A Night to Remember - part 18
In which an exhausted crew of a wrecked aircraft make their own way back to Ludford, where they face the same ordeal 12 times over.
SILENCE at last, everything is still while everybody digests the fact that we have survived and slowly we start to unbuckle seat belts and parachutes and gather together our bits and pieces and start to make our way down the fuselage to the exit door. The engineer stands aside to allow me to stiffly get out of my seat. “OK Stan, we made it!” “Yes skip, I’m glad that undercarriage didn’t fold up”. The navigator is just finishing stuffing his charts and gear into his green canvas bag. “OK Alex?” He gives me a wry smile. “Yep, I guess so”.
Why are we all so subdued ? Mentally exhausted? We should be cheering and shouting, but we don’t, we just climb wearily into the crew bus which takes us over to a welcome cup of coffee, a tot of rum and de-briefing. “Your eyes look very red Smithy, you had better get them looked at after we’ve been de-briefed.” “OK skip, they are bloody sore but I’ll have my rum and coffee first”. We walk to the mess where egg and bacon is on the menu and at four o’clock we fall into bed and sleep the sleep of the exhausted.
We wake in time for lunch after which we report to the admin office to discover that our squadron can’t spare a crew to come and collect us and that we will have to make our way back to Ludford Magna by rail. We are a motley looking bunch in our flying boots, helmets, Mae Wests and parachutes when we are taken to the railway station to board the train for London, where we find that we have missed our connection to Lincoln and will have to stay overnight.
Who’s complaining? I live in London, so does Peter our Special and Junior the midupper, so we make our way through the Underground and on buses, six of us to my home where I can be with my wife and the other two to their homes, having made arrangements to meet up again in the morning to catch the train back to Lincoln and bus to Ludford.
It’s very strange, dressed as we are nobody seems to be taking any notice of us. It feels as though we are invisible and nobody knows that just a few hours ago we were over Germany in an aircraft in flames and facing instant oblivion. Oh well, we won’t tell them, we will just go on enjoying the fact that it’s good to be alive and hope that we can survive the next twelve operations.
Ron (on the right) and his Lancaster crew did survive their tour of 32 ops despite their flying beacon for night fighters, and kept in touch for the rest of their lives, in Ron's case at the age of 92. More about this remarkable man in the next few days.