Library Reference Number: 118
And After The Fighting Was Over - What Then?
It was September 19th, 1945. The fighting had ended a month earlier. I had been a screen flight engineer at 1660 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Swinderby since the previous September having completed my operational tour of 34 ops. with 106 Squadron. Though V J Day had come and gone, flying training had still continued at Swinderby but now the die was cast.
On the 17th I had my last flight as a crew member. It was the day when a number of air stations were opened to the public to savour the atmosphere of an operational flying station. Our show culminated in a 'Red Arrows' demonstration by a 'vic' of three Lancasters which sedately circled the airfield, roared earthwards over the runway and, with a discharge of coloured Very lights, 'mushroomed' upwards before landing and taxying before the admiring crowds!! As flight engineer in the leader of the 'vic' I had bidden farewell to what I had joined up to do. What lay in store?
With a Demob. Group of 52 I was going to have a long wait to return to civvy street but the RAF decided I was to be no further use to them in the air - so - redundant I was. All flying gear was handed in although I did manage to retain my little life-saving whistle. First transported to Burn, then to Catterick from where I wrote home....
As you know, the purpose of my visit here is to be re-allocated to my ground job and so far I have had an interview with a Squadron Leader. He told me I was one of the top in the test and I have asked for one of three jobs - Air Movement Assistant (supervision of people travelling by air); Equipment Accounts Clerk and Postal Clerk, both of which are self-explanatory. The idea is to get an indoor job during the winter. A snag with all the jobs offered is though - overseas is almost unavoidable. Still, the war is over so it shouldn't be too bad really."
The aptitude tests and interviews had suggested that my forte was Equipment Accounts. Thus, it was off to the School of Accounts Training at RAF Kirkham, near Blackpool, where I joined twenty-two other ex-aircrew lads. The two month course completed, now a Warrant Officer, on December 7th, at RAF Oakington, at 1 pm, a Liberator lifted me out of the UK to deposit me, (via Castel Benito, Cairo, and Shaibah) in Mauripur in north-west India a week later. I had sampled the desert environment, explored the Pyramids and Sphinx, sampled the desert environment and been accosted by local gentlemen who greeted me with...'och aye the noo!!', They had of course learned the lingo from the 51st Highland Division lads of the Eighth Army!!
A Dakota then transported me, via Poona to the other side of the sub-continent to Arkonam, thence to 337 Maintenance Unit at Avadi, near Madras (now Chennai). It was a huge base and included Royal Navy, Army, and Royal Indian Air Force as well as ourselves. From my office there, I communicated with far flung units over tbe Far East keeping track of their property and their needs. My great accomplishment was to track down finally some 56,000 pairs of mosquito boots which had been missing - on paper at least - for many months.
The base was well equipped with sporting facilities of which I was able to take full advantage - swimming, football, cricket - gaining admission to the 337 MU cricket and football Xl's - even to the Area Football XL - all of which kept me fit and free of the various tropical ailments that befell less active chaps. Other experiences not available to most people arose - trips to the nearby Indian Ocean shores, sampling the facilities of the YMCA Hostel on leave in the rarified atmosphere of the Nilgiri Hills, being deluged by monsoon rains, mingling with all sorts and conditions of life in a country of many traditions, cultures, languages and religions. Doing duty as Orderly Officer in the dining hall was a bewildering experience!
Shopping in Madras enabled me to send silk stockings, dress lengths, dried fruit, etc to family at home in impoverished Britain! I made rapid progress in my new trade and, while sporting my Aircrew Warrant Officer's insignia on my leather wristband, I was promoted Corporal Clerk E/A!!! There was even word of being recommended for a Commission which never materialised.
There was a down side of course. The subcontinent was in turmoil in 1946. 'Brits' were assaulted as the country sought independence from British rule and Hindu and Moslem savaged each other. We travelled about armed and our open lorry transport was protected from missiles by wire netting.
My letters home, however, conveyed feelings of frustration, anger and disillusionment. The return of the services to a peace-time footing brought much that was unacceptable and, to me, trivial and insensitive. I had enlisted to fly. By and large, while the war was in progress, the public had recognised and applauded the part played by the flying men of the Royal Air Force - the 'Brylcream Boys'! Now, there was a growing awareness on my part of the contempt in which young aircrew senior NCOs were held by many 'Regular' career NCOs in the Sergeants' Mess.
