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| That's me, second from the left |
Recently I spoke of life at the camp near Madras, India. A veritable metropolis, Madras had modern shops and a Chinese restaurant, but after a mere couple of months we were moved to Ceylon, which was pretty much nothing but jungle.
For over a year (well into 1944) we were out there in the wilderness, so it was important to get along with your fellow squadron members. Luckily, I belonged to a cracking crew.
Once we had settled, the First Pilots were given
the task of picking their respective crews and ours did a fine job. It
was a true Commonwealth crew, made up of Brits, Canucks, Aussies, Kiwis and
Saffers. Plus, we had an American and a Spaniard to boot.
Our First Pilot was a class act. Eventually
achieving the status of Wing Commander, he was highly educated and after the
war became a solicitor of renown before ending up in Parliament.
While obviously a member of the British
upper-class, he was down to earth and didn't attach any importance to
background whatsoever, treating us as his equal. We called him
"Skipper" and he was just fine with that.
The Skipper had trained as a pilot in Canada and
must have made a special connection. He christened our B-24 Liberator bomber
"Winnie-Mae" and after war's end went back to Canada for a reunion,
returning to England with a Canadian bride named … you guessed it, Winnie-Mae.
Our Second Pilot ("second dickie")
was an affable Englishman and though a competent pilot, he suffered from a
minor defect – a lack of height perception. On the rare occasions the
Skipper allowed him to land the aircraft, he would perform a perfect landing twenty
feet from the ground.
Along with the frightening thud when finally
connecting with terra firma, the second dickie would come perilously close to
using more runway than was available!
The navigator hailed from New South Wales,
Australia, and was prone to mild profanity. It wasn't offensive, because he
spoke with a certain panache - not quite the Queen's English, but would have
been if the Queen had been born in Waga-Waga.
Our front-gunner, a native of Pugwash, Nova Scotia,
extolled the virtues of his home province to the point where it tried our
patience. Mind you, once I'd moved to Canada and explored the east coast, I saw
he hadn't exaggerated.
Another Canadian - our wireless operator - was
universally respected, yet disliked by the other Canucks in the squadron;
apparently for the sole reason of being from Toronto.
I was happy to be accepted into the group, though
disappointed at not being called "Ted". It had such a manly sound and
I was fed up from everyone back home calling me the childish "Teddy".
Alas, there was already a Ted at the airfield, so
another moniker had to be chosen. Not pleased with the initial effort of
"Cockle" (after mishearing my refined accent as cockney), I quickly pointed
out that Carshalton was a good 10 miles from London, so it just wouldn't do.
They settled on "Larry". I was
satisfied – it had a nice masculine ring to it. Not until later did I
learn it was short for "Larry the Lamb", due to being the youngest member
of the crew at 18.
I clearly remember our crew's first mission - into
Burma. It was uneventful except that the navigator had to find our way back.
You see, in the Far East the winds are much stronger than elsewhere and would
often nudge the plane off its course.
In this instance, the navigator asked me, as rear
gunner (aka "tail-end Charlie"), to test the wind via flame floats.
A float would be dropped into the sea and I'd train the guns on it without
firing and a graph at the top of the turret would register the angle. If the
graph moved side to side I could let the navigator know and he'd see how far
we'd been taken off course.
The Waist Gunners took a flame float off the rack,
dropped it into the chute and released, but somehow an updraft caught it and
pitched the float right back up into the plane and they had to scramble to grab
it.
They found this situation quite hilarious and
roared with laughter, that is until the navigator shouted from the front end
"What the hell's going on back there?!"
So, they got down to business and I watched the
flame float going down and as it hit the ocean and started smoking I kept my
guns trained on it and was able to relay the graph readings to the navigator to
get back on course for a safe first journey back home.
One memorable return to camp came from a Canadian
crew we shared a runway with. They had been on a sea mine mission over the
Malaysian Straits but were delayed by enemy fighters and bad weather. The
flight engineer had to inform the crew they would run out of fuel about halfway
home.
Their choice was to either ditch in the sea or
crash land in occupied Burma. The decision was made to ditch. The mid-upper
gunner spied a tiny freighter in the distance, so the pilot overtook it and went down in the water close by. Fortunately, it was a Dutch freighter.
During training we'd been told you'd have no more
than 30 seconds to get out of a ditched plane and these well-trained men all
managed to escape and float about in their Mae West vests until picked up then
brought back to Ceylon by the accommodating Dutch.
As you can imagine, it was always distressing when an
aircraft failed to return to the field after a mission. So, it was with relief and a rousing cheer that we greeted the missing crew when they sauntered back into camp like it had just been another day at the
office.
Ed
