Enlistment
When World War 2 was declared, my brother was an accountant in the National Bank in Stanthorpe, and he joined up and departed Australia in 1940. I had just left school, and as he was in the Armed Forces, I wanted to do my bit as well.
My brother said to me, "If you go and join up, you'll get six shillings a day, but if you work for a bank as I did," as he did, he said, "Your wage will probably be 21 shillings a day, and the bank will make up the pay." So I joined the Bank of New South Wales, and they posted me out to Dirranbandi. I made a lot of good mates there, and when the recruiting train came round to Dirranbandi, which was the end of the railway line, we all went down and signed up. But the Air Force put you on a reserve list, which they did with me.
My other mates joined the Army, and they were up and away, but I was left, and it wasn't till about a year later that I was called up. It was 1942 before I joined the Air Force. I was always mechanically inclined and very interested. I had a great love of machines because I thought, really, they would probably be more reliable than people. You could ask a lot of them, and they'd just do it. The Air Force had already shown, you know, the 1940 battles and the Battle of Britain were pretty inspiring stuff, so I thought it'd be wonderful to be able to participate in that kind of activity.
Journey to America
We went by ship to Wellington in New Zealand, and picked up some more Kiwis, and then across the Pacific to San Francisco. I always remember walking through the ... As we came off the wharf, there was a caption over the gateway, and it said, "Through these portals pass the finest fighting men in the world."
The Aussies all said, "How did you know we were coming?" And asked various questions of the locals. We enjoyed that. No, not much.
We were put on a train and sent the northern route up through Wyoming and Utah and into Colorado and across Northern America to Camp Miles Standish in Massachusetts. The Americans were just so welcoming and really lovely people.
I remember the train stopped at a little place called Salida in Colorado, and I remember it had a great tall mountain up behind the village. An old fellow came up, and he peered at my shoulder flash, which had Australia, and he peered at that and he said, "Australia." And he leaned back and he said, "Say, which part of the States are you fellows from?" Some of the Americans had a bit to learn about geography, I think.
We played cards and peered out at the ever-changing scenery. It was winter, and it was really very cold, and the wonderful trains, the Pullman trains, were all heated, so we lived in great comfort. Well, being winter, there wasn't a lot visible in the farmland. A lot of it was snow-covered, and all through the Utah, the Wasatch Range, and then it went along. I remember the Colorado River, and we were going along beside the river. The railway line was up above, like on a ledge, with the river flowing down here. One stage went through this Royal Gorge Canyon, and the bridge over was a thousand feet up above the railway line. It was quite spectacular. We had nothing like that in Australia, but they were sights that you would never forget.
The Andrew Sisters
We were given leave, and I went to New York with another fellow, and we did over all the nightclubs, all the ones that were famous at the time. There was one called the Top Hat, and the Stork Club, and at the Riobamba, the Andrews Sisters were performing.
We went to the Riobamba and had an unforgettable experience there. Having watched the three sisters performing, singing their songs that were favorites at the time, like "The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B" and "Rum and Coca-Cola" and those songs. They belted them out in fine style. But anyway, while we were sitting at our table, Patty Andrews came over, and she said, "Oh, you Aussie boys, come over and meet my sisters." So we went over and met Maxene and LaVerne, and, you know, we had drinks with them and a great conversation. They were really great, lovely people who really looked after us and needn't have wasted their time with us, but I appreciated the fact that they did and displayed interest in what we were up to. So that was one I'll never forget.
Journey to Scotland
Finally, the relaxation ran out, and we were posted to catch a ship up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. So we travelled by train up to there, and we embarked on the Queen Elizabeth. And we were not alone, because there were twenty-odd-thousand American troops also embarked, and so we had to have our meals on the three-day journey racing across the Atlantic we had to have our meals in a rotation system. That's the only way they could feed everybody.
It went so fast. It went over 40 miles an hour, and it was unescorted. At one stage, we did a left-hand turn and threw everybody off-balance. There was obviously a submarine scare, but they did a left-hand turn and shot off somewhere. We finally came down from Iceland and over down into Greenock in Scotland, but we never really saw anything else except the limitless ocean.
