him under the circumstances but mine was open and I was trying to get out of it myself and in a Beaufighter you put your hands up and your parachute and your legs are sitting in the seat and you got to lift your bum out of the seat and drop through this hole behind you. Well I started to take my hands off and it went into a spin and the G force was so strong I could feel I wasn't going be able to, I couldn't lift my bum out of the seat. I could feel my hands being torn off and I knew in an instant when all of this was going on, I thought, "You thought you were going to die sometime or other and this is it." Then everything all went quiet. That's the last I remember, when my hands were torn off and that was the end of my life. Except that the weight of the top half of my body was heavy enough to tip over and bring my bum out and I hit my head and broke my nose and God knows what and blood was everywhere and the next time I came to I was floating in the air, so I put my hand down to see if the parachute was there and I pulled the parachute and I just got it opened and I landed in the water at about the same time as our aircraft. So I don't know how long I floated before but if I had been any longer I would have just hit the water. So I could call that 'a fairly shaky do.
D Day from the air
The big day came and it's going to be hard to tell you what it looked like. It was sort of just absolutely out of this world. The aircraft that were flying over towards Normandy, pulling gliders and all those sorts of things – so many – the air was just covered in, it was like a couple of thousand bombers raids, the numbers – and the noise of the engines of all the aircraft – you could feel it vibrating – I said that I could feel it through my feet – it was just like to ground – you know what one or two aeroplanes are like – you know when there are thousands of them are all going – and a lot of them were old type of aircraft – you know pulling gliders and that – Whitley's and things like that – anything that would fly a glider. So they went over, and on the sea, you could look out to sea, and just see ships everywhere. Cause we weren't involved at that stage till the night-time comes – as our job was at night. So we saw all the day preparations and all the aircraft – blokes going over there – we knew all about the weather changing – some of the water-borne troops had to stay in their ships – being sea-sick and being cold at night – because the weather was too bad – some of them were to going to go on June the 5th I think and they to had change because of the weather. Just seeing the buildup of it all was just absolutely fantastic. So, we were flying at night – and the first night of D Day one of our members – two of our members shot down a big German bomber – on the first night of D Day. That was the start of it. We were all – most of us were very successful – we were just luckier than some – and Bill and I over a period of about 17 days, I think, 15 days or something – we shot down four German bombers over Normandy.
We won the war, and thank God we did'
Some people have said to me, what was it like sort of killing people. Well that's what we had to do, that's what it was all about and that's why war is so bloody horrible, but I always think when we're flying over there at night, at Normandy, looking down and there'd be a lot of flashes and bomb flashes and gun fire flashes and it was lit up all along the coast there and inland to Caan and everything and we look down, I used to, we used to think "Jesus, we're lucky being up here", just thinking of the blokes down there. I really seriously thought about it, but the end of it with all those people being killed and everything else, you just got to stop and think we won the war. And thank God we did, because what the world would have been like now, if we hadn't, God knows. With Hitler and the Japanese and, even the Russians were hopeless, like they were supposed to be our allies, but they helped us, I think, in the long run. But Old Joe, we used to call him Old Joe, the Russians killed 22 million of their own people apart from the war. So, I mean, we were living with monsters around the world at that time. So, I always just console myself that it's good we won.
Lessons from war
I think at the end of the training when I, just before I got my wings, I think I thought I was God's gift to aviation, we got so confident in them and we used to go up and do silly things on them. And then I saw one of the blokes getting killed one day and that made me realize that perhaps I better be a bit more sensible and not do things that we were doing but I think the whole was a bit like that. If you see things happen, each one you try and remember a lesson from it for yourself. So, I got my pilot officer training, when I got my wings, and got on the boat to go to England.
