by Ray Whitrod
Apart from providing navigation, survival was my prime concern. I shared a room with my skipper, Dick, another Australian. He was unmarried. If I showed any moroseness because of absence from the family, Dick organised some activity, such as playing tennis or sharing a half-pint of weak English beer. He helped me through the worst periods. We became close mates and went on leave together. I had someone I could talk to who understood my situation. Things were different for Mavis, who was battling along on her own.
My other operational tours were in the North Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean. Navigating in the Arctic, escorting Russian-bound convoys, proved to be challenging — first finding them in thick cloud when my astro skills were useless, and then getting back to base at Akyrerie in Northern Iceland. At the time, flying boats were only equipped with magnetic compasses, and the proximity of the North Magnetic Pole meant that the compass was particularly sluggish in responding to changes in the aircraft’s heading. At the time, the allies were very keen to support the Red Army on the eastern front. Any German division that could be tied down in the east meant one less division on the western front. Stalin extracted a high price for this service in terms of aircraft parts, fuel and other necessities of war. The convoys carrying this material had to sail through the North Sea and into the Arctic Ocean, eventually docking at Murmansk in northern Russia. Our job was to fly over the convoys looking for enemy battleships and submarines operating out of occupied Norway. The weather was usually atrocious, making it very hard for us to see anything, but this also meant that we too were very hard to see. We were rarely shot at.
In retrospect, I think the war taught me several valuable lessons. I discovered that I could master a complicated technical instrument like the Mk9 Bubble sextant to give me a position within a 4-mile triangle after ten hours of ocean flying, despite the chronometer’s inaccuracy. My self-confidence grew to almost match that of the rest of the crew whose lives were at stake. They had great belief in my capacity since we always “got there” and “got back”. I did receive squadron assessments of “above average”.
The war, of course, dragged on far longer than any of us thought it would when we volunteered. I found that the best way to cope with separation from my family was to put life into two compartments: home life and war life. For the most part I lived in the war life compartment, and I became inured to the war. I just accepted that it was the present state of affairs. I suppose I rationed the amount of time I allowed myself to think about Mavis and the boys. I think most aircrew with families did this. Anyone who mused too long or too deeply on their distant loved ones became moody and depressed. Mavis wrote every week and usually her letters got to me; however, none of the parcels she sent me arrived, not one. I wrote back, although not as regularly as Mavis did.
I never doubted that I was flying with the best pilot in the squadron who would get us out of any scrapes, nor that I was with the top wireless operators, gunners and, of course, our excellent Belfast-trained flight engineer. I learned to trust our crew. We were a “family” and known on the Squadron as “Dick’s crew” — a description we were proud of. I didn’t actually swagger in the mess but I didn’t pay homage to any other crew either. It was a nice feeling to know you were regarded as one of the best. Our RAF officers’ mess was dominated by the squadron crews. We talked, argued, drank, played shove halfpenny, and engaged in more violent pastimes. There were ground staff there — the engineer officer, the intelligence team, the met forecasters, the padre and the doctor. They were made welcome in any discussion/drinking group, but the padre and the doc were especially regarded as “dwellers on the fringe”. They were seen as useful but not essential in getting a crew over a convoy. The last two were my age and my rank. They called aircrew by their first names as we all did, but they were set apart because they never achieved that degree of acceptance, being always “Padre” and “Doc”. I liked them both. We occasionally talked on equal terms about anything. Gradually I lost my Murrays Lane cringe when addressing medical doctors and ministers of religion. Ever since my Gibraltar days I haven’t accepted any “social distance” between us, although I have noted that in Australia these two professions seek and receive more status than they do in England. The others in our crew were all volunteer RAF sergeants. Over the four years, I grew to admire their fine characters. I thought that they were superior in many ways to their officers, especially those officers who were permanent RAF. One of the less attractive aspects of the officer-men divide was that the two pilots and I had almost no contact with the rest of the crew after a mission had been flown. We might have been together for almost twenty-four hours sharing the dangers and deprivations of the patrol but, once back on solid ground, the sergeants retreated to their own mess and quarters and we to ours. It was very English.