Demand for bomber pilots
We were trained on single-engine aircraft, and Britain by then had air superiority, because its fighter command was so efficient and had built up in such numbers that they didn't need any fighter pilots. That's what the line was. However, in the end there was an insatiable demand for bomber pilots, and in the end they realized that the best source was from ex-fighter pilots and to retrain them onto twin and multi engines. And that's what happened to me. I received a posting to South Cerney and then in the Cotswold Hills, and then to a little satellite aerodrome called Bibury.
Crewing up
I was posted to what's called an OTU, operational training unit, at Wharton in the Marsh. I'm flying Wellingtons, so we had to learn to fly a big lumbering Wellington, which I really enjoyed. It was a lovely old aircraft.
That's when we crewed up. There were six of us. We got a couple of gunners, and a aimer, and a navigator, and so on. We were put in a big hall and just milled around. You sort of looked at each other. There were various categories of gunners and navigators, and you'd like the look of a fella and say oh are you crewed up? And he'd say no, and you'd say do you want to try your luck with us? Anyway that seemed to work out. That's how the whole RAF got its crews together. They let them choose each other.
Anyway, I think it was a success because I had no problems with my crew. They were quite good. From there we then were led to a conversion unit to learn to fly multi-engines. We went to this place called Riccall, and there we acquired another crew member called a flight engineer, because on four engines, they decided the pilot had his hands a bit full to do it all himself, so they provided a flight engineer. He could do all the tank changes. For example, in the Halifax there were 16 fuel tanks, and they had to be changed in order to avoid an airlock, which would stop the engines. They had to be switched over in a certain sequence. That was the job of the flight engineer to learn the proper sequence for changing the fuel. They always used the outermost tanks and worked their way into the fuselage to get rid of the fuel.
76 Squadron rules
From con unit we were posted to our first squadron, which mine was 76 squadron, RAF, at a place called Holme-on-Spalding-Moor, in North Yorkshire. That was a real eye opener, because this was a squadron in which Leonard Cheshire, who was the most decorated airman of the war, he did his first tour of operations in Whitley Bombers, and then later became the CO of 76. It was a squadron that had great tradition, and the CO at the time was just one of those wonderful English gentleman. His name was Wing Commander Hank Iverson.
When we reported to him that we had arrived on his squadron, I knocked on the door and a voice said "Come in", and we went in, and we were greeted with a pair of flying boots on a desk. This bloke is leaning back in his chair with his hat on the back of his head, and he leans forward and says "Come in, come in chaps". Puts his feet on the floor, and he stood up, and he greeted all seven of us, and he said now, "Take a seat boys". He said how we operate here. He said "It's pretty isolated", so he said "The first thing we'll give you is a bicycle to get around, because we're quite dispersed and there's a long way between the mess and your sleeping quarters, and so on".
He said "There are certain rules I've installed here. Saluting," he said "this is an old RAF tradition, but" he said "after midday I banned it. You can salute in the morning if you encounter an officer, but in the afternoon just ignore them".
Then he said "Dress comfortably". He said "I prefer my big, roll neck jumper". He said "I think you would enjoy comfortable clothing as well", so he said "Don't feel as though you gotta have your tie on and be regimentally dressed".
This sounded as, you know, a happy introduction to 76 squadron. Sure enough, when it came to operating in the briefing room, the blind would go up revealing a target, and wing commander Iverson would say "Now, it's not good news tonight chaps. We're going to Dusseldorf", or Frankfurt, or somewhere deep in Germany, and he said "A very tough opposition".
He said "I'll be leading A flight, and squadron leader Bridgman he will be leading B flight", so he said "But I hope we all meet afterwards and you all have a good trip".
Then a few nights later we had an operation which was to a flying bomb site, which was only across the channel into France, and back again. It was only a three and a half hour trip instead of six hours. Obviously over to France and back, you've got a better chance of survival than going deep into Germany and ure enough.
Wing Commander Iverson would say, "Well now chaps you should have a good night tonight. It shouldn't be a lot of trouble". He said "Squadron leader Moxham he'll be leading A flight, and Squadron leader Bridgman will have B flight", and he said "I'll be here when you get back". On the hard trips he would lead, and on the easier trips he would wave us goodbye. He was that kind of bloke. We really loved and respected him.
