MBE - RAF Liberator over the Eastern Front: A Bomb Aimers Second World War and Cold War Story

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by
Pen & Sword Aviation
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright Jim Auton 2008

9781844684694

The right of Jim Auton to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission from the Publisher in writing.

Typeset in Sabon by
Phoenix Typesetting, Auldgirth, Dumfriesshire

Printed and bound in England by
Biddles Ltd, Kings Lynn

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation,
Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Wharncliffe Local History,
Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics and Leo Cooper.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact
PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England
E-mail: enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

Dedication

To the memory of my friend, the late Colonel Wojciech
Borzobohaty VM, Regional Commander of the Polish
Armia Krajowa ( Okreg Radomsko-Kielecki 1939 1945).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

I am particularly grateful to the following distinguished friends and organizations for their help and encouragement during the preparation of this book:

Chapter One

Training for War

Balls up! Balls up! Get your balls up, man! We stood there in rows, scores of us, in the Long Room at Lords, our trousers down round our ankles, our shirt tails trapped under our chins, while a man in civilian clothes carried out an inspection of our most private parts.

Get your balls up, he bellowed at the top of his voice as he paused in front of each of us. We were rather surprised by his vulgarity and we could not understand why he seemed to be so angry. I suppose he thought the whole process was a waste of his time. We certainly thought it was a waste of ours. Get fell in for an FFI! the corporal had shouted. What on earth does that mean? we asked each other. They want to see if youve got a dose of the clap. We tried not to stare at each others works, as we stood there exposed and red-faced.

Fall out, that man! we heard the corporal bark, and we craned our necks to see what was happening. Was it the clap? If so, what did it look like? As one of our number was hauled out of the ranks, we saw that one of his testicles was rather larger than an orange. The other one was the usual size. How the hell did that happen? Surely not the clap but we didnt know the symptoms. The lad with his extraordinary ball was led meekly away, never to be seen or heard of again. Since that time, I have never gone back to Lords. Years later, when I mentioned to a cricketing friend that we had exposed our willies in the sacred Long Room, he exclaimed in horror, Good Lord, and you were not even members!

We had enlisted in the Royal Air Force voluntarily and enthusiastically, to be trained as pilots. Why did it seem to us like such a good idea at the time? Our side didnt appear to stand any chance of winning the war. The United States had not yet shown any signs of joining in as combatants. Our newspapers indicated that Stalin with his millions of troops was allied with Hitler. Our gallant allies, the French, had swiftly capitulated to the Germans, and the British Army had been humiliatingly kicked out of the Continent at Dunkirk. However, despite the apparent invincibility of Hitlers forces, we had been impatient to join up. What drove us to such foolishness? Most of us were still at grammar school when the decision had finally been made in 1939 to teach little old Hitler a lesson. At our age, nobody would have allowed us to drive a car, borrow a motorbike or vote, but the Royal Air Force offered us the chance to leave home and fly an aeroplane. So we were hooked. The RAF didnt ask for birth certificates. We were whatever age we said we were. All we had to do was to pass the strict medical and educational tests and we were in. The youngest pilot I ever met was a lanky lad of fifteen. Joining the Air Force made us feel that we were real men. Little did we realize what was in store for us some of it good, much of it bad.

For the first few days, we would have put up with anything. We were so elated to think that we would soon be up in the sky. However, we had a lot to learn on the ground before we were to see any aeroplanes, and we would generally be treated with contempt both by the people who were directly in charge of us and the remote and unseen people who ran the Air Force. Uniforms were shoved at us by grumpy storekeepers in a garage that the Air Force had commandeered in St Johns Wood. Some of the uniforms almost fitted us. Unfortunately, they had no new footwear of my size, so I had to hobble around in a crippling pair of repaired boots one with rubber soles and heels and the other one leather with steel heel-plates and studs. We spent our first weeks learning how to salute officers, how to march back and forth for hours and how to carry out ridiculous drill movements while wondering how such knowledge should help us to win the war. What are you supposed to be? the drill corporals would snarl, Pilots! You couldnt pile shit!

In our spare time, we practised such manly pursuits as beer drinking and smoking. Most of us were still virgins, but keen to learn the ropes as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Every night there were plenty of ladies of easy virtue loitering in the streets between our billets near Regents Park and the West End, but they were wary of us because an aircrew cadet had recently murdered several prostitutes in the vicinity. Although the cadet was eventually caught, the girls were still scared of any man with the customary white aircrew flash in his cap. The solution was obvious: take out the white flash. The next hurdle was that the girls seemed rather intimidating. After all, they had been at it quite a while and we were mere beginners. Each night after lights out at 10.30, we related our latest experiences of chatting up the birds. One of the more intrepid lads told how he had spent two pounds, which, we learned, was the current local rate for sexual services. We excitedly encouraged him to disclose all the details. She was a nice-looking girl. I was a bit surprised when she invited me to go with her. She took me to a flat near St Johns Wood station. When we got to her room, she took two quid off me and put it under the clock on the mantelpiece. She told me to undress and lie on the bed, while she went off to the bathroom. Of course, I wanted to get my moneys worth, so when she came back into the room I asked her to take off all her clothes. She kept her stockings on though, and I remembered reading that girls had been strangled with stockings, so I guessed why. What happened then? we wanted to know. Did you shag her? You lucky sod. Well, no. She got me so worked up while she was putting a French letter on me that I came, and she said, Youre finished. I said no I wasnt. Oh yes you are, she said. I said, But I havent had it yet! Well, youre finished, anyway, she said. Then I suddenly thought about my two pounds on the mantelpiece, and so did she. We both jumped off the bed together, but she was a bit quicker than me and she grabbed the money. Then she told me to get dressed and go. I felt such a fool, and thats all my money gone until next pay day. We sympathized with him. As pupil pilots we were paid only two shillings (10p) a day, so two pounds was a lot to lose.