Lancaster Men

by Peter Rees

  The newly formed crew was posted to Lichfield. John, at twenty-one, was its youngest member.

  After arriving in Bournemouth to the welcome of a bombing attack by two Messerschmitts, Alf Read appreciated the seven days’ leave he was given. He grabbed the chance under the Lady Ryder Scheme to go to a dairy farm on the coast, unaware that it was located in an area regularly shelled by the Germans. He saw bombs on every one of those seven days. Once, Alf and his farmer host were driving to a sale when they suddenly heard air raid sirens.

  And I thought, ‘Golly that sounds a bit funny.’ The next thing we see a row of houses with the windows and doors blown out. Women and kids come screaming out, and a truck had been blown over and a fellow lying wounded alongside of it. I realised I was in an air raid. And this was all in [my] first week [in England]. What a welcome. I was ready for home, I can assure you.

  Back in Bournemouth, Alf found that would-be pilots greatly outnumbered aircraft. He was selected as one of sixteen pilots to be trained as flying instructors. No sooner had he begun the course than his best mate was killed in a formation flight when the tail of his aircraft was cut off. Then an aircraft flew into a hillside, killing its two crew. Not long after, as Alf was waiting to take off, a collision between two aircraft killed another eight men. Bits and pieces of debris showered into a paddock where POWs were pulling turnips. A further disaster involved a new Oxford. The aircraft had been fitted with a heavy radio, which upset its balance and sent it into a flat spin from about five thousand feet. The centrifugal force threw one of the crewmen up into the tail section. When the plane hit the ground he survived, but his three crewmates were killed. As training-course captain, it was Alf’s job to advise the next of kin.

  After graduation, Alf was posted to Cranwell College, the RAF training and education academy, where pilots were trained to fly spy planes. On one training flight, with a pupil in the front seat of the single-engine aircraft and Alf in the back seat, a pipeline broke, blinding the young trainee with hydraulic fluid. Alf had to switch the motor off urgently.

  I was getting ready to drop into a paddock. But I saw an airfield with Lancasters landing on it and I came in across 90 degrees to the runway and managed to get the undercarriage down and finish my run right under the control tower. I just sat there and nothing happened. After a while I thought I’d better get out and have a look. I could see a Lancaster with a rear gunner being hosed out of the turret. When I went into the mess I found that it was the dambusters [who] had just returned from their raid. There was sixty-four missing from the mess that day, so they weren’t concerned with my problem whatsoever.

  Before long, Alf asked to be posted to a Lancaster squadron. He hoped that his experience as an instructor would stand him in good stead.

  Arriving in Brighton, Bill McGowen and his mates immediately began exploring the town’s hundreds of pubs. The former holiday resort’s hotels, cafes, shops and boarding houses now stared across the English Channel at occupied Europe. After a couple of weeks, Bill was posted to No. 9 Advanced Flying Unit at Penrhos, in north Wales, to be trained as a bomb aimer. It was still summer and, having had no luck with the local girls, he decided to go surfing in the Irish Sea. ‘Quite a good surf was running and large enough waves for body surfing. The beach as usual was all stones and care had to be taken to drop off a wave before reaching shallow water. It was entirely new to the locals and they turned out in droves to watch, as did quite a lot of the Englishmen on the station.’

  Flying duties were concentrated, with as many as three exercises a day. There were quite a few Polish pilots, who Bill thought were slightly mad. On navigation exercises over the Irish Sea, they loved to fly at about fifty feet above the water. While exciting and dangerous, this was emphatically against the rules.

  One day, while flying at about one hundred feet, the pilot wanted to use the toilet and asked me if I could hold the aircraft steady. I told him that I thought I could and with that he left his seat and told me to take over, while we were still flying low. I found that flying straight and level was fairly easy, but it was too low. I pulled back on the stick and climbed to about 1000 feet. The pilot returned screaming bloody murder in Polish. While using the funnel to relieve himself, he had fallen over as I climbed and wet the front of his trousers.