Halifax v Lancaster
There were already three Australian squadrons down in Lincolnshire flying Lancasters. We were all flying the Halifax 3. The Halifax 2 was really a quite different aircraft from the Halifax 3. The Halifax 3 was redesigned. The tower was redesigned. The engines were re-engined.
Instead of 1200 horsepower Merlins, we had 1750 horsepower radial Bristol Hercules engines, which transformed the aeroplane. We regarded them as a far safer aeroplane to fly than a Lancaster. The disadvantage with the Halifax was that the main spar of the Halifax ran right through the middle of the bomb bay. That mean the bomb bay could not carry giant bombs such as the Lancaster could carry, like the 12,000 pounder, which was a very long bomb and could fit in a Lancaster bomb bay, because the poor old Lancaster had the main spar up in the fuselage.
That main spar often became a death trap to the crews trying to go from one end of the aircraft to the other and negotiate this great high spire across the fuselage. Anyway, Lancaster fellows were so loyal to the aeroplane which they enjoyed, so good on them, didn't mind this impediment, but in Halifax we had no such problem. You could walk full length from one end of the fuselage to the other.
466 Squadron
When we arrived at 466 squadron, at Driffield, which had 466 already there and 462 being formed, there was an Australian CO, and his name was Group Captain Forsythe. Apparently his record of service was he'd done about a dozen trips in the Pacific, and he got kicked upstairs to be in command of this squadron in England.
He lined us up and he said "Right, now, stand at attention", and he said "I'll let you know how we run this squadron. We'll have MO inspection every week. Make sure your boots were beside the bed, and you have your tie on, and you always salute officers", and "Could we have a push bike?" "Certainly not, you'll walk". We didn't mind because we were operating.
It was a very intense, in fact moving from one squadron to another I completed my first tour of operations of 30 trips in 3 months. We'd just seemed to be, you know, either operating or sleeping, and that was it. Our heads were kept down and that was life. I completed 30 trips. I had a few adventures in that, you know, we got beaten up by a night fighter, we managed to escape from that.
Emergency landing
We came back on three engines on a couple occasions. We had to land away at the emergency dromes at Woodbridge, which had what's called FIDO, fog dispersal.
The runways at the three emergency dromes, of Manston, Woodbridge, and Carnaby. The runways were three miles long, and they had grass and tarmac, or concrete, and then grass again, so that anybody that came in with no hydraulics and no brakes, they could land on the grass and they'd pull up quicker.
If the undercarriage collapsed there was less likelihood of a fire starting on grass than on concrete. So that was the purpose of those aerodromes. Also they were able with a series of kerosene lit flares to create such convergion of the moisture laden atmosphere that they would disperse the fog so you could see the runway and come in and land.
Dangers of a bombing run
I remember at one stage when the attack seemed to be aborted, we were running up on the target, and the bomb aimer had taken over as he does on the run up to what's called the bombing run. The bomb aimer gives instructions to the pilot. He says "Steady, left, left, left a bit, steady, right, right, steady, hold it, steady".
He's got control of the aircraft, and the rear gunner says to me, "Oh skipper, an enemy aircraft is about a thousand yards to the rear, port quarter, up high. "Prepare to corkscrew starboard".
At the same time, the flight engineer, standing behind me, is looking up, and he says "Oh skipper, there's an aircraft directly above". He said "I'm looking into his bomb bay. I can see the cookie", which is a 4,000 pound bomb. He said "You wanna move away from him?"
The bomb aimer is saying "Steady, steady, hold it, steady", and the rear gunner is saying "Prepare to corkscrew starboard".
It's one of those occasions when you have to make a decision. On that occasion I thought "Bugger the bomb aimer, we're gonna ruin the bombing photo, the bomb is gonna go somewhere else". I rammed on the starboard rudder, and skidded away, and at the same time the cookie came, it went between the wing and the fuselage. I could've touched it. It went wibble wobble wobble wobble, like that, down. That got rid of that.
My skidding turned away, and then I came back on the target, and by then the rear gunner said "No, he's broken away, he's broken away to port skipper". "Keep an eye on him". So on that occasion we got away with it. When we had a combat, you know, he came in from about 800 yards and opened fire.
