Enlistment
Well, I was a student at Norwell High School in what's now called year 11 when war broke out, and I thought, "Good, I won't be in this." I thought the war would be over pretty quickly. I was 16. Anyways, as time went by the war got worse, and I joined up because I thought I had to, not because I really wanted to, because I thought I had to.
I don't know why I chose the Air Force because I was an apprentice electrician. I could have probably gone into one of the maintenance units in the Army, but, anyway, I chose the Air Force, and, of course, like every young bloke, I wanted to be a pilot, which I wasn't.
So I started training here in Victor Harbour, and then went to Ballarat and trained as a wireless operator air gunner. And I went to Mount Gambier as an instructor for a while. I was at Air Observer School, and then went to England, and eventually arrived in Bomber Command.
Father's enlistment
My dad was too young for the First World War, but he joined up in the Second World War, so both he and I were in the services together. He was in the Army in the 2/27th. He fought in Africa, in Egypt, and Syria…Yeah, we wrote letters. He came home. He got injured in Syria, and he got discharged, so he was out not long after I went in.
A big adventure
Well, it was a big adventure thinking, well, I'm going to going to go, first of all, I'm going to Victoria to see Melbourne. And then Sydney, and then Los Angeles, not Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, and then across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary to Greenock in Scotland, and then right down the bottom, England to Brighton where the reception centre was for aircrew. I forget how long we were there. Couple of months, I suppose. Then we were sent to wireless training schools, and the training units, and eventually I got sent to a squadron.
Crewing up
We were told one day, "Look all the air crew will gather in a room on a place called Wing," in Buckinghamshire, I think it was. Or, I'm not sure, but I think Buckinghamshire or Bedfordshire. "All air crew will assemble here." When we got there, they said, "Alright, crew up. Two gunners, a wireless operator, a navigator, a bomber and a pilot." So the first thing to do was find a pilot. And I was the last one to find a pilot, and I chose this elderly bloke.
Most of the other fellows had chosen young daring blokes. I was looking for a nice steady guy, and I chose a bloke called Jim Robson from Perth. He was then a flying officer and I had done about, oh, nearly 400 hours flying by then. And I thought I was pretty experienced, and I said, "If you're the last bloke, so I got you as a pilot." I said, "But I'm fairly experienced. I've got nearly 400 hours." He said, "I've got seven thousand hours."
He'd been in England quite a while before me and he'd been an instructor flying, training pilots on Tiger Moths, and so he was a very experienced pilot. And a very good pilot, too. So I chose, well he chose me or accepted me, really. And then he said, "Well, I've got a navigator," and that was a lad from Kent, and he was a wonderful navigator. Probably the best one in squadron. And then he already had two gunners. One bloke had been a Yeoman of Signals in the Navy. Another lad was a Londoner, and one came from Derby. And so we finished up with a crew of seven.
And then we started flying together, and on our first flight, I think, at Wing we burst a tire approaching. And that was a bit of an adventure, holding the plane still. And we went from there to flying on Sterlings and Lancasters … when I look back, I think the Lancaster was probably the best aircraft, or one of the best aircrafts that was ever built. It's a wonderful plane.
Quarters
We were in Nissan huts. They were cold and they had a little stove in the centre. And we had access to coke in a shed nearby. And it was the duty of everyone if we got up during the night to stoke up the stove. We used to get it really red hot the stove to keep us warm. It was so damn cold, but we had a comfortable bed, we had sheets and pillow slips. Whereas when I was training in Australia it was blanket and a pillow without the pillowslip on. So it was pretty good really.
Laundry lady
The lady in the village used to do our laundry for us. Cost us a couple of bob for shirts and things like that. And we'd go to the local pubs and things like that. Ely was the nearest town. I was at Witchford which was about a 15-minute bike ride out of Ely, and we'd cycle into town and sometimes for a different meal that what we're getting on squadron. Have a few beers at the local pub, cycle back. Lovely town.
Lucky charms
I had a rabbit's foot. Someone got me a rabbit's foot when I enlisted, and I put it in the bottom of my kit bag and was there until the end of the war. And all the fur wore off the bottom of it, but it saved me…The pilot used to wear a white scarf, and he used to write the name of the town that we'd bombed on the scarf. And, well, I suppose his daughters got it now because he's dead and his wife's dead. But he had this scarf, and all our ops were written on this scarf.
And I used to sing to the crew after we bombed the target on every op. I used to sing one of Bing Crosby's songs, The Funny Old Hills. They all enjoyed that or seemed to. Because I controlled the wireless, you see, being the wireless operator. But apart from that, no. Nothing unusual that I'm aware of. I don't know what the others had. I didn't ask them.
