Just as nowadays much of our time is wasted in "waiting" for such as deliveries, the post, appointments with doctors, dentists, opticians, telephone answering, and even jabs, so my days in the RAF as a wartime volunteer, and after, also involving waiting, but on a different, larger, and sometimes life-altering scale.
As I was complaining to myself recently about so much waste of time in life, I came to think and mentally record the same seemingly endless waiting around in the RAF both before and after gaining my wings in the USA.
So I have recovered a piece of dog-eared paper (now some 80 years old) on which I recorded the various stations with their now long-forgotten acronyms of purpose on my journey from joining up in 1942 wartime and being invalided out of the RAF with Tuberculosis (TB) in 1947.
If anything of note happened during this saga of billeting I will add a word or two on it for the sake of interest. So here goes.
1942. Having been a refugee in the USA, and now, at 17 years old, I crossed the Atlantic from New York to Liverpool in a convoy as I was at last old enough to join the RAF in England. I signed up right away in Oxford (why Oxford I have no idea). Disappointed, I was told to await a vacancy for pilot training. So, thinking that one day in the future I might become a farmer like my father, and now fully aware of food shortages, I took a job as a farm labourer to learn and help with the national effort. It was a hard life, which I embraced, but one of worry, which rather put me off the whole idea. I then heard of a job vacancy at RAF Theale, some five miles away from my digs, where a prop-swinger was wanted. Within bicycling distance, I took the job of starting up the engines of Tiger Moth biplanes. With no meteorology available at that time, an instructor would fly up-wind to see if the oncoming weather was suitable for safe flying. As the second cockpit was unused, and I was known to also be in the RAF, I had some gratis instruction in how to fly. This was valuable later when I came to my first solo flight. Then came the welcome news that I could start my training. This period of waiting in civilian life had been frustrating but put to excellent use.
06/09/1943 - 23/09/1943 at St John's Wood, London. This was where we were issued with uniforms and given a collection of inoculations before gathering at Lord's Cricket Ground beneath the corrugated roof of a single story stand where the Warner Stand now exists. One of our number blew up a condom and let it sail out over the hallowed ground to much laughter. We were given a patriotic lecture.
25/09/1943 - 06/01/1944. I was posted to RAF Paignton, Devon, where we were put through the unbelievably harsh training to become airmen and fit men. The non-commissioned officer who chastised us was known as "Chan". Some of our number swore to get even with him after the war. Life was miserable, my fountain pen was stolen and I had not the money from our meagre pay to buy another. On the bright side was the rough cider served in a thatched, woodland pub. Those unused to this drink might fall flat on their faces when leaving the pub. Fellow airmen who had been brought up close to home and mommy-coddled, had a dreadful time of this harsh training/bullying. Those few who had experienced tough boarding school life were far more able to deal with it. It was wonderfully enlightening to mix with people from every walk of life - something for which I have been eternally grateful.
07/01/1944 - 04/02/1944 at RAF Shellingford. This was just a few huts, a farmer's field, and Tiger Moth biplanes in which we learnt initial flying techniques up to the stage when we flew our first solo flights over the Berkshire countryside. It was a magical experience to have now flown an aeroplane alone. Local girls were much in demand by American soldiers stationed in the district. Silk stockings were the reward for sex, but condoms had been pierced by needles - leading to an increase in the local population.
18/02/1944 - 28/02/1944. Heaton Park, Manchester, was a holding distribution station. I can only recall a crowd of us airmen waiting on one railway station platform when three girls walked on to another platform opposite - to much whistling. Showing the airmen some hidden areas of flesh drew enormous shouts of approval.
28/02/1944 - 14/03/1944. I was in Scarborough but for why I cannot recall, except that it must have included more waiting.
15/03/1944 - 16/05/1944. RAF Davidstow Moor, in Cornwall was, I believe, the highest airfield in England, so quite often interesting aeroplanes would land there when other airfields were fogbound. After a Wellington squadron was based there, the station became an air/sea rescue unit of Coastal Command flying twin-engined Warwick aircraft. These failures as bomber aircraft had specially made lifeboats slung beneath the fuselage to be dropped beneath parachutes to save fellow airmen in the Bay of Biscay. I have written elsewhere of my experiences flying in the second pilot's seat, only as another pair of excellent eyes. My 20 hours in these Warwicks were my only operational flights in the war - one in particular being extremely dangerous when we managed to avoid the attentions of a powerfully armed, four-engined German Condor aircraft.
17/05/1944 - 07/06/1944. I was back at Heaton Park for more waiting.
07/06/1944 - 17/08/1944. Now I was on a Lancaster bomber airfield. RAF Skellingthorpe, just outside Lincoln. It was very much operational with its aircraft regularly missing from night time raids over Germany. It was not uncommon for those returning from bombing missions to have the vulnerable rear gunner dead and hosed out of their turrets. One day a returned Lancaster had to have a Merlin engine replaced after it had been destroyed in combat. So the new engine installed had to be tested in a flight up to Scotland and back. The rear gunner was, for some reason, unable to fly on this test flight, so I was asked to take his place. Now, at my fingertips I had four Browning machine guns fully armed up and ready. With a twist of the hands I could swing the turret from side to side and the guns up and down. It was possible, but improbable, that a German aircraft could cross the North Sea and beat us up. And I was ready. My only task, when asked by the navigator, was to take the drift (aeroplanes are subject to side winds, and this is drift). I would line up my guns with the landscape beneath and read off the drift on a scaled indicator at floor level on the right hand side of the turret. I would give him the information on the intercom. All was well. The new engine worked. No German aircraft appeared. Then, for the landing, those aboard, except the pilot, would gather around the main spar amidships that connected the wings. I had now flown in a Lancaster which, at the time was exciting enough, and, in recollection, a memorable stroke of wartime luck and experience.
17/08/1944 - 05/09/1944. I was back at Heaton Park - waiting once again.
05/09/1944 - 21/11/1944. I was posted to RAF Hornchurch a fighter airfield on the outskirts of London - again to wait. So I volunteered to mend bombed roofs in the East End south of the river Thames in Plumstead. Given a mate, the simple equipment, and an hour or so training by a professional slater, I crossed the river on the Woolwich ferry to start mending broken roofs with rather poor quality Welsh slates. It was a filthy job as the terraced slums were Victorian, with their soot, dirt and bits of slate accumulated in the roof space over the years, seemed to penetrate my clothing. The new slates had to have two holes tapped out of them with the point of my slater's hammer and then nailed into position on the slats attached to the rafters (I hope I have the nomenclature right). I must have made three or four bombed houses rainproof. It was such a deprived district that a lovely girl in one of the houses I worked on, smiled only to expose a mouthful of rotten teeth. The inhabitants were not only extremely grateful for the work done but would generously offer us tea and buns from their meagre rations. One day when I was up on a roof I heard a loud a loud explosion, followed by a strange swooshing noise. Later, I learned that is was made by one of the first German V2 rocket bombs to strike London. The noise of it arriving through the air followed the sound of its explosion.
21/11/1944 -30/12/1944. Back to Heaton Park once more to wait. Now, at last, important advances were about to happen.
