For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II. Dr. Campbell-Begg Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ attendants whatsoever near the tarmac. However, an airman ran out and said, “Quick, get down, we’re being attacked!” So we got into a slit trench and, sure enough, Biggin on that day, Sunday, was being very, very heavily bombed. Their transport, I recall, their Transport Section, had a direct hit; quite a number of ground crews and airmen and WAAFs were injured and killed.

      I then found I had an unserviceable aeroplane and I had no way of getting a ride by a vehicle, by a transport vehicle or anything else, and certainly not by an aeroplane, to get back to my own station, Stapleford Tawney, north of London. I was south of London. The end result was I hitch-hiked; I hitch-hiked up to the southern end of London, I took a tube across London. I called my own unit from the most northerly point and they came and picked me up. That was the way of life in those days. I guess I should mention that in this journey back to Stapleford I carried my own parachute on my back, not open of course, and so was ready to get into the air again.

      Moving along, that following week we were very hard worked; we were doing three or sometimes four patrols a day or flights a day, up to two hours in length, often making an interception and having an engagement.

      For me, 15 September was a day I certainly will never forget. I think I was on my third flight of that day. Around midday we joined up with another squadron, probably two squadrons, of 24 aircraft climbing up into an enormous raid which was coming over. We made an interception. The pattern was with these that when you came across these bombers with the Hurricanes you could get in perhaps two good attacks, by which time the bomber formation would break up, your own comrades would break up and you’d find yourself in a sky full of single-engined aircraft of both nationalities, German and British, and you’d have to try and make some reforming if you had any ammunition left. During that act, on that day, I suddenly was shot at and in no time my aeroplane was on fire, burning merrily, and I got out very smartly. I recall that I was probably about 12,000 feet and I had in mind, right, I won’t open my chute immediately – there was some scattered cloud – I’ll wait until I get just about to the bottom of the cloud layer, which might be 5-6,000 feet, so I wouldn’t be a target, I wouldn’t be shot at, and this is what I did.

      I opened my parachute around 5-6,000 feet. I looked around at myself – my trouser legs were in tatters from having been burned, I didn’t have shoes any longer. Contrary to all advice – like most other pilots, because we were searching and you can’t search with a pair of goggles on – I had not had my goggles over my eyes. I realised I had some burning in my face; the oxygen mask, of course, is round your nose, and as soon as the aircraft caught fire that oxygen burned up, so I was quite damaged with burns and so on. I saw I was coming down to land in the sea. I landed in the sea perhaps a mile, perhaps a little less, from the mouth, the southern mouth, of the Thames estuary, and I had a Mae West on and I just sat in the water and saw a small craft coming towards me, a power craft, and they pulled me aboard and they saw I wasn’t in good shape. I, too, saw I wasn’t in good shape. They got me ashore, they put me into a vehicle and took me to a First Aid Post in the Isle of Sheppey, north of Rochester, and called Rochester Hospital. They said, well, do nothing with this man, bring him here immediately. So in a private car I was taken to Rochester Hospital.

      In Rochester Hospital I was immediately put in the theatre and given a full anaesthetic and had my burns worked on. The following day I learned that – I didn’t ever see him – but I learned that a Luftwaffe pilot was also a customer at Rochester Hospital. I was extremely well looked after at Rochester Hospital. I was treated with something called gentian violet, which was a dark dye, and that was put all over my face and my hands and my legs. I had a few shrapnel injuries upon my legs.

      Eventually, after several weeks, I guess, a civilian surgeon was going around South East England looking at RAF casualties and evaluating them. He decided that I should go up to RAF Halton, which was the hospital near Aylesbury. I and two or three other fellows were transported up there by ambulance. I recall we drove through the centre of London, saw all the damage that was being regularly inflicted, stopped at a local pub and had a glass of beer brought out to us in the ambulance and off we went again to Aylesbury and into the Halton Hospital.

      From there, the New Zealand burns specialist, Archie Mclndoe, decided that I should go to his hospital in East Grinstead for skin grafts. So I guess it was in November 1940 I went down to East Grinstead where a whole mass of mainly RAF people suffering burns, some away back to the early days of the war in France, were all being attended by Archie, as we all called him, and he did wonderful work. He recognised not only the necessity for surgical work, but also rehabilitation. He got on to all the families in the East Grinstead area – the solicitor belt as it was called – and said to them, look, you’ve got to make these fellows, who are badly disfigured, more conscious of everyday life and invite them to your homes, and so on. So he had great success in that aspect of his work as well.

      I only had grafts on eyes – top and bottom eyelids were replaced. The pattern was, you had an op and then you went off from there to a Convalescent Hospital down in Torquay, the Palace Hotel, which had been taken over. Then you’d come back for your next op, so it was a long and slow business, but we were well looked after.

      After several medical boards I was cleared for home service only and with limited non-operational flying. I was posted as a Flight Lieutenant to the post of Air-ground Control Officer running the watch office, now known as “flying operations”, and this was at Martlesham Heath. They were interesting times. I had control of a dummy town, which was supposed to be Ipswich, and lights came on at night and made it look for all the world like an operating city, and it attracted some German bombs. Also a dummy airfield – we would switch on the flare path at night and aircraft movements showing on the ground, all disguised of course and artificial, but that too attracted bombs from time to time.’

      A final vignette of the 1940 air war over Britain comes from Alan Burdekin, who had joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve in March 1939 as a wireless operator/air-gunner:

      ‘We did get some flying; apart from the training in the town centre, we had camera-gun exercises flying. We were flying Fairey Battles and Audax mainly, open cockpits of course, strings and wires, biplanes, all very little different from the aircraft they finished up the Great War with. A monkey wire to stop you falling out and your scarf flying in the breeze, all real Biggies stuff, and for a young man interested in flying all very exciting. So then, of course, we were into the “Phoney War”. We did war training, we did hangar guard, duties at the aerodrome and that sort of thing. I think it was 1 October 1939 I was posted away to join 266 Squadron at Sutton Bridge.

      They had Fairey Battles, the odd one or two, that was all. Got no flying there until I went off to Penrhos in Wales for a gunnery course, where we were flying again almost last-war aircraft, the Westland Wallace for instance, which was a fair sort of antique, even then. However, I passed my Gunnery Course and back to Sutton Bridge, where the Squadron had then re-equipped with Spitfires, so there wasn’t a job for me, and I transferred to 264. We went to Martlesham Heath and trained with our new Defiants, which had a good turret, a four-gun Boulton Paul turret – it really was magnificent.

      Then I was detached on to a Parachute and Cable outfit; there was just one pilot, myself, a sergeant fitter and a couple of erks [ground crew]. The idea of this Parachute and Cable was that we would lower the bomb-bay of our Handley-Page Harrow, again strings and wires, biplane and canvas, and, when the enemy approached, we would steam across their bows but higher up, if we could get that far, and drop this load of 1,000 feet of piano wire with a parachute on one end and a bomb on the other. The enemy would obligingly fly into this, which would either wrap round the prop or soar back over the wing with the resistance of the parachute and either wreck the engine or blow the wing off. Well, it was a nice idea!

      Then, on 10 May 1940 the Squadron was told to be at Knutsford that same afternoon and ready to go into battle, so I went across the road and saw my Flight Commander and said, “What do I do, sir?” and he said, “Well, you’re working on this experimental job – you’d better stay there. СКАЧАТЬ