  With double summertime Bill found himself playing cricket at 9 p.m. in full sunlight. When the course ended, Bill went to his next posting, No. 27 Operational Training Unit, Lichfield, in early September. Training was now more intense, and he knew it would not be too long before he was posted to a squadron. His ‘perfect summer’ was over.

  A few days after he arrived at Lichfield, crewing up began. ‘I was standing around looking as confused as the others when I felt a tap on my shoulder. A pilot said, “I’ve got a navigator and wireless operator and would you like to join us?” I said I would and went off to meet the others. On the way he also recruited two gunners.’ The crew now consisted of Sydneysider Tom Davies, pilot; South Australian Mark Edgerley, navigator; Victorian Denis ‘Ned’ Kelly, wireless operator; Bill McGowen, bomb aimer; and two Queenslanders, Col Allen the rear gunner, and Jim Kluver the mid-upper gunner. ‘The first thing to do was to get acquainted—so it was off to the canteen for a few beers. We all got along extremely well and conversation soon flowed. As a crew we spent all our time together for the next three months of our training.’

  Before night training began, they were given leave in London. Bill did not drink much at that stage, and followed his mates from pub to pub drinking orange juice. It was no fun watching them get ‘full as boots’, particularly one afternoon when he picked them up at the Windmill Theatre strip show. ‘They were all full and I sober, so it was a shock when we were ejected for making too much noise! I then decided that as they were having all the fun and me none, I would join them. The next few days passed in a rosy glow.’

  On 10 November, the crew made their nickel raid—a trip to France dropping leaflets—and returned safely, unlike one crew that was shot down and another that was lost. The flying course was followed by a six-week commando and survival course. In one exercise,

  Col Allen and I were dropped off near a bridge outside some large village. Experienced in craftiness by now, we carried cash in our shoes and a bar of chocolate in our blouses. We walked into the village, without being challenged, although the bridges were supposed to be guarded. After a nice morning tea we adjourned to the pub and then when the pub shut at 3 p.m. went to the local pictures. At the railway station we enquired how we could get back to our base and then caught the train to a town nearby. A short walk and we were at the base reporting back. We were congratulated on our success as all the others had been caught. It was pure luck and the fact we had cheated a bit.

  Already, the Australians’ larrikin attitude was beginning to irritate the gentlemanly RAF hierarchy. The Australian Imperial Force had had the same effect on British Army staff officers in the Middle East—and during the First World War. Taking leave to London without permission when they finished the course earlier than other crews, Bill’s crew raised the ire of the English commander. ‘There was hell to pay when we got back, but the commanding officer took the reasonable view that he was getting rid of us soon and there was no point taking the matter further. He did let Tom know what he thought of the attitude of the Australians,’ Bill recalled.

  Posted to No. 5 Lancaster Finishing School at Syerston in Nottinghamshire, the crew entered their final stage of training in early April. They made the most of the local pubs, and Bill found the daughter of the Elm Tree hotel’s proprietor ‘particularly friendly’. But they were apprehensive about the future, wondering how they would measure up as a squadron crew. When they learned they had been posted to RAAF 467 Squadron at Waddington, reality sank in: as Bill put it, it was now up to them to survive. They left on 20 April 1944.

  Around this time, Jim Rowland completed his training at No. 1663 Halifax Heavy Conversion Unit at Rufforth, near the old city of York. One da
y he and his crew were in Betty’s Bar in York when he was approached by a short and beguiling Scotsman, Group Captain Hamish Mahaddie. Unbeknown to Jim, he was the ‘chief poacher’ for Pathfinder Force, responsible for selecting, recruiting, and training Pathfinder crews. Mahaddie had seen the crew’s fine course results. Jim did not know much about group captains—‘they were superior beings one didn’t see much of, and never in bars, who did things like pinning on your Wings when you finally qualified’.

  Mahaddie soon fixed that. With charm, humour and Scottish banter, he extolled the virtues of the Pathfinders. And he was honest about the drawbacks. ‘It’s a long tour,’ he told the group, ‘and I’ll no’ conceal the risks. If ye don’t get results, ye’ll be returned to the main force. But if ye come, ye’ll be part of the greatest team that ever fought, and ye’ll be doing as much against the Hun as any man in Britain.’ Jim and his crew rather liked the idea of joining an elite force. ‘Next morning, I asked the crew what they wanted to do. All of them agreed, and we volunteered for Pathfinders.’