Radio silence
I used to receive messages mainly. And they were winds and any instructions they wanted to give us. Usually, you couldn't send messages because you had to maintain wireless silence because the enemy could track you down. If you sent a message, the radar would pick up where you were, so we kept radio silence. Every 15 minutes, I think it was.
Not sure now, was 15 minutes, half-hour I'd get a message for the navigator with the wind speeds and various other weather information…Oh, you always had a debriefing. You had to report to the intelligence people. But the best thing was that you got a cup of coffee with rum in it. A cup of tea with rum, and you'd have a cigarette. We were all encouraged to smoke. When you got your pay you got free cigarettes sometimes, and a razor blade. I think it was to shave and not cut your throat.
Staying alert
I was a wireless operator. I rarely wore anything, because I controlled the heating and when I got everyone else warm enough, I'd be sweating … Stay alert? No trouble at all, believe me. You never made a mistake and you were as sharp as you've ever been in your life. Cause your life was on the line and those of the crew too. So no, no worry of going to sleep or dozing off or not doing your job.
Ludwigshafen
Ludwigshafen, I think, was the hairiest because we did a lot of daylight flying as well. And usually, we could bomb through cloud, but there was no cloud at Ludwigshafen, and we all got plastered. The anti-aircraft fire was extremely heavy, and that would have been the hairiest.
London leave
After every six ops, we got a few days leave. I forgot how much it is, three or four days, perhaps. Generally, we'd head to London or must be more than that because I went to Edinburgh a couple of times. You get a free train pass to London, or wherever you wanted to go.
We always asked for the longest destination we could. Then we could drop off anywhere along the track. Yeah, mostly that was in Australia House where the basement was Australia the house in the strand and they had visitor's book that you could sign the visitor's book and you could make any comments if you like. I think you got some tea and things like that and you could catch up with the Australian newspapers.
It's a huge room I remember I was there one day with the, oh the buzz bomber went overhead that's one of those flying bombs. Then the engine cut out sounded like right over the Boomerang Club. And I dived under the table next to a Wing Commander. I thought "How great". But it went off in The Strand somewhere.
General Eisenhower
I was in London. I was on leave. We'd finished our ops and we went on leave prior to being posted back to Brighton to come home. And I saw Eisenhower receive the freedom of the City of London driving down The Strand in the open car. And oh, it was great, I got in the crowd at Buckingham Palace. If you ever look at the picture closely you might be able to find me. I forget where I was staying.
The Strand had a Comfort's Fund hospital in Sloane's Square which was very good. We could go and stay there fairly cheap. We would catch the tube back to, usually around Fleet Street where there was pub called Coaches just off Fleet Street where most of the Australians gathered. And we used to go to a pub called the King and Keys after we probably had a beer after VE-Day. Only the pilot and I because the rest of the bomb crews had gone home. They were celebrating with their families. We were just waiting to come home.
Prime Minister of New Zealand
Well first waiting for me was the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Mr. Fraser. Because we called into, what's that Wellington? We got called into Wellington, he was nearly blind apparently. He came up and shook my hand and said, "Welcome home". I still wasn't home I was in New Zealand.
And then in Sydney, I can't remember we went into Circular Quay and we were picked up and taken, I think we went straight to a train…Yeah, it wasn't all in one day. I'm not sure I think we could've overnighted in Melbourne. Hard to remember, but I remember at Ballarat. The train stopped at Ballarat, and people had stayed at Ballarat where I was training were on the platform to greet me and gave me a parcel, which was a parcel of fruit actually, to take home to my family.
War and trepidation
I was at school when the war broke out in 39'. September 39', and some of my school mates, their fathers had been in WWI and they'd served in France. And one of them had been gassed very badly. He couldn't sleep in the bed, he used to sleep in. He couldn't breathe properly because of the gas he'd received in France. And he used to have to sleep in a lounge chair at night. And I'd seen him, and he was a nice guy. But he suffered a lot, and another one his father was an alcoholic because he'd been shelled quite a lot when he was served in France. And then I thought, "God I didn't want to be in this someone will stick a bayonet in me". I'm only a little bloke, and so I thought "Oh I'll be glad that I'm only sixteen. It'll be all over when I'm old enough to go when I'm eighteen".
But when you get to, as things got worse and the Japs started to come down you could just feel that you had to go to war. And you know I couldn't give a thought about joining any other service but the air force. I really don't know why it's hard to say. But that's one of the reasons I didn't want to go. And I hope we don't have any more wars.
I'm glad people are coming back from Afghanistan. Because there's been 40-odd killed there. In WWII, there were 55 thousand Bomber Command people killed. So you know that's a dreadful waste of young life. One of my mates got killed in a raid in Cologne on Christmas day. He was very intelligent bloke he had a lot to offer the country. With his brains and that sort of thing. You know just lost, waste of a good life. For what? All right that's enough.