This was something new to me. On the flying units at home, I was aware of an intense mutual respect between those on the ground and those in the air. We depended so much on the skill and conscientiousness of the men and women on the ground while they, only too often, waited in vain for the aircraft and equipment which they had serviced to return.
Authority, too, was imposing more and more petty regulations. 'Airmen below Commissioned rank must not walk in front of the Officers' Mess', was one. In the Sergeants' Mess, it was decreed that there be no noise in the afternoon lest those who preferred to sleep were awakened, I suppose!!!
Most of all, I remembered that, when remustering at Catterick, posters proclaimed that redundant aircrew could be assured of retaining rank, pay and status - or words to that effect. These promises disappeared into thin air on July 1st 1946. An edict from the Air Ministry now regraded aircrew who did not have seven and a half years' aircrew service (counting time up to 1.9.45 as double). They were now designated 'Aircrew II' On paper, few wartime noncommissioned aircrew had any chance of being anything other than 'Aircrew II' and retaining their rank My rank now became Sergeant Engineer II and my Warrant Officer rank granted to me over the signature of Lord. Stansgate was now forfeit. On one day I sported my Warrant Officer badge on my arm; on the next I wore Sergeant's stripes!!
It was a most degrading experience and on 337 MU did little for one's status. It was a particularly insensitive way to treat ex-operational aircrew who had been 'through the mill'. Particularly unfortunate was the fact that the visible 'demotion' was not universally applied and it was frustrating, to say the least, to see aircrew junior to myself still sporting the Flight Sergeant and Warrant Officer insignia in public. A new Pay Code was introduced at the same time. At home, the Press were indicating that the Armed Forces had been given a pay rise, but my letter to my father on June 3, 1946, tells a different story.
By it I lose 2/- a day 'Jap.Campaign' pay, and 1/6d War Service increment. On top of that we are now under UK Income Tax (much higher) and we have lost the special forces concessional rate of 15 Rupees per £1. It is now Rs. 13.4 to the £1. So where is the increased pay coming in ?
These events, the treatment of Bomber Command and its Commander-in-Chief, and the refusal of the Authorities to grant the Aircrew Europe Star to aircrew of my era, led to considerable disenchantment with the RAF as it was now functioning. With a 'demob' group number of 52, I was constantly envious of those with lower numbers allowed them to depart before me. However, my posting back to the United Kingdom did come amid great excitement on November 13th and within ten hectic days I was in Bombay now Mumbai, after a rail journey of 31 hours and 700 miles from Madras, waiting to embark on the 27,000 ton Cunard Motor Liner 'Britannic.
I did embark on November 28th and after a voyage through the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, Mediterranean Sea and Bay of Biscay, the 'Britannic' docked in Liverpool, opposite the Liver Building, on a cold, damp, misty day in December. Although I was glad to be on my way home, I have been eternally grateful for that year spent in that comer of what used to be called 'The Third World'. In hindsight, it was a privilege, not granted to many, to sample an environment so vastly different in landscape, climate, culture and ways of life from our own. My future career was to lie in the field of education, and as a teacher of geography it was part and parcel of my work to bring youngsters into a better understanding of the lot of the peoples of the poorer countries of the world. This I could do backed by personal experience. In the latter part of the 20th century, 'The Third World' topic is rightly, and wiIl continue to be, a preoccupation of those with a concern for the well-being of mankind at large.
After Christmas Leave, a final posting took me back to Swinderby, of all places, where I had spent a year training new crews for Bomber Command. Now I was a 'pen-pusher' there - in the Equipment Accounts section. I remembered the lovely sounds of the Merlin engines. There, for a few weeks, I worked under the scathing eye of the Flight Sergeant in charge of the section. One of my colleagues was Wolfgang, a German prisoner of war, still wearing his uniform of dull crimson battle dress with blue circular patch on the back of his tunic. I took final leave of these new colleagues on February 7th, 1947, and the last person to wish me 'God Speed' was Wolfgang. Perhaps there was something symbolic in that.
At No 101 PDC (Personnel Dispatch Centre) at Kirkham in Lancashire, I was presented with a new uniform - navy blue pinstripe suit, grey raincoat, shoes, tie and trilby hat to carry me into 'Civvy Street'. Group Captain WR Sandford signed the last page of my 'Service and Release Book' on 19.2.47: 'RAF character- VG; Proficiency: Superior. Has maintained a consistently high standard in equipment accounting duties. VAS Psychometric tests show him ideally suited for teaching'. If I remember correctly, I had done a fair bit of flying as well but apparently that did not count!!