  11

  STALAG TIME

  Rollo Kingsford-Smith was not the only member of his family fighting the Nazis. Soon after war was declared his elder brother, Peter, aged twenty-five, applied to join the RAAF and was accepted as a pilot trainee. After training in Canada, in August 1941 he joined 58 Squadron RAF, flying the already obsolete twin-engined Whitley bombers. Holed by the Germans on a raid, his aircraft crashed into the North Sea at night. Peter was rescued by a Royal Navy patrol, but some members of his crew were killed.

  In January 1942, Peter joined 138 Special Duties Squadron RAF, which conducted clandestine low-level operations in support of civilian resistance forces in occupied Europe. Flying Halifaxes, the squadron flew as far afield as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Norway, the Balkans, and even North Africa, dropping special agents, guns, ammunition, food, radios and explosives. They flew wherever their help was needed to sabotage German military activities.

  One night in February 1943, Peter, now a flight lieutenant, set off to drop an agent, along with radio sets and ammunition, at a safe location south of the French city of Lyon. As he flew his Halifax over the drop site at just under 500 feet, Resistance members flashed a light up at him, indicating that it was safe to fly another circuit before doing the drop. But as Peter flew back, German groundfire blasted the Halifax, disabling two engines. Too low to bail out, he successfully crash-landed the crippled bomber on a field eight kilometres away. The Resistance men picked up Peter and the crew. For the next three weeks the Underground moved him from house to house as he made his way towards the Spanish border. But as he waited for a guide to lead him over the Pyrenees and across the border, he was betrayed to the Vichy French police and captured while hiding in a farmhouse.

  Peter spent the next two months in a concrete-floored cell so small he could not stand up in it. Unable to wash or shower, he soon became filthy. One day, the Vichy police dragged him out and told him he was going to be shot. Instead, they shot the prisoner next to him. He was then handed over to the Gestapo, who took him to Paris.

  There he has thrown into an open-roofed cell, where a guard standing above him ‘showered’ him with a fire hose. The Gestapo fed him properly but threatened to kill him unless he told them what he had been doing in France. Peter refused to speak. Finally, he was sent to Stalag Luft III, the POW camp for captured airmen near Sagan, about 180 kilometres south-east of Berlin.

  Pilot Officer Charles ‘Chuck’ Lark, a twenty-four-year-old Sydney-sider, was already in Stalag Luft III when Peter Kingsford-Smith arrived. A German night fighter had shot down his Wellington over the Netherlands on his fifth op with 460 Squadron. He was the only survivor.

  Chuck had been forced to leave school early because of the Depression, and had worked in a brewery delivery office and then the Commonwealth Bank while he studied accountancy. Called up in January 1941, he trained as a pilot. Originally posted to Coastal Command in England, he requested a change to Bomber Command, and was posted to 460 Squadron after an urgent call for volunteers. Chuck was one of six who stepped up, but when they arrived at 460’s base they found pilots were no longer needed; instead they became spare gunners, bomb aimers or observers. Setting out for Bremen on the night of 2 July 1942, Chuck joked with his best mate, Gordon ‘Stumpy’ Lee, that if he did not return then Stumpy could have his bicycle. He took off on the raid, the Wellington climbing to 16,000 feet without incident.

  I was in the middle of the plane at the astrodome when suddenly all hell broke loose. I heard machine-guns and cannons drown the noise of the engines; saw hails of tracer bullets streaming up around me; cannon shells exploding and incendiaries setting the fabric on fire. Felt myself hit in several places, fell—or rather collapsed—to the floor, and remember wondering when the shower of bullets would stop. Then I noticed that my right arm was powerless and I could not see from my right eye. I spoke into the microphone to the crew, but got no answer. The plane seemed out of control.

  Finding I was too weak to disengage myself from the oxygen tube, I pulled off the whole helmet, grabbed the parachute and somehow stumbled back along the burning fuselage on hands and knees to the exit hole. Then I noticed that the right-hand clip of my harness had been shot off, so after engaging the chute to the remaining clip, I jumped.

