It was in the spring of 1944 that I was posted for operational training to the highest airfield in England, RAF Davidstow Moor, in Cornwall.
I was only an AC2 trainee pilot, waiting for a vacancy to become a fully-fledged pilot in a friendly country where the weather was more conducive to novice flying.
Here, for experience of operations at Davidstow, my only job was to take the second pilot's seat in Warwick aircraft to watch out for the four-engined and powerfully armed German Condor aircraft, based in Brittany and operating over the Bay of Biscay.
Even with our plentiful collection of 303 Browning machine guns, we were no match for the bristling canons on the far swifter German aeroplane.
So my extra pair of sharp eyes being directed skyward were of vital importance when the others aboard the Warwick were looking seaward to locate bailed-out or crash-landed aircrew for whom we were prepared to drop, via parachutes, a specially-made lifeboat slung beneath the fuselage.
The sorties were often long ones, one, as I recall, lasting 9 hours.
We were each given a box of food and drink guaranteed as fried egg on our return to Davidstow.
The noise on board from our two Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp, radial engines was enormous. So conversation was impossible without use of the intercom.
Back on land at Davidstow there were several useless plans to keep me busy, if not happy. But life on the station was generally pretty miserable with poor rationed food and infrequent leave.
As having the lowest rank in the RAF (AC2), I mostly had to keep my sleeping space in a multi-bed Nissen hut clean and tidy, trousers pressed, boots shiny, brass burnished and blankets in perfect "bisquit" form. So leave, if only a day's worth, was a delightful break from the land-based monotony.
My favourite outing was to take a bike ride to Boscastle, a delightful, small and almost miniature unused inlet harbour on Cornwall's north coast.
On the way there or back I would stop, make for a field of grass, lie on my back and gaze into the blue sky to listen to the song, and watch the hovering flight of a skylark.
