Gaining An R.A.F Pilots Brevet In WW II

[regle]

The story goes on

Shortly after I joined 105 Sqdn. they moved from Horsham St. Faith , to a larger grass aerodrome called Marham, near Kings Lynn. It was here that I met the WAAF Flt. Sgt. (Discip!) that was to become my future wife. From the moment that I met Dora, I knew that she was the girl for me and I courted her assiduously even though she was engaged to an Air Gunner fortunately, for me based at another Station. We were both members of the Sgts.' Mess, of course, aand romantically shared the large Chamber Pot filled with beer that was traditionally passed around at Xmas and other festive occasions. Breakfast was served until 0830 and was rarely worth getting up for in those days of rationing, but when real eggs were on the menu and not the awful dried variety, word would quickly and magically spread around and tousleheaded, unshaven aircrew would rush in at 0829 with battledress tops over pyjamas to partake in the luxury of a real egg.
On the 30th. Oct.1942 I was sent, with another Mosquito piloted by Flt.Lt. Bill Blessing, an Australian, to attack Leeuaarden Airfield in Holland. It was an important German nightfighter base and the plan was that Bill Blessing should lead and we were to cross the Dutch coast well to the South of the airfield and then turn and bomb it on the way out . It was to be a daylight attack at very low level and we each carried four , five hundred pound H.E bombs with an eleven second delay to enable us to get clear. No armament of any kind was carried. we were to rely on our speed. The visibility was very poor and we lost the leading Mosquito as we were nearing the enemy coast. We pressed on but could not use the radio , of course. Unfortunately we went just over the masts of a smallship when nearing the Dutch coast and it fired off six red Very lights obviously warning the defences that we were en route.
Even in the poor visibility and at about fifty feet we saw the airfield right in front of us and attacked straight away. There was no sign of Bill Blessing so we dropped our bombs on the runway and some large buildings on the airfield. The light flak guns were giving us all that they had got and hit us with one burst just as we were turning for home.
In that one burst the major part of the nose cone disappeared, the instrument panel disintegrated, wounded both of us but neither of us felt it and were unaware of our wounds until much later, and set the port engine on fire. I feathered the port engine and,struggling, to control the aircraft, yelled to Les to press the fire extinguisher button. He promptly pressed the wrong one ! That wonderful Merlin coughed, spluttered and miraculously fired again as though nothing untoward had happened.
The port engine fire had gone out of it's own accord and,much relieved, I struggled to keep the aeroplane straight as we were turning left because of the assymetric power. My left leg was hurting and I put it down to the fact that I could not put any rudder trim on as the handle of the trim had disappeared. In actual fact I had caught some of the German flak in my left thigh and Les had got a small piece of shrapnel in his chest but not deep enough to penetrate far, luckily. By gradually reducing the power and slowly climbing to the base of cloud, about a hundred and fifty feet, I was able to set course for the nearby coast. We were doing about 190 knots which was not bad but we were dead meat for any fighter that could spot us.
We crossed the coast between two of the Friesian Islands, one of which was certainly Overflakee, so aptly named ! Unfortunately we also went between two small German naval vesels just lying out to sea. They were firing like mad at us and we could see the German sailors, in their characteristic flat caps, angrily shaking their fists. We thought that they were shaking them at us but it could have been at each other as the trajectory of their firing was so low some of their shots must have been perilously close to each other. Luckily we were not hit again and I set course for England but was very apprehensive at still being shot down as I could not climb in to the very low cloud as I had no Altimeter. The A.S.I. was working, Thank God, and the needle and ball, but most of the panel was gone.
We carried on and I began to be optimistic. It was very cold as my left foot was sticking out into the badly damaged front of the Mossie and we were getting most of the airstream in the cockpit but we actually got the aircraft back to Marham . The cloud had lifted very near the English coast and Les map read us brilliantly back. We were given immediate landing permission and I was actually on the approach with the wheels down when I felt the aircraft turning to port as I increased the power as they came down. The principle of "Safety speed" was virtually unknown at that time and I had certainly not heard of it. The next thing that we knew was there were trees coming into the cockpit and we came to a sudden banging, halt. I remember thinking, as I saw the trees coming in "We are going to crash, I hope that my watch does'nt break " It was a 21st. birthday present from my parents. We had crashed into a small copse at the side of the aerodrome, taking down thirty one trees, according to the Farmer who owned them and had the temerity to claim compensation for them and was, literally, thrown out the office of our irate Station Commander, "Groupie" Kyle.
My foot had gone through the wooden fuselage and I could'nt get out but Les just stepped through the large space where the front of the aircraft had been and took my boot off from outside. Luckily , as it had been a low level "Op" I had not been wearing my large flying boots. I am sure that had the aircraft been a metal one then we would both have been killed as it would have come in upon us and not broken up the way the our Mossie had done. We both ran from the 'plane as it was burning and it blew up when we were about a hundred yards away. As we were running I first became aware of my thigh wound but still kept running. We came to a small field where there were two Land Army girls running towards us. I was on the ground by then and they promptly pulled my trousers off me and started giving me very rudimentary First Aid by tying their green scarves around my thigh which was now bleeding badly.
The RAF ambulance was soon on the scene and the personnel were unable to believe their eyes when they found us. We had not got a scratch from the crash and our wounds were very slight. We were taken to Ely Cottage Hospital where they removed two small fragments of shrapnel from my left thigh and found another fragment in Les's breast pocket which had just broken the skin beneath but had not penetrated the chest.
It was Dora's, my wife to be's birthday but we had not got to know each other at that time but had spoken, briefly, the night before. One of her Waafs had told her that we had both been killed as most of the Station had seen the explosion following the crash and had assumed that no one could have survived that.
We were visited by the Sqdn. Commander , whilst in hospital who commended us both and was very kind about the outcome of the Op. We had severely damaged the buildings and put the airfield out of use for a time. We were in Ely for about a week and given leave and were back on "Ops" in about six weeks so there is more to tell.....