named Ray Trenouth, went on his first op as second dickie. His crew just lay on their bunks praying for his return. Eight hours later, to their great relief, he walked back into the married quarter which was their home on base. He said nothing, kicked off his boots, sat on his bed, pushed his cap to the back of his head, lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. His silence was more than the others could bear.
‘What was it like, Ray?’
He blew out a cloud of smoke and chuckled. ‘Just wait until you blighters go!’
Ray Francis had joined up after seeing his home city of Birmingham suffer under the weight of the Luftwaffe bombing. He wasn’t going to be easily deterred. ‘In the early days on the squadron we knew that people were being shot down and killed. But we never talked about it. We never related casualties to deaths. If 20 aircraft went up and two got shot down, you never said to yourself at that time, “That’s 10 per cent gone, so we’ve got to do 30 ops, therefore we’re going to get the chop three times.” We were just keen to get in and take part. You never expected to finish a tour, but then again you always thought it’ll happen to the other fellow and not me. Now that’s a bit daft, isn’t it?’24
Norman ‘Babe’ Westby was the youngest member of Rusty Waughman’s crew. As a bomb aimer his role was to guide the pilot over the target and release the bombs at the right time. He spent most of the op next to or behind the pilot, but moved down into the nose during the bombing run, the point at which the aircraft was running the gauntlet of the enemy’s most focused flak defences. He would lie down and look through the bombsight as shells exploded and shrapnel flew around him, to usher the bomber calmly into position.
It was not a job for the faint-hearted. In Norman’s opinion, it guaranteed him the best view of the unfolding drama: the searchlights scouring the sky and the fires burning on the ground; the kaleidoscopic ‘target indicators’ released by the Pathfinders to mark his aiming point – or, when visibility was poor, the skymarkers, coloured flares attached to parachutes. And to round off the show, as he thought of it, were the ‘fireworks’. ‘Isn’t it pretty?!’ he would cry, surveying the flak-blasted stage. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?!’
‘For Christ’s sake, Norman, shut up!’ the rest of the crew would chorus. They just wanted to hear that the bombs were gone and they could head for safety.
When another crew went missing, ‘It wasn’t worth thinking about,’ Rusty Waughman says. ‘We would raise a toast to them: “Here’s to so-and-so, he’s dead, and here’s to the next one to die.” Or: “Death put his bony hand on your shoulder and said – Live, chum, I’m coming.” We were young and naive. We didn’t have the mental capacity to truly understand the reality. The chaps who suffered most were the highly educated ones, who understood what was happening and knew they were likely to die.
‘If the other crews in your hut didn’t return, then the Committee of Adjustment arrived to remove all their personal belongings. One minute they were, the next minute they weren’t, and then a new crew arrived to replace them. People just disappeared. You didn’t see dead bodies, even though thousands of my colleagues died. People simply weren’t there any more.’
Alan Payne remained an irrepressible optimist. He always thought there was ‘a gap in the flak’ where he and his crew would find safety under the heaviest fire. Roger Coverley was a fatalist. ‘I knew I was going to get the chop because all my mates around me were getting it. So many aircraft were being lost that it felt inevitable. But it did not affect me. I thought, whatever happens, happens. No one shed any tears about it. We laughed at it really. We thought, let’s get on with it and then have a drink.’
Drink was not discouraged. Even Bomber Harris believed his men needed a release. ‘I have always considered that the strain imposed by sustained bomber operations requires that aircrew personal should enjoy the maximum amount of freedom from restraint, and should be relieved, as far as can be done without loss of efficiency, of routine station duties.’ He added: ‘The last thing I would wish to do would be to impose on aircrew personnel an irksome regime of inspections, parades and spit and polish.’25
The focal points of the men’s life became the pub and the mess. Any entertainment was welcomed which might take their minds off what lay ahead, whether it was the cinema or just a good sing-song in the mess.
Sam Harris and his crew were regular visitors to the Oswald pub in Scunthorpe on their free evenings. It had a gramophone; the barmaid would put on Bing Crosby singing ‘Cow Cow Boogie’, and on Saturdays there was a large back room where ‘some of the aircrew would go on stage and do their party piece, usually when the night was well advanced and a quantity of beer had been consumed. A favourite was a Flight Sergeant from 576 Squadron who was in charge of “discipline”; he sang a rude song about a woodpecker. It was always greeted with applause and the crowd joined in the chorus.’
Not everyone could use these diversions to escape the feeling of impending doom. Chick Chandler’s pre-war job – manufacturing parts for anti-aircraft guns – was a protected occupation, but everyone he knew had joined up and he didn’t want to be left out. ‘I can’t say I really enjoyed life in Bomber Command. It was always in the back of your mind that tomorrow might be the day that you might die. Even when you were going out, there was always the thought that it might be the last time: that this would be your last pint, or this might be your last dance. I wanted to join up and be part of the war effort, but the reality wasn’t quite as I imagined. Nobody told me they shot back!’
The other release was female company. The objects of their desire were the girls in the local town who might have an eye for a young man in uniform. There were also the WAAFS, members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force who worked alongside the men on base, doing clerical jobs in operations and control rooms and working in technical, electrical and mechanical roles to free the men for flying duties.
Norman ‘Babe’ Westby had been a virgin when he joined Rusty Waughman’s crew. ‘Taffy, our mischievous wireless operator, took it upon himself to introduce him to the ways of the flesh. He knew of a full-bosomed woman in Grimsby called “Luscious Lil” with a penchant for revealing outfits, who’d be the ideal target for Norman’s first operational sortie with the opposite sex.’ He organised a pub crawl. ‘By the end, Norman was rubbing his hands with excitement. The sight of her black stockings with the thin black lines at the back made it almost impossible to bear. Needless to say, the evening concluded satisfactorily as far as most parties were concerned, and Taffy took great pride in his achievement of turning a boy into a man.’
The married men worried about those they had left behind, and might leave behind permanently. When they were bombed out of their home in Portsmouth, Ron Auckland’s family moved to Porchester. Another family who had also suffered the same fate lived two doors away, and Ron became friendly with Sheila, a friend of their daughter. ‘As soon as I saw her, I knew she was the girl for me.’
She was equally smitten. ‘I felt safe with him.’
They became engaged in 1942, shortly before Ron was posted to America for his pilot training. A year later they married. Ron’s best man was Alan Barnes, another pilot whom he had met during the recruiting process at Lord’s Cricket Ground. Their group had been assembled in alphabetical order and the two men ended up next to each other in line – it was the chance start of a great friendship. They were soon stationed together as trainee pilots and became inseparable. Posted to different squadrons, they vowed to try and meet up every time they were on leave.
In January 1944 Ron called Alan’s base to put a date in the diary for a pint. He was told Alan had gone missing on a raid over Berlin. ‘I knew he was dead. It really brought home what we were all facing.’
Alan’s body was never found.
Sheila
