Department of Veterans' Affairs
Transcript
If you can ride a horse, you can fly…
Well there was an advertisement on radio calling on volunteers to go into the air force, they joined what was called the Empire Air Scheme and they just reached a stage when they were ready to start doing something about it and it was in May, I think, of 1940.
They started a radio broadcast in which the key thing was 'If you can ride a horse you can fly an aeroplane' and the two other blokes that I was sharing a flat with at the time were all horse bred people.
So after the appeal had gone out for a number of nights we decided we should go down and register. Well that's how I got into the air force.
Crew selection
Well, the first one we went in on a Saturday morning in Sydney, they took us by train to Victoria to, forget the name of the place now, and we did our first 12 weeks training there, all ground stuff during which they had a process of eliminating people from various categories.
I finished up being selected, as I'd hoped for, to be a pilot to learn to fly, the more highly educated blokes were chosen as observers they called them then, later on navigator, and the ones who didn't register so well were bomber wireless operators and when we finished that period of training we then went to do various things.
Mustangs and Spitfires
I finished up flying the Mustang Mk I on 231 Squadron where I served for about nine months I think it was and they disbanded the 231 and I went to number 16 Squadron where I flew Spitfires.
People think flying Spitfires was wonderful but I was on photographic reconnaissance which didn't have any guns, didn't have any armour plating and it wasn't all that fun and fortunately I only lasted there about four months and then I transferred back on to flying the upgraded Mustang Mk III with number 112 Squadron and that's the squadron I served with through Normandy, through to Brussels.
I joined just before D-Day about the 2 June and on 28 September they took it back to England. The British RAF had started to bomb at day time when previously they'd only done it in the dark and we flew fighter cover for them from there until I finished my tour of operations which was then 31 December 1945.
Rough landings
The Spitfire undercarriage, opened, the wheels came down, came out and opened, from the middle, from the body, so they were like tram wheels, like a set of trams and they opened that way so that you had very narrow and the thing wobbled on it and if it was rough ground you could easily drop it and break a wing, bust a wing, whereas the Mustang came from the outside in.
So, it had wide wheels and it gave you much more latitude. And by the shape of all of them, they all landed with the nose up and when you had the nose up, you couldn't see in front of you, you could only see out the side so, you know, on rough ground the Spitfire wasn’t all that much fun to land.
D-Day reconnaissance
Probably the one that I was luckiest to survive would have been in the Mustang. As I said it was photographic and we were photographing the beaches where ultimately the landings were.
We didn't know that. Well we had a vague idea that they were doing it but we were also not only, well on the beaches, the things they put there to stop the landings.
We did that as an individual. Not only did we have no guns we had no armour plating either so, you know, there was quite a few blokes who, you know, didn't come home and I don't know whether it was because I was smart or I was a coward. I didn't follow the routine of how you took the photos and I was in a bit of trouble with the people who processed it because I had to keep a special log of which direction I was flying.
Instead of going straight along and doing them and curling off and come round and do another one I wouldn't do that. I'd start at the very end and a do a little bit then disappear and then come up right down the back. Well I'm still here and some of the other blokes weren't.
Questions and Mustangs
Well as it turned out it was important. Unfortunately they didn't tell you and I had a blue on one occasion which is why I didn't stay there for long n that I said 'If you don't want to tell us what we're doing it for'.
The response I got after several attempts was 'It's for your own safety' and I said 'What do you mean? What you want us to do is dangerous.'
And they said 'Yes but if you get shot down although the Germans are not supposed to mistreat you' he said 'If they don't feed you and you go hungry pretty soon you'll start to give in and then all that we said, or half it, you're doing away with it and it could mean thousands of people are getting killed as a result of it.'
So anyway they got sick of me going crook and I moved back to Mustangs which delighted me because they had eight guns, four in each wing and you carried a 1000 pound bomb under each wing so you felt as though you were doing something.
You could see what you were achieving. It's a rare sight to drop two 1000 pound bombs on something and see the massive fire come up out of it.
Not very nice to think about it now because you didn't know who was inside but it was war.
A rude awakening
We arrived there late in the day they were moving forward and into Normandy, they'd erected the tents and our fold up beds were there, we had to unpack them. And there was trenching things there for us to dig a trench. Four of us in the tent we, enthusiastically we started, but it got very hard towards the end and we only got about 12 or 15 inches down and we packed in for the night.
We went to bed and, I don't know what time of the night it was, suddenly a plane was bursting in the air and you could hear the whine of cannon fire. And the bloke in the one next to me screaming out that he'd been hit. Well, we got out of there and we started digging again. That bloke unfortunately got, well he was hit bad enough for them to take him away and we never saw him again. Now what happened to him I don’t know.
D-Day strafing missions
On D-Day, as you're probably aware, the weather was lousy, very, very poor.
I'd only been on that particular squadron for four days I think it was, so I was the bottom of the pile and everybody wanted to go and see it.
We were not allowed to go to Normandy. In fact, I didn't do any attacking in Normandy until very nearly the end of it. Because we were Mustangs, because we were carrying bombs and we had much wider range than the other aircraft we were allocated all the work out into France.