On the other hand, I had found a very warm “second home” in the United Kingdom whenever we went on a week or so’s leave while our Cat had an engine overhaul — as it did about once every six months. I had been adopted by an aristocratic family who lived on their estate just outside Winchester. The Lady Lilian Austin, a sister of an earl, offered me hospitality when she discovered I had no family or friends in Britain. Roundwood was a large country house, and even in wartime there were ancient servants and a nanny. Paintings of Hussars in full dress uniform adorned the walls. At Roundwood my socks were darned, and Lady Lilian would always write to Mavis after a visit to reassure her that I was well. I think I was the only young man to stay there who had not been to Eton College. Lady Lilian knew I was an Australian policeman but I received only the most gracious treatment from that family. I quickly noted and learned some of the social graces that had been missing from my own upbringing. This helped greatly later on in my career when I was in close contact with the royals.
Lady Lilian was friends with the local wartime doctor. He was a Harley Street specialist who had been bombed out of London and had come to Micheldever, near the estate. He was about fifty and from an entirely different social world. We became “mates”. Whenever he heard I was coming he would somehow acquire a crate of local beer and have it installed in “my” room. This was a guest bedroom set aside mainly for my use. Lady Lilian, who was an ardent reader and had a weekly order at Foyles, would also place alongside my bed a collection of books which she thought would interest me. I was not quite one of the family but I was a very welcome guest. I had come from a background which encouraged the concept of “the class war” and my High School studies of Marx and the capitalist system had strengthened the thought that the British aristocracy was unnecessary and did not, in any way, justify its privileges. Lady Lilian’s caring and responsible attitude, not only towards me but also to the estate workers and their families, considerably modified that view. Later on, when I spent time alone yarning and joking with Prince Philip as we sat birdwatching in the front seat of the aged Whitrod Holden sedan, I gained further understanding of the class situation in England. It wasn’t as one-sided as I had thought: “noblesse oblige”: meant that the better nobles certainly accepted their obligations towards the proletariat.
I was not aware that my visit to Roundwood immediately before my posting to the Middle East would be my last. I expected to return to England as I had done from my other postings. So I left two pairs of silk-woollen thermal underwear in an attic. These had been issued to me in the Arctic, but I had never worn them: they weren’t very Australian. I would certainly not need them in the Middle East. But the war ended and I went home on a freighter from Aden. In the 1960s, when I was a student at Cambridge, Mavis and I paid a visit to Roundwood. I asked Lady Lilian about my long johns. They had been taken over by her brother. The Earl of Sunderland still wore them when the weather was cold.
One of the other lessons I learnt from the war is that life really is unfair. I’d had my suspicions that we aren’t all dealt the same hand of cards. But the war really reinforced my belief that we don’t all start off equal and we don’t all have equal opportunities. I felt then, and sti
ll do, that many worthwhile contributions to the community go unrecognised. Some people receive public awards that they deserve, but many don’t.
This was driven home to me when I was in Gibraltar. Dick and I became friendly with a civilian type whom we used to meet playing tennis on the navy’s courts. He said his name was Don Darling. Dick and I got to like him and we met occasionally. We didn’t know much about his background. And then one day he asked us if we would like to accompany him on a trip to Algeciras, the town across the bay in neutral Spain. He said he’d shout us lunch at the pub over there. So the next time Dick and I had a spare day we joined up with Mr Darling and proceeded through the border post, Dick and I presenting our Air Force identification and Don Darling his civilian passport. We walked around the shore of the bay towards Algeciras. On the way we stopped very casually at a small cafe and Don suggested we have a cup of coffee. Inside the cafe Don said that he wanted us to play the part of tourists being shown around southern Spain. We drank some excellent coffee and then Don disappeared for a quarter of an hour with the cafe proprietor with whom, he said, he had a small bit of private business to transact. When Don returned, he took us to the main part of Algeciras and we lunched very well on the terrace of a hotel, surrounded by Spaniards and some other fair-haired types whom Don pointed out to us as German officers on leave. They looked at us and we looked at them. And then we returned to Gibraltar.
