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...... I was stationed at Uxbridge England. One evening I took the tube to London and it was during a very bad air raid, I got my eyes filled with what the English people were going through--- sleeping in the underground of the tube subways, little kids yelling --- it was hell. I would rather take my chances with the bombs above.
I latched on to a newspaper reporter with the paper called The Scotchman and we spent the evening together. His newspaper was in a tall building and we saw London in flames, standing on the rood of the building. After seeing this for a while we went to a London underground bar, had a few drinks and then went back to his office and slept in a couple of bunk beds.
Well-- finally off to O.T.U. ( operational training unit) where we had advanced training to prepare us for a squadron. We flew Wellington bombers and learned all kinds of air firing, air to ground -- the ocean being the ground. We had two browning machine guns in our gun turret and I had to learn how to clear jams and in fact put a gun together in a dark room, with the gun in pieces. It was a fun time, with an occational bash on the side. Mostly it was work and more work-- our guns were always jamming and in O.T.U. you didn't have the best equipment, the best equipment going to the operational squadrons. One time I had a jam and we were over the North Sea doing firing to ground exercise when a German Dories bomber appeared a few hundred feet away.-- he was probably short on fuel and our guns didn't work so we went our separate ways, but to say I wasn't scared would be a lie.
My frequency in the Sgt Mess became a nightly affair but I passed my gunnery course with about a 70 to 75 % average. Finally my future crew flew to the O.T.U. and picked me up for a raid that night, their previous rear gunner had been killed the night before on a bombing raid. Our quarters on the squadron, 75 New Zealand, were superb, two men to a room and our rooms were kept clean and the beds made by the Waafs.
My raid over Germany that night was nothing; we had to turn back because the port engine was flaming. I made my first op without any trouble ( our trip was scrubbed, but the engine fire was something new. |