The rear gunner says "Corkscrew starboard", so over I go, and what you do, you peel off and dive, and the aim is that when he is shooting, by then you're gonna be lower and off course, and he will not have allowed for that alteration of course but as you need to resume your journey, you've gotta, when you've dropped 500 feet, you wheel over, and pull the stick back, and regain your height again, and then resume your course again and you keep doing that with instructions from the gunners as to what the fighter is doing. The moment he lines up and comes within say 4 or 500 yards, it's time to go and just put his aim off, and you just keep corkscrewing until he gets sick of you and picks someone else.
The German night fighter "Schrage Musik"
When we finished our first tour, we were asked due to crew shortage would we volunteer to do an extra five trips? That would give the squadron time for newcomers to come in. So we got together and said look, it's always other people that get shot down, it's not us, so we volunteered to do the extra five trips. On the third one of those, we were shot down, but we were shot down by what was called the Schräge Musik, which was something that we never knew anything about.
The Germans had a twin engine fighter with upward firing cannon, and they would come in below in your blind spot where it was impossible to see them, and give you a three second burst into an engine, which was sure to set fire to your aircraft. Then they would move on to the next one. I heard a German night fighter pilot interviewed after the war, and he said "On one night I shot down seven four engine bombers in 19 minutes". He said, "I would just set one on fire, I'd move on to the next one". He said "You couldn't go wrong".
That was how we came to our sticky end. As a night fighter they were very good. Once they equipped them with these upward firing canons, they had a wonderful life. Most of the casualties of bomber command would have ended up as victims of Schräge Musik, because many blokes who were shot down thought it was flak, because the first thing they knew was they were on fire, and a few bullets were flying past them. Some would have gone into the aircraft, and some would have gone between the wings or out through the other side. Fellas had never heard of Schräge Musik, and they would put it down to flak, but I think most of it was Schräge Musik.
Shot down
On the third trip, which was to Dusseldorf, we had just bombed, and we'd just turned off the target, and the next thing, the starboard inner engine just erupted in flames. The fuel lines were severed and the fuel caught fire, and the whole wing was on fire.
So, I bailed out the crew, I said "Bail out". We all bailed out. I went down the hatch, to the front hatch and luckily the bomb aimer and the flight engineer had done the right thing. They had pulled out the hatch and put it up in the nose. In our drills we always stressed, I always said to them "When you pull up that hatch, if you've ever got to, put it in the nose. Don't try to put it out the hull", because quite a number of fellas would pull up the hatch and then try to put it through, and the airstream would grab it and lock it into the hatchway, and they were trapped. They couldn't get out. There was no time to run back and get out the rear hatch.
I was very lucky again that my crew had done the right thing. They'd remembered their training, and I noticed the hatch up in the nose. So I went up into the nose and faced aft and drop your legs through and drop down. Then I remember pulling the rip cord, and I looked at the bit of wire at the end of this ring, and I was sort of over and over, and then finally drifting down. For a while the moon was shining on the Rhine, and I thought "Jesus", the Rhine is about a mile wide, I thought I'm gonna land in the Rhine, but anyway I landed on the west bank. I drifted in under, you know those big pylons with power lines? I drifted in, how lucky can you be?
Instead of landing on them, I drifted in underneath, and it was in a field of mangels, big turnip things, so I pulled the chute off, and I bundled it up, and I pulled up one of these big mangels and put the chute in and put the mangels back on top again, and then I got there and I cut off my insignia, and I started running to the west. So, the first thing, in a backyard of a house there was some clothes hanging out to dry, so I borrowed a jacket. It was a brown jacket, and I put that on over my navy blue battle dress jacket. So now I have navy blue trousers and a brown jacket, and I was a foreign worker. I was immediately disguised so that was a bit of luck that I came upon that.
Evading capture, part 1
All the locals were busy fighting the fires, and I just kept heading west, away from all the activity, and, you know, there were roads I had to cross, and I would wait until the traffic had gone, then I'd nip across. I kept away from people. I didn't want to have any conversations with anybody. So this went on for about four days.