We had a few more outings with Don. We learned about a “Spanish” trawler that had slipped into Gibraltar harbour and unloaded some cargo. We thought this was a bit odd — ships from neutral countries did not normally do this. We talked about this with Don who told us that the vessel also visited the French Mediterranean coast where its crew performed a few duties “for us”. We didn’t pursue the subject.
After the war I discovered that Don Darling worked under the code name Monday. He was the southern organiser of the famous MI9 escape route over the Pyrenees. He organised for escapees from prisoner of war camps or shot-down airmen who had managed to escape from France into Spain to reach Gibraltar. I suspect that the cafe owner may have had a small dinghy with which to row escapees to our side of the harbour. As well as Monday, there were Saturday and Sunday and the MI9 escape route was very successful. But the Germans were nevertheless able to infiltrate the organisation and send through their own agents posing as downed allied airmen. In this way, the Germans learned where the safe houses were and then shot those people who had been helping the escapees.
By chance we met one of the British airmen who had crossed the Pyrenees in winter with his mate from a bomber crew who had been shot down over Holland. They had made their way to southern France and then over the Pyrenees by the smugglers’ route. One man had dislocated his ankle on landing and the injury had worsened and become gangrenous. He had received some medication from friendly doctors along the way, but had walked for three weeks on a green and painful foot. When he arrived at Gibraltar he was taken to our mess to await a plane home. He was in considerable pain. When I think back on the sacrifices made by the Dutch and French Resistances in giving help to allied air crew and escaped POWs, it seems to me that we really owe them a great debt. I know that some of their contributions have been acknowledged, but often honours are given for very minor things compared with the dangers involved in helping an airman from another country. True enough, the airmen were on the same side as the Resistance, but the lives of not only the active men and women of the Resistance were at stake: whole families could be shot. Yet throughout the war that escape route kept operating. A few years ago I read that the chief organiser of MI9, who had become a member of parliament, was assassinated by a car bomb while on his way to the House of Commons.
Another incident that confirmed the idea that life is less than fair occurred when Dick and I went for an exploratory trip in a British submarine operating out of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. We only went for a while, but I was completely frightened the whole time, although I hope I didn’t show it. Dick wandered around asking technical questions about engines and speed and horsepower. I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm at all. But I really was impressed by the courage and the sheer guts of the submarine crews who went to sea time and time again. In this case it was a medium-sized sub under the command of a Lieutenant Spring-Rice. Spring-Rice was a young man of about twenty-three or twenty-four, tall, fair-haired, athletic, charming to talk to. Dick and I got on well with him and we benefitted from our stay on his submarine. He got us safely back to Gibraltar and I have never been so grateful to be on dry land. About a week later, we were flying out of Gib towards Malta and saw Spring-Rice’s submarine coming back towards Gib on the surface. It was only a few miles out in a safe lane. He saw our aircraft and signalled to us on the Aldis lamp: “Good hunting, birdmen.” And I thought about how much courage was involved because he himself had survived a number of attacks from aircraft. In fact, Spring-Rice did not return from his next trip: his submarine was sunk somewhere in the Med. I feel a loss, a personal loss, that type of man had given up his life, while back home wharfies were going on strike, demanding higher wages for the task of loading munitions for our soldiers in New Guinea. And I’m afraid that whatever little interest I had in the ALP disappeared when I learnt about that. For some years after my return to civvy street, every time I read of Eddie Ward getting up in Parliament and making one of his speeches, I used to think what a loss it was that Spring-Rice had gone.