Our job was to blow up roads, blow up anything that moved, drop bombs on things where they suspected the Germans might be and so my participation in action in Normandy was nearly nil.
The last two days when there was the great slaughter on in what they called the Falaise Gap.
We were to join in then and just flew up and down and slaughtered anything that moved. Horses, people. Anyone. So that was the only time we were allowed.
The Spitfires and Typhoons, they were the heroes of Normandy. They were on a strip not far from us and we would stand there and watch them, some of them being shot down before they got their undercarriages up. That's how close they were and they lost a lot of people, a lot of blokes and quite a few Australians in that.
Aftermath at Tilly-sur-Seulles
I want to go back. There was one particular incident or place. When we were in V. 12 there had been a big tank battle on big open space which was pretty scarce. I'm not sure how long before, whether it was one day before or two days. I'm not sure about that.
Four of us borrowed the squadron jeep and we went up there to have a look at allegedly fifty plus American tanks were knocked out plus a lot of German. So we went up there.
The only building that was standing but it had been damaged was the church but the rest of them, were a complete shambles. Three story buildings just collapsing.
The place stunk like nobody's business because there were limbs, arms and legs, feet and dogs and what else, lying on the ground rotting. The bodies, anything that was identifiable they'd taken away and the rest they were waiting for a bulldozer to come up and push them all up in a heap and do whatever they did to them.
Well that, we wandered around there for a little while and Tilly-sur-Seulles is burned in my head and its now a memorial museum because 780 or something of the French people in that village are buried in it, you know, the place was just slaughtered.
It had actually changed hands in excess of three times, the whole village. The Germans had it, the [Americans] went and took it from them. The Germans pushed them back. The [Americans] came back again and they had another go. So it was really slaughter and that's the place I want to go to.
Sympathy for French civilians
Well because I was there and saw, you know, with my own eyes, the damage, I feel, my sorrow goes to the French people who were living there because we saw none of them, something must have happened, well the ones at Tilly, 700 and something burials there.
Now how many of those there would have been all over and they were people who wouldn't have been all that badly affected by the Germans being there anyway, I mean they would have suffered but because they were probably used to feed the Germans anyhow.
They mightn't have got paid for it or something but at least they wouldn't have been hounded unless they were part of the Resistance and then they would have been.
People don't realise the non-active people who just have to, the same with those people who worked in the places that I watched them bombing.
My thoughts were, sure they were making armaments but what about all the poor unfortunate people that were down there just being burnt.
Death of a Lancaster
One of the Lancaster's was way behind the rest and they were flying loose formation at that stage.
There was a master bomber who was hovering around the top, you know, nearly at our height, that we were watching and he was directing them on how to vary their bombing and anyway he broke loose and came back to take these two on or that's how it appeared to me.
I got delegated with my group of four to go and cover this plane which we were doing and they were sitting up watching them. The other plane came back and I thought, we didn't know what he was doing. He came back, did a sweep around and came back and because he didn't have a load he was flying faster than the other one and then suddenly the one that was dragging the chain, let his bombs go on open land and anyway as they came down the other bloke flew underneath it and one of the bombs hit his wing and snapped the wing off.
So I was there guarding the other one and watching this one and I just went round and we followed him and only six of the seven got out. There were seven crew and only six parachutes opened.
We watched them. We couldn't watch for long, until they went down and we didn't know what happened to them but at least they were out and I often wondered after that what had happened to that crew.
Turn the clock forward to about 1956 and I was in Wagga and the bloke I did my wool classing training with had been in the air force together and we'd been friends, intermittent friends but close friends.
He was in business in Wagga so he persuaded me to stay the Saturday night because they had a dinner dance at the RSL which we did.
Bob and I were sitting there and for something to think of I said 'Bob'. He'd been shot down and been a prisoner of war. I said 'When did you buy it and what happened?'
And would you believe he was in that crew that I saw the wing come off. It was the pilot who didn't get out. The pilot stayed there while the rest got out and he was too late.
Bob became a prisoner of war and eventually got home. I thought that was a pretty good story to anyone interested in that sort of thing about that time.
Brussels sprouts
As air crew we were treated fairly lavishly, relatively lavishly anyway. It was brought home to me when I married and went to stay with her parents. Her mother used to have great difficulty getting sufficient food. Well, we were never really, I mean, often it was very monotonous food, like Brussels sprouts and I've never eaten another Brussels sprout either because you had them for breakfast, you had them for dinner, hot at nighttime and then you got them rehashed in the morning and again at lunchtime.
Further education
When the war finished, I was fortunate enough to be able to, they had 10,000 Australians and no ships to bring them home, so we were given the opportunity to, if we wanted it, to get some further education, which I did. I did a course at the Bradford Institute, crash course they put on especially and in wool and that stood me in good stead when I got back home and I stayed, I went back to Dalgety’s who I'd worked with before I signed up, and I stayed there for the rest of my working life.
Well, the law required them to hold our jobs, to give it back to us but because Dalgety's actually their head office was in London. They'd been very, very good to me. When I went over there the Sydney people wrote and told them I was coming and they were very instrumental in this course that was put on and when they still weren't ready for me to come home I then went and worked in the woollen mills in Bradford. I jumped the thing a bit not long after I finished my tour of operation. I married an English girl.