On one occasion at the village, one night I was there and I see this farmer come out, and I thought "Oh I don't think I can get any help here", you know, "I think they're all German these people, so I don't want to talk to any of you".
Evading capture, part 2
When I got near the frontline I had to swim this, I don't know what it was, I thought it might have been the Waal River, but it may not have been, must have been a tributary. I had to take my boots off and put them around my neck, and swim over this river. It would've only been from me to that wall wide, but you couldn't wade over, so I had to sort of swim over, and then dry myself, put me boots on and get going.
One occasion I got a bit of a fright. I came to this five barred fence. I'm heading west and southwest as best I can, and I'm confronted by this. I'm walking along the fence for a few hundred yards this way, and that way. There was no way round. I looked, and it had a notice up, it had , 'Achtiung Minen'. Minefield.
So I thought, "Well I don't know, I can't go, 'm not gonna keep going at a right angles to the way I've gotta go, either that way or that way. I've gotta go this way, so I thought "Oh bugger it, maybe it's an old minefield or something". So I got down, I crawled under the barbed wire. I tip toed through this area. I never got blown up. I was lucky.
Evading capture, part 3
I could hear this artillery firing. I kept going and I came to this village and I walked around the corner and I came face to face with two German soldiers. They had their rifles slung, and one bloke just opened his mouth, and he said, he looked at me and said "?" "Ich bin ein ?", and at that stage, two Lightnings flew over the village with this deafening roar, and everybody took off.
I ran in the opposite direction to the soldiers. I thought, "I don't want to continue this conversation". I took off and these other, there were a couple of villagers around. Everybody flew out.
These Lightnings, the next thing they loosed off rockets. They had rockets under their wings. Later I found they were shooting at tanks. I came upon a tank, you know, I don't know it was an hour or two later but anyway I came on this tank that had been knocked out.
There were bodies there, and there were sub machines guns lying around and so on. I looked at all this mess, and thought "I don't want to get involved in this. I'll keep going", and I came on where these Germans have these artillery pieces, probably 88 millimetres. They're shooting in that direction, which was the direction I wanted to go, and I thought "Well, wherever they're pointing, that's where I gotta be. I gotta be there".
Evading capture, part 4
I went off down this road, and I'm sort of proceeding on this road. The next thing, machine gun fire is stitching the road. It was a concrete road and the bullets are flying off that. By then I'm in the table drain, facedown. Every time I'd sort of progress forward with my backside stuck up, they'd stitch the bank. I thought, you know, this is a really unfriendly place here. This is bad news. I thought "Well, I can't stay here. I gotta keep going", and the only way I could keep going was along this table drain.
I went a few hundred yards. I came to, there's a dead German lying in the drain. He's at the foot of a telephone pole. I don't know whether he'd cut the wires or what he did. Anyway, he was dead down here. I thought "Jesus, there's no room to go around him". So I had to go over him. So we got acquainted. I quickly, like, somersaulted over him, and my mates stitched the bank again. I kept urging on by this machine gun which was pretty unfriendly, and I kept thinking "If I stay here, they'll come out and get me. I'm not keen on that. I've gotta keep going". So I kept going, and in the end I kept going until the German shells were landing and kicking up dirt.
I thought this is the end of the road. I can't go any further. So I lay there and sort of thought about things, and I thought "Right, what I'm gonna do, at night time they won't see me. They're not gonna come over looking for me in the dark. They won't do that. I'll get going". Then I thought "Yeah, but if I get going in the dark, and I'm going where I hope my friends are, it'll be shoot first and ask questions later". So I thought "Look, while there's light I gotta get going".
Evading capture, part 5
There used to be a 15-20 second lull in the artillery fire. I got up in a lull. I got up on the road and I opened up my jacket, and I put my hands up, and I belted along the road. I went for a couple hundred yards, and a voice behind me said "Halt". So I turned around and there's a little American GI with his carbine pointed at me.
I went up to him and I said, "I'm an Australian airman, take me to an officer". He said "Australian?" I said "Australian". He said "March". I marched, and he took me to a little old shed in an orchard, and there was a captain and a major there. The captain says "Whaddaya got here corporal?" He says "I don't know". He says "Some bloke who says he's Australian. I don't know what that is. Australian". I said "I'm Australian". The captain says "Oh, Australian, right". He says "You got any identification". I said "I got me dog tags". I produced me dog tags. He said "Well, I think you look alright to me. Leave him with me corporal, you can go".