Thinking back about Spring-Rice’s Aldis lamp message to us brings to mind another three-word message that I haven’t forgotten in fifty-eight years. This was a message that was flashed to me by the commodore of a convoy of oil tankers in the Atlantic, making for Malta. The convoy of twenty large tankers, manned by merchant seamen, had set out from the West Indies carrying oil fuel. They would have been given a close escort until they reached “the gap” in the mid-Atlantic. The American destroyers would have turned back before the convoy reached the waiting British warships. There was no air cover possible so far out to sea. It was here that the U-boat packs would have been patrolling. They had sunk ten vessels from this convoy — half the fleet.
I can’t imagine a more frightening experience than being a merchant seaman in the mid-Atlantic on a large oil tanker exposed to U-boats waiting to torpedo you. If you are hit, the vessel either catches fire immediately or you can be thrown into the sea where you suffocate on the oil that spreads out and gets into your lungs. It was a dreadful prospect. And the remaining ten vessels would have seen the other ships go down one by one in the middle of the night. They would have seen the flames and heard the screams. But they couldn’t have stopped to pick up survivors, as this would have given the U-boats stationary targets. They would have had to steam on, leaving their mates to drown or die of burns.
In this case, we left Gibraltar and were the first aircraft to give the convoy cover after the ordeal. It was early morning when we picked them up and began to cruise around looking for U-boats. The commodore of the convoy sent us a signal: “Thanks for coming.” We stayed with them as long as we could and then left when another aircraft from our squadron arrived and took over. Our squadron was required to give the convoy close cover all the way through the Straits of Gibraltar and on to Malta.
Dick and I picked them up a few days after our first encounter as they were nearing Gibraltar. We flashed the captain a message: “Meet you in Gib.” The tankers arrived in Gibraltar harbour at about midday and by tea time the crews were ready for shore leave. Dick and I went down to the docks and met the captain and his mate. The American ships, unlike the British ones, were completely dry. No alcohol was carried on the American vessels, so we offered the Americans dinner in our mess. It was a bit late when we arrived, but we scrounged a bit of a meal and had a few drinks. When our bar closed at ten o’clock, we loaded up with some more grog and retired to Dick’s and my quarters. The four of us drank whisky and sherry until the early hours of the morning, by which time the dockyard gates were closed and locked
. So the captain and his mate stayed the night, sleeping on the floor. One or two of us became sick as dawn approached, so our room was a bit of a mess in the morning, but we got up and showered and shaved. Dick and I were due to fly late that afternoon, so we took things fairly quietly, seeing our American friends off at the gates of the camp.
Later that morning, Dick and I were carpeted in front of the Wing Commander — “Uncle Case”, as we referred to him. He was a regular RAF type: domineering, a pain in the neck, a bully. I never felt at ease in his presence. The war was providing Uncle Case with a big career opportunity, to achieve promotion. I thought he was a phony, that he did not have the commitment to action that the other air crews had. Years later, when trying to analyse why I couldn’t get on to the same wave length as Joh Bjelke-Petersen, I found real parallels with Uncle Case. I think Joh wanted the state of Queensland to benefit from his administration, but I also think he was even more interested in the Bjelke-Petersen family benefitting from it. I don’t doubt that Uncle Case wanted the Allies to win the war, but he wanted the war to effect his own advancement. He tore strips off Dick and I for the party we’d given our American friends. He was outraged that we’d left our room in such a mess that our batman had complained to the head batman who had complained to the adjutant who had complained to him. As a matter of fact, Dick and I didn’t get on at all well with our batman. I suppose he thought us tight-fisted, but we refused to tip him as the English officers tipped their batmen. It didn’t surprise us that he’d complained. The wing commander subjected Dick and I to his normal diatribe. We received one of these every four or five months for some misdemeanor or other. We took it in good order, but what annoyed me was that Case could so completely fail to understand the relationship, the bond, that had developed in just in a couple of Aldis messages between a convoy badly beaten up by U-boats and the first aircraft to reach them. But Dick and I felt good about our hospitality, and felt hostile towards Case. My own hostility has lasted a long time.