  It is a funny feeling just falling through space like a stone, and watching the aircraft fly on without you. I lost little time in pulling the ripcord and in a moment the jerk was so terrific that I’ll swear I bounced. Then I felt quite helpless, and very cold, except for something warm dripping down my cheek and pain in various places.

  As Chuck drifted downwards from 12,000 feet, attached to his parachute by just one harness clip, the Wellington disappeared, never to be seen again, along with its crew. Chuck concluded that it might have blown up when it crashed, since it was on fire and carrying a full bomb load. It was just after 1 a.m. when he landed in a lake. His Mae West life vest kept him afloat as he kicked out for the shore, keeping a straight course from the star Altair. Two hours later he reached land, stumbling from his injuries.

  He was soon taken in by a Dutch family. They called a doctor, who told Chuck he would live but lose his right eye. Transported to a Dutch hospital, he was cut out of his clothes. He recalled ‘having cocaine poured into my right eye, several injections and the tedious business of having the eye removed’. He later wrote home: ‘The bullet entered the right side of my face, knocked a few splinters off my cheekbone, high up, drilled a hole clean through the eye, and, on its way out, just grazed the bridge of my nose. The doctor said that had the bullet entered half an inch higher it would have meant “finis” for me.’

  A cannon shell had passed through his shoulder muscles, making ‘two nice holes’ about 30mm in diameter but miraculously avoiding bone. Another bullet entered his left leg just above his knee and travelled up the thigh to his groin. The doctor decided to leave it there. Chuck was put under a Luftwaffe guard to prevent his escaping.

  When he recovered after seven weeks in hospital, Chuck was escorted to Amsterdam for interrogation and then sent to Stalag Luft III. He later wrote a comprehensive account of what the camp was like for him and the other 4000 Allied airmen who were imprisoned there. Set among ‘dreary looking pine woods’, the Luftwaffe-run camp was divided into four separate compounds. No visits were allowed between compounds, except for an occasional concert or football match, when a few prisoners were escorted to and fro under guard.

  The camp was guarded by troops as well as Alsatian dogs. Two outer camps contained the medical and dental barracks, where British doctors and dentists worked under German supervision. A sick parade was held daily in the sick bay, where Russian prisoners served as orderlies. A prison within the prison camp known as the ‘cooler’, was used for punishment: escaped prisoners served two weeks there upon recapture. In the same building was a shower room, where each prisoner could take one hot shower per week. Two barbed-wire fences about two metres apart e
nclosed each compound. Between the fences was barbed-wire entanglement. Raised wooden guard boxes were placed at intervals of about 150 metres, each containing a rotating searchlight and one guard armed with rifle, tommy-gun, and fixed scatter gun. At night, sentries also patrolled outside the fence. Day and night, special intelligence guards known as ‘ferrets’ snooped around inside the camp, searching for tunnels or information. About five metres inside the fence was a wire with notices warning that anybody who crossed it would be shot.

  The prisoners were quartered in wooden huts, each with twelve rooms, a fuel stove at one end and a toilet at the other. The lighting and heating were inadequate, and each room had from six to eight prisoners, who slept in double-decker wooden beds. In the centre of the compound was a communal kitchen where hot water could be obtained four times a day. German food rations were also issued from the kitchen. A loudspeaker on the roof relayed German news and music. Chuck thought that the canteen was ‘more or less a farce, as practically nothing useful can be purchased there’. He continued:

  The sanitation is rather poor, with insufficient taps or washing conveniences. Frequently the water is cut off for hours without warning. The latrines are primitive and objectionable—especially in summer.

  Thanks to the Red Cross, sports facilities are not lacking; a variety of games are played with enthusiasm. A miniature theatre is set up in each camp by the boys’ efforts, the standard of entertainment in plays, concerts and orchestra recitals is high.

  The libraries in the compounds are usually in three sections—Technical, Reference and General. Quiet rooms are set aside in certain huts, and there is opportunity for study. Lectures and exams are also held in many different subjects although concentration is very difficult in the circumstances.