The corporal went off, and the captain says "Could you use a drink?" I said "Yeah." By then I could use a drink. Anyway, he opened up this black trunk he had out, tin trunk, and got out, I'll never forget, a bottle of black and white whiskey. It had a little black dog and a white little scotch terrier dogs on it. He pours a shot into a pannikin, and he says "Get that into you". I never had whiskey before, so I choked it down, and I felt a bit better after that.
Anyway, he said "Now we're gonna send you off to the intelligence people. They'll interrogate you and find out all about you, and see what you can tell us and what's going on." I said "Who are you? What mob are you?" He said "We're General Simpson's Ninth army. We're waiting to be the first army across the Rhine."
Interrogation and return
The first thing they did they put me with some officers, the major and the captain, they went down into Aachen which had just been liberated, and it was an absolute wreck. Aachen was just, there didn't seem to be one building standing. It was just all walls and ruins.
They had these American officers were in a kubelwagen, which, I'd never seen one before, and it went down into the river and the propeller, it had a shaft propeller out the back, and they just progressed across the river, and then he pulls it out of gear, pulls it into four wheel drive, and it just climbed up the bank and away we went. Marvellous bit of gear. An amphibious jeep.
Anyway, then they transferred me. They gave me an ordinary America jeep and a big black driver, and he drove me westward through Laissey to ?, and delivered me to the British.
The British officer said "My name is Colonel Bonham Carter". He said "What we'll do", he said "I want to interrogate you and see what information you've got". Then he said "We'll get you to Brussels, which has just been liberated". This they did. They drove me to Brussels, and I went into an intelligence office there, and also in that office was a Belgian paratrooper, and I said to him "Where have you come from?" He said "I've come from Arnhem". I said "I was in operation Market Garden", where General Montgomery, it was one of his failed operations, he dropped 15,000 paratroopers to take the Rhine bridges.
Of course he didn't inform the paratroopers that waitng for them was a panzer division of tanks who had just come back and were resting after being on the Russian front. So they were there to greet these paratroopers. No wonder the Arnhem bridge operation was a complete shamozzle. This paratrooper was one of them. He'd escaped westward. Obviously he had a bit of help from the locals.
Anyway, from Brussels they said "We liberated Antwerp yesterday. We'll take you to Antwerp and we'll get an aircraft to fly you back to Britain". They dumped me at Antwerp, and I got on a Dakota, and flew back to Northam in Britain, and was claimed by the British intelligence, that's in St. Johns Wood. I ended up there.
Winston Churchill and the Speaker of the House of Commons
The speaker secretary of the House of Commons was a bloke called Sir Ray [Ralph] Verney, and his job is to run the House of Commons. He allocates the time that it'll operate. He arranges, you know, the seating and the cleaning and the provisioning of it. Everything to do with the running of the House of Commons. They weren't relations, but they were good friends, the Newtons, had advised Sir Ray [Ralph] Verney that I was over there, and a friend of the family, and to look after me.
He was really marvellous. During my career he took me to lunch at the Traveller's club. I was appalled to have lunch, because he was a civilian just being the secretary and the speaker of the House of Commons. He was in the civilian suit. I was just a dirty old Australian flight sergeant. At the next table was Lord Portal, the chief of the RAF. Sir Ray [Ralph] Verney then said to me "Would you like to see the house in session?"
I said "Oh that'd be wonderful". He gave me a chit, which I have around somewhere. I've got it here still. It was a chit to the distinguished stranger's gallery, which is a mezzanine floor overlooking the House of Commons. So, I'm up there on my own, there's no one else there, just me, and I'm looking down, sitting forward, and Churchill is there, and Anthony Eden is right behind him, and Lady Astor is there and Atlee and the Labour party along this side, and they're talking about the casualties in Greece and Crete operation. There were 27,000 British captured, and 9,000 Australian troops captured. I just remember those sort of figures that he quoted